religion
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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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With the first coronation in seventy years looming fast, there is naturally a lot of discussion about various aspects of the ancient ceremony. I don’t know what the new king’s wish to “modernise” might finally entail, but I do know the proceedings will have to include the Coronation Chair (now a shadow of its former…
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The Stanley who found religion – Sir John Stanley of Honford.
Anne Benger, Anne Boleyn, Bishops of Ely, clerical celibacy, executions, Fleet prison, Flodden, George Legh of Adlington, Handforth, illegitimacy, James Stanley, Joan Larke, Manchester Cathedral, monks, property disputes, Sir John Stanley, Sir Urien Brereton, Stanleys, Westminster Abbey, William HanfordSir John Stanley was a grandson of Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby and Eleanor Neville. His father was James Stanley (c 1465-1525) a cleric who eventually became Bishop of Ely. (He retained multiple benefices and seems to have been as often in Lancashire as in Ely. He is buried in what is now Manchester…
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Having recently written about Minster Lovell and the fact that the remains of Francis Lovell may have been found walled up there, I found myself drawn to yet another Cotswold house with a similar legend. This is Owlpen Manor on the western flank of the Cotswolds. This Owlpen Manor link mentions four ghosts, but only…
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Oh dear. There are times when words simply will not suffice, and this, I fear is one of them. If you go to this site you’ll see what I mean. Richard’s story, and the supposed fate of his nephews, has surely been done to death (sorry, no pun inended) but this time I fear it’s…
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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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I had never been much interested in medieval history. I thought of them as backwards and a little too obsessed w the afterlife. However, the “what ifs” of history always intrigued me. What if the Nazis won WWII? What if the north had been defeated in the American Civil War? And so forth. I’d always…
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REBLOGGED FROM A MEDIEVAL POTPOURRI @sparkypus.com The peaceful garden…a tranquil spot to sit a while in the busy heart of the City of London. Photo Haarkon co.uk. St Dunstan-in-the-East was already ancient when John Stow wrote about it in his Survey of London Written in the Year 1598. Not to be confused with St Dunstan-in-the West,…
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This may not be from our period, but it’s remarkable nevertheless, if only for revealing just how well the most unlikely of treasures can survive under the sea. For over 300 years in this case. In 1724 the German vessel “Archangel Raphael” sank off the coast of the Gulf of Finland. She was supposedly on…