anniversaries
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By Super Blue Channel Four’s occasional series about the lives of the Royal Family is back and this time it is focused upon Scotland. Dumfries House in Ayrshire is mentioned as is Glamis Castle, the home of their Bowes-Lyon ancestors, arguing that Scotland is where they feel most at home. Most of the hour was…
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If you hear a wailing and gashing of teeth, both anguished sounds will be emanating from me. Why? Because my rudimentary archaeological endeavours in my garden continue to unearth clay pipes The darned things show no sign of becoming rare and valuable. Other people find great treasures of one sort of another; I find…
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Well, Hallowe’en is nigh, a time when we like to shiver and squeal, so here is a dark legend to set those shivers and squeals in motion. It happened at the end of the 14th/beginning of the 15th century among the dense trees of Nannau Park near Dolgelly/Dolgellau, the county town of Merionethshire (now Gwynedd).…
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This was shown on BBC2 over three consecutive Mondays, featuring an all-Italian excavation of the abandoned city and the British volcanologist Dr. Chris Jackson. It featured the familiar story of the two-day eruption and pyrochastic flow killing thousands, including Pliny the Elder, before they could escape as many ran from the lava towards the sea…
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Today, 16 October, in 1987 something happened that most of us who are old enough will remember very clearly. Overnight we’d endured the raging of a terrible storm (see here, here and here). The resultant destruction of property and trees meant that Sevenoaks in Kent no longer had its famous seven oaks! In the…
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I confess that when I wrote the article The disgraceful second marriage of the unpleasant 3rd Earl of Arundel…. – murreyandblue, {21/9} I thought such marital chicanery was a one-off (Henry VIII excepted!) I certainly didn’t expect to happen upon another instance. This second example of heir-shuffling isn’t as easy to explain as Arundel’s, however,…
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When we think of alchemy and alchemists, we tend to categorise them as men. But no. There were women alchemists as well, as I discovered when I came upon this article which lists ten such women through history. One of the ten caught my eye. She lived in the reign of Elizabeth I, who was…
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The disgraceful second marriage of the unpleasant 3rd Earl of Arundel….
“Copped Hat”, annulment, Arundel Castle, bigamy, Bodleian Library, child marriage, clement vi, dispensations, Earl of Arundel, Edmund Crouchback, Edward II, Eleanor of Lancaster, executions, Fitzalans, Havering atte Bower, Henry III, Henry of Lancaster, Hugh Despencer the Younger, illegitimate children, Isabel le Despenser, John Beaumont, Kathryn Warner, Lewes Priory, Limoges, National Portrait Gallery, popes, prisoners, Saint-Martial, scandal, Sir Edmund Arundel, tournaments, Tower of LondonIn January 1376, 63-year-old Richard Fitzalan, 3rd/10th (depending on how you calculate it) Earl of Arundel, passed away at Arundel Castle and was interred at Lewes Priory, where his 54-year-old second wife had lain to rest since 1372. The earl was nicknamed “Copped Hat” because of the type of gabled headwear he favoured, and he…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 