MacCullogh on Cromwell

Last Monday, BBC repeated Sir Diarmaid MacCullogh‘s excellent documentary Henry VIII’s Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell, from 2013. Please watch it soon as you can it is only available until mid-January. Actually, excellent is rather an understatement as it is better than others you may see. In telling Cromwell‘s story from “the…

Is it time to exhume Cardinal Wolsey?

Thomas Wolsey was born in Ipswich, apparently in March 1473, to Joan Daundy and Robert Wolsey, who seems to have been a butcher and may possibly have been killed at Bosworth. Opposite his birthplace, in St. Nicholas’ Street, is this seated statue (below). His local achievements include Wolsey’s Gate and, after about 475 years, the…

The Friaries and Priories of Ipswich

On the bottom left is the Buttermarket Centre, formerly the home of the Whitefriars or Carmelites. There were Greyfriars (Franciscans, whose name survives near Princes Street) and Blackfriars (Dominicans, based near St. Mary’s Quay). The mid-“Tudor” Christchurch Mansion, on the bottom right, is on the site of the Holy Trinity Priory. Whether this was newly…