Cecilia, I’m down on my knees
I’m begging you please to come home
Come on home.*
The amazing Celia Fiennes was born in 1662, two miles from Stonehenge, in Newton Toney, Salisbury, Wiltshire.
Celia and my heroine, Mary of Modena, were four years apart in age, but Celia’s family were devoted
Parliamentarians, meaning they opposed the Crown. In fact, both Celia’s father and all her uncles had fought against the King during the English Civil War.
Driven by insatiable curiosity, remarkably, Celia rode side-saddle through every county in England, accompanied by one or two servants. Her journeys included a close drowning and a highwayman’s attack.
From Celia’s journal, later published: **
‘2 fellows all on a suddain from ye wood fell into ye
Road, they Look’d truss’d up with great Coats and
as it were bundles about them wch I believe was pistolls’.
Unusual for this time period, Celia did not marry. This and her family’s wealth provided the freedom and opportunity she had for such adventurous travel. At the time, travel for pleasure was still very unusual and as a female traveler, Celia was exceptional. Her explorations started for health reasons. ‘Taking the waters’ was often the only active measure for managing one’s health.
Celia saw many of the finest English country houses while they were still under construction. Fiennes stayed at country houses where she had connections or at inns.
Wrote Celia:
“If all persons, both Ladies, much more Gentlemen, would spend some of their tyme in Journeys to visit their native Land, and be curious to Inform themselves and make observations of the pleasant prospects, good buildings, different produces and manufactures of each place, with the variety of sports and recreations they are adapt to, would be a souveraign remedy to cure or preserve ffrom these Epidemick diseases of vapours, should I add Laziness? -it would also fform such an Idea of England, add much to its Glory and Esteem in our minds.”
Here here!
Adventure runs in the family: A descendent is explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Third Baronet, OBE, the first person to visit both the North Pole and South Pole by and the first to completely cross Antarctica on foot.
* Simon, Paul. Bridge Over Troubled Water, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group. 1970.
**Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary. London: Field & Tuer, The Leaderhall Press, 1888.
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/quakers/biographies/celia_fiennes.html
https://www.philippagregory.com/news/celia-fiennes
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/birth-celia-fiennes
