Henry IV
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Following on from the blog above, entitled More C17 coincidences, it occurred to me that there is another strange set of coincidences concerning Richard III (1452-1485), and his predecessor and namesake of the previous century, Richard II (1367-1400). And I do not only mean being killed and usurped. Both had a queen named Anne…
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Chapter 10 of Ashdown-Hill’s “The Last days …” (pp.92-7) describes the circumstances of Richard’s first burial in great detail and adds some intriguing points. Right at the beginning, we learn that Leicester’s Abbey, also lost and the burial place of fellow “Tudor” victim Thomas Wolsey, was more prestigious than the Greyfriars church. So why was…
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This is posted on behalf of someone else, and is not the work of viscountessw ‘I can feel his presence, I’m sure of it’, said the leader of the group of hormonally challenged women in the ruins of Pontefract Castle. It was the inaugural meeting of the Woodville Wives, a pilgrimage they had vowed to…
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On 28 July 1399, William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, Lord Treasurer of England and King of Man, Sir John Bushey and Sir Henry Green were executed outside Bristol on the orders of Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV). They had a summary trial at best, and quite probably no trial at all. It is not at…
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For the purpose of this post I am going to assume that everyone’s father was as given in standard family trees. The question of whether the eldest 14th Century Beaufort was actually a Swynford both legally and biologically, and the issues around the fathering of Katherine of Valois’ children I leave to others to untangle.…
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There was no ‘constitutional’ arrangement in place in the 14thcentury. For many years, father had been succeeded by son, and there had been no need to set out any arrangements for any other contingency. Late in Edward III’s reign, the king, who was losing his faculties and very much under the influence of Gaunt, produced…
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I have seen it asserted recently that Henry VII ruled ‘by right of conquest.’ This may be the de facto position, but it is not the de jure one. Parliament would never have allowed him to claim by conquest – it would have destroyed everyone’s – and I mean everyone’s – title to their lands. (This…