Edward IV knew he’d made a big mistake with Elizabeth Woodville….?

The following sentence makes me want to smack Edward IV! Again. I fear I’ve wanted to smack him a great deal recently. Still, perhaps in this instance meant that he’d realised the damage that could ensue from a stupid marriage. Certainly he didn’t want the ‘error’ repeated. Not that he ever revealed the true extent…

Were the English, Welsh, Irish and Scots once all Celts…?

  I haven’t read Sir Simon Jenkins’ book The Celts: A Sceptical History, and to be honest I don’t think I’m likely to. Like Jenkins, I too am half-Welsh and half-English, but I don’t fancy being descended from “sociable sailors”. What’s the old saying about sailors having a girl in every port? I should imagine…

Pembroke didn’t pop the Weasel when it should have….!

Well, the first part of a riveting, absolutely factual series about Henry VII was warning enough. I confess to having had to read the first sentence twice, because first time around I thought Edmund Tudor was fighting against the Duke of York’s men and Edmund’s own wife, Margaret Beaufort, who was Henry’s underage mother. Shame on…

Richard III had the sweating sickness before facing Tudor….?

It has been argued before, especially by the late John Ashdown-Hill, that Richard’s sleepless nights and so-called ghastly appearance before Bosworth were caused by the sweating sickness. It has also been more generally understood that it was Henry VII and his army of foreign invaders who brought and spread the disease, which was new to…

SIR HENRY BODRUGAN – A LINK TO RICHARD III, EDWARD V, COLDRIDGE AND THE DUBLIN KING

REBLOGGED FROM A MEDIEVAL POTPOURRI @sparkypus.com Bodrugan Leap – a traditional Cornish story tells of how Sir Henry Bodrugan leaped from this cliff top to a waiting boat and made his escape first to France and later to Ireland.  If you are reading this then it is also likely that you have read my other various…

The complete, utterly biased dissing of the House of York….

  When I recorded the first episode of the Sky series Royal Bastards: Rise of the Tudors, I watched it on 23rd November, which is the anniversary of the day in 1450 when Richard 3rd Duke of York returned to London [and Parliament] with his sword unsheathed to claim his right. The docudrama series kicks…

The imposition of ransom….

    My latest target for research is the English garrison/bastion of Brest, on the coast of Brittany, specifically the final years of the 14th century before it was handed back to the Bretons. My interest had been aroused when reading Ducal Brittany 1364-1399, by Michael Jones. In it I learned of the practice of…

CICELY PLANTAGENET – NOT SO FORTUNATE AS FAIR.

Reblogged from A Medieval Potpourri sparkypus.com Stained glass portrait of Cicely.  Formerly in Canterbury Cathedral now in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow. Cicely Plantagenet (b.1469 d.1507) daughter and niece to kings, and a prime example of a medieval noblewoman who endured and in this case survived the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses.    Oh how that…

Baron Arundel took fifty-two new suits to sea in 1379….!

I have just read in Margaret Aston’s  excellent biography of Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor, that according to Walsingham (always a fount of truth, of course) that when Sir John Arundel, 1st Baron Arundel, died at sea in December 1379, among his lost belongings “were fifty-two new suits”. This, it seems, led…

WAS HENRY VII A RELUCTANT BRIDEGROOM?

REBLOGGED FROM A Medieval Potpourri sparkypus.com Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.  Their effigies in Westminster Abbey.  Artist Pietro Torrigiano. Photo westminster-abbey.org I was recently reading an excellent article in the Ricardian discussing Henry Tudor’s enthusiasm, or lack of it, for his marriage to Elizabeth of York by David Johnson entitled Ardent Suitor or Reluctant…