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…

Children? Or a litter of 14th-century what….?

  “….John and his elder brother, Richard, and younger brother, Edward, and their sister, Constance, were bred as children at Dartington….” Um, what else might they have been bred as? 🤪 I won’t identify the source – not fair, because people like me aren’t supposed to see it as funny!  

Another medieval scoundrel who abducted a woman….!

  I’ve written before, more than once, about the abominable practice of medieval men abducting women and forcing them into marriage in order to lay hands on their estates. It was a capital way for impoverished, unprincipled knights to improve their status and finances. In this they were only too usually aided and abetted by…

Latin inscriptions are a mystery to me….

  My mastery of Latin was gleaned at the age of 13, when for one dizzying year I was elevated to the “A” stream of King Edward VI’s Grammar School for Girls, Louth, Lincolnshire. Then they realized I wasn’t that bright, after all, and down I went! The result of this demotion is that I…

The Epiphany Plot of 1400

Following the deposition of Richard II, his leading supporters among the nobility were put on trial before Henry IV’s first parliament. Well, all apart from the Earl of Wiltshire who had – in plain terms – been murdered at Bristol on Henry’s orders before Henry became king. (As a Lancastrian, Henry was of course allowed…

We know Richard III’s mottos, but what about other nobles….?

Is anyone out there hot on chivalric mottos? Everyone knows Richard III’s motto, “Loyaulte mie lie”, and we even know of more he used, but it’s not so easy to find other mottos belonging to lesser known English figures of the 14th-century. Well, one gentleman in particular. I am trying to discover what “Rendere Vero”.…

Who’s the great-granddaddy then…?

Following on from the blog A Big Development below…. It is interesting that the latest scientifically gleaned results to come out from the tests made on the remains of King Richard III, have raised in a question mark over the line of legitimacy on his paternal side. Someone, somewhere, somewhen committed adultery, and the resultant…