Richard Empson
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Well, while researching the Painted Chamber of Westminster Palace, with particular reference to the “Good Parliament” of 1376, I couldn’t help imagining today’s House of Commons faced, not with someone like John Bercow (whose birthday it is today and is quite short with a head), but Edward the First! Can you just imagine old…
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Recently it came up on Mastermind that Margaret Beaufort was once Regent of England. This surprised me as I had not heard this fact stated before. Digging on the internet, it turns out it is indeed true. Henry VIII was not quite of age when he ascended the throne, although he was not far off,…
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Here is a link to an interesting article first published in the BBC History Magazine in October 2016. Written by Steven Gunn, a professor of early modern history at Merton College, Oxford, the article gives appraisals of five of the ‘upstart’ advisers who Henry came to rely upon and their varying fates. Professor Gunn, however,…
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We are always being told that medieval aristocratic marriages (and indeed most medieval marriages) were arranged and did not feature love. The object was to increase property and lands, enhance a family’s reputation and produce as many heirs as was humanly possible. I pity those women who had a child a year throughout their married…
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Much of Jonathan Swift’s seminal ‘Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships’, or Gulliver’s Travels as it is more popularly known, is metaphor and allegory. Swift had lived through the troubles of James II’s dalliances with Catholicism, the…
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Usurpation, Murder and More
“Princes”, “Tudor” “sources”, Angelo Cato, Croyland, denialists, Dighton, Edmund Dudley, Edward IV, Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth Woodville, evidence, Henry of Buckingham, Henry VI, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Jack Leslau, John Morton, John Russell, Lady Eleanor Talbot, Louis XI, Mancini, Miles Forest, Polydore Vergil, pre-contract, Ralph Shaa, Richard Empson, Richard III, Royal College of Arms, Sir James Tyrrell, Sir Richard Grey, Thomas More, Utopia
Originally posted on Matt's History Blog: I read a series of blog posts recently that sought to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Richard III ordered the deaths of his nephews. Whilst I don’t take issue with holding and arguing this viewpoint I found some of the uses of source material dubious, a few…
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If there is one thing a lot of people know about Henry VII—apart from his dastardly defeat of Richard III at Bosworth in August 1485—it is that the latter part of his reign was a dreadful time for England. His avarice became almost oxygen to him, and he allowed his ministers to inflict truly dreadful…
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For anyone interested in portraits of those who lived centuries ago, it can be very frustrating—if not to say aggravating—to come across one portrait, that recurs all over the internet and identifies the people in it, but that is all. No date, no artist, nothing. A good example is this portrait of Henry VII with his…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 