KING JOHN AND THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

KING JOHN AND THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION King John was not a good man, He had his little ways. And sometimes no one spoke to him For days and days and days. And men who came across him, When walking in the town, Gave him a supercilious stare, Or passed with noses in the air, And…

THE THREE HUNDRED YEARS WAR – PART 3 : the dogs of war

Preface This is the third of three articles charting the course of continual Anglo-French conflict from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The first, covered the rise and fall of the Angevin Empire, and the Treaty of Paris (1259). The second, continued my narrative from the accession of Edward I until the Treaty of Bretigny…

THE THREE HUNDRED YEARS WAR – PART 2: the just cause

  Preface This is the second of three articles charting the course of continual Anglo-French conflict from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. In the first article, I wrote about the rise and fall of the Angevin Empire, culminating in the Treaty of Paris (1259). This article picks up my narrative after the death of…

THE THREE HUNDRED YEARS WAR – Part 1: the Devil’s brood

Preface I conceived this article as a defence of King Henry V against the accusation that he was a war criminal. It became apparent, however, that my research was drawing me away from Henry’s campaigns towards a broader study of the origin and causes of the Hundred Years War. Soon, I was reading material going…

BOOK REVIEW

Stuart Bradley – JOHN MORTON: adversary of Richard III, power behind the Tudors (Amberley 2019)   John Morton served the English crown for a almost forty years during one of the most turbulent periods in English history. He wielded considerable influence at the courts of three kings. First, in the Lancastrian household of Henry VI:…

Henry VI: saint or sinner?

A gentle and devotional life About seventy years ago, the historian John Harvey wrote this in an essay about King Henry VI: “The life and death, and the thwarting of his noble designs are one (sic) of the sorriest tragedies of English history. He was a victim of forces outside his control, for whose existence…

SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III: HERO OR VILLAIN?

” Never let it be said that fate itself could awe the soul of Richard.            Hence babbling dreams, you threaten here in vain;            Conscience avaunt, Richard’s himself again” (The tragical history of King Richard the Third)[1]   Richard’s himself again: or is he? There is a moment in Olivier’s film of Shakespeare’s play…

SIR THOMAS MORE , A MAN FOR ALL REASONS: SAINT OR SINNER?

‘Not exactly the horse’s mouth’ In Josephine Tey’s spellbinding novel ‘The Daughter of Time’, Detective Inspector Alan Grant has a reputation for being able to spot a villain on sight. Whilst in hospital with a broken leg, Grant is idly flipping through some old postcard portraits to while away the time. He turns over a…

The King’s bishop? What did John Russell know in 1483?

  “ ‘Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’ ‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night time’ ‘The dog did nothing in the night time’ ‘That is the curious incident ‘ remarked Sherlock Holmes.”[1]   By applying his reasoning to this simple observation, the world’s…

1484 – TITULUS REGIUS: FACT OR FICTION?

  Introduction ‘ ‘This is indeed a mystery’ I remarked.’ What do you think it means?’‘I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suite theories, instead of theories to suite facts.’   In Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story A Scandal…