Robin Hood as you have never met him before….

This is my review of J. P. Reedman’s excellent story ROBIN HOOD – VAMPIRE LORD:- Was Robin Hood real? Or a fantasy? J.P. Reedman’s Robin is definitely fantasy. More than that, he is fantasy that becomes entangled with horror. The title, ROBIN HOOD – VAMPIRE LORD prepares you for what follows, when the Robin we all know…

A question of responsibility

Who takes the ultimate responsibility for events in late Medieval England? According to the Cairo-dwellers, from 1483 to August 1485, the answer is the King (Richard III), whether he knew what happened or not. According to the same people, the answer from 1471 to 1483 isn’t the King (Edward IV) but the Duke of Gloucester…

A Strange Congruence

If you look at a map showing Lancastrian/Yorkist areas at the start of the war, there is a good degree of congruence with Royalist/Parliament division in the Civil War. Not complete, but fairly similar. The main difference is probably the Yorkist domination of the Welsh marches, which tended to be a bit Royalist in the…

The Hundred Years’ Grudge?

William Catesby, a Northamptonshire lawyer, was one of only three people executed in the aftermath of Bosworth, the others being a West Country father and son. From this and other circumstantial evidence, we are inexorably drawn to the conclusion that this happened because he was the only surviving layman who knew the details of Edward…

All Souls’ Day

by Merlyn MacLeod All Souls’ Day is Sunday, November 2nd. Beginning in 998, it was the day the ancient church set aside to pray for the dead — not just for your relatives, but for anyone you loved. In medieval England, children and the poor went “a-souling” on All Souls Day; going door to door,…

C17 deja vu all over again

Consider the following coincidences: 1) The Mortimer-York army in 1458-60 was led by the Duke of York, two sons, a brother-in-law and a nephew. Charles I’s principal commanders were himself, two sons and two nephews. 2) Richard of York had four healthy sons, one named after himself who became King. Charles I had three healthy…

Who painted that portrait? And when…?

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…

Another case of monarchical remains and their DNA

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/21/world/king-tut-visual-autopsy/index.html This time it is Tutankhamun (no doorbell jokes, thankyou) nearly three millennia earlier. The “virtual autopsy” shows him to have had a clubfoot and he owned about a hundred walking sticks as a consequence, strangely held in the wrong hand. DNA evidence appears to show his parents (Akhenaten and the “Younger Lady) to be…

The perils of a fraternal career

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…

An update

Thankyou to those who read our post “The explorer and the Clarence descendent”. We now know that, just like Richard III himself, there is a facial reconstruction of Bartholomew Gosnold. http://historicjamestowne.org/news/gosnold_new_tests.php