Elusive facts - when do you give up and cheat?

Do you ever find yourself researching your novel, getting along quite happily, then you get to one fact that you just cannot find any trace of anywhere? Or else you find one statement of fact and no source for it?

My latest one, and it'll probably sound ridiculous...I'm fiddling around with some ideas for my historical WIP, as I had a flash of inspiration today as to how it could be sorted out. I was looking into the history of Glastonbury, of all things, and all the mythology surrounding the place, which is going to figure in the story. Anyway, I found a couple of references to the Glastonbury thorn (supposedly planted by Joseph of Arimethea) being cut down by the Roundheads in the seventeenth century, and eventually tracked the date of this down to 1650. However, I can find no primary source evidence for this date at all, and one slightly later (eighteenth century) source even said the tree was cut down in the reign of Elizabeth I.

It's just really irritating me, because if the thing was cut down slightly earlier, say during the really heated fighting in that area and in Glastonbury in 1643, it'd be fantastically convenient for my story.

I'm at a loss as to what to do. The only reference I found to the 1650 thing was Wikipedia, which is why I wanted another source. Would I get away with saying it happened in 1643, even if I put a note or something to say that I'd tweaked the facts slightly? Or would something like that jerk an informed reader out of the story? I just would really like to have one of my MCs watching the tree be cut down.

My thinking kind of is if it's that hard for me to find (and I've been through a ton of contemporary stuff, as well as histories of Glastonbury Abbey and the likes and still can't find a conclusive date), then people wouldn't really notice if I changed it, but it feels like cheating to do that.

So has anyone had a situation like this and if so, what did you do?

PS if anyone actually does know where I can find a fairly contemporay reference...

Medievalist said:

Cutting down a thorn isn't going to kill it you know; new growth comes from the stump and roots.

But why not write the Trust, and ask? And there's enough here, that you can find what you want at a decent academic library:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06579a.htm

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As far as I know they did manage to kill it, but they had enough samples from the surrounding area (though the one in the Abbey was the 'special' type of tree, there were others scattered around Glastonbury), and it wasn't replanted for a while (and then it was the second attempt that finally took). It's just that the Joseph of Arimethea legends around there would work in very nicely with my new plot element and it would've been nice to have had my character there to watch it being cut down.

The problem I had with the Catholic Encyclopaedia is that they don't footnote that section so again they don't say where they got that information from. The one book listed there on the Glastonbury Thorn isn't in our library, I've checked, and we don't seem to have anything else of much use. I've already been through a lot of the contemporary documents, as I said. I can't find any other reference to this 1653 letter other than a brief note in one of the online journals, that speaks about it more as a general lament against Cromwell's stance on Christmas and the excerpt doesn't include the bit where the date is mentioned, or some site called 'findarticles.com' that's flagged by my software as being potentially dodgy and virus-riddled. It's just really frustrating.

It would've been a nice idea if it'd worked but I think this WIP is cursed not to be written somehow.

TomoeMichieru said:

What I'd do is give it a best-guess, then in an Author's Note say that's what you did when you tried everything you could think of and couldn't find a source.

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That was an idea I had, but it occurred to me just now that I could always say they hacked at it or something without actually cutting it down (in 1643 I mean). Their problem with it was they said it was idolatrous so it would seem feasible. I think.

Puma said:

If you do a Google search for "Glastonbury thorn" "cut down" quite a number of hits pop up. Have you checked those out? Puma

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Not that exact search (though I just had a look) but most of the links coming up came up on other combinations I'd tried. The story about the axeman being hit with the splinter, for instance, has cropped up in about a dozen different versions so far, including one that has nothing to do with the Civil War, but happened instead during the dissolution of the monasteries. I did find an article on jstor that argued none of it was true, and around the seventeenth, eighteenth centuries, anything broken was blamed on Cromwell, so the incident never took place at all (which I found quite funny).

I'm not sure why this is bugging me so much, other than the fact I've been able to track down primary source material for most other facts I need. I always feel if I can at least point to a primary source, I have something to argue with if people pick holes in my research.

Cool thing is, if you do search for glastonbury thorn cut down, this thread shows up on page 1 of the results.

Anyway, thanks so much for the help and for taking the time to actually look this stuff up, folks. I was just getting to the stage where I wondered how much stick I'd get if I made up an incident of my own based on this story rather than using the concrete historical basis.

Medievalist said:

You need an academic library; go to your local college or university.

This is the important bit: "The original thorn tree on Wearyall Hill was cut down in 1653 by some fanatical soldier of Cromwell's army, to the great annoyance of Bishop Goodman of Gloucester who wrote to the Lord Protector complaining of the outrage;"

You can, as I said, simply write the Glastonbury Abbey trust, but honestly, I bet you'll find what you need at an academic library.

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I was looking in the academic library (at the University of Glasgow, where I'm studying medieval legal history). As I said, I've been through the contemporary documents held there and there's nothing definite.

julie thorpe said:

This is the important bit: "The original thorn tree on Wearyall Hill was cut down in 1653 by some fanatical soldier of Cromwell's army, to the great annoyance of Bishop Goodman of Gloucester who wrote to the Lord Protector complaining of the outrage;"

I'm so jealous that you have access to Jstor - lucky lucky you!

About the Glastonbury thorn - I should think if you quoted (in an author's note) the above as your reference point and qualified it by saying it is unverifiable but you are using it because it suits the purpose of your story, you would be covered?

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Yes, this year when I forgot to renew my Athens password and had to go a day without being able to roam around online journals - think I went a bit mad

I think if I did add my own incident, that sounds like the best way to cover it, just say in an author's note that there was the established thing in 1653 but I'm being a bit liberal with the facts.

Carmy said:

How important is the date to your WIP? Could you tweak the novel forward by ten years? If not, I wouldn't worry too much about it. There were many trees around during that time so who's to know the tree your character chops down is the same tree that was cut down ten years later? Perhaps there were two trees.

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Unfortunately I need the rest of the action to take place over a short period in 1643, else that would be the ideal idea, yes.

tallus83 said:

Is the thorn central to your story?

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The more I've researched into it (and hawthorn in general, in terms of old superstitions) the more I think it wants to be now, but I think I can get away with just taking bits off it rather than having it cut down, and still make the same point. I hope

donroc said:

It is not as if you had Charles I executed in 1647 or 1660 to suit the plot. That would cause me to toss away the book. What 0.000% of readers/critics would stop and check the thorn date? I would not. Again, as said above, you can cover your tush with a comment in the author's note section.

www.donaldmichaelplatt.com

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Oh, I have a book on Edinburgh history that's like that - it gave the date of Charles I's execution as 1650 and the date of Cromwell's death as 1661.

Ha! (Just have to share the triumph here). Finally found the Goodman 'letter' (which isn't actually a letter at all, really, but is the dedication to one of Goodman's books on religion) and at no point does he say when the thing was cut down.

And I will insist in one particular, the White-thorn at Glastonbury, which did usually blossom on Christmas Day, was cut down, yet I did not hear that the party was punished;

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Other than going on about the history of the tree in general, that's all he says; he doesn't mention when it happened. The book in question was published in 1653 which is why that's being given as the date of the event, I should think.

I am pleased. Now I only have another, oh, four hundred things I need to double check before I can start writing... heh

pdr said:

propaganda! Was the Bishop one of Charles's One Laudian Church out to blame the Roundheads or a sympathizer with the Puritans?

And Thomas Cromwell, who supervised Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, did a great deal of damage to anything regarded as Catholic idolatry.

Then you have the sheer biology of the fact that Hawthorns aren't that long lived as far as trees go!
Choose what you need for your story, Jesse, and add that footnote re dates.

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One of the things that came up in an article about it was that it might have been a mistake as to which 'Cromwell' was involved. Certainly one version of the 'soldier was hit in the face with a splinter whilst trying to chop it down' story supposedly took place during the dissolution of the monasteries rather than the Civil War.

Thing is, at the time he wrote the book that contains this thing about the Thorn, he was quite infirm and died three years later, apart from the fact he was never an incumbent at Glastonbury or anywhere near it as far as I know and was reporting something he'd heard of rather than seen, so I figure I'll put a note to that effect in the book and just explain that's why I'm not going with the 1653 date.