The White Lady of Tutbury

While not as famous of other ghosts, the White Lady of Tutbury remains intriguing.

Tutbury Castle and its ruins have a special place in English history.

My solo acoustic guitar album, Lost and Haunted Ways, takes its title in part from the most ambitious composition, The White Lady of Tutbury, named for an apparition said to haunt the ruins of Tutbury Castle.

Celebrating 950 years in 2018, Tutbury Castle arose in 1068, less than two years after the Norman Conquest. With a natural command of the surrounding flatlands, it was likely the site of earlier, primitive strongholds.

In 1153, Henry FitzEmpress put the castle’s uncooperative owner under siege during the Norman civil war known as The Anarchy, on his way to becoming Henry II, the first Plantagenet King of England. His legendary wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, stayed at the Castle during their long reign, when it belonged to the Earls of Derby, that is, when they weren’t in rebellion against one king or another.

Some 350 years later, the Castle was the glittering jewel and center of power for John O’Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of King Edward III, and the historical inspiration for the fictional Tywin Lanister in Game of the Thrones.

This is believed to be an accurate portrait of the Guaunt made shortly after his death. It is unlikely this fanciful portrayal of the Castle in Gaunt’s day is accurate. Much of the masonry didn’t exist for another century. Still, it was a palace compared to most castles. As the permanent home of his wife, Constance of Castile, it was made resplendent under her direction, and was reputedly the Windsor of its day.

All of the monarchs of Spain descend from the daughter of Gaunt and Constance. His first wife, Blanche Bolingbroke, had a daughter from whom all the kings and queens of Portugal descend, as well as sons that included the future King Henry the IV, the first Lancastrian king of England. But she did not live to see him on the throne, as she died when she was 26 years old, at Tutbury Castle while her Gaunt was overseas fighting in a war.

Gaunt was also the progenitor of the Tudor line, which is descended through his mistress, Katherine Swynford. Their children were legitimized by the Pope Alexander VI, following his marriage to Katherine two years after Blanche died in 1394.

It was far grander (and granit-er) a castle in the Tudor era, when it also became the chief prison of Marie Stuart, reine d’Ecosse, aka Mary Queen of Scots. Because of her plausible claim to the English throne, she spent eighteen years locked away by her cousin, Elizabeth I.

Here is a drawing from the British Library, of the Castle’s interior made in 1584-85, which would have been around the time of her final stay. She was executed at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587 for plotting Elizabeth’s assassination.

And here is a computer mock-up of what some feel it looked like in those days.

Modern excavations uncovered the foundations of a wooden longhouse that may have served as Queen Mary’s chamber. Much of the surviving stone structures at Tutbury Castle today date from that time. Only a gateway is left standing that was there in Gaunt’s day (it’s actually older,) while the recently uncovered chapel foundations date from the reign of Henry II in the 1170s.

A Sad End

After nearly 600 years of war wounds and rebuilding, the once-impregnable fortress was destroyed once and for all by the Parliamentarians at the end of the Civil War, to punish and impoverish the lands thereabouts for siding with King Charles I. At the restoration of the monarchy, Tutbury Castle was left as a ruin and memorial for Charles and all who suffered at the hands of Cromwell and his followers.

While it is understandable that people may choose to believe the spectral White Lady to be Queen Mary, I suggest she might could be any number of ladies who once walked the Castle grounds, in any of the many eras where it was a place busy with life, and a vital center of the local universe in that part of England. But my guineas would be on poor Blanche, who died so young, so long ago.

And thus, my tone poem.

The first of the three sections in my “suite” is entitled “John O’Gaunt’s Gateway,” after the inner gate that is now the main entrance to the ruins. It depicts the marshalling and marching away of a troop train, to some battle or royal progress, until a trumpet sounds the closing of the gate.

The second section, “Lady of the Tower,” is concerned with the lady left behind to while away the hours alone, perhaps forever.

The final and longest section is called “The Ghost’s Walk,” and should be self-explanatory.

Read more about Tutbury and Tutbury Castle at http://www.helenlee.co.uk/tutbury/castle.html