The gigantic fingerprint of Nuada - the Wild Hunt's corpse collector. Source: Castle history - Arundel Castle & Gardens

Buried beneath Collyweston's bizarre 'lost Palace' narrative lie clues to how the Palace lost its plot, why it lost it. And who helped it lose it when.

They are most obvious in the bizarre narrative of Collyweston's most prominent owner. Lady Margaret Beaufort: mother of Henry VII, grandmother of brother-princes Arthur and Henry.

That's Arthur as in dead and forgotten. And Henry as in dead but well remembered as England's most bedchamber-challenged hunter-king.

Analysed carefully, Lady Margaret's biography appears to be allegory hiding a truthful core. A core just discernible beneath layers of fabrication and metaphor. To unravel it, start with orthodox history's retelling of Lady Margaret's family dynamics:

From 10. Lady Margaret Beaufort and Torrington Manor - One Great Torrington:

A special royal position of ‘Kings Mother’ was created at court and Henry consulted her on many topics. The Spanish envoy Pedro d Ayala in 1498 wrote ‘ [Henry] was much influenced by his mother’.

That's Lady Margaret's son, Henry VII.

And from WHO LIVED AT THE PALACE - Collyweston Historic:

the King's second son Henry (VIII) spent many hours in the care of his grandmother.

Both he and his grandmother shared a love of hunting.

That's Lady Margaret's grandson, Henry VIII. England's hexed groom.

It was Lady Margaret, then, who showed the two Henrys how things get done.

For her own part, we're told, Lady Margaret left home early and learned in the School of Hard Knocks. Mainly learning how to make money in the property market. So much so that when Stukeley claimed Harry VII's mother was a 'Countess', he really meant it:

From The Palace of Collyweston:

Sandra: [Margaret Beaufort] also had a Counting House. So, apart from her jewels, she clearly had lots of money! You see, Margaret Beaufort administered the Midlands from Collyweston. This meant that there was also a council chamber where she could conduct business – quite unusual for a woman!

Sarah: So, Margaret actually administered the whole of the area in the Midlands on behalf of her son Henry VII?

Sandra: She did, yes. She was one of the very few women who could conduct business in her own right – [known as a ‘femme sole‘] [^1]. She, therefore, administered her estate independently. Very few women in the Middle Ages were allowed to do that. I think Alice Chaucer was another one. So, she had power, and on behalf of her son, she could intervene where there were disputes. People would probably come over from Coventry or somewhere similar to Collyweston for her to adjudicate on whatever was under question – and she would decide guilt or innocence – and the sentence.

It's probably news to many that Geoffrey's wife Alice Chaucer was a business woman. But was she - like Lady Margaret - into hunting?

The answer's probably in the name. 'Chaucer' resembles French 'chasseur'. In English: 'hunter'.

If you investigate England's fen-edge castles and mounds, you find a surprising number were lodges in hunting parks ^{2 3 4} run by lone royal women. In addition to Alice and Margaret, common names are Isabel and Elizabeth ⁵.

But we were talking about money.

From The Palace of Collyweston:

Sarah: It’s fascinating that Collyweston had its council chamber like other grand palaces! ¹

Sandra: Of course, there was also business to be done locally, in the village and the surrounding areas; she would have collected the rents because the villagers would have paid money for the rent of lands or other taxes. So, yes, Lady Margaret was very influential in the whole area – and Collyweston was one of her favourite places.

Margaret's patch of England's Midlands was the core of a distinct administrative region:

The big red one. Mercia... Source: A Super Quick History of England

From WHO LIVED AT THE PALACE - Collyweston Historic:

By the early C16 the Manor had become the favourite home of Lady Margaret and it is well recorded that she spent more time at Collyweston than at any of her other residencies, and she had quite a few!

She did indeed. In Mercia and beyond.

From Lady Margaret Beaufort:

In 1467 she apparently stayed at Woking from the end of March until the 24th August, then embarking on an epic expedition around her West Country estates. From Basingstoke she went to Andover, Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Yeovil, Wells, Bristol and Chepstow to Wreyland in Devon, staying for almost a week before returning again via Bristol, Wells, Glastonbury, Thornbury and Sampford Peveral - arriving back in Woking in early November.

... leaving at the end of April for a quick tour of some of her properties to the north of London at Ware, Royston and Huntingdon, before returning to Woking

That's a lot of residencies. Especially for a woman who had - orthodox history also alleges - lost her properties to rival royals six years earlier. Before we get to that, let's remind ourselves about Royston.

Enigmatic in its own right, Royston was the food and fashion centre James I developed in the centre of an enormous hunting park.

James went on to commission the even bigger hunting park now called Rockingham Forest. Its true size isn't public but it covered a large chunk of Mercia. Most importantly for Lady Margaret, the park's north-eastern corner butted up against the grounds of Collyweston Palace:

Ermine Street ran between two enormous hunting parks

Key:

• Red Circles: Royston and Rockingham Forest hunting parks
• Blue line: Ermine Street between Castor and Stamford
• Blue marker: Site of Collyweston Palace

Apparently, James I didn't much use the well-engineered road between his hunting parks.

From Collyweston House - Royal Palaces:

Despite James I love of hunting in Northamptonshire he seems not to have made use of Collyweston and on his death it was granted away to one of his grooms of the bedchamber.

Grooms of the bedchamber?

Groom. Grim. Devil.

Unless you were bred to please guests in a hunting park, you probably need reminding of the business case that links 'Devil', 'Grim' and 'Groom' with 'hunting parks' and bed-chambers.

So here it is:

Word of mouth marketed Rockingham Forest. Source: Westworld

The royal bedchamber featured in another significant Beaufort home: Pembroke Castle in south Wales. There, in 1457 - a year into the first of a series of apparently profitable marriages - we're told a 13-year-old Lady Margaret squeezed out an enormous neonate:

Birth of the Tudors. Source: Pembroke Castle - Wikipedia

Margaret is the pallid lady on the left.

Certain aspects of Harry's birth are not well explained by Pembroke Castle's depiction of the event. Lady Margaret's quick re-dressing and perfect coiffure is one of them. Her composure so soon after a birth that apparently tore her from nape to nose is another.

The midwife's ignorance of how to properly hold a human neonate is a third. Although it may be explained by her horns. Perhaps she trained in an off-world nursery.

Despite these thought-provoking details, Pembroke Castle's depiction does remind us that Harry's was a miracle birth.

From Lady Margaret Beaufort - Wikipedia:

Margaret's confessor, John Fisher, deemed it a miracle that a baby could be born "of so little a personage".

Modern, educated humans actually believe this tosh. But in 1889, no one did.

Back then, the Rev. WD Sweeting - Second Master of Peterborough Cathedral School - presented evidence that a year after Harry VII's birth, the teenage Lady Margaret was still living at home with her mother. In the village of Maxey on the other side of Stamford. Not quite 10 miles east of Collyweston.

From The Sweeting Lecture on the history of Maxey, Rev. WD Sweeting, 1889:

It is quite likely too that for some time at least, in her childhood, if not in later years, she was an inhabitant [of Maxey] and lived in the old castle. I will tell you why I think so. In a curious old manuscript book, The Red Book of Thorney, belonging to the Earl of Westmorland, is copied an old petition from John Bukke prior of Deeping. “ to the High and gracious Princesse the Duchesse of Somerset”, who was the mother of the Lady Margaret.

This order was given at the Castle of Maxey, 1455. This seems to show that the Duchess occasionally lived here. She only had one child, the Lady Margaret, who was at that time 14, and it is unlikely that she would be away from her mother.

Decide for yourself whether or not the High and gracious Princesse the Duchesse of Somerset knew in 1455 that her 14-year-old daughter would be married a year later, and a widow rendered infertile by the birth of her son. And still be only 13.

Time travel may be possible but it is more likely, Harry VII's difficult birth and his sterile, teenage-widow mother were added to English history some time after Sweeting's 1889 lecture. Perhaps by the same writers who helped romanticise England's real past into today's more palatable history.

Because, yes, the conspiracy-minded may have noticed certain parallels between John Fisher's account of Lady Margaret's miracle birth and John the Fisherman's account of another miracle birth.

They may also have noticed - along with even the most orthodox minds - that as well as being a close second to the Virgin Mary in the miraculous birth department, Lady Margaret also worked as hard as the Good Lady at spreading Christian doctrine.

From The Sweeting Lecture on the history of Maxey:

She was greatly interested in learning and education; she founded two famous colleges at Cambridge, Christ’s and St John’s, which remain to this day enjoying the fruits of her liberality; she founded also a professorship, still called the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity.

For the fact-checkers, that's actually two 'Professorships of Divinity': one at Cambridge and one at Oxford. Though none at Stamford ⁶.

It seems Lady Margaret was the physical source of Britain's royal family, a sponsor of Christianity and - for those who know 'Mary' and 'Margaret' are variations of the same name - a role model for the New Testament's Virgin Mary.

And also for the Old Testament's:

From Mary in the Old Testament - Mother of All Peoples:

The fact that she is clearly designated as a woman without a husband, something most unusual... represents an implicit reference to that same virgin birth.

Though these coincidences disappear if you know who helped write both testaments.

Presumably forced to mother the enormous Harry VII while travelling between various manors and hunting lodges, teenage Lady Margaret's challenges had only just begun.

Allegedly, when Harry was just four years old, Yorkist Edward IV won a momentary victory in the Wars of the Roses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Margaret_Beaufort#Involvement_in_the_Wars_of_the_Roses). As a result, the Yorkists confiscated Lady Margaret's properties.

At this point - 1461 actually - Collyweston's narrative asks you to believe another inconceivable miracle.

It asks you to believe Beaufort's Collyweston palace complex was not identified, discussed, and documented by Edward IV's relatives and courtiers as they divvied up Lady Margaret's assets.

And this is part of a wider problem with the narrative of Lady Margaret's assets. In addition to claiming she acquired hunting parks, properties and palaces indirectly from James I and from various husbands, history claims she lost the lot. Then it claims she acquired a new array of manors again. This fell into her barren lap some time after 1485 when Harry beat the Yorkists at the Battle of Bosworth. That's just north west of Rockingham Forest hunting park. And may well have been in it, given that the park's northern boundaries are not entirely known, let alone agreed.

From 10. Lady Margaret Beaufort and Torrington Manor - One Great Torrington:

Shortly after his coronation Henry granted his beloved mother many manors and holdings making her one of the richest people in England.

Not at issue here is which manors and hunting lodges Lady Margaret owned when, which she lost when, which she re-acquired when, or which she acquired for the first time when. Although it should be. What is at issue is that against this history of royal property confiscations and returns, we're to believe all documentation about the location of Collyweston Palace went missing.

So let's not believe. Instead, let's look for what else is missing from Lady Margaret's biography.

Left scratching for income after Edward IV's 1461 Yorkist victory, our courageous femme sole had only two options. So she took both of them. The first was to get herself or a suitable family member back on the throne.

In Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses (New York, 2013), author Sarah Gristwood popularises evidence for one orthodox view: that Lady Margaret conspired to get Henry - that's Henry VII - on to the throne.

According to Gristwood, this theory required Lady Margaret's part in a double-infanticide.

From Lady Margaret Beaufort - Wikipedia:

Lady Margaret is known to have conspired with Elizabeth Woodville, mother of the two York princes whom Richard confined to the Tower of London, after rumours spread of the boys' murder.

Gristwood, however, suggests that another was responsible; Henry Tudor's path to the throne was certainly expedited by their disappearance, perhaps motive enough for his mother – his "highly able and totally committed representative" – to give the order.

To clarify Gristwood's careful wording: she is saying one orthodox suspicion is that Lady Margaret conspired with Elizabeth to blame Richard II for a succession-preventing infanticide for which she herself was actually responsible. Lady Margaret, that is, not Sarah Gristwood.

You may instead be rational enough to notice the narrational parallels with the story of King Arthur and his son Mordred. The product of a (hopefully) accidental mating between Arthur and his half-sister Morgeuse, Mordred also became a succession threat to Arthur's throne. As a result, myth claims, Arthur ordered all male infants be killed to prevent Mordred's succession.

You may also be rational enough to notice parallels between infanticides involving Arthur, Henry, Herod, Lady Margaret and fertility and succession problems involving Henry, Herod and Mary.

Somehow, infanticide keeps pushing its baby-sized scythe into birth-of-the-Tudor-dynasty narratives. As if infanticide were a dead horror-baby intent on hacking its way out of the secret womb of Tudor history.

Expect, therefore, to be deeply discomforted by what follows.

Beaufort's second choice was to extract more cash from her tenants. Of course, for that to work, her tenants had to have cash to extract. Given the wealth once evident at Collyweston Palace, one presumes they did.

However, the area Beaufort administered from Collyweston was largely covered by Rockingham Forest hunting park. Parts of which (we're told) were off-limits to locals; while much of the rest was unavailable for farming or harvesting because it was covered by royal trees.

And - so we're told - bow-toting bandits.

This left Lady Margaret with a problem England's elites have yet to solve. How much tax can you realistically raise from subsistence-level incomes in an economy run by the elite for the elite?

One possibility is that Lady Margaret did solve that problem. And her solution may be the real reason Wild Hunt folklore tells of hunts for female demons or innocent women.

At the very least, Rockingham Forest's true past may be why Lady Margaret's biography is obviously fabricated. And why Collyweston Palace itself had to be 'lost':

It's called 'Crisis Management'. Source: The Hunt

Did England's best reputation management team 'lose' Collyweston Palace in the hope Lady Margaret's 'thing' didn't go mainstream?

This is an extraordinary claim. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Extraordinary evidence that would - had it not been hidden - might have looked like this:

Sedlec still welcomes your custom. Source: The Dark Old-World

He's got a point:

He's got four more points. Source: Sport Hunter in Africa

And a photo to prove it. Because hunters don't just love trophies. They love to be seen with trophies:

He wants his. And hers. Source: Westworld

Unfortunately, hunting parks produce so many trophies - decomposing, smelly trophies - that most of them have to be quickly converted into marketable value-adds. Into food for banquets. Into leather. Into souvenirs. And into games to amuse hunting park guests after dark.

Board games that use counters and gaming chips and games that use dice:

Dem bones were made for rolling. Source: Ancient Roman dice made from bone

Games that were played amid the decorations traditionally associated with celebrating achievements:

Especially if it's your bladder. Source: BALLOONS | How It's Made

Of course, Sedlec Ossuary isn't in Collyweston or Stamford. It's in Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. And while it's curious that Kutná Hora is twinned with Stamford, that doesn't make Sedlec extraordinary evidence of human-hunting around Stamford or Collyweston.

It just makes Sedlec extraordinary evidence of human-hunting around Kutná Hora.

For extraordinary evidence of human hunting around Stamford and Collyweston, you need to stalk the dark heart of Rockingham Forest itself. Starting with the much transformed ossuary beneath Holy Trinity church in the village of Rothwell:

They grew their own soup-bowls. Source: Rothwell bone crypt - Flickr

Actually, that skull was probably cut for forensics. But it highlights a cultural trait still visible in modern England: the neo-liberal abiding aversion to the costs and risks of manufacturing products the hard way.

As fans of England's other Lady Margaret might say: why pay people to make pottery when it's cheaper to make pottery out of people?

The tax-man's first begging bowl. Source: The Giant Humans That Hunted & Cannibalized Neanderthals

We don't know if Holy Trinity's 1,500 current inhabitants were once arranged like Sedlec's 40,000 to 70,000 inhabitants. As residents-turned-decor. However, various clues suggest Holy Trinity's ossuary wasn't exactly built for private grief:

After preying on them. Source: The Rothwell Charnel Chapel project: The Digital Ossuary

Modern historians are reluctant to support the suggestion Holy Trinity was originally well-lit and decorated so that it could show off trophies hunted in Rockingham Forest. And that labelling its former hunting trophies as 'medieval funerary practices' doesn't change what they really were.

A scientifically-minded few do, however, agree that 'pray' is pronounced the same as 'prey'.

Historians do tell us Holy Trinity church was much larger until 1673, ⁷ when it was downsized, then more or less abandoned. This following a lightning strike ⁸ and one of those earthquakes to which England's Midlands seem so enigmatically prone. For more evidence of England's strange 17th century weather and its 18th century aftermath, see Desert Islands of Eastern England.

Holy Trinity's ossuary isn't the only evidence of human hunting in Rockingham Forest. But its ossuary's peculiar narrative is evidence - perhaps even extraordinary evidence - that the best reputation management teams were as "all over it" in Rockingham Forest as they were in Collyweston.

I suggest reputation management were so all over Rockingham Forest it's even possible to name one member of the team. And produce a photograph of him.

To appreciate why, you have to first appreciate that a busy hunting park requires a lot of infrastructure to manage customers and staff. Not to mention human carcasses.

No matter how much effort you put into hiding that infrastructure from modern humans, it still leaves fingerprints. The fingerprints of removed transport infrastructure are easy to find. Remains like this agger between Stamford and Collyweston - on the lowland route into Rockingham Forest hunting park:

Remnant agger stub below Collyweston scarp. Google Maps

Hunting park transport infrastructure can be passed off as Roman roads or quarry trackways

The fingerprints of removed buildings are passed off as a medieval farming and fish ponds. Once you are familiar, their fingerprints are easy to find in the fields west of Collyweston past Melton Mowbray into Northamptonshire.

The fingerprints of post-hunt carcass dismantling facilities are harder to find. But only because modern humans have no idea what they looked like. What they looked like was dictated by what went on in them:

Note the lavish use of water. Source: Westworld

It seems grim but well-used products hint at happy customers.

It's called a dakhma. Source: Trinity of Old-World Secrets

The image at 23 seconds is explained in more detail at Towers of Silence in Yazd - History, Architecture & Visiting Guide. The final photograph shows the bone collection pit in the centre of the dakhma.

Now we know what we're looking for: distinctive circular stone structures. Wide, circular structures originally built with a roof sloping down to a central circular 'court' or pit.

Structures like this:

Today, we call them 'shell keeps'. Source: Restormel Castle - Wikipedia

'F' marks Restormel Castle's former chapel. Just where you'd need one if you accept that 'chapel' = 'chop hall'.

Once you understand how Yazd's Tower of Silence functioned, it's easy to decrypt descriptions of England's shell keeps.

From Shell keep - Wikipedia:

True shell keeps were a stone wall around the upper perimeter of the motte with lean-to buildings against this outer wall and a small courtyard in the middle.

The phrase 'lean-to' hints at the all-important sloping roof. The Yazd video shows how the slope was important for drainage. The liquid shown trickling past the corpses in the Yazd Tower of Silence video could be used as fertiliser.

As for the small central courtyard, its function you already know. Though it should be noted that the little 'chapel' commonly attached to shell-keeps sometimes had a pit in its floor. Providing more evidence that this room really was used for collecting separate or flensed bio-material.

Restormel is said to be England's best preserved shell keep. Other carcass dismantling facilities were more thoroughly hidden. And at least three were extended and turned into tourist attractions.

Such as this one:

Centre: The Round Tower. Source: Windsor Castle - Wikipedia

Windsor's iconic Round Tower was lower and less ornate until around 1824. Then it was raised and decorated to look more imposing.

And, presumably, to look less functional.

Pretty much everything to the right of The Round Tower is - historically-speaking - a recent fake.

From Windsor Castle - Wikipedia:

the Upper Ward was judged to be "to all intents and purposes a nineteenth century creation which stands as the image of what the early nineteenth-century thought a castle should be"

an image of tall towers and battlements influenced by the picturesque movement of the late 18th century.

So also is pretty much everything to the left of The Round Tower.

From Windsor Castle - Wikipedia:

most of the Lower Ward was renovated or reconstructed during the mid-Victorian period ... to form a "consistently Gothic composition".

In short, it seems that until around 1850 Windsor Castle was a simple circular, er, facility.

Windsor was, of course, a hunting park.

Various architects are associated with designing Windsor's 'ancient' mid-19th century castle. But the architect credited with poshing up its shell keep is Anthony Salvin. His is a name worth following.

A similar round tower graces Arundel Castle in West Sussex:

Centre: Arundel Tower. Source: Arundel Castle - Wikipedia

A description of Arundel Tower allegedly surviving from 1635 suggests the key features of a dakhma had by then been removed and its no doubt fertile ground turned over to horticulture.

From Arundel Castle - The creation of one of England's great princely seats:

The building was roofless and a garden was laid out within the circuit of its wall. It overlooked an orchard with ‘fruitful appletrees, peartrees, plumtrees and filberd trees’, as well as a ‘large sweet garden… within the walls

And yes, Arundel Tower originally sat in a hunting park.

Between 1854 and 1865, Anthony Salvin was paid £250,000 19th century pounds for one of England's most extraordinary dakhma conversions.

He converted Alnwick Castle's 'shell keep' into a cluster of ten 'ancient' towers. They still dominate the centre of Alnwick Castle:

Children know it as Hogwarts. Source: Alnwick Castle in Alnwick, Northumberland

If you didn't know, you wouldn't know. But why would you? After all, England's best reputation management teams have been all over it.

And Salvin certainly was all over it. He is credited with reconstructing a formidable list of castles and country houses. To help you appreciate just how recently he salvaged the reputation of England's 'ancient' carcass processing facilities, Salvin lived 40 years into the age of photography:

Anthony Salvin. 1799-1881 ⁹. Source: Anthony Salvin - Wikipedia

Tantalisingly, photographs of the original structures Salvin worked on apparently did not ¹⁰.

It's hard to believe we've been led up the garden path about England's carcass processing facilities. Sometimes that's partly because reputation management actually turned the evidence into a garden path.

Such as at Belhus Park in Essex:

The secret garden of concentric circles. Source: Tudor to Tartaria (Video no longer available)

Understanding shell keeps as reputationally managed dakhmas also enables hunters of extraordinary evidence to decrypt some of England's strange mythology.

From Crowland - and it was probably called Crowland for a reason - comes the strange story of St Guthlac. One variant of his legend claims he became a recluse who took up residence in a small hole in a fenland mound. There to be taunted by 'goblins'.

But that's Christopher Marlowe's romanticised 19th century version. An alternative version captures the structure of a dakhma and the funerary practice apparently used to dismantle Guthlac's carcass before its parts were taken for further processing.

From Guthlac of Crowland - Wikipedia:

[Pega] buried the body [of Guthlac] on the mound after three days of prayer. A year later Pega had a divine calling to move the tomb and relics to a nearby chapel ¹¹

The three days may relate to how long it takes to confirm a body is dead in the absence of medical equipment. Typically, corpses start to smell only after three days - at which point you can be reasonably sure they aren't going to wake up.

We have evidence of how carcass dismantling facilities looked; we have evidence of how their reputations were 'managed'. And we have evidence of when their reputations were managed. We even have Anthony Salvin as a key player in the reputation management effort.

What we don't have is a large reputatonally managed dakhma in Rockingham Forest.

Or do we?

About eight miles north east of Rothwell - roughly halfway from Rothwell to Collyweston - is Rockingham Castle.

Take a look:

Nice back garden. Source: Rockingham Castle - Flickr

From Rockingham Castle - Discover Rutland:

The layout of [the] gardens dates from the 17th century, following the restoration of the Castle gardens after the English Civil Wars. Emulating the Norman keep, the circular Rose Garden was laid by Sir Anthony Salvin in the mid-nineteenth century

It would be interesting to see pre-Salvin photographs of Rockingham's back garden.

Also visible near the lower left corner of the above image are the enormous D-towers of its main gatehouse:

Militarily indefensible. Source: Rockingham Castle - Wikipedia

Rockingham's D towers are hard to explain. They face into a field rather than the road and their defensive function is compromised by the smaller walls protecting the rest of the castle.

But they conjure up an amusing vision. A vision of a castle architect who uses a pile of spare curved stone to build a mid-19th century idea of a romantic castle gatehouse.

That's just a vision, though heritage surveyors have wondered if Rockingham Castle's builders' records hint at a former shell-keep.

From Shell-keeps revisited: the bailey on the motte?, Robert Higham, 2016, p12:

In some other cases, where no fabric now survives, the editors speculated from the terminology employed in the records that the documented works may have related to shell-keeps: as at Marlborough and Rockingham.

If there was a large human carcass processing facility in Rockingham Forest hunting park, surely the surrounding area would provide additional indirect evidence that humans were being hunted in Rockingham Forest?

For example, if local craftsmen were producing prodigious supplies of de-fleshed human bone, you'd expect to see their output reflected in the region's industries.

At the north western end of the rail line (and former canal routes) between Stamford and the West Midlands is The Potteries.

It's famous for bone china:

Note that last name. Source: There Is Actual Bone In Bone China

That's the same Wedgwood family whose bone-based pottery wealth funded Darwin's claim that humans are the natural offspring of mutant chimps. And - adding to the coincidence payload in that link - note the family interests in weaponry, game management and eugenics.

But is there any indirect evidence - especially extraordinary indirect evidence - of human bones being processed within and east of Rockingham Forest?

From Lace maker's bobbins:

Until the mid-nineteenth century, the craft of lace making provided occupation for thousands of women in the East Midlands (Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and the borders of Berkshire and Oxfordshire), as well as in Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, they say...

From Bobbin lace - Wikipedia:

Bobbin lace is also known as ... bone lace, because early bobbins were made of bone or ivory.

The mid-19th century decline of bone-lace seems to correlate with a bone shortage after dakhmas were converted into 'ancient shell keeps'. Not to mention rose gardens and orchards.

In response, lace makers shifted from bone bobbins to wood:

Wooden bobbins look similar but weigh more. Source: Bobbin lace - Wikipedia

Yet bone supplies didn't die away entirely.

From Lace maker's bobbins:

Another bobbin from the collection with a personal touch is made out of bone and has the name 'Hannah' inscribed around the base. The name was drilled into the shaft of the bobbin by the maker and then coloured in with red ink.

Here's Hannah:

Or what's left of her. Source: Lace maker's bobbins

It seems human bone became rarer in England's east Midlands but were still valued when donated by a relative or sold as a souvenir by the justice system.

From Lace maker's bobbins:

Bone was a popular material for inscribed bobbins ... Bobbins inscribed with names, like Mrs. Butler's, were extremely common.

A bobbin maker would probably have had a stock of 'standard' expressions of affection ('Forget me not'),

The commercial nature of bobbin making, however, is probably best illustrated by the phenomena of the 'hanging bobbin': bobbins that were made to commemorate the public hangings and proved extremely popular souvenirs. They were inscribed with the name of the criminal and the year of their execution ('Joseph Castle hung 1860').

Obviously, correct labelling of carcass parts was important around the Rockingham Forest of old. Apparently, more so than correct labelling of some of the forest's former structures.

Souvenirs may also explain a strange discovery made near Crowland in 2021. There, archaeologists excavated a low rise in Anchor Church field - the remains, they said, of:

a henge of truly monumental proportions.

They found two bone combs:

And dated them to AD 500 - AD 900. Source: Archaeologists Discover a Hidden Ancient Henge in England

I'm not suggesting the combs are bits of St Guthlac. I am suggesting they didn't spend a 1,100+ years buried in one of the wettest parts of England. Because if they were that old, both were well past their 'Rot By:' date.

Plenty of evidence suggests what Crowland's henge of truly monumental proportions might really have been. And when it might have stopped selling souvenir bone combs.

A couple more pieces of extraordinary indirect evidence suggest Rockingham Forest once hosted an unusual concentration of violence and that concomitant of violence: carcass management skills.

First, shortly before Rothwell's unnatural-sounding 17th century natural disasters, rent collection in the village required courage and armed guards.

From Rothwell Charnel Chapel - History of Rothwell:

the most recent charter (James I Charter of 1614) is read by the bailiff on his horse, the national anthem is struck up by the town band and then youngsters aged between 16 and 24 try and wrestle staves held by the halberdiers - in this way the “rumble” begins.

It is believed that originally the halberdiers/stave bearers were given specially marked staves at the start to guard the bailiff while he collected the rents. They were only paid at the end of proceedings after producing their stave and it wasn’t always the same person who was given the stave and who ended up handing it in to collect payment!

Second, in 2020, meat processing businesses around Melton Mowbray were granted Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status for Melton Pork Pies. The label officially recognises and protects rights to profit from the extraordinary - unique even - butchery skills located between Rockingham and Collyweston.

Immediately, in the best Rockingham Forest tradition, meat processors began to fight over the extent of their unique skills. Melton's pork pie producers claimed extraordinary carcass processing was a Melton skill, not a regional skill. That butchers beyond the town had no right to Melton's PGI label.

The carcass strippers of Rothwell - and perhaps also Rockingham - must have been rolling on their dakhmas.

To trim the fat from a long story, on 4th January 2021 the UK government ruled Melton's unique butchery skills had previously extended beyond Melton. Therefore, it said, meat processors in the wider region were also entitled to slap Melton's PGI label on their products ¹².

Melton's PGI dispute reminds us that sticking a label on something - or somebody - doesn't turn the something or the somebody into what the label claims it is.

And so it is with hunter-queen Lady Margaret Beaufort.

As it also is with Lady Margaret's near neighbour and patron saint of falconry: hunter princess Saint Tibba.

As it also is with Saint Tibba's sister or cousin - it varies with narrator - Saint Eabba.

From The family memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, M.D., William Stukeley, published 1882, in an entry allegedly dated 26 June 1736, p170:

Tibba and Eabba, of the royal Mercian blood, owned Ryhal. They were at first wild hunting girls, at last saints.

And so it also is with Lady Margaret's near neighbour Saint Kyneburgha - also known as Saint Cyneburgh, Lady Coneyburrow, Lady Ketilborough. And as Wild Hunt leader Lady Hackelberg.

You can make what you want of Mercia's hunting honeys but you can't dispute they lived in the right place:

The hunting honeys of Stamford

Key:

• Blue marker: Hunter queen Margaret Beaufort at Collyweston
• Yellow marker: Hunter queen Saint Tibba at Ryhall-Belmesthorpe
• Orange marker: Hunter queen Saint Eabba at Ryhall
• Violet marker: Wild Hunt leader Saint Cyniburga/Kyneburga/Lady Ketilworth/Lady Hackelberg
• Red circles: Rockingham Forest and Royston hunting parks
• Blue line: Ermine Street

Stukeley's comment that saints Tibba and Eabba were transformed from wild hunting girls into saints is probably as close as you'll get to an admission that reputation management teams were all over it.

But there's plenty more evidence their reputations have been managed.

Specifically of attempts to multiply these huntresses into a New Model Army of clean-living womanhood.

In addition to Saints Tibba and Eabba becoming nuns, Lady Ketilworth/Lady Hackelberg's curiously-named sister Saint Kyneswitha took the oath.

From The Three Ladies:

Offa, King of the East Saxons, became wonderfully aflected towards this holy pious nun, and earnestly desired to make her his wife and queen. She [presumably Kyneswitha], however, says the monkish legend, refused to accede to his wishes, and implored the assistance of the Virgin Mother ” to ridd her of these troubles.” The latter, ” appearing in a vision unto her, gave her counsell courageously to persist in her purpose of perpetual chastitie

So what we have is another sexually aroused ruffian chasing another woman peacefully going about her hunting in or near Rockingham Forest hunting park and another miracle intervention from The Chastity Department. If you've read Location Analysis: Peterborough-Stamford Wild Hunt Part One, you should recognise the motif from her sister's experience while apparently building an extension to Ermine Street.

My point isn't that these rape-evasions didn't occur; my point is that as the huntresses multiply so does the same narrative. Saint Eabba's resemblance to Saint Tibba - and the confusion across accounts over whether they were 'cozens' or sisters - epitomises this narrative repetition.

But the creation of St Eabba is Level One, so to speak. Try this:

From The family memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, M.D., William Stukeley, published 1882, in an entry allegedly dated 26 June 1736, p167:

"'Tis now above 700 years since St. Tibba, the celebrated saint of Ryhall was taken out of her grave there and carryed to Peterborough Church by Abbot Elfin. The inhabitants there have still an obscure memorial of her, but have lost her name. They call her Queen, and say she used to walk up to Tibbal's hill, and wash her in a spring there. This is all they know of her."

Recognise any of that from Location Analysis: Peterborough-Stamford Wild Hunt Part One?

Remarkably, Stukeley seems to have known her name better than the locals.

More evidence of invention-by-repetition-of-narrative comes from a dispute over whether Saint Tibba really lived just north of Stamford in Ryhall or in Godmanchester. About 20 miles south of Lady Hackelberg.

From Magna Britannia antiqua & nova or, a new, exact, and comprehensive survey of the ancient and present state of Great-Britain, Vol 4, Cox, Thomas, Anthony Hall, Robert Morden, 1738, p564:

One Tibba, a Saint of the lesser Rank, was worshipped here by Falconers as a second Diana, and reputed the Patroness of Hawking.

Mr. Wright wonders upon what Authority Mr Cambden reports this, since he says he is certain that this St. Tibba was a Virgin Anchoress at Godman-Chester in Huntingdonshire, - a Kinswoman of Penda, King of Mercia, and lived about the Year 696

this Character (adds Mr. Wright) agrees to Diana, and how St, Tibba came from Godmanchester to be worshipped in Rutland I know not.

Yes, 18th century antiquarians believed Saint Tibba - the hunter queen who Ryhall's residents memorialised but whose name they couldn't remember - was Greek hunter-goddess Diana herself. They weren't arguing over who she was but where she was.

If you look at Ryhall and Godmanchester on the map, you'll notice neither of are in Greece:

Hunter queens and hunter saints of Stamford

Key:

• Blue marker: Hunter queen Margaret Beaufort at Collyweston
• Yellow markers: Hunter queen Saint Tibba/Diana at Ryhall-Belmesthorpe and Godmanchester
• Orange marker: Hunter queen Saint Eabba at Ryhall
• Violet marker: Wild Hunt leader Saint Cyniburga/Kyneburga/Lady Ketilworth/Lady Hackelberg
• Red circles: Rockingham Forest and Royston hunting parks

To cut short a lot of archaic-sounding quotes, 18th century writers also claimed Tibba was Phoebe, another name for Diana the huntress. Along with several other names.

From Phoebe (Titaness) - Wikipedia:

Her name, meaning "bright", was also given to a number of lunar goddesses like Artemis and later the Roman goddesses Luna and Diana

Phoebe was also an epithet of Artemis as a moon-goddess.

Phoebe's rarely depicted. Where she is, she is fighting winged creatures:

You'd need a big falcon for that one. Source: Phoebe (Titaness) - Wikipedia

From Phoebe (Titaness) - Wikipedia:

Phoebe appears on the southeast corner of the Pergamon Altar which depicts the Gigantomachy, fighting against a Giant with animal features

Phoebe, wearing a diadem and a very creased dress, is seen wielding a flaming torch and fighting next to her other daughter Asteria.

Yes, that Tibba. The patron saint of Mercian hawking who lived - and presumably hunted - at the edge of Rockingham Forest. And who apparently had another manor further south on Ermine Street close to Royston hunting park.

It is probably no coincidence that a couple of miles north of Tibba's Godmanchester manor is Huntingdon. Where, yes, a circular mound stands next to the bridge that carries Ermine Street over the river between the two towns.

The multiple narratives, names and locations may have been a reputation management strategy to confuse anyone that cottoned on:

It wasn't in Vermont. Or Croatia. Source: The Hunt

Did Lady Margaret done fucked up?

Was The Manor at Collyweston?

Why were Margaret Beaufort and her grandson's famous fertility problems woven into a collection of stories about infertile monarchs, infanticidal monarchs, rape-evading huntresses, a sterile hunter-mother-monarch, virgin births and chastity?

One guess is the tales of virgin births, infertile monarchs, and infanticidal monarchs were composed to help hide the genetic engineering and game-breeding programs that enabled hunting parks to deliver a premium-priced hunting experience.

Repetitive stories with slight variations suggest professional writers engaged to re-work existing narratives:

The view from above.. Source: Westworld

While their narratives are implemented by workers on the ground:

The view from below. Source: My lady, the king's mother images of Margaret Beaufort - Art UK

From My lady, the king's mother images of Margaret Beaufort - Art UK:

Her illuminated Book of Hours at Alnwick Castle, which was commissioned before 1499, when she took her vow of chastity, shows her at prayer [to Saint Barbara].

In the next part, I'll present evidence that this is exactly what the repetitive narratives were written to cover up.

More:

• In Shell-keeps revisited: the bailey on the motte?, Robert Higham points out that some English "shell-keeps" seem formerly to have had towers around their edges.

Perhaps they were water supply towers like these:

Mumbai dakhma, India. Source: Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Bombay, 1896via Old World Dome of Doom

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[^1] femme sole means 'as a single woman'. From 10. Lady Margaret Beaufort and Torrington Manor - One Great Torrington: Margret was ... given control of her own lands and estate, as ‘if single’ even though she was married.