Phew! 400 and rising.
Q.400. Hi Henry. What were the toilets like in a Palace for the courtiers?
The higher ranking the courtier achieved the better their accommodation so the top ranking one’s hade their own guardrobes for their toilet. The rest of the court who needed to relieve themselves during a banquet would have to go to the common toilet called the Jakes which was just outside the entrance. This is the origin of the Americanised name for a toilet the “John2. The Jakes was for all courtiers and senior servants who lodge outside the Palace, it was a building of two levels each level having about fourteen toilet seats which were just holes in planks of wood over a big hole which went into the moat or river. Yuk!
I must continue this answer into the realms of ridiculous happenings. People who could not be bothered to walk the distance to relieve themselves would use a wall or the nearest convenient space which annoyed me greatly as I cannot stand such crudity and behaviour. I actually had signs mounted for the court and servant to adhere to: “Beware of emptying of piss-pots” and “No pissing in the chimneys”. Now that conjures up horrible visions. There were many toilet devices about in my day, the funniest of all was the wooden chair with a drawer at the bottom full of soil. The cushion would be removed and the rope “springs” moved to make a round hole in the centre, the box would make a high volume noise as the wood reverberated, thus giving this device the name “Thunder Box”, others called them Lambing chairs.
Q.401. Hi Henry. What was an Acatry?
The word catering comes from the term Acatry so it is the “below-stairs” servants, who bought, stored and cooked the food for the Palace.
Q.402. Hi Henry. How does the food of today compare with your food?
You must sit back and think, put all factors into the equation before any possible understanding of our food can be compared. Here are the 10 factors:
1. We had no long term storage of food except for salting, pickling or smoking.
2. We had no mass transportation systems.
3. We had no long reach purchasing to foreign countries.
4. We had no mass production of foodstuffs and any form of refining.
5. We had no health and safety watchdogs.
6. We had no airtight reseal-able packaging.
7. We had fears of dirty food.
8. We had status of certain types of food. I would not eat a vegetable grown under the soil, so goodbye carrots!
9. We had Epothacaries who advised about the healthy effect of certain foodstuffs.
10. We at the Palace fed hundreds of people every day.
BUT the biggest factor of all was the seasonal food growing problem. Strawberries cannot be eaten fresh all the year round in Tudor days, unlike today 2008 thanks to international haulage movement.
Your food is super pure and clean, packed in airtight containers to keep germs at bay, this has increased your lifespan but I believe it beginning to reduce your body resistance to illness.
In my day, the poor eat better balance food than the rich; they had much less meat and more fibrous vegetables. Bread was fresh every day because of storage problems, meat was killed fresh on the day of cooking, fish was farmed for Fridays in Manor ponds. The poor ate quite well and we were the best fed country in Europe as we were self sufficient. Salt lay at the heart of our well being, food flavouring, storage and bodily well being it was the main element of life. We had our own salt in the Cheshire plains, we even exported it. Cooking was mainly by roasting and large simmering pots though we did have a crude form of Steamer powered by hot stones which cooked the suet, sweets and replenished the dry bread. Seasoning and spices were very expensive and we treasured them to the extent of housing them in their own room under lock and key.
I would say that 2008 has much better food than we ever had, you are spoilt for choice, you get fresh every day and all can afford to eat well if chosen. I must say that with all the knowledge and advice about good food, I fail to understand why a large number of people still go down the Rich Tudor route of eating fatty, sweet, cholesterol foods when so much better food are readily available, but then who am I to criticise.?
Q.403. Hi:
Just saw your web site
Can you help me please?
I am trying to find data concerning how young children were treated during the reign of Henry VIII-- were they apprenticed and at what age?
How were poor widows treated and aided financially?
I know there were hated beggars and vagabonds but poor ill men- how did they treat them? Who was responsible??
UNDER ELIZABETH I:
Local parishes vs. the church took care of ill, poor and children UNDER HENRY VIII: who was responsible?
Any resources I can go to also please??
Thanks
Loved your web site but these questions could not be answered on your site.
Charles.
There has been a question answered on the website about the poor, Q36. But, that was a long time ago and I now have much more in the way of explaining the attitude of people in the 1500/1600’s.
First of all you must consider the way people viewed their very existence. They only lived for about 40 years and the death rate of babies was at the chronic level of 50% before the age of 8yrs. To see one’s own grand children and maybe even great grand children, the “adults” would get married at about 11/12 yrs of age which seems, and is very young if not criminal these days. The normal length of time of any engagement for marriage was about 3 years, so parents would organise a marriage for their child and the engagement, would take place at the earliest age of 8yrs. Now notice the significance of the age 8yrs. The children would not be considered to have come of age until they had passed the death rate barrier and achieved 8 years, then they get promised in marriage and start their working life, a rich child would begin their studies. Girls slept on wooden planks tied between two stanchions and they would be tied to it to stop falling off, sleep tight! The Boys would sleep on a pad of hay on the floor, come back to my pad!
Treatment of the poor was the responsibility of the manors, they would be expected to feed the very poor who could not help themselves, they must off work for food to the poor who only needed some help to get going and they would punish malingerers.
I have found a Tudor Steamer cabinet; it has “poverty rails” in the top of the cabinet. The rails have balls and cutters to press a line in the top of stale bread to show it is re-softened second hand bread for the poor; “The bread Line” is not a queue! Poor people would try to grow their own food, work for food and take hand-outs.
Official reports back to their masters, foreign ambassadors have written that “England feeds its poor better than all the rest of Europe”.
Young children left alone after their parents die could be taken into house to work for their food, duties such as looking after the fire, Black guards which became blaggards, they could also do the cleaning and washing eventually working up to the fields as a proper worker.
No apprenticeships for skills in Tudor days, the sons of skilled men would carry it on or the6 would take in a helper to learn the skill. An apprenticeship was a structured system for replacing skills and keeping the skill alive. Towards the Industrial revolution the apprenticeship system came into being for all young boys to apply for, though the age of 8yrs was still the starting age.
Resources for more facts are mainly by the author Alison Weir who makes a point to write about the common person.
The poor were actually better off after the Reformation of the Church, no more Pay to pray and the 10% levy from the Monasteries dissapeared too. Some could argue that it was a ploy to bring the people into the crime and keep any resistance to a minimum, Always expect a kick back eh!
Just a little quip about paying your bills. King Henry’s suppliers of animal stock would be picked from over 20 miles away so that the farmer had to walk for over a day to get his payment, he would then wait all day for the money, then have to walk all the way home. Many suppliers could not be bothered, so they just displayed the Royal order on their sign to show they feed the King. One way of not paying your bills!
Q.404. Hi Henry my name is Georgina
Why did Tudor ships have cannons?
At one time, fighting ships would sail alongside each other and fighting men would swing across to try and capture the ship. To capture a ship was a real prize as it was a very expensive piece of weaponry. Then ships had cannons mounted upon their deck aiming upwards, the cannon ball would fly to the enemy and hopefully break the rigging and bring a mast down. Then we started firing with cast iron cannon barrels which were very accurate and so we aimed the cannon balls directly at the ships hulls to try and sink the vessel. This was because we had built up a good size navy and capturing whole ships was not as important. Cannons were also use to bombard the ports and forts of the enemy on land. We did overdo the number of cannons as the poor old Mary Rose found out when she turned over in the Solent, the problem too was that we also had men in armour ready to board French ships and they weighed too much for the ship to be stable. The wood around the hull was smooth (carvel) and not stepped (clinker) like our older designs and this reduced the resistance to tip over.
HenryR
Q.405. Hi Henry. What did the Spanish think of England as a power?
I’ve been trying to answer this question for ages and it took a trip to Spain, 20 miles North of Madrid to the Castle of Manzanares to find evidence of one of the factors influencing the Spanish attitude towards England.
They considered England to be just an annex to their Empire, but a really strategically placed one with great access to the sea and the new America’s. The change to my Catholic version of their Church was Tolerated until my Son’s reign, when he and the Seymour’s threw it out completely in favour of the Protestant new church. With the death of Edward without children, it became apparent that the English did not want the Holy Roman influence again and tried to usurp the throne with poor Lady Jane Grey. After only nine days, she had lost power to the rightful heir Mary, daughter of a Spanish Princess and an English King. She wanted to marry well and reinforce the Roman Catholic Faith and it took blackmail and threats to force her to execute her own cousin Jane, evidence kept surfacing too about the antics of Elizabeth, she being a staunch Protestant. Mary’s marriage to Prince Phillip of Spain was a sham, he had mistresses and she was too old and ill to bear children. Spain always considered that Phillip was King of England and so their aim to retake their lands culminated in the Armada and their old enemy Elizabeth beating them.
You see from the picture that the Spanish had poor maps of our coastline, so when the weather pushed the Armada up the channel and around the Scottish and Irish Northern coasts, they foundered on the rocks and sandbanks. So rather than laugh at such a ridiculously poor atlas of our land, marvel at how this helped to save us.
Q.406.Hi Henry. I read with interest about how your designs of Fort down the south coast could be classified as “Stealth Castles”, by the way the walls were shaped to deflect incoming cannon balls. Did any other castle design exist before your “Stealth” shapes were introduced, which also deflected the Cannon balls away?
I must not claim lone ownership of the idea that a design can deflect a speeding cannon ball away from the wall. The Spanish were doing it for over 100 years before me, except they had not quite got the idea of actual redirecting the cannon balls flight, more the case that they skimmed it off at a random angle which was away from harm.
Here is a Castle in 1400’s Spain showing their ideas for diverting the Cannon Balls using Hemispherical shapes instead of flat. I thought this design to be rather crude, so I went back to the flat surface but angled it to give a more accurate redirection.
This next picture is from the same Castle but mid 1500's changes. See how prisms have replaced Spheres!
Q.407. Hi Henry: How did they cross huge spaces to make floors in Castles?
Thanks to the arch and the keystones which were clad above with intermittent beams of wood. See this Picture to explain it and it also explains why the holes are the only thing left today after the wood rotted.
Q.408. Hi Henry. Who told your daughter Elizabeth about how and when Anne Boleyn, her mother, had died?
Not a subject I care to talk about, but I must clear the air and explain the situation for you.
Elizabeth was 3 years old, staying with her guardian the Lady Bryan, Anne was executed on the 19th May, actually the anniversary soon. I sent a special messenger, Lady Mary Tudor, her sister to tell her. Mary always loved Elizabeth even though she hated Anne Boleyn for causing the rift between Katherine and me, or so she thought. I had actually stopped loving Katherine before I even met Anne Boleyn. Mary was kind and told her gently in her garden at Hatfield, Lady Bryan stood there to comfort Elizabeth but she broke down and cried. When my son Edward was born I asked Lady Bryan to be his guardian and gave Elizabeth a new lady to look after her, Kat Cambernowne who became Kat Astley when she married. This decision was to give Elizabeth a second mother figure to love and Kat was wonderful becoming Elizabeth’s best friend for life. Kat Astley was also Anne Boleyn’s second cousin so she knew about Elizabeth’s mother and could tell her about Anne s Elizabeth grew up. I even allowed Elizabeth to stay for a short while with Princess Anna Kleve in Hever Castle where she lived and also where Anne Boleyn was brought up. All this was to give Elizabeth some memories of her mother back to her, though she must not mention her name in court as it brings back bad memories and pricks many consciences.
Anne Boleyn had made a beautiful tangerine dress for Elizabeth’s coming of age and she turned up in it for party at Greenwich which upset me and Mary, Elizabeth was sent to her room to take it off.
Q.409. Hi Henry. Where did you die?
Enfield. Short question and so short answer.
Q.410. Hi Henry: Why did you order the coffin which held your dead son Henry Fitzroy, to be lead lined?
I suspected he was poisoned by the way his skin had turned black, he would have bloated and smelt of the poison, so I had him sealed airtight in his coffin. I instructed Howard to have him buried secretly for a while, then after a few weeks I instructed them to raise the coffin to be buried properly. I always suspected foul play, and the Howard’s were on the top of my list of those with much to gain from Fitzroy disappearing. There was also rumours that Fitzroy was plotting to overthrow me but I never believed he would do such a thing.
Q.411. Hi Henry. Thomas More was made a Saint in the Roman Catholic faith, just how Saintly was he?
He stood up for his beliefs and defied me, so the Roman Catholic faith rewarded his memory. Mind you, so did Lady Jane Grey who died because she would not renounce her Protestant Faith but then the Protestants don’t put memories up as sainthoods.
Thomas More wrote a famous book “Utopia”, the most anti-female book ever written, he tortured men and women to find out their secrets, jailed hundreds of poor people for not paying taxes, physically hit his own family as punishments. So being a saintly person, I think not. Being a high profile denouncer of the reformation, now that’s it in a nutshell. Propaganda. Remember you asked Henry for his opinion and got it.
Q.412. Hi Henry: A difficult question for you. What age could one expect to live for in Tudor times, and are there any figures to show the death rates for each age?
Correct, it is a difficult question to answer and I don’t think even living in Tudor times one could work it out because of poor communications, word of mouth and who cares anyhow. But being a man of great wisdom, I have produced a graph in a spreadsheet using figures written by many Historians of the number of deaths at certain ages including the survival rate of the birth itself. Nobody can say it is right or wrong, but the overall picture does tell a true story of fear of dying before one achieves their aim in life.
It also answers another question, Was King Henry VIII old or middle aged when he died at the seemingly early age of 55? Actually quite old really.
The graph is below, just click the file and download it.
Click here to download this file
I deny any knowledge of population statistics, historical records of England’s population death rates, so don’t bother me with trifles such as “where did you get the numbers from”, just read it as picture of survival in Tudor times.
Q.413. Hi, I just wanted to know; who did you send to the pope to ask for a divorce between you and Catherine?
I could easily answer this in two names, but the melodrama of the occasion needs outlining so you can understand the whole scenario.
During May and June of 1527 the Pope, Clement VII, was imprisoned by the Emperor of The Holy Roman Empire, Charles who just happened to be Catherine’s nephew. Whoever was sent on the mission for the marriage to be officially annulled was going to fail, as Catherine had sent previously another messenger to make sure her nephew would not allow his Aunt to be slighted in such a move. Wolsey thought up the plan of getting the imprisoned Pope to delegate powers to the English cardinal, himself, who could then annul the marriage and let the king marry again. Sounds good!
Trouble was the whole plot needed to be very secret or Emperor Charles would find out and scupper it, Wolsey told the only person who could be in the loop, the King himself who brazenly went to Catherine to tell her about their marriage being null and void. So Henry actually gave the secret away.
Catherine sent her trusted aid Felipez who had to lie to the King about a sick relative in Spain to get travel permission, Henry suspected he was a spy on a mission for his wife, and tried to waylay him in France but Felipez got away and eventually reached Charles. Charles wrote back secretly to his Aunt Catherine promising full support of the Holy Roman Empire and of course the Pope, who was still his prisoner. Eventually Henry succeeded with some sort of allowance from the Pope when he sent his own emissaries from Embassies, but the wording was technically wrong on purpose and Catherine making sure would still be Queen. Now desperate, Henry demanded that Wolsey send his secretary Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox to extract an agreement from the Pope which turned out only to be an agreement for the hearing to be held in England instead of Rome.
The Pope sent a sick and ageing Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio who took his time to get to England which infuriated Henry but also consoled Emperor Charles who was watching the proceedings on behalf of Catherine. He arrived in London on 9th October a full six months of travel causing a long anxious wait for Henry. When Campeggio announced he had come to heal the love rift between Henry and Catherine, an order from Charles, Henry erupted, threatening that if it did not go his way he would cut all ties to Rome in favour of the new teachings of the Lutherans.
As secrets go this was hopeless, the people of England had worked it all out and when the Pope’s emissary suggested that Catherine might keep her titles and enter a Nunnery, giving Henry the opportunity of an accepted mistress, the people chanted against the poor man as he went through the streets. “We want the Queen, no Nan Bullen for us!” You could say this was the beginning of the hatred Anne Boleyn endured from the People who loved Catherine. Wolsey never recovered his position of trust with the King.
Q.414. Hi Henry. I'm totally intrigued by the making of window glass by spinning it on the end of a rod. Do you have a greater explanation?
Sure do, I even have a picture and a poem about the famous Galyon Hone, "to hone" now means to fine tune a fit.
.jpg)
Galyon Hone
By Henry Tudor
Punty rod ready, wet the grooved wood steady
Heat the end bright, large wheel make tonight
Blow a great ball, cut the end open small
Spin and spin ‘til opening
Now heat and treat the glass in neat.
Spin out the shape, wheel will imitate
Thickness fatter in the middle, impossible to fiddle
Wrinkles and rings formed within
Let the wheel congeal, greater feel.
Cut the quarries at the edge, richest there to pledge
Middle class get the middle
Cut above higher shove
Colour and paint, etch in faint
Place together in leaded came, tight in frame
Create your art, that’s my part
Create your light, air and water tight
From Holland all alone, except for flowers near my home
We work so hard to please the King, jubilant we sing
Were are masters of our ware, nobody can compare
I now stand here alone, master of glass, Galyon Hone.
Imagine a great bubble of glass, spinning at the end of a rod called the punty. The glass maker then punctures the end, the spin then opens the hole and the ball slowly becomes a flat disc spinning. As the disc opens it causes wrinkles or waves to form, getting more pronounced towards the centre. So middle class had middle glass, upper class had upper glass who thought they were a cut above the others.
Cannot find a picture of Galyon Hone, so I made one up.
Q.415. Hi Henry. How many were executed in the Tudor era?
I hate having to cobble up an answer from a range of books with such a wide range of facts and figures given to either wow the reader or blind them with statistics. Not as many died as traitors as you might think, more died at the hands of Dukes, landowners punishing thiefs etc. Anyhow here we go.
Not an easy question to answer because executions could have been ordered by as low as a the Head of the Manor for the stealing of a loaf of bread and all in the Monarch’s name. No newspapers, recordings of nationwide deaths unknown, so it is about educated guesses! About 200,000 in all out of an average population of 5 million.
Here is a rough estimate of the death by tragic circumstance on each reign:
King Henry VII, the first Tudor King, not recorded but estimate of 50,000
King Henry VIII reigned for 38 years and 72,000 died.
King Edward VI along with the Seymour’s and the Dudley’s as protectors, 7,000 died.
Queen Jane Grey, only nine days on her unwilling throne, but still about 500 died trying to stop her reaching the throne.
Queen Mary I, Bloody Mary, trying to reverse the reformation, killed 2500. I cannot find greater numbers in Mary's reign, so maybe not as Bloody as we all thought.
Queen Elizabeth I, our favourite but still about 50,000 died. Remeber she reigned for half a century and thieves still got themslves hung.
Elizabeth I is not commonly considered a tyrant like her Father, but she was in a delicate position. The Pope in Rome had declared her essentially a “pretender” to the throne and she was considered illegitimate. To be loyal to the Pope was to be opposed to her rule. After it became a capital offence to be a Roman Catholic priest in England, the stage was set to root out the papal supporters of England. Almost 50 Catholic priests were executed during Elizabeth’s reign and over 20 people were executed for either helping priests, having or printing Roman Latin Catholic books or practicing the Roman Catholicism Mass. There were those executed in relation to the “Irish troubles” and those for political treason in the Babington plot including its pretender waiting in the wings, Mary Queen of Scots, and those who supported Robert Devereaux the 2nd Earl of Essex in the seemingly naïve plot to overthrow the Queen.
Q.416. Thanks Henry for the estimate of deaths. What was Europe like pre Tudor for death from unnatural causes?
This is very difficult to answer, because how do we know? Who can prove otherwise? Who counted?
Here is a graph which averages all the claims.
Must add, because of my own astonishment, the biggest death toll in actual genocide committed in the history of our world, was 50 million. It was the wiping out of the resistance to the Peoples Revolution in China, then what about the 21 million Jews in WW2 and 18 million Native American Indians and ........and ......... These figures makes a mockery about being Human.
Q.417.
Hi Henry
I understand that cleanliness was not high on the agenda in Tudor times. Who were the best environmentalists?
I was very clean; I washed three times per day and burnt my clothing every three days after only wearing each piece for about 12 hours. The people however were rather dirty. The best environmentalists were the farmers and the priests. Farmers would recycle waste as a form of natural fertiliser; the priests in the monasteries had to find a method of removing their waste away from their stone built buildings. I have compiled a picture showing a 1,000 year old plumbing system for taking away rain water, notice the following things:
A. There is a catchment pool carved on every step to stop the running water splashing over where you walk!
B. The channel is turned so the running water comes out of the wall at 90 degrees and so misses the wall.
C. The end of the water system has a long reach stone nozzle to make sure the water misses their own wall. They obviously didn’t bother about the village below.
Q.418. Hi Henry
Thomas Culpeper the boy friend of Katherine Howard, what was he really like?
Yes he was a young handsome man in his early twenties when he formally met Katherine gain, her cousin. In fact Katherine’s mother was a Culpeper. Now you must consider his actual personality before you consider him to be ill treated in the treason that befell his fate and left his head on the spike of London bridge for four years whilst his body was laid to rest in the cemetery of St. Sepulchre’s church in Newgate.
He was a cad, a nasty schemer who would use people to get ahead. He saw the working classes as animals, raping a gamekeeper’s wife and murdering the hero who tried to stop the rape. He had an illegal affair with the Queen behind my back and then when caught he tried to blame Katherine, he kept a private letter from Katherine for future blackmail but it was used as evidence against him. So he was not Katherine’s boyfriend, he was her tormentor with his power over vulnerable women.
Q.419. Hi Henry
Did you ever regret having Thomas Cromwell executed?
Ah! You are considering the comment I made in the hear-shot of my court when I was angry at their feeble attempts to do an efficient job in the gathering of evidence against the traitor Katherine Howard. They heard me shout “…on light pretexts, by false accusations, the made me put to death the most faithful servant I ever had!”
Don’t read too much into this, I was only trying to scare the court into working harder. Thomas Cromwell was a schemer and he made too many errors of great magnitude, he deserved his end.
Q.420. Hi Henry
Talking about Thomas Culpeper, I have read somewhere that there was in fact two Thomas Culpepers, is that true?
There were two brothers, both called Thomas Culpeper. It was a practice in ambitious families to name two sons after their father, or a courtly name, just in case one died thus leaving the surviving son to carry it on. Half the children died before adulthood so you see is was hedging their bets. “Hedging was to put a protective barrier around a vulnerable prize”, so creating another Thomas mad it a better gamble to make sure one used the name to further the family. The notorious Thomas Culpeper was the younger of the two brothers.
Q.421. Hi Henry
What are “clodhoppers”? My Mother says that they are clumsy people who wear less than fashionable shoes.
I’ve heard that one too, but it is a derivation of the actual intended meaning.
A “clodhopper” was someone who would rather read, and learn than hunt and do skilful sports. Nowadays we call them Nerds who are seen as weaklings and clumsy with the opposite sex by six packers.
Q.422. Hi Henry
Who invented the Rack?
John Holland, Duke of Exeter who was the constable in the Tower of London in the reign of Henry VI. It was nicknamed “The Duke of Exeter’s Daughter” sometimes called the Brake. Other countries had similar torture instruments to the rack; Spain had the escalera, Germany had the folter and France had the chevalet.
Being racked with pain became a saying for chronic back and joint ailments.
Q.423. Hi Henry
What kind of table manners were children expected to learn?
The children of the nobles were taught not to take too much wine, limit their choices of food dishes from the normal buffet to one or two selections and not to pick their noses, belch, cough, scratch or fart whilst at the table.
Q.424. Hi Henry
Most of the monasteries I have seen are quite tall, which is the tallest and how did they get the supplies up to the entrance?
I don't know which is the tallest, although there are a few on the top of mountains and I've just been to see quite a tall one this week, Mount St. Michel on the Brittany/Normandy border. Luckily your question was on my RV browser so I went back and took these pictures for you. I would have just walked past without a second glance, so thanks for focussing my attentions.
Q.425. Hi Henry . How did Britain become such good farmers?
Hey! We were really only hunter gatherers before the Romans turned up, OK we had bread and wheat and we kept our families alive by breeding the pigs and sheep, but to feed a whole army, well that’s different. The Roman’s arrived in the first century to a country opposed to their presence, though divided into tribes and haphazard communities. We held out a strong resistance and Britannia was the one country which needed the most Roman control structure, hence more mouths to feed. They were experts at crop growing and land drainage; they would build huge farms manned by Roman, Romanesque mercenaries and Briton collaborators. We in the Northern apart of Britain had to endure an invading army of mainly Spanish tribesmen from Astures in Spain. So the type of farming varied according to the type of Roman in charge. The Governor of Britannia was put to the task of feeding the troops and getting local agreement to work alongside the invaders, he was very successful. He reduced the flooded plains by planting forests, mainly by the use of Wychelms and also by diverting rivers. He created farmland for selected types of crops within a catchment area connected by the new Roman road system he was building. So this man should be acclaimed to be the godfather of the British farming science. Oh, have I mentioned his name yet? Sorry.
The governor at the time was called Julius Agricola. Guess what they called his farming methods? Agriculture.
A silly fact to be added to this. His boss, the Emperor of Rome at the time was a well known bully, always overriding other people’s ideas or even stealing them as his own. His name! Emperor Domitian! Quite a dominating character!