Blog Archives - Meandering Through Time

Elizabethan Playwright: Robert Wilson

29/1/2018

Robert Wilson was an English playwright and actor during the reign of Elizabeth I. He is credited with at least sixteen plays, on most, he collaborated with others, such as Michael Drayton, Anthony Munday and one Richard Hathwaye (not considered to be any relative of Shakespeare's wife Ann.)

A number of these plays were not completed including Henry Richmond (Part 2) and Owen Tudor, what a shame it would have been a wonderful opportunity to read about these two men, who played such an important part in the Wars of the Roses, from the pen of another playwright. However, parts 1 and 2 of Wilson's play The True and Honourable History of Sir John Oldcastle, was completed.

In this play it's protagonist was a soldier who was executed for heresy and treason, being hanged and burnt, in 1417. Oldcastle's character, or part of his character, we have heard of before, Oldcastle was portrayed in Shakespeare's Henry V plays under the guise of Sir John Falstaff.

Interestingly, the play is thought to have been commissioned to counter Oldcastle's/Falstaff's reputation in Shakespeare's play.

Robert Wilson was buried at St. Giles in Cripplegate on November 20th, 1600.

Funeral of Catherine of Aragon

29/1/2018

Catherine of Aragon died in the first week of January 1536 it was on this day she was laid to rest at Peterborough Cathedral.

Catherine was Henry VIII's first and 'true wife,' abandoned when she was no longer any use to him. In the furore that surrounded Henry's relationship with Anne Boleyn, it was said that Anne poisoned Catherine. Today, however, it is widely considered that she died of cancer, and most probably a broken heart.

Catherine had written of her fears to Charles V in the November of the previous year

"My tribulations are so great, my life so disturbed by the plans daily invented to further the king's wicked intention, the surprises which the king gives me, with certain persons of his council, are so mortal, and my treatment is what God knows, that it is enough to shorten ten lives, much more mine."

Henry did not attend Catherine's funeral, and in one last cruel act against his wife, he also forbade their daughter Mary to attend. It was written that the queens funeral waggon was

"was covered with black velvet, in the midst of which was a great silver cross; and within, as one looked upon the corpse, was stretched a cloth of gold frieze with a cross of crimson velvet, and before and behind the said waggon stood two gentlemen ushers with mourning hoods looking into the waggon, round which the said four banners were carried by four heralds and the standards with the representations by four gentlemen." and once inside the cathedral Catherine's coffin was "placed under the chapelle ardente which was prepared for it there, upon eight pillars of beautiful fashion and roundness, upon which were placed about 1,000 candles, both little and middle-sized, and round about the said chapel 18 banners waved.”

Below you can see the tomb of Catherine at Peterborough Cathedral if you look closely you can see that people are still leaving pomegranates in remembrance of her.

Death of Henry VIII

28/1/2018

For someone like me who has trouble with dyslexia and the getting of numbers in the right order, the birth of Henry VII and the death of his son can be somewhat confusing. Henry VII was born on this day 1457, and on this day in 1547 his second son, Henry VIII died - that's exactly ninety years later.

Anyway, I seem to have got my sums right and the numbers are in the correct order so let's get on with a bit of information about the infamous Tudor king's final years.

Most of you will already know that Henry went into a physical and mental decline following a riding accident in the January of 1536. Henry was unconsciousness for two hours and his courtiers thought him dead. It was all downhill for the king after that, ulcerated legs, weight gain and an increased tendency to be irritable and quick to temper.

As his girth increased his courtiers began dressing in heavily padded clothes in an attempt to flatter him, and who can blame them, would you want to get on the wrong side of a grumpy monarch? Despite being grossly overweight Henry was still in search of a bride, on the 12th July 1543 he found one, the twice-married Catherine Parr. Catherine nursed, cared for and finally outlived him. On his death, he was succeeded by his son, Edward VI - he wasn't much fun either.

Henry was buried next to Jane Seymour, the wife who gave him his heir, at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

Marriage of Edward III to Philippa of Hainault

24/1/2018

On this day in 1328, King Edward III of England married Philippa of Hainault at York Minster, just eleven months after Edward had become king of England.

Edward's father, King Edward II had sent the Bishop of Exeter to Hainaut to check out the four daughters of William, Count of Hainaut. In a letter to the king the Bishop writes of his impression of the fourteen-year-old Philippa. In the letter, he describes her as a child but it has been argued that the description is of Philippa's older sister Margaret.

A description of Philippa can be found the register of the Bishop of Exeter which reads:

"The lady whom we saw has not uncomely hair, betwixt blue-black and brown. Her head is clean-shaped; her forehead high and broad, and standing somewhat forward. Her face narrows between the eyes, and the lower part of her face is still more narrow and slender than her forehead. Her eyes are blackish-brown and deep. Her nose is fairly smooth and even, save that it is somewhat broad at the tip and also flattened, and yet it is no snub-nose. Her nostrils are also broad, her mouth fairly wide. Her lips somewhat full, and especially the lower lip. Her teeth which have fallen and grown again are white enough, but the rest are not so white. The lower teeth project a little beyond the upper, yet this is but little seen. Her ears and chin are comely enough. Her neck, shoulders, and all her body are well set and unmaimed; and nought is amiss so far as a man may see. Moreover, she is brown of skin all over, and much like her father; and in all things, she is pleasant enough, as it seems to us. And the damsel will be of the age of nine years on St. John's day next to come, as her mother saith. She is neither too tall nor too short for such an age; she is of fair carriage, and well taught in all that becometh her rank, and highly esteemed and well beloved of her father and mother and of all her meinie, in so far as we could inquire and learn the truth."

Phillipa and Edward were married for forty years, she gave Edward thirteen children, three of them of her children died as a result of the Black Death in 1348.

NB: Since writing this post I have read Ian Mortimer's book The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation, in it he suggests that the above description is that of Philippa's sister Margaret.

Eleanor de Montfort

14/1/2018

Eleanor, the youngest daughter of King John, had been abandoned by her mother Isabella of Angouleme in 1216. She had been left in the care of a number of governesses, one of the first was Margaret Biset she left Eleanor to serve in the household of her brother King Henry III's queen Eleanor of Provence. Margaret's replacement was Cecily of Sandford who Matthew Paris described as "of noble blood, but with nobler manners" and who was " learned, eloquent and courteous."

When Eleanor was just nine she had married the twenty-five-year-old William Marshall the son of William the Marshall, the first Earl of Pembroke whose title he had received in 1219. In 1231 Marshall died, some thought he was poisoned. His death left Eleanor a widow at sixteen.

Following William Marshall's death, Eleanor under Cecily's guidance, some might say influence, was persuaded to take a vow of chastity but this vow was soon broken when she married, in the January of 1238, English noble Simon de Montfort. Henry III had approved the marriage, which took place in secret and all three chose to ignore condemnation by Edmund Rich, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose presence, Eleanor had taken the holy oath.

It is easy to see why Eleanor broke her vow, Simon de Montfort was just eight years older, he was charismatic and plain spoken and he was also a great friend of the king. However, this friendship and Eleanor's marriage ended in tragedy when de Montfort chose to lead a rebellion against the king.

The aftermath of the Battle of Lewes in 1264 saw Henry and his son Edward, later Edward I captured and de Montfort rule in the king's name. Eleanor chose to side with her husband, she was an enthusiastic supporter of his cause right up to his death at the Battle of Evesham in 1265.

With Simon de Montfort Eleanor had seven children. She would survive him by ten years, dying in exile in France in the April of 1275.

William Laud - Archbishop of Canterbury

10/1/2018

“Give great praise to the Lord and little Laud to the Devil" was a popular saying in the time of King Charles I, it was in reference to William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was beheaded on Tower Hill in London on this day in 1645.

William Laud was a supporter of Charles I, he believed that Charles had the God-given right to rule by divine right - a view strongly held by Charles himself. Laud was against Puritan reform of the church.

The charges brought against Laud was that he undermined the laws of England and therefore endangered the Protestant faith, however, these charges were never actually proved. Nevertheless, William Laud was convicted by a bill of attainder by Parliament instead of a jury and his execution planned for the 9th January.

Laud requested that he died by being beheaded rather than by hanging, he was buried in the chapel of St John's College, Oxford.

An etching of Laud's trial was produced at the time that quotes from Proverbs “The righteous are delivered from trouble and the wicked get into it instead" However Laud's was being praised right up to the mid 19th century, William Gladstone, who wrote a number of sermons that he would read to his servants on a Sunday said of Laud -

"Laud as a Churchman has lasted. He lives today. His opponents have mostly disappeared from off the earth. They have left consequences, but no representatives. Laud has both."

The Galgano Sword

7/1/2018

Saint Galgano was born Galgano Guidotti in 1148 in Chiusdino, a village in what is now the modern province of Siena in Italy.

Galango was said to have been a medieval Tuscan knight, the son of a feudal lord. Galgano had a reputation for selfishness and being somewhat of a rebel in his youth. Galgano, after have a vision of the Archangel Michael, saw the error of his ways, abandoning his old life for that of a hermit at Rotonda di Montesiepi. To prove his total commitment to his new cause Galgano plunged his sword into a large stone forcing it through the rock up to its hilt, thus changing the sword into a cross a symbol of his new found piety.

Galgano died here on 30 November 1181 and since then pilgrims have arrived in large numbers and miracles have been performed. A papal commission was set up in 1185, after which Galgano was canonised in 1190.

For centuries the sword was thought to be a fake, but researchers revealed in 2001 that the sword is in fact, twelfth century. The University of Pavia, who tested the metal of the sword also used ground penetrating radar analysis and revealed that beneath the sword there was a cavity in which is thought to be the body of Galgano.

Incidentally, in the church, there are two mummified hands and these too are twelfth century. A local legend says that anyone who tried to remove the sword from the stone had their arms ripped off.

Coronation of King Cnut

6/1/2018

On the 6th of January in 1017 King Cnut was crowned king of England.

Edmund Ironside fought a number of battles against the Danish army, but they ended in his defeat on the 18th October 1016 at the Battle of Assandun in Essex. The signing of a peace treaty gave Edmund control of lands south of the River Thames and Cnut ruled north of the Thames. On Edmund's death, despite leaving two sons, Cnut gained control of all of England.

Taking the English throne was the very beginning of a conquest that saw King Cnut rule most of Northern Europe, by the time of his death he controlled England, Denmark, Norway and parts of Sweden, yet the one event he is only ever remembered for is his attempt at controlling an incoming tide, Cnut probably didn’t paddle in the sea but what he is thought to have said was:

“Let all inhabiting the world know the power of kings to be empty and worthless and that there is no other king worthy
of the name but He at whose will heaven earth, sea obey by the eternal laws.”

Not the words of arrogant and powerful foreign invader, just man suggesting that a kings were human.

Cnut controlled much of Scandinavia, under his rule Viking raids on England’s coastline lessened, the economy improved, and by marrying Emma, Ethelred the Unready’s Norman widow, he consolidated his power.

"Whitehall burnt! nothing but walls and ruins left"

4/1/2018

In 1666 the cause of the Great Fire of London was blamed on a fire in a bakery on Pudding Lane, evidently, sparks from a fire fell into some dry flour. Over thirty years later another accident with the equally combustible items was the cause of a fire in which the Tudor Whitehall Palace burned down and along with it a Hans Holbein masterpiece.

Whitehall Palace in 1544.

It was at 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th January in 1698 that a women doing her laundry at a London riverside house placed her clothing too near a fire, within minutes her washing was engulfed in flames as was all the furniture in the room.

The fire soon spread destroying residential and government buildings from the riverside to the Holbein Gate and the Banqueting House, both of which had survived a previous fire in 1691 that had damaged the older palace structures. Of the 1698 fire diarist John Evelyn wrote

"Whitehall burnt! nothing but walls and ruins left."

Whitehall Palace had been the main residence of the royal family in London from the reign of Henry VIII. In 1537 Henry VIII commissioned Hans Holbein to paint a large mural so he could show off his Tudor lineage. The magnificent painting was Holbein's largest and most important royal commission, in it Henry VIII was portrayed with his queen Jane Seymour and his parents Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. The mural was probably painted on the wall of Henry's privy chamber and no doubt dominated it. It is said to have faced the door and any visitor would have been immediately overwhelmed by the life size image of Henry VIII confronting them.

How wonderful would it have been to wander the corridors of such a palace and look upon the faces of those people who changed our history, sadly it was not to be, however today some parts of the old palace do still exist but have been incorporated into new buildings in the Whitehall.

Battling the Vikings: January 871

4/1/2018

In the January of 871, three battles took place between the forces of King Ethelred against an invading Viking army, the first on this day, was outside the Berkshire town of Reading.

Vikings Arrive by Chris Collingwood

King Ethelred had ascended the throne of England on the death of his brother Ethelbert in 865, that was the same year that the men of the north arrived on our countries shores. Within five years the Vikings had defeated the forces of the king of Mercia and were making their way to Ethelred's Wessex.

It was on the 4th of January that Ethelred took on the enemy at the Battle of Reading. This battle ended with defeat for Ethelred's army enabling the Vikings to take the town which they used as their base.

Within days they continued their advance into Wessex and by the 8th of January, the two forces battled on the Berkshire Downs just the south-west of Ashbury village. Ethelred's scattered army had reformed, and he had placed his forces in two units, one under his command the other under his brother Alfred on either side of a ridge. A delay on Ethelred's part to order a charge forced Alfred to make his attack, Ethelred followed, eventually, the Viking army was defeated.

The final battle in January took place at Basing on the 22nd where Ethelred's army was once again defeated but there were heavy losses to both sides. Exactly two months later on the 22nd of March at Marton, the forces of the Anglo-Saxon's and the Danish army met again at a site that has never been confirmed (up to five sites have been suggested) that was another loss for Ethelred. In the April King Ethelred is thought to have died from wounds inflicted at Marton. Taking up Ethelred's sword against the Vikings would be Alfred named the Great, who according to English historian Edward Freeman was

"the most perfect character in history’