The Bedingfield turncoat of Oxburgh Hall….

In this 2014 post mention was made of Sir Edmund Bedingfield of Oxburgh Hall, near King’s Lynn in Norfolk. He was a Yorkist-turned-Tudor supporter who, like the Stanleys and others, failed Richard III at Bosworth. Sir Edmund was a Yorkist who benefited under Edward IV and Richard III (at the coronation of the latter, he was…

Witchcraft (3): Matthew Hopkins

If the witchcraft trials at North Berwick in the 1590s and later in England, of which Pendle in 1610 is an example, happened because James VI/I fervently believed in witchcraft, as shown by the three characters in Macbeth, it can be argued that the subsequent decline in such cases came because judges and Charles I…

Witchcraft (2): The Pendle Trials

Lancashire, in the early 17th Century, was one of the poorest and least populated counties of England, where even many gentry families had an income of less than £100 a year. The Forest of Pendle, which lies between Burnley, Colne, Clitheroe and Whalley in a remote corner of the county close to the Yorkshire border,…

Are we still ruled by superstition….?

Above are the Venerable Bede and King Cnut, who are concerned in the following extract from Medieval Man by Frederick Harrison:- “…Only Bede wrote about such subjects as astronomy and geography; and his knowledge of these was conditioned by the teaching of the Church. As time went on, as much reliance was placed on charms as…

More blinkered traditionalist mumbling about Richard….

I quote” “This controversial study argues that although Richard was indeed guilty of, or implicated in, most, if not all of the crimes of which he has been accused, this ruthless, inscrutable man was also very religious, an austere practitioner of a chivalrous code of ethics, a public benefactor and protector of the Church, a…

Whilst researching my new biography of Henry III, a tantalising thought began to emerge from bits of evidence.

Was Henry III autistic? https://mattlewisauthor.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/was-henry-iii-autistic/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Henry-III-Son-Magna-Carta/dp/1445653575

Julian of Norwich

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07l6bd0 I would highly recommend this documentary by Janina Ramirez, whose book on the subject will soon be available . She showed how Julian, who was female by the way, was born during the fourteenth century. She may well have had a husband and children but lost both to the Black Death before becoming an…

A medical dictionary for Richard’s time as well…

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Medical-Language-Shakespeare-Dictionaries/dp/1472520408/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458901507&sr=1-1&keywords=shakespeare%27s+medical+language As a writer of historical fiction, I use many publications to search for information, even just snippets. This book by Sujata Iyengar is a dictionary of the Bard’s medical references, and is superb. Each entry is described in with regard to the general period use of the item, then indicates its appearance in actual…

What really motivated medieval minds?

Originally posted on Giaconda's Blog:
Love, ambition, fame, self-interest, fear, religious conviction, physical desire for something or someone, patriotism, duty, compassion, self-sacrifice, revenge or bitter hatred. Historians make a case for the various motivations of historical figures in order to try and understand these people themselves and then persuade their readership through their analysis as…

The contemporaries of Henry VIII

Genealogy Francois I of France died in the first quarter of 1547, after a reign of over thirty years, leaving only one legitimate son, Henri II. Whilst thought of as a cultured monarch, a patron of the arts and a linguistic reformer, he took an ambiguous approach to religious reform, (in which his sister Marguerite…