Did Henry VII believe in vampires….?

My devotion to watching TV documentaries often turns up odd bits and pieces. This time the culprit is “Curse of the Vampire” from Mythical Beasts, series 1, episode 3, shown on Sky History 2. As you might expect, the theme was the strong medieval belief that the dead could return to torment the living as…

Coldharbour – An Important Medieval London House

Reblogged from A Medieval Potpourri @sparkypus.com A segment of the Visscher Panorama of London 1616 showing Coldharbour after the earlier medieval house had been demolished by the Earl of Shrewsbury c.1585 and rebuilt up to the waterfront.  The rebuild incorporated many tenements ‘now letten out for great rents to people of all sorts’ (Stow).  …

Elizabeth Woodville’s Wiltshire Retreat

Elizabeth Woodville left sanctuary with her daughters on March 1, 1484, after Richard III swore a public oath that she and her daughters would be unharmed and that he would find the girls suitable matches. But where did she go then? Her daughters were, at least part time, welcome at court, but ‘Dame Grey’ as…

Richard III’s many daughters….

  Fake news. Ah yes. We regard this as a modern curse, but, of course, it goes back through the centuries. Probably ever since the humans in one cave fell out with the humans in another. Lies…erm, fake news…soon circulated. And if there was one King of England about whom there is fake news in…

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…

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…

Historic royal families and incest….

  The above gentlemen have the infamous Habsburg chin on full display. It means they are definitely not going to win a World’s Handsomest Man competition any time soon. Their chins and general looks are the result of generations of inbreeding, the aim being to keep the royal blood pure. Well, there’s pure and there’s…

Settling the Bosworth Debt….

With the denizens of Hades gathering to do their worst, here is a horror tale of Sir William Stanley’s final Hallowe’en, when retribution snatches him at last. “Settling the Bosworth Debt” is the story of what happened to William when he was confronted by some terrible truths about Henry Tudor. Friday, 31 October, 1494, Hallowe’en,…

The price of one royal progress….

  King Charles III’s fleeting visits to the separate nations of the United Kingdom have been the modern equivalent of the royal progresses of the past. From very early times each new monarch embarked on a progress through their realm, to show themselves to their people. As their only transport was the horse, it took…

The Summer of 1483: Who Was Doing What, Where, With Whom and Why.

Reblogged from A Medieval Potpourri sparkypus.com Today a guest post from Annette Carson, author of many excellent books about Richard III and his times including The Maligned King, Richard III, A Small Guide to a Great Debate, Richard Duke of Gloucester as Lord Protector & Constable of England and a new translation of Mancini. Annette was also…