genealogy
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Lance Corporal Jones – Dad’s Army – referring to his trusty bayonet. When someone on a Ricardian group mentioned that John Ashdown-Hill was receiving a right bashing on the BBC History Magazine page, I and a few other intrepid Ricardian souls..you know who you are..trundled over there to take up the cudgel on said author’s behalf.…
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Originally posted on Helen Rae Rants!: As the old saying goes, it’s a wise child that knows its own father; one might add it’s a sure child that knows its own mother, if only because maternity is harder to conceal, deny or be mistaken about. So while doubts have been cast on King Edward’s paternity…
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What do Matilda and Margaret, Eleanor and Elizabeth, plus two Henrys, add up to…?
“Beauforts”, Antioch, Catherine de Roet, Crusades, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth of York, Fair Rosamund Clifford, Gerald of Wales, Henry I, Henry II, Henry VII, John of Gaunt, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Lancastrians, Matilda, Raymond of Poitiers, Richard III, Robert of Gloucester, Shakespeare, Stephen, The Lion in Winter, Viscount Welles, YorkistsTo my mind, it adds up to two very similar situations that are two centuries apart. Let us begin in the 12th century. On his deathbed, Henry I of England named as his successor his only surviving child, his daughter, the Empress Matilda. He obliged the nobility to agree. They reneged, of course. A woman…
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You may recall that, about two years ago, we published the footnotes to Bertram Fields’ Royal Blood. Now it seems that, on page 152 of the paperback edition, he has something to say about Catherine de Valois’ apparent relationship with Owain Tudor. Just like G.L.Harriss (1988) and John Ashdown-Hill (2013), he holds that they are…
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Squaring the Circle
“Perkin”, Arthur “Tudor”, Arthur Plantagenet, books, Catherine of Aragon, David Baldwin, Dr. John Clement, Edward IV, Edward of Warwick, Edward V, Elizabeth Wydeville, Ferdinand of Aragon, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Isabel of Castile, Jack Leslau, James “VIII/III”, James VII/II, Lady Catherine Gordon, Margaret of Salisbury, Matthew Lewis, Reginald Cardinal Pole, Richard III, Richard of Eastwell, Richard of Shrewsbury, sanctuary, The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, Thomas More, Westminster AbbeyWriting The Survival of the Princes in the Tower was an enormously enjoyable project. The book, due out in Autumn 2017, considers the evidence that one, or both, of the sons of Edward IV survived well beyond 1483, when they are traditionally considered to have been murdered by their uncle Richard III. My problem with…
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“A breakthrough in the search for Richard III’s remains was the fact that Dr Ashdown-Hill, who is a genealogist as well as historian, had used DNA science to trace a descendant of the king – Mrs Joy Ibsen who lived in Canada. “He is now using that DNA sequencing to dispel the centuries-old myths surrounding…
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One of the most fascinating (and bloody) periods of English history is The Anarchy, when Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I (he who might well be found sometime soon in the ruins of Reading Abbey) fought her cousin Stephen of Blois (thought to be in Faversham Abbey) for the English throne. Battles raged across the…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 