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If anyone out there is wondering if any hayfield in England is still cleared by scything, as it was in medieval times, the answer is yes. You’ve missed the annual scything on Hackney Marshes in east London for this summer, but there’s always next year, as Community Haystacks’ clearing of the Walthamstow Marshes in east…
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Originally posted on The Social Historian: History is the most deeply dishonourable profession there is, at least outside the Square Mile. The basic premise is that people die, and then you denounce them. It’s a bit like being a reverse version of Kim Jong-Un, but with worse hair. For the uninitiated, though, it’s also…
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Here we introduce the case of the future President Kennedy: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3154984/Was-JFK-bigamist-eve-Jackie-Kennedy-s-86th-birthday-mystery-president-married-Palm-Beach-socialite-lingers.html#ixzz3gToxv6xD There are some clear differences. We don’t have full length research by a doctor of history, as we do for Edward IV. American law doesn’t allow for the “per verba de praesenti/ de futura” secret marriage and there would have been official records and…
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I admit it: when I first fell for Richard III and through him, the House of York and Wars of the Roses history in general, I hated Henry VII. (I also hated his mother Margaret Beaufort, the perfidious Stanleys, the late queen Margaret of Anjou, and anyone else I could blame for bringing harm upon…
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In the late 80s, I made the acquaintance of a classically trained British actor. Born in Guernsey, he served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and was imprisoned in a German prisoner-of-war camp for three years, from 1942 to 1945. Until I learned that he and his fellow prisoners were forced…
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Unexpected news has reached us from Saumur in the Loire valley. The local wine growers have decided to commission a top artist to honour Richard with a “reclining statue” (possibly an effigy) in nearby Fontevraud Abbey. The Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud is the burial place of some of Richard’s most famous ancestors:…
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It appears that the traditional assumptions surrounding the execution of William, Lord Hastings in June of 1483, generally incline towards the idea that the Lord Protector, Richard Duke of Gloucester, simply lost his temper and so, without lawful trial or consultation, ordered the immediate beheading of his previous friend, virtually on the spur of the…
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Re: “Richard the Mourner”: I tend to agree with layers of unsubstantiated myth building century after century, including Richard’s butchering his way to the crown (4 executions against over 20.000 dead on the field only at Towton to put his brother Edward on the throne, indeed a pale imitation of a larger than life example…
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Mulahwajah* “Anything green that grew out of mould was an excellent herb to our fathers of old” So wrote Rudyard Kipling when describing the English medieval addiction to herbs and spices – the more exotic the better. And surely there is none more exotic than Alpinia officinarum, or lesser Galangale, now simply known as galangal although,…
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Left: The original crown. Right: The replica, shown from the same angle. The crown shown in the picture above left is said to have originally been made for Henry VII, but ‘done up’ considerably for his spendthrift son, Henry VIII. Here is what I know of it:- If you go to the following site, you…
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