anniversaries
-
On 17th September 1483, Richard III sold the manor and village of Northwich, Cheshire, to the Stanleys. Did that grasping family do some good for once? Or did Northwich wish Richard had kept it? Who knows. The Stanleys were certainly expert at acquiring property and then hanging on to it—Northwich remained theirs until the late…
-
Last year, we brought you the news that the developers of the Stanley knife were descended from Thomas, Baron Stanley, subsequently Earl of Derby. Now we can announce that a great scientist and inventor was a Talbot, authentically descended from John “Old Talbot”, Earl of Shrewsbury and posthumous father-in-law to Edward IV. William Henry Fox…
-
On 16th September 1398, at Gosford Green near Coventry, there was a tournament involving a trial by combat between Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Almost the entire nobility of England attended this event, including the king, Richard II, who had ordered the trial to settle a dispute (concerning…
-
BOOK REVIEW
“Perkin”, “Princes”, ambition, Archbishop Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, attainder, Battle of Bosworth, Cardinal, Domenico Mancini, Edward IV, Edward of Lancaster, Edward V, Francis Bacon, Henry of Buckingham, Henry VI, Henry VII, illegitimacy, inheritance, James IV, John Morton, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, Master of the Rolls, Milanese Ambassador, Morton’s Fork, Polydore Vergil, rebellion, Richard III, Robert Cecil, Stuart Bradley, Tewkesbury, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More, Thomas Wolsey, Titulus Regius, Towton, William Cecil, William Lord Hastings, WydevillesStuart Bradley – JOHN MORTON: adversary of Richard III, power behind the Tudors (Amberley 2019) John Morton served the English crown for a almost forty years during one of the most turbulent periods in English history. He wielded considerable influence at the courts of three kings. First, in the Lancastrian household of Henry VI:…
-
Sir Alec Jeffreys, the scientist who revealed the secrets of genetic fingerprinting, remembers the exact moment of his discovery. “It was 9.05 on the morning of Monday, September 10, 1984 – it’s seared into my memory,” he said. It may not be seared into ours in the same way, but we still marvel at the…
-
While searching for what could be accurate likenesses of a number of lords, I came upon the above illustration, which I had never seen before. It is not helpful for actual likenesses of the folk concerned, but is interesting for all that. It is an engraving of the brass that once marked the tomb of…
-
How clever are you when it comes to the precise use of English, grammar, punctuation and so on? My query here is about the use of a tilde, that is a ~, on top of an “h” in the confession of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, on the eve of his grisly death, 8th September…
-
This Mail on Sunday interview with Jonathan Rhys Meyers is sadly, mostly about his current personal problems. However, one or two paragraphs towards the end, should be of interest: But it was his lead role in TV drama The Tudors, as the criminally charismatic Henry VIII, that made everyone take note, even though Rhys Meyers…
-
Very few people know that there is a mystery surrounding the church of St Alkelda in Giggleswick. The whole matter started with a parish fair. People from the two churches dedicated to St Alkelda, one in Middleham {pingback to March 28} and one in Giggleswick, were looking for items to sell at the fair in…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 