The Rise of the Stanley family.

In the late 14th Century, the Stanleys were a gentry family, their power base lying chiefly in Cheshire, notably in the Wirral. Their ancestry might fairly be described as ‘provincial’. There were certainly no kings in their quarterings. This is not to say they were unimportant, but their influence was of a local rather than…

The Stanley who could have been King.

Ferdinando Stanley (1559-1594) was very briefly 5th Earl of Derby. He was descended from Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, and according to the terms of Henry VIII’s will, which had statutory force in this respect he was the heir to Elizabeth I, since the Scottish branch were excluded. It is worth mentioning that he was…

My, my, some families really do not change their spots….!

While researching fourteenth-century Northamptonshire, I happened upon Sir John Stanley (1350-1414). “Stanley’s father was Master-Forester of the Forest of Wirral, notorious for his repressive activities. Both Stanley and his older brother, William (who succeeded their father as Master-Forester), were involved in criminal cases which charged them with a forced entry in 1369 and in the…

Thomas Stanley, or, the man with the evil beard….

For anyone interested in knowing what made slippery Lord Stanley tick, here is an excellent evaluation, save that Sir William was executed for refusing to oppose “Perkin”, not for supporting him. The man was a born opportunist and survivor. Full stop. Oh, and he had an evil beard!  

Medieval palace site at Lathom being excavated by group of military veterans….

If you can stomach paragraph two of the article below (by Henry James) the rest is quite interesting! I have taken the precaution of copying the entire article because of a server problem that messed me around after a minute so. So I opened it again, copied, and it’s below, complete with link to the original. “A…