James VI/I
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When we think of alchemy and alchemists, we tend to categorise them as men. But no. There were women alchemists as well, as I discovered when I came upon this article which lists ten such women through history. One of the ten caught my eye. She lived in the reign of Elizabeth I, who was…
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As you have probably gathered by now, I’m rather partial to a spooky story, and one that appears in The Folklore of Oxfordshire by Christine Bloxham is that of the very early 16th-century Lord and Lady Tanfield and their ghostly chariot, in which they reportedly haunted Burford and Great Tew in Oxfordshire. A bit out…
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… and here it is, with many thanks to Tony Riches. Uncrowned features claimants from several centuries, including Jane, Edward V, Edward the Black Prince and Henry Frederick Stuart. Ashley Mantle is also the author of King John: A Brief History.
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… ie dating from the era immediately after Richard III, in particular from Mary I and Philip to Charles I. These were found under the floorboards of a West Dorset house by Robert and Becky Fooks, having been hidden during the Civil War, to be auctioned shortly for about £20,000.
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The Stuarts aren’t our period of course, but this link is interesting and worth a read. The opening line reads as follows: “….Beautiful, charismatic and cunning, George Villiers caught the eye of one king, was the favourite of another, and soared to heights of power and wealth in 17th-century England – only to…
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Royal Autopsy, a documentary series dealing with the recreated post-mortems of Charles II and Elizabeth I….
Alice Roberts, autopsies, Bethlem, Bezoar, blood letting, Brett Lockyer, bronchopneumonia, Charles II, Chelsea Physic Garden, clocks, Edmund King, Elizabeth I, emetics, executions, four humours, hair analysis, Hartshorn, Henry VII, James VI/I, John Dee, Jonathan Goddard, malaria, Mary Stuart, microscope, Nell Jones, parotitis, Rainbow Portrait, renaissance, Richmond Palace, Robert Cecil, Royal Autopsy, Royal Society, scars, sepsis, Sir Charles Scarburgh, Sky History, smallpox, Spanish fly, stroke, succession, sugar, syphilis, teeth, toxicology, Wellcome Collection, white leadI confess to having doubts about watching this two-part series on the Sky History channel because I envisaged CGI overkill with odious (but hopefully by then dead) parasites etc., and so I started viewing with the firm intention of stopping the moment it became too horribly wriggly and gory. No wriggles, but the gory…
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A few years ago, we showed that Robert Catesby, directly descended from Sir William Catesby, sought to kill James VI/I, a descendant of Henry VII, by gunpowder 120 years after Henry had Sir William hanged after Bosworth.This second case, of which I was reminded in Kathryn Warner‘s The Despensers, doesn’t involve direct ancestry on both…
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Matt Lewis is, of course, a force to be reckoned with when it comes to supporting Richard III and this link is a very interesting article he’s written concerning why Shakespeare may have bad-mouthed Richard. I had no idea the Bard could have been a secret Catholic who wanted the return of the old…
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Well here’s something interesting. I confess that the Stuart period isn’t one of my strongpoints, and I know very little about Elizabeth Stuart, but the above portrait of her is very intriguing. Is she wearing the same crown that appears in the pictures beneath the main portrait? The crown in the little illustration on the…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 