anniversaries
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This interesting paper by Carole Cusak is well worth reading. Particularly worthy of note is the fact mentioned in it that no contemporary source suggests that there was anything wrong with Richard II‘s state of mind. It was, in fact, Bishop Stubbs in lectures at late as 1866, who first suggested that Richard was insane.…
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The boy who had been King Edward V….
“confessions”, “Lambert Simnel”, “Oakhanger”, “Perkin”, “Princes”, attainder, Battle of Bosworth, Battle of Stoke, bigamy, Catherine of Aragon, Coldridge, Devon, Dublin Cathedral, Edward of Warwick, Edward V, Elizabeth of York, Essex, executions, fiction, fire, George Duke of Clarence, Havering atte Bower, Henry of Buckingham, Henry VI, Henry VII, hunting lodges, illegitimacy, imposture, John Earl of Lincoln, Kent, Lady Catherine Gordon, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Lord Protector of the Realm, Ludlow Castle, Margaret of Burgundy, notebooks, Oxford, Portuguese marriage plans, Richard III, Richard of Shrewsbury, Richmond Palace, Sheen, Sir John Evans, Sir William Stanley, Spain, Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset, Thomas Stanley, Titulus Regius, Tower of LondonLadies and gentlemen, please remember that this novella is a fictional account of what might have happened to the boys known as the Princes in the Tower. The theory about Coldridge is not my original thought, nor have I done anything personally to help prove it. To my knowledge there is nowhere called Oakhanger in Kent, let alone that it was held by the Earl of Lincoln. I…
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I was quite enjoying this article until I came to: “….‘Kings whose claims were disputed were accordingly anxious to be consecrated as quickly as possible,’ writes Zaller. ‘Both Edward IV and Richard III rushed to be crowned, and the Yorkist kings claimed to have been anointed with chrism conveyed directly to Thomas á Becket by…
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Further Royal ancestry – twice over this time
Alexander Armstrong, BBC1, Bear Grylls, bigamy, Bruce Forsyth, Canada, cellists, Chris Ramsey, Chris van Tulleken, Claire Foy, Clare Balding, composers, Danny Dyer, Dev Griffin, Emily Atack, Henry III, honours, Josh Widdicombe, Julian Lloyd Webber, katherine Willoughby, Kevin Clifton, Lancastrians, Lesley Manville, Lloyd Webber, musicians, Netherlands, Richard Bertie, royal descent, Scotland, Scouts, Sir Matthew Pinsent, Sir Peregrine Maitland, USA, Waterloo, Who do you think you are?, Xand van TullekenWho do you think you are, the celebrity genealogy show with some surprising results, has returned to BBC1 on Thursday evenings. The twentieth series, of nine episodes, began with Andrew, Lord Lloyd Webber, whose parents, cellist brother Julian and late son Nick were also known to be musically talented, but makes some uncannily similar connections…
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I thought that the Lily White Boys (as mentioned in the lyrics of the 12th-century song Green Grow the Rushes O) were a reference to Christ and St John the Baptist. Well, that was what I was told. But then in John Gardner’s book The Life and Times of Chaucer I came upon a reference…
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I’m afraid that I’m not a lover of Shakespeare’s works. I think the blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of ‘O’ English Literature. I was bored rigid. But when it came to the much earlier Geoffrey Chaucer, which I didn’t read until after leaving school, I loved every word. Maybe if…
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… but this one is by Ursula K. leGuin, better known as a science fiction writer, before her 2018 death: Richard Loyalty bound him. Not deft, not flexible. Stanley betrayed him. Why did he fight so hard to die so sorely hurt? Did he foresee the hump, the murders, and the theft, the withered hand,…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 