Damage done to Richard of Eastwell’s tomb….

There really are some morons around. If they’re caught, I hope they are punished – by being publicly named and then hurt in their bank balance! http://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/tomb-raiders-target-grave-of-99462/  

More of Richard’s ancestors

Although they are regarded as loose ends, the last Anglo-Saxon and last Norman kings of England are both Richard’s ancestors, via Edward III’s marriage. This document demonstrates Phillippa of Hainault’s descent from Harold II, via Kiev and Hungary, and Stephen, via the Low Countries. There seems to be little news from Faversham Abbey, where Stephen…

TWO BRIDES FOR TWO BROTHERS

  ‘Did Richard III Marry His Sister?’   Lurid headlines blared off a rag on sale during Richard’s re-interment week in March 2015. A certain anti-Richard professor was, once again, insisting that because Isabel Neville was sister to Anne Neville and married to Richard’s brother George, that made Richard Isabel’s ‘brother’ and therefore his union…

Richard III and White Surrey….

Once again, while rooting around for information that might be of use in a book I intend to write about figures in the court of Richard II, I have found an interesting snippet. This time my thoughts are jolted with regard to the name of Richard III’s horse, White Surrey. I have never particularly liked…

Julian of Norwich

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07l6bd0 I would highly recommend this documentary by Janina Ramirez, whose book on the subject will soon be available . She showed how Julian, who was female by the way, was born during the fourteenth century. She may well have had a husband and children but lost both to the Black Death before becoming an…

Richard returns to Sudeley….

And a grand time will be had by one and all! http://tinyurl.com/hkzf6bs

Would Richard have recognised this view of Westminster….?

  This illustration is from a report about the Westminster World Heritage Site that dates from 2007. It contains some interesting information and rather good illustrations, especially of what the site looked like in late-Medieval times. Worth dipping into. The view above is how it is believed the abbey and palace looked circa 1532, or thereabouts,…

Mythmaking: BONES IN THE RIVER

Night. The late Middle Ages. An angry mob rips open the sealed tomb of a man and carries his fleshless skeleton through the town streets, jeering. Reaching a field of execution, the bones are hurled on a pyre and burnt, then crushed to small fragments. This indignity not being enough, the desecrated remains are then…

A Colchester mystery

Have you ever visited Colchester Castle? The guide book is very informative about three thousand years of the town’s history, particularly the 1989 revision, which I have. Page twenty names some 23 people who were imprisoned there and burned during 1555-8, together with two more who died there before they could be executed. Some of…

An impertinent view of Richard’s father…

  Surely I can’t be the only one to look at this famous likeness of Richard’s father, the Duke of York, and see two goofy front teeth….? <g> Yes, yes, I know it’s his lower lip, but I’m afraid that since the thought struck me, those two ‘front teeth’ are all I see. Can you imagine…