genealogy
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A few years back I wrote about Buckden Towers in Cambridgeshire, the old palace of the Bishops of Lincoln. Finally, with the pandemic receding, I was able to visit the site in its small village (once a thriving place in coaching times and earlier but much diminished with the advent of the railways.) Here Richard…
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Antony Woodville, quite early in his career, had an affair with Gwenllian Stradling which led to the birth of a daughter, Margaret Woodville. As it turned out, although he subsequently married twice, this was his only child. Or certainly, his only child who grew up. The Stradlings were a long-standing Glamorgan gentry family, based at…
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It seems that a Hull pub stands on a historically important site because many centuries ago, the building on the corner of Lowgate and Alfred Gelder Street in the city centre replaced a certain Suffolk Palace, which once belonged to King Henry VIII. However, of much more interest to us than the Tudor monarch is…
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There I was on the road to Damascus when there was a great roll of thunder and suddenly I was confronted by Vlad the Impaler. I jest of course, but I did see a TV documentary about Vlad’s curse and did have a flash of inspiration for an article for the blog. Except….right now I…
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The quiet Woodville….
Abbey of St. James, books, Duston, Edward IV, Elizabeth I, executions, illegitimate children, Jacquette, Katherine Wydeville, Knights of the Bath, Lord Mayors of London, Northampton, Richard Earl Rivers, Richard III, Richard Woodville, secret marriage, Sir Anthony Wydeville, Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset, Victoria History of Northamptonshire, William CaxtonWhenever we hear the name Woodville (various spellings) we’re inclined to think of Elizabeth Woodville and her grasping relatives. We’re told they had goodies thrust upon them by Edward IV, and that they were foisted in marriage onto almost all the leading families of the realm. One couldn’t go anywhere without encountering Woodvilles in…
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Today a hundred years ago, George Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon, died, about five months after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which he funded. Herbert was also, of course, the surname of the Earls of Huntingdon/ Pembroke, who included Richard III’s son-in-law William. The earlier of these families dates from the fifteenth century,…