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In his excellent book The Greatest Traitor Ian Mortimer states (p.188)…’With regard to secret plots, most chronicles reflect contemporary rumour and popular opinion more closely than historical facts. To put the issue in perspective, imagine the results if several amateur historians – perhaps working in retirement homes, which monasteries sometimes were – began to write…
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Historical opinion often moves in circles on certain topics. Sometimes it’s a slow process and sometimes it happens quickly. The White Queen series stirred up the latent and under-examined but long-standing theory linking Margaret Beaufort to the disappearance and murder of the Princes in the Tower. In short order, the increased attention drew an onslaught […]…
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Leicester City’s 3-0 Champions’ League victory in Bruges on Wednesday will have pleased the House of York hugely, and Richard III in particular, as Bruges was one of his favourite cities. No doubt he had something to do with it, of course. But we’ll never know for sure.
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Unfortunately this link does not concern itself with Richard III, but it is very interesting anyway. It seems that such coins of the first usurping Lancastrian, Henry IV, are rarer than those of the unfortunate Richard whose throne and life he took. Sound familiar? Except, of course, that in the case of Richard III, just…
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A short while ago I had cause to question a source that spoke of Edward of Middleham coming south to London with his mother, Anne Neville. My source at that time was http://www.basiccarpentrytechniques.com/Medieval%20Towns/The%20Story%20of%20London/46618-h.htm#CHAPTER_II In the above work is the following paragraph:-… “Edward IV. died on April 9, 1483, and his young son, Edward V., was…
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I used to live only a couple of miles away from Elmore Court, one of the seats of the Guise family. It was sometimes open to the public (every fourth Sunday after Easter, I seem to recall) and I had the good fortune to see around what was already a symbol of a fast-disappearing world. That was in…
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The recent suggestion by a well-known academic that Richard committed incest when he married Anne drew to my mind at least three examples at the highest levels of society where people had done something similar without any criticism. I was confident that there were many other examples at gentry level. However, as I no longer…
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Matt Lewis’s biography of Henry III will be released on 15th October 2016, in time to celebrate the 800th anniversary of his coronation. The book will seek to understand the real impact of this oft-forgotten king and his long rule and examine why he is so forgotten by history. The editing is just completed and…
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It would seem that pirate queens existed long before the 17th/18th century, the Spanish Main and swash-buckling as we know it. There was a certain French noblewoman in the 14th century who took her revenge upon the French for executing her husband, and did all she could with her pirate fleet to help the England…
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There is, apparently, a second, equally as genuine, version of the Mona Lisa. I know which one I prefer, and it’s not the one we always see, which makes me think it’s a rather dissolute young man. (Yes, I do mean dissolute, because that is how ‘he’ strikes me.) But if da Vinci did indeed paint…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 