travel
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According to this site, which is all about the play entitled the Coventry Carol, and details its history: “In Coventry — where Richard III attended plays shortly before he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field — the plays lasted for longer than in other cities.” Well, whatever he watched, it wasn’t the Coventry…
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A nice little pre-Christmas break took me to two towns of interest, Buckingham and Grantham. I wanted to see Buckingham museum which is currently hosting a Richard III display featuring the gold Half Angel found in the fields nearby. It was a nice little collection and the info panels were mercifully free of too many…
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In my seemingly endless trekking around the internet in search of information about Kennington (not Kensington!) Palace, I was pleasantly surprised to at last discover something I’d been trying to pinpoint for some time. In the days before there was any bridge over the Thames except Old London Bridge, the only way to cross the…
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Returning to Sutton Hoo
“The Dig”, Anglo-Saxons, Basil Brown, Beowulf, British Museum, Bromeswell Bucket, burial mounds, cafe, Carey Mulligan, cornish pasty, Deben, Edith Pretty, exhibition hall, Greek, National Trust, Orford Castle, Raedwald, Ralph Fiennes, Richard III Society, Scandinavia, Seamus Heaney, ship burial, Suffolk, Sutton Hoo, viewing platform, Woodbridge, WuffingsThe Mid Anglia branch of the Richard III society met at Woodbridge railway station and drove to the National Trust’s Sutton Hoo. Sutton Hoo, made famous this year by the release of Netflix’s “The Dig”, starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, is the site of the Royal burial ground of East Anglia’s 6th, 7th and…
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There must have been a brisk trade in illustrations of boating parties in the Merry Month of May…and Flemish painter Simon Bening (circa 1483-1561) stepped up to the mark! Mind you, I’m a little perturbed as to how the good Simon managed to paint the above in 1575 if he died in 1561. I suppose…
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Isabella of Castile takes the crown, in more way than one….
“Perkin”, Aragon, artificial insemination, Castile, Catherine of Aragon, Catherine of Lancaster, Catherine the Great, Christopher Columbus, Elizabeth I, Empress Elizabeth, exploration, expulsion of jews, Ferdinand of Aragon, Giles Tremlett, Isabel of Castile, John of Gaunt, Maria Theresa, Moors, Pedro I, Spain, Spanish Inquisition, usurpation, VictoriaThis article lists the top five great European queens as Elizabeth I, Maria Theresa of Austria, the Empress Elizabeth, Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria. Ah, but that’s the top five after Isabella of Castile, who reigned from 1474 until she died in 1504. Isabella snatches this particular crown right under the other ladies’…
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Research has recently taken me all over 14th-century Europe, and in the course of this I happened upon the information that wives did not accompany embassies. Well, I’ve now acquired a book entitled Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land made by Henry Earl of Derby, published by The Camden Society. The future Henry…
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Was 29th March a day of retribution for a certain 14th-century lord….?
adultery, Blanche of Lancaster, Bridge of San Lorenzo, Britannica, Buda, Bustardthorpe, Charles VI, childbirth, conception, Crusades, Dartington Hall, diplomacy, disputed paternity, Elizabeth of Lancaster, envoys, France, Froissart, funeral effigy, Ireland, Isabel of Castile, Jerusalem, John Duke of Exeter, Mediaeval chronicles, murder, Old St. Paul’s, Order of the Passion, Philippe de Mézières, pilgrimage, questions of paternity, Richard Earl of Cambridge, Richard II, ViennaFor the past two/three years I have been grappling (off and on, so to speak) with some defiant dates. No doubt I’ve bewailed this particular problem before because my interest in the lord concerned is quite considerable. Not least because he may have had great significance for the House of York. So here goes…
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Calais was at one time English territory, and Richard III made his son John of Gloucester the Captain of Calais. John was as ill-fated as his father. Further back, Warwick (the “Kingmaker”) was another Captain, and in 1469 his elder daughter Isabel was married there to Richard’s older brother George, Duke of Clarence. The…
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