Two famous lovers I cannot love….!

  We all know the story of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford/de Roët. It was a wonderful, passionate love affair that ended with Gaunt, a prince of the realm, making the relatively lowly Katherine his third duchess. Yes, a great romance, and it was fact, not fiction. However, historically speaking, both of them had…

The house owned by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the man accused of being Anne Boleyn’s lover….

Here is another fine old house for sale, although way out of my price bracket. I’ve learned of it courtesy of Country Life magazine. Hunton Court, formerly Court Lodge, is tucked away near Maidstone in Kent and you can read about it here. There is a link to the estate agent’s details of the property,…

Was 29th March a day of retribution for a certain 14th-century lord….?

  For the past two/three years I have been grappling (off and on, so to speak) with some defiant dates. No doubt I’ve bewailed this particular problem before because my interest in the lord concerned is quite considerable. Not least because he may have had great significance for the House of York. So here goes…

THE TRIAL OF RICHARD III – PART TWO

REBLOGGED FROM A MEDIEVAL POTPOURRI SPARKYPUS.COM The two QCs prepare to do battleFollowing on from my earlier post.  The day had dawned – the trial commenced.  Because of the length of the trial I only give snippets here which stand out and which I think are the most pertinent/funny/excruciating. The judge addressed the jury as to…

How did Edward III’s claim to the throne of France come about….?

Should you be interested in the background to Edward III’s claim to the throne of France, here’s a link to a fascinating article about the adulterous goings-on at the French court! And here’s me thinking the French wouldn’t dream of doing such things! 😄

Schrodinger’s royal marriages?

Anne Boleyn and then Katherine Howard thought they had married Henry VIII. Then he annulled them both, as he did with his first and fourth weddings, such that they were deemed to have been invalid from the start. However, he had these second and fifth Queens executed for treason in that they committed adultery whilst…

Which man fathered the first Beaufort….?

Here is the scene. The mother with her newly born child, her ladies, the air of relief and happiness. But presumably she is a faithful wife, and her delighted husband will soon be summoned to see his new offspring. No doubt he hopes for a son. But what if she isn’t a faithful wife, and…

JANE SHORE—TART WITH A HEART?

Medieval mistresses seem to get a raw deal from most contemporary and near-contemporary chroniclers, being seen as falling ‘outside the accepted norm’ in regards to sexual mores. Prim Victorian authors also enjoyed making moral judgments on them, and even modern historians, while less interested in the prurient details, often paint them as scheming she-wolves or…

Fabricating Precontracts: Richard III vs Henry VIII

On 10 and 11 June 1483, Richard duke of Gloucester wrote to his affinity in the North and asked for troops to support him against the Woodvilles who, he claimed, were plotting his destruction. On 22 June Ralph Shaa preached his “bastard slips” sermon, followed by similar speeches by the duke of Buckingham, and on…