Henry IV
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One of the most intriguing stories of the English medieval ages – and like most good stories this one is upfront and personal – involves Prince Hal (the future Henry the Fifth) and the Battle of Shrewbury that took place on July 21, 1403. For whatever reason, this particular story is overlooked in Shakespeare and…
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Did the House of York, founded by Edmund of Langley, first duke of York, have distinctive livery colors? Perhaps this is an unusual question to ask, because I’ve always been under the impression that those colors were murrey and blue. In their text Heraldry, published in 1993, Rouge Croix Pursuivant Henry Bedingfeld and Lancaster Herald…
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Why lineage still matters in battle
“Beauforts”, “Tudors”, Battle of Bosworth, Blanche of Lancaster, Cnut, Earl of Oxford, Edmund Mortimer, Edward I, Edward IV, Edward VI, Emma of Normandy, Ethelred II, Hastings, Henry I, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Henry VII, House of York, James VII/II, Jane, Joan of Acre, Mary I, Matilda, Richard II, Richard III, Stephen, William I, William IIIThe crown of England, among others, has often been claimed in battle or by other forceful means. However, to exercise such a claim, it is necessary to persuade a challenger’s military followers that he has a dynastic claim of sorts, even when this is greatly exaggerated or totally spurious. Thus William I, the Conqueror or…
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A ghost story for Christmas may seem a little ill-placed, but nevertheless it has become something of a tradition. There was a time when BBC TV would not have been the same without something ghostly on Christmas Eve. Now we may or may not see anything like that. Dickens was greatly to blame, with Scrooge and…
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Following on from the blog A Big Development below…. It is interesting that the latest scientifically gleaned results to come out from the tests made on the remains of King Richard III, have raised in a question mark over the line of legitimacy on his paternal side. Someone, somewhere, somewhen committed adultery, and the resultant…
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Today is the annniversary of the death in 1416 of Constance of York, Lady Despenser and (for a time) Countess of Gloucester. She was one of many people of various conditions in life who inexplicably preferred the ‘tyranny’ of Richard II to the rule of Henry IV, and put their lives at risk to do…
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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…
