Death in Drogheda: Thomas Fitzgerald, 7th Earl of Desmond

FAMILY BACKGROUND The FitzGeralds of Desmond traced their descent from Maurice FitzGerald, son of Gerald of Windsor and the Welsh princess Nest. The original Norman conquests were confined to the eastern parts of Ireland, and the Anglo-Norman lordship as created by Henry II was based on a clear division of authority between this area and…

The Wandering Butler: John, 6th Earl of Ormond

FAMILY BACKGROUND The Lancastrian leader who faced – or failed to face – Thomas, Earl of Desmond, at the Battle of Piltown in 1462 was the fourth of the five children born to James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond (otherwise known as the White Earl), and his countess Joan Beauchamp, daughter of William Beauchamp, Lord…

Sassanachs don’t Like Mondays (allegedly)

Ormond versus Desmond In addition to the canonical list of battles, the sporadic chaos of the Wars of the Roses spawned one or two encounters between the heads of rival aristocratic families, of which the best known is the battle between the Berkeleys and Talbots at Nibley Green in Gloucestershire in March 1470. What is…

RIIICHARD: A forthcoming American event

This play is to be performed in a latino theatre in New York on 18th and 19th December and streamed online those evenings (EST). The dialogue is partially in Spanish, although the English part will explain a lot. The new playwright (Norman Briski) has used Shakespeare’s parody as a departure point before making it more…

An Irishman abroad but not for much longer?

“Red” Hugh O’Donnell (1572-1602) was an Irish chieftain who fought a series of battles against English armies between 1595 and the beginning of 1602 (during the Nine Years’ War which actually ran from 1593 to 1603), one of his less successful opponents being the Earl of Essex. O’Donnell ruled Tir Chonaill in the extreme north-west…

Thomas More and the Removal Men

Thomas More’s detailed and heart-wrenching account of the murders of Edward IV’s sons is well known, and is usually either accepted or dismissed in toto so it would probably be useful to pause at this point to remind ourselves exactly what it was that Thomas More claimed had happened to the boys and why opinions…

Edward IV, Dame Eleanor and the Phantom Web of Impediments

Introduction The precontract (i.e. prior marriage) between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler, née Talbot, has long been a subject of debate, but what has not previously been claimed is that Edward and Eleanor were so closely related as to have been unable to make a valid marriage without a special dispensation from the Pope.  Recently,…

The O’Donnells, the Four Masters and the Personnel of the Wars of the Roses

In the context of the current search for the remains of the Red Hugh O’Donnell who died in Spain in 1602, I thought that readers Murrey and Blue might be interested in a few vaguely Wars-of-the-Roses-related snippets from the O’Donnell history of the fifteenth century. In 1434 Red Hugh’s predecessor Niall Garbh O’Donnell was captured…

Archbishop Octavian and the Simnel Plot

A couple of months ago, this post attracted a reply from an individual who has commented before. He was responding to the suggestion that the boy crowned in at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin (see illustration opposite) may actually have been Edward V rather than an earl of Warwick (false or otherwise). Whilst he is…