Barbara Tuchman
-
The peculiar mystery of the d’Aubrichecourt brothers….
abduction, Anthony Goodman, Barbara Tuchman, Bridport, chastity, d’aubrichet brothers, dower lands, Earls of Kent, Edward the Black Prince, Elizabeth de Juliers, Epiphany Rising, evidence, executions, Froissart, Gascony, Henry IV, marauding, Medieval Free Company, Michaelmas, Normandy, Order of the Garter, Penny Lawne, Phillippa of Hainault, Poitiers, Prince Philip, richard barber, Richard II, sir john hawkwood, Thomas Holand, Treaty of Bretigny, usurpation, waverley abbeyI have written articles on this blog about the disgraceful way many 14th-century knights abducted women and married them by force. These men’s prey were usually widows with attractive fortunes that could provide their callous bridegrooms with the comfortable later life said scoundrels hadn’t bothered to prepare for during their careers (often as soldiers). Even…
-
It seems that in 1386 a second “Norman Invasion” was planned by the French. And a “stupendous” part of the preparations included a portable wooden town to house and protect the invaders when they landed. I found the following description in Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, page 426 of my copy:- “….A huge camp enclosing…
-
Here is a heartfelt lament. Some books are always widely lauded, and rightly so, but what happens when one finds a blooper within the hallowed pages? In this instance I speak of A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, by Barbara Tuchman. It’s packed full of detail, and a great read…until that one blooper leaps…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 