Perkin Warbeck made an ILLICIT play for power….?

“….Perkin Warbeck himself is a famed pretender to the throne, having made an illicit play for power in the 15th century by taking on the persona of a royal heir who had mysteriously disappeared….” So it is claimed on this site.  Um, an illicit play for power? Come on, that throne was occupied by the…

Two butchers, an archer and a “bourgeois of Tournai”….

“….Consider, for example, the case of John Sperhauk, which came before King’s Bench in April 1402. The plea roll record opens with the memorandum of his confession taken on 13 April by the coroner of King’s Bench, before the king and ‘by [his] authority and command’. In this confession, Sperhauk admitted to publicly repeating allegations…

From the Lizard to Deptford Bridge – a guest post

An Gof and the Cornish Rebellion 1497 As the early summer sun seared upon Bodmin Moor, sweeping south westwards to Goonhilly Downs , which straddles a swathe of the Lizard Peninsula , the tortured arid landscapes  weren’t the only features of 1497 Cornwall, threatening to ignite in a blaze of fiery agitation. In  1337 the…

Bishop Stillington’s Lost Chapel

The beautiful Cathedral of Wells  is a medieval visual delight. It was, of course, the See of Bishop Robert Stillington who sought out Richard Duke of Gloucester and announced that King Edward IV had been secretly married to Eleanor Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, prior to wedding  Elizabeth Woodville in a second secret…

OLD FAMILIAR FACES: THE HUNKY PUNKS OF LANGPORT

The last few times I’ve gone to visit the other half’s family in Somerset, we’ve driven through the town of  Langport, a small place  now but once an actual port and quite an important site in the Middle Ages. As we rounded the corner in the car, I kind of obliquely wondered why there was…