Royal Marriage Secrets
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Today in 1461, at Hereford marketplace, Owain Tudor was executed and buried in the local Greyfriars. It appears that, although he had commanded Lancastrian troops at Mortimer’s Cross and been captured, he was not expecting this fate. He may well have foreseen himself being ransomed instead until he saw the block. Perhaps he was executed…
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One of Cairo’s biggest trolls claimed, last week, that the Fourth Lateran Council banned secret weddings, thus Edward IV’s June 1461 marriage to the dark-haired, older, Lancastrian widow Lady Eleanor Talbot could not have been valid. There are only two problems with this claim, from the clown who confused “June” with “youth”, had Katherine de…
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“Henry VIII and his six wives” – Channel Five
“Tudors”, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, Arthur “Tudor”, Catherine of Aragon, Catherine Parr, Channel Five, Channel Four, Dan Jones, David Starkey, executions, Francis Dereham, Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, John Ashdown-Hill, Katherine Howard, pre-contract, Royal Marriage Secrets, Stephen Gardiner, Suzannah Lipscomb, television programmes, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas WolseyThis has been presented by two of Five’s favourite history presenters: Dan Jones and Suzannah Lipscomb. Perhaps the title isn’t the best of starts, as Ashdown-Hill (Royal Marriage Secrets, ch.10, pp.95-113) has shown that Henry may have contracted as few as two valid marriages, the third and sixth ceremonies. Jones begins every episode by reciting…
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Here we introduce the case of the future President Kennedy: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3154984/Was-JFK-bigamist-eve-Jackie-Kennedy-s-86th-birthday-mystery-president-married-Palm-Beach-socialite-lingers.html#ixzz3gToxv6xD There are some clear differences. We don’t have full length research by a doctor of history, as we do for Edward IV. American law doesn’t allow for the “per verba de praesenti/ de futura” secret marriage and there would have been official records and…
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Page 69 of Ashdown-Hill’s Royal Marriage Secrets indicates that an Act of Parliament was passed in 1427, forbidding the re-marriage of a royal widow without the consent of an adult king. It has also been clearly established that Catherine de Valois, the widow of Henry V at whom the legislation was surely aimed, died in…
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I was going to write a review of this fascinating volume and may well do soon, but here is one by a lady whose stepbrother is a Clarence descendant: http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9024951/royal-marriage-secrets-by-john-ashdown-hill-review/