anniversaries
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Clarissa Dickson Wright and the Art of Medieval Food
Alfred the Great, BBC, British Library, Candid Camera, Clarissa Dickson-Wright, Enoch Powell, George Duke of Clarence, Henry IV, Jennifer Paterson, mediaeval food, medieval recipes, Pontefract Castle, Richard II, Richard Olney, The Form of Cury, The King’s Cookbook, The Spectator, Two Fat Ladies, Waffle House, Yotam OttolenghiThe late Clarissa Dickson Wright is known to the English-speaking countries of the world as one of The Two Fat Ladies – the middle-aged motorcycling cooks who zipped around the English, Welsh and Irish countryside, one at the wheel of a Triumph Thunderbird, the other stuffed into the sidecar wearing what appeared to be…
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Does someone not understand science?
“Beauforts”, Anglo-Saxons, Cecily Duchess of York, DNA evidence, dynastic succession, Edmund Mortimer, Edmund of Langley, Edward III, Ethelred II, evidence, executions, forked beard, Henry V, House of Wessex, Joan “Beaufort”, John Ashdown-Hill, Lancastrians, Lionel of Antwerp, mortimer claim, Nevilles, Penrith church, Raby, Ralph Earl of Westmorland, Richard Earl of Cambridge, Richard III, Sir Thomas Grey, Southampton plot, Strathclyde, William Scrope, Y-chromosome, YorkistsThis blog suggests that the failure of Richard’s Y-chromosome to match that of the Dukes of Beaufort doesn’t make him a male line descendant of Edward III through the “illegitimacy” of Richard, Earl of Cambridge. The issue it fails to address is this: The inconsistent chromosome has several other, more likely explanations – that Richard…
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Reading Abbey is reopening, but without the remains of Henry I having been found. He’s there somewhere, having definitely been buried there after his “surfeit of lampreys”. Well, they found Richard in Leicester, so there’s still hope of locating Henry.
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The above is the only illustration I can find that might be part of the original palace at Sheen. Or, it could be part of Richmond Palace. Tracing details of the original royal palace at Sheen, on the banks of the Thames, is not an easy task, because its Tudor replacement, Richmond Palace, rather steals the…
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Well, I was at a temporary loose end, pondering what to do to while away a Saturday afternoon…and what did I come up with? Why, assembling scenes of the deaths of monarchs of England. Of course. The devil makes work for idle hands, and mine were indeed idle. So here are our kings and queens,…
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Today marks the anniversary of the death in 1402 of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, an undervalued and almost forgotten prince. Edmund deserves his place in history. Without him the House of York itself would never have existed, and its later members, who everyone finds so interesting, would never have been born.…
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Yet another case
Audley case, BBC2, Bontems, Canale Plus, denialists, Duc de St. Simon, Edward IV, Elizabeth Wydeville, Fontainebleau, France, Harlay Archbishop of Paris, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, John Ashdown-Hill, Lady Eleanor Talbot, Louis XIV, Marquise de Maintenon, marriage law, morganatic marriage, Pere la Chaise, Richard Earl Rivers, Royal Marriage Secrets, Saudi Arabia, secret marriage, VersaillesThis year’s third series of “Versailles” reminded me of a further instance of secret marriage, even though some people maintain that nobody ever married in secret despite this case, that spawned two whole books, this one and this just decades ago, let alone Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydeville or her parents. In 1683 or 1684,…
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Thomas Stanley, or, the man with the evil beard….
“Perkin”, “Tudors”, Battle of Bosworth, Blore Heath, Cheshire, executions, First Battle of St. Albans, Henry of Buckingham, Henry VII, Lathom House, Lord High Constable, Lord Welles, Ludlow, Richard III, Second Battle of St. Albans, Sir William Stanley, Stoke Field, Tatton Park, Tewkesbury, Thomas Lord Stanley, Towton, treachery, Wakefield, Wars of the RosesFor anyone interested in knowing what made slippery Lord Stanley tick, here is an excellent evaluation, save that Sir William was executed for refusing to oppose “Perkin”, not for supporting him. The man was a born opportunist and survivor. Full stop. Oh, and he had an evil beard!
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How often do we Google for old town maps, only to find they’re so low in pixels that actually making out details is impossible? Well, while searching for such a map of Coventry, I have found an excellent site that gives a zoomable version of Speed‘s map of 1610. It goes in so close that…
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According to this site, (http://www.northamptonshiresurprise.com/news/2018/the-battle-decided-by-a-banbury-bar-maid/) Edward IV lost the Battle of Edgcote in 1469 because of a Banbury barmaid. And no, amazingly, Edward was not involved in the lustful squabble. The culprits were the Earls of Pembroke and Devon. . .and a barmaid from Banbury. It seems that prior to the battle:- “Edward decided to…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 