law
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Apologies to anyone who expects this to be a five thousand word essay with at least a hundred cases but I was wondering about one thing in particular: when “Tudor” monarchs repealed legislation, how did they usually go about it? The usual procedure was – and still is – to have a new Act passed,…
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While browsing Royal Blood by Bertram Fields I noticed the following remarkable passage, (pages 116-117): “…during the reign of Henry VIII, Charles V’s ambassador to England reported that people ‘say’ that Charles had a better claim to the English throne than did Henry VIII, since Henry could only claim through his mother and she ‘was…
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We published “A mystery from 1468” nearly two months ago, pointing out that Lady Eleanor Talbot owned some land after 1461 and trying to explain how. It wasn’t from her first marriage or as a dowry. It wasn’t inherited. She couldn’t have afforded to buy it. It seems to have come from Edward IV but…
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A Salic Law (dating from c.507-11) stated, among other things, that a kingdom must be inherited agnatically. Women are to be excluded from the Crown, as are men who would only inherit through the male line. How did this affect different European countries? FRANCE: applied more rigidly as time went on, precedents being created in…
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The suggestion in John Ashdown-Hill’s Royal Marriage Secrets (pp.69-74) that Edmund “Tudor” may have been fathered by Edmund Beaufort, of Somerset, and not by Owen Tudor, Catherine de Valois’ servant and apparent illegal husband, is most intriguing. It is clear that Edmund was a “transitional child” between one of her relationships much commented on at…
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On 28 July 1399, William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, Lord Treasurer of England and King of Man, Sir John Bushey and Sir Henry Green were executed outside Bristol on the orders of Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV). They had a summary trial at best, and quite probably no trial at all. It is not at…
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There are two kinds of historian. One kind searches scrupulously for undiscovered sources before writing and the other glibly quotes those that are generally available, even when serious questions have been raised about them. This is the easier approach and some would call it lazy. Most of us know who belongs in which category. Other…
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More’s account of the marriage of Edward IV The Duchess [of York] with these words nothing appeased, and seeing the King so set thereon that she could not pull him back, so highly she disdained it, that under pretext of her duty to Godward, she devised to disturb this marriage, and rather to help that…
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Lady Eleanor Butler (born Talbot) probably knew that she was dying. In the early months of 1468, she transferred the lands that were hers to transfer to her sister, Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk. Where these lands came from is something of a mystery. John Ashdown-Hill has demonstrated that they were not dower lands, could not…
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So, Leicester it is. After all the furore, delay, money spent and suffering (if bones can suffer) of Richard himself, we are back where we started. If it were not for this judicial challenge, he would be buried now and at rest. But, Spring 2015 is when he is to be finally shown the honour,…
