anniversaries
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The de Courcy Matter Part I: According to English records….
Anne of Bohemia, Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Thomas Arundel, banishment, boulogne, Calais, Catherine de Valois, Charles d’Orleans, Charles VI, churches, dolls, France, gold harts, governesses, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VII, Hundred Years War, Ireland, Isabelle de Valois, jewel theft, John of Gaunt, Ladies of the Garter, Lancastrians, livery badges, marguerite lady de coucy, Owain Tudor, Richard II, Rockingham, St. George’s Day, Terry Jones, usurpation, Who murdered chaucerMarguerite, Lady de Courcy, was the French governess of Richard II’s second wife, the child-bride Isabelle of Valois. This article, Part I, tells the generally known English version of what led to Marguerite’s return to France. I will begin with Richard’s obligation to remarry after the death of Anne of Bohemia, with whom he had…
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“Time-honour’d Lancaster” was given to pressing on at the expense of his men….
1475 invasion of France, Anthony Goodman, Anthony Steel, arnold, bayonne, Bordeaux, Calais, Castile, chevauchee, Constanza of Castile, david nicolle, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Castle, Edward the Black Prince, Elizabeth of Lancaster, France, Froissart, Gascony, Helen Carr, Henry IV, Hundred Years War, John of Gaunt, Jonathan Sumption, Navarre, Pedro I, Portugal, Scotland, Sir John Holland, Spain, tournaments, troyes, unofficial executions, usurpation, villalpandoIn late April 1388, John of Gaunt‘s son-in-law Sir John Holand returned to England from the Spanish peninsula, where he had been constable of Gaunt’s army. Gaunt had invaded the peninsula in pursuit of the Crown of Castile, to which he had a claim through his marriage to the Infanta Constanza. I am now going…
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The following list deals with fifteen unexpected rulers. Well, these things are in the eye of the beholder, of course, but (for readers of this blog) the salient name on the list is Henry VII, who apparently won at Bosworth “largely by chance”. Hmm…. How, pray, can deliberate desertion and treachery be regarded as…
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Sir Edmund Shaa – Cheshire’s Answer to Dick Whittington.
apprentices, Calais, Cheshire, Crowden, edmund shaa, Edward IV, goldsmiths, Greater Manchester, john shaa, Knights, London, Lord Mayors of London, moneylenders, mottram-in-longdendale, Royal Mint, sheriff of london, St. James, st. thomas of acre, stockport, Tower of London, wills, woodhead, YorkshireEdmund Shaa was born in about 1436, reputedly in Mottram-in-Longdendale, which was then in Cheshire. He was the son of John Shaa ‘of Dukinfield’ who was, it appears, a yeoman. ‘Shaa’ is the medieval version of the surname ‘Shaw’. Many of the name ‘Shaw’ can still be found in the general area of Greater Manchester…
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On 7 September last year on the Sky History channel was the first series of Royal Autopsy. It dealt with Charles II and Elizabeth I, and was excellent, if a little gory. I reviewed it on the following link: https://murreyandblue.org/2023/09/07/royal-autopsy-a-documentary-series-dealing-with-the-recreated-post-mortems-of-charles-ii-and-elizabeth-i/ Now the second series is soon to commence, and there are four monarchs having the…
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This article explains how the site of the C12 castle in Sheffield, where Mary Stuart was held but which has been lost since partial demolition and decay in the 1640s, is being explored by organisations including Keltbray, after previous work by Wessex Archaeology from 2018. The area, now known as Castlegate, includes the confluence of…
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I have recently come across the argument (again) that Edward III‘s purported enfeoffment made Gaunt and his son the rightful heirs of Edward III.
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When people, who had known Richard III in life and would have seen evidence but obviously hadn’t, wrote subsequently that he suffered from kyphosis, not scoliosis, their statements are best described as lies, as shown by the evidence found in Leicester almost a dozen years ago. When Henry VII re-legitimated his wife and thus…
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This interesting article by Deanna Rodriguez gives details of many of Christine’s works, some of which are readily available to the modern reader in translated form. Christine de Pizan (or Pisan) was born in Venice but moved to France at an early age and spent the rest of her life there. After her husband’s death,…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 