Last year, descending the rabbit hole, I met someone new:
A 17th Century solo woman traveler!
Celia Fiennes
Celia and Mary of Modena, my book’s main focus, were born only 4 years apart, but as an anti-royalist, I doubt Celia crossed Mary’s path! I’ll bet the brave woman traveler came up in royal conversation though, because, remarkably, Celia rode side-saddle through every county in England, accompanied only by two servants, and including two long journeys through northern England and Scotland and including a close drowning and a highwayman’s attack.
Celia Fiennes’ explorations started for health reasons in the south of England, then continued well beyond. Unusual for this time period, she did not marry. This and her family’s wealth provided the freedom and opportunity she had for adventurous travel. At the time, travel for pleasure was still very unusual and as a female traveler, Celia was exceptional. She was born in 1662, in Salisbury, a 15-minute modern-day drive from Stonehenge. However, Celia’s family were devoted Parliamentarians, meaning they opposed the Crown and supported Parliament & Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Celia’s father and uncles had fought against the King.
Celia kept a journal, later published: Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary. London: Field & Tuer, The Leaderhall Press, 1888.
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 each place, (they) would also form such an Idea of England, add much to its Glory and Esteem in our minds.”
Most consider the fine lady in the well-loved children’s nursery rhyme, “Ride A Cock Horse To Banbury Cross” to be Celia:
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she
goes.
The phrase ‘cock horse’ originates from the 15th century (meaning anything from a child’s rocking horse, a castrated horse, a high-spirited horse, a horse & cart, or riding sidesaddle). The rhyme first turned up in print in the early 18th century, around the time that Fiennes was gaining a reputation for her travels. For ‘fine lady’ could we read ‘Fiennes lady’?
Celia lived to be 78 years old, dying in London, in 1741. She is remembered with a memorial near Whitchurch, 45 miles south of Liverpool, to commemorate the 300th anniversary.
