Spreading propaganda works both ways, as John of Gaunt discovered….

As we all know, the Tudors were masters of propaganda. The lies about Richard III poured forth throughout their usurpation, and still persist to this day. If they could say something unpleasant and derogatory about him, they did. Perhaps it was in their blood, of course, because they were descended (one way or another) from…

A pinch of salt reflected in A Distant Mirror….

Here is a heartfelt lament. Some books are always widely lauded, and rightly so, but what happens when one finds a blooper within the hallowed pages? In this instance I speak of A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, by Barbara Tuchman. It’s packed full of detail, and a great read…until that one blooper leaps…

Audrey Strange

Being obsessed with all the books related to Richard III, I discovered a very interesting story I totally ignored. I bought a book titled “The Crowned Boar” published in 1971 and I soon discovered (after buying both of them for a small fortune) that there was another book titled “The Son of York” that told…

Now available …

… on the Tewkesbury battlefield website: Wars of the Roses music by the Legendary Ten Seconds. Here is more information about the group and their output so far.

Beware the dragons of Suffolk….

“….CPR, 1401-5, 377, 482. In 1405, according to the St. Albans chronicler who was suitably impressed by the event, a dragon appeared near Sudbury, hard by the vill of Buryra (probably Bures), and the serfs of Sir Richard de Waldegrave, on whose demesne it was found, shot at it with arrows, but with no effect.…

The Stanley who could have been King.

Ferdinando Stanley (1559-1594) was very briefly 5th Earl of Derby. He was descended from Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, and according to the terms of Henry VIII’s will, which had statutory force in this respect he was the heir to Elizabeth I, since the Scottish branch were excluded. It is worth mentioning that he was…

Philippa Mortimer, Countess of Pembroke and Arundel – a short, interesting and little-known life

Philippa was the younger of the two daughters of Edmund Earl of March and Philippa of Clarence,and second youngest of their four children, being born in November 1375. Philippa lost both her parents at a very young age, but her future was provided for (eventually) by her marriage to John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke after…

Windleshaw Chantry

Windleshaw Chantry dates from about 1415 and is the oldest structure extant in St. Helens. (Now Merseyside, formerly Lancashire.) It is an unusual example of a detached chantry, not part of some other religious building. Locally, it is sometimes known as Windleshaw Abbey, though in fact it was never an abbey or even a priory.…

Richard, 3rd Duke of York, took his wife’s maiden name….?

    The following review extract is from this link :- “….They might be united by blood, but in 1459 England’s royal family of Plantagenets and Nevilles are being torn apart by an internecine war. Cecily, Duchess of York, is embroiled just as deeply as her husband, Richard Neville, in a plot to topple the…

Long live the King

This interesting tome has finally appeared in paperback. The opening Parts read like an abridged biography of the story familiar to us through Warner’s The Unconventional King, but to be read with an open mind as to whether Edward II survived his “official death” today in 1327 or not. The reader will re-learn the events…