The New Murrey and Blue blog

Stalin comparison

Did Chaucer die a natural death….?

Apr 10, 2024

anniversaries, battles, genealogy, religion, The play’s the thing

“Lancastrian”, “Tudors”, Archbishop Thomas Arundel, Archbishops of Canterbury, authoritarianism, Battle of Bosworth, de heretico comburendo, executed women, Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry IV, Henry VII, John Morton, renaissance, Richard II, Richard III, Shakespeare, Spanish Inquisition, Stalin comparison, Terry Jones, usurpation

Here is an extract from Terry Jones’s exquisitely researched book Who Murdered Chaucer? This extract deals with the first Lancastrian usurpation of the throne of England. The usurper was Henry of Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV, and the king he usurped and killed was his first cousin Richard II. I think Terry Jones’s words…
Tyrants – Part 1

Dec 18, 2023

genealogy, law, The play’s the thing

“Tudors”, double standards, Edmund of Langley, Edward III, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, executions, expenditure, France, Henry IV, Henry VI, Henry VIII, Hundred Years War, John of Gaunt, Lords Appellant, Mary I, Richard II, Stalin comparison, The Hollow Crown, Thomas Mowbray Earl of Norfolk, tyranny

I am heartily sick of certain historians – or ‘historians’ in some cases – who use the ‘tyrant’ word as a badge to stick on the rulers they dislike as a sort of badge of disgrace. These people invariably gloss over the similar – no, let’s be plain, worse, far worse! – deeds of the…