Category: 15th Century - Meandering Through Time

The Birth and Death of William Shakespeare

23/4/2020

On this day, the 23 April 1616 William Shakespeare died, the 23rd of April may have even been the day he was born too. His baptism appears in the parish register for the 26th April 1564, babies were usually baptised a few days after their birth so it is in the realms of possibility.

William Shakespeare was one of our greatest playwrights, (I forgave him for the hatchet job he did on Richard III years ago!) and would like to write a piece on him myself but his life and his works are much covered and in a way I could never aspire to. However, I found this lovely comic line supposedly said by the man himself and thought, "this is my piece on Shakespeare."

"No I have drunk with Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, Haunted Hillboro’, Hungry Grafton, Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom and Drunken Bidford and so, I will drink no more."

The line supposedly originates from when he was visiting Stratford, Shakespeare is said to have gone on a Elizabethan 'pub crawl' setting out with a party of friends with the intent of out drinking a drinking club from the neighbouring village of Bidford on Avon. Drinking, all night, in no less that eight ale houses in the same number of villages, including Marston, Exhall and Wixford, Shakespeare finally fell asleep under a tree, where he was woken in the morning by his drinking friends who asked him join them the following evening, to which Shakespeare is said to have replied with the above sentence.

There is no proof that Shakespeare actually had the conversation but still, it may have come from his lips. We know he wrote comedy using such things as slapstick and practical jokes, and this statement is a fine example of Shakespeare talking in a quick and witty manner.

What a great pun! Only a man with the talent of William Shakespeare could have said that surely.here to edit.

Birth of Henry VII

28/1/2020

On this day in 1457 Henry of Richmond, later Henry VII was born at Pembroke Castle to Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor.

In 1455, at the age of just twelve years old Henry's mother, a wealthy heiress had married Edmund Tudor, the son of a commoner who had climbed into the bed of a queen of England. Margaret was soon pregnant.

Henry was born into a country that was divided by conflict and civil war.

Margaret Beaufort was just a child herself and Henry's birth did irreparable damage, this could account for the fact that she never gave birth again, however she turned out to be an influential and dominant figure throughout Henry's life. Margaret was also aware of her son's vulnerability and because of this sent him into the care of his uncle, Jasper Tudor. Following the Battle of Tewkesbury in the May of 1471 Jasper and Henry fled to Brittany and then finally into France. Henry spent, in total, fourteen years of his life in exile.

His return to England in 1485 has been much written about, and most of you will know that he was aided at the Battle of Bosworth by Thomas Stanley, his mother's husband and his brother William.

Henry of Richmond became king of England on the 22nd August in 1485.

I, of course, am a Ricardian and see Henry as a usurper, whose claim to the throne is a tenuous one to say the least, however, Richard and Henry's stories are real and to understand Henry, Richard and the Wars of the Roses it is always best to read widely with the aim to gain an understanding of both sides of story, therefore I add this paragraph taken from the Henry Tudor Society about Henry.

"He is a king often accused of being parsimonious, miserly, ruthless, severe and avaricious to the extreme, cold to his wife and cruel to friend and foe alike. The study of Henry’s life, from his beginnings through to the exile, and from his early reign to the tragic end, put forward a different man. It is this man, the real Henry, not the mythical Henry, that we aim to bring to the fore. A man who had an astounding tenacity to survive, to cling to his throne and to pass his crown to his son in a peaceful manner, something which eluded several monarchs before him."

Here a link to the Henry Tudor Society -

henrytudorsociety.com/?fbclid=IwAR2DEEbRVuKvHsmExFXibyQXSiXNnOvKz-5ARFeP31VIqfD2S7sFQKwzT84

A little Bird Named Enza

26/2/2019

I've just spent the last four days suffering from a dreadful cold which, I suppose, you could call Flu. While I was coughing and spluttering my way through numerous hankies and cups of Lemsip, I wondered how on earth the poor souls in medieval England managed without the support of chocolate and assorted historical dramas, no Wolf Hall then!

Flu has been around forever, it is known that a major epidemic of something similar to influenza followed Charlemagne and his army across Europe in the middle of the ninth century. Medical experts suggest it arrived in Italy and spread northwards, and this is well documented. Repeated influenza pandemics broke out in this pattern between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

This virus has been described as a

"cough that spreads like the plague"

Modern historians believe that a sickness that was present at the Siege of Troy was Influenza.

It had been described in the Iliad that a nine day epidemic had its beginnings in the Trojan War, its symptoms first affecting horses and dogs.

However in a paper "Animal Influenza in the Ancient Literature" it states that

"domestic animals associated with possible human influenza outbreaks in the ancient literature are ultimately inconclusive."

Flu was not a major worry in the fourteenth century but was the bane of the lives of those in the fifteenth century and inflicted terrible losses within the life time of our grandparents too.

This little nursery rhyme was sung on England's school playgrounds throughout the country.

I had a little bird
Its name was Enza
I opened the window
and in-flu-enza

The nursery rhyme was referring to the influenza virus that was spreading across the country at a great rate. As the Great War was ending, a threat was emerging that was even more lethal than the fighting that had brutally cut down so many young men. The pandemic of 1918-19 claimed the lives of between twenty and forty million people around the world, at least three times the number killed in war. More died in a single year than died in the four years of the Black Death from 1347 to 1351. At the height of the pandemic, in the Yorkshire city of Sheffield, over 3000 people were dying a week. Not only were hospitals unable to cope, but with a shortage of both labour and coffins, mortuaries and undertakers were overwhelmed.

Of the virus Charles Cheighton in his book, The History of Epidemics in Britain states that

"Influenza appears to correspond with something broadly the same in human life at all times and to have lasted unchanged through so many mutation from medieval to modern it is unique in history."

A resilient little blighter isn't it?

Its a good job that I am a cheerful soul, even if I do say so myself, or I might be panicking!

However, apart from a miserable few days the only trouble it caused in our house was that the dog went un-walked, no housework, no cakes baked and no time-travelling in the medieval world was done.

But as you can see from this new blog I am on the mend.

Atchoo !!!!!

The Murder of King James I of Scotland

20/2/2019

It was late in the evening of the 20th February in 1437 that James I of Scotland met his death at Blackfriar's Church in Perth, Scotland.

The bolt on the inside of the king's bedchamber door had been purposely removed leaving it easy for the assassins to force their way in. On hearing a noise outside, James was quick to realise that his life was in danger, he hoped to make his way to safety through a small tunnel that led to the cellar. While James was making his escape it is said that Catherine Douglas, lady in waiting to Jame's queen Joan Beaufort, rushed to the bedchamber door and placed her arm across the door to prevent the murderers making their entrance. However, the door was easily forced and this broke Catherine's arm.

The king crawled along the tunnel but his exit was blocked. Unable to escape he waited in silence until he thought the danger was over and then called out, but the men were still in the room, two of his assassins crawled in and attacked him with knives, the third coming in later finish him off.

James died from sixteen stab wounds, his hands torn to ribbons defending himself from his enemies blades.

James's killers, Walter and Thomas Stewart where related to the king through Robert II of Scotland, and Robert and Thomas Graham were wealth landowners. They all managed to escape, but were soon found and all died horribly gruesome deaths in ways that don't bear thinking about.

Walter Stewart and Robert Graham had problems with James's rule that were numerous and complicated. They did conspire and act against the king in what appears to be a frenzied attack. However, I do realise these were hard and different times, but the way these men were dealt with was simply barbaric.

Birth of George Duke of Clarence

21/10/2018

On this day in 1449 the birth in Dublin of George, Duke of Clarence to Richard, Duke of York and Cecily Neville.

George's life is viewed as a long list of facts that give us some insight into his life and there isn't much written about Clarence as a person at all so because of this Clarence's character is hard to define. However, I have often wondered if we could apply the modern term 'middle child syndrome' to help understand his personality. Maybe it was his position within his family that made him the man he was, looking at the personality traits of a modern 'middle child' surprisingly Clarence fits the 'profile' on a number of points.

1. Middle children are not particularly interested in family hierarchy or ranking:

Clarence could not have cared less that his brother was king, he would undermine him given an opportunity, he had joined in all the careless talk, calling into question the legitimacy of the kings birth. His later actions had convinced Edward that he was looking to take the throne out from under him.

2. Middle children are more interested in taking advice from others outside the main family group:

Clarence was reliant on his cousin Richard Neville rather than Edward or Richard. He took Neville's 'advice' on more than one occasion, joining him in supporting a northern rebellion and went along with the idea to restore King Henry VI to the throne of England, realising too late that listening to Neville was not a good idea after all.

3. Middle children are risk takers and are more rebellious than their siblings:

Clarence certainly ticks both these boxes. By rebelling with Neville, Clarence risked everything and lost. He lost his position as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and by organising yet another rebellion, because of the loss of his Warwick lands to Richard, he caused a major rift that was ultimately the last nail in his coffin.

4. Middle children don't like conflict:

This is one category that Clarence doesn't fit into.

Of course, Clarence wasn't a middle child at all, he was number six of seven so you could argue that this hypothesis doesn't make any sense at all.....but it does if you look at it from the point of view that he was eventually slap bang in the middle of three boys. His older brother Edmund had died at the Battle of Wakefield aged just seventeen, I wonder if he had lived he would have shown the same personality traits as Clarence or would Clarence have been a different person altogether?

Supposition this may be, but whatever the cause Clarence turned out to be a weak self-centred man, and in the end, it was greed and jealousy that cost him his life.

Marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon

19/10/2018

On this day in 1469, the marriage took place of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon,

Wedding Portrait of Isabella and Ferdinand c1469

Their marriage had been previously arranged, but Isabella only consented to this marriage if she met with the future king of Aragon before it took place, this meeting had been set for the 11th of October. The young man that Isabella first set eyes on was a dark-haired, seventeen-year-old with chubby cheeks and full lips who she no doubt found attractive.

Isabella was a year older than Ferdinand, they also were second cousins. The marriage of close family members was illegal and therefore there were consanguinity issues, however documentation, dated to five years earlier, had been found that decreed that Ferdinand could marry within the third degree of consanguinity, this papal bull legalised their marriage.

The wedding took place at the Palacio de los Vivero (Palace of the Nurseries) in the city of Valladolid in Castile and their first child, a daughter, Isabella, was born just under a year following their marriage.

Isabella and Ferdinand went on to have another six children, the most famous, from an English point of view, was Catherine, the wife of Prince Arthur and later his brother Henry VIII.

Isabella and Ferdinand's marriage paved the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country that we now know as Spain.

John Sutton Ist Baron Dudley

29/9/2018

On the 30th September in 1487, John Sutton, Baron Dudley died at the age of 87.

From their humble beginnings in the West Midlands, the Sutton's began a slow rise to prominence, it was during the 15th and 16th centuries that they had reached the peak of their success, the most famous, or you could argue infamous of them held important offices under Henry VII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I.

John Sutton, the sixth of that name was born in 1400 and was created Baron Dudley when he was summoned to parliament as

"Johanni de Sutton de Duddeley militi" in 1440.

Previously, the Dudley barony had passed, in the 14th century, to a member of the Sutton family via the marriage of John's 4x great grandfather to Margaret, the sister and coheiress of John de Somery whose family owned Dudley Castle.

Sutton became the first of his family to take Dudley as their surname. A writ, issued in the February of 1439, enabled the title to be used by the Sutton family in future generations.

John, Baron Dudley served under both Henry V and Henry VI and was a veteran of the Wars of the Roses, first under the Lancastrian banner and at Towton under the Yorkist. Despite his association with the Lancastrian party, he was looked on favourably by Edward IV and in 1477 he accompanied the English ambassador, his nephew William Fitzalan, to France as part of the continuing peace negotiations.

With his wife Elizabeth Berkeley he had four sons, whose descendants would play an important part in the history of England.

Sutton's eldest son Edmund had predeceased his father, and the Barony descended through the family to Edward Sutton who died in 1643 when the Dudley estates passed to the Wards of Birmingham.

His second was John Dudley, the father of John and Elizabeth. John was the father of Edmund Dudley, financial adviser to Henry VII and head of the king's council. John Sutton was therefore grandfather to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland 'puppet master' to the boy king Edward VI and great-grandfather to the Duke's thirteen children including John, Ambrose, Robert and Guildford Dudley.

The aforementioned Elizabeth Dudley, had married Thomas Ashburnham - Elizabeth and Thomas were my 15th great-grandparents.

John Sutton's third son William became Bishop of Durham and his last son, Oliver, died at the Battle of Edcote in 1469.

John Sutton was buried in the Priory of St. James in Dudley which was founded in 1190 by Gervase Paganel, the kinsman of the aforementioned Somerly family of Dudley.

Birth of Margaret Pole

12/8/2018

On the 14th of August in 1473 the birth of Margaret Pole, the daughter of George Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville at Castle Farleigh, an estate not too far from Bath in Somerset.

This west country castle was once the ancestral home of the Hungerfords, a family who had sided with the Lancastrians during the Wars of the Roses and were punished for that with execution and the loss of their estates. Castle Farleigh was granted to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III, however, in 1473 it was linked with the Duke of Clarence for it was here that Isabel gave birth to Margaret.

Isabel Neville died in 1476 and Clarence was executed two years later, Margaret lived out the rest of her childhood with her paternal cousins in the royal household. Six years following the accession to the throne by Henry Tudor she was married to Richard Pole by whom she would have five children - the four sons were thorns in the sides of Henry VIII. However, Margaret was a member of the young Katherine of Aragon's household during the reign of Henry VII and under Henry VIII she was governess to Henry's daughter Mary. During the troubles between Catherine and Henry and Henry and Mary, Margaret would stay true to their cause.

By the end of 1538, Margaret was in trouble and found herself embroiled in the fall out of the arrests of her sons Geoffrey and Henry Pole on a charge of treason. She was detained at Cowdray Park, the home of the Earl of Southampton. It wasn't long before trumped up charges were brought against her, and she was sent to the Tower where she was kept for just under two years. Poor Margaret was not treated well during her incarceration, the conditions were austere and inadequate for a woman her age let alone her status, the room was cold and damp and she suffered as a result.

Margaret Pole would die at the hands of an inexperienced executioner on the 27th May in 1541 - she was sixty-eight years old.

The above image is considered to be that of Margaret Pole as she wears a tiny barrel charm on a bracelet which is taken to represents her father's death in a barrel of Malmesbury wine. This, of course, is a case of fabricating the evidence to fit the crime. Not only did this one tiny detail added weight to the vat of wine theory but it means that this portrait has been wrongly attributed.

Birth of Henry V

9/8/2018

The date of Henry V's birth is said to be either the 9th or the 16th of August in 1386/7 at Monmouth Castle. The baby, so the story goes was placed in this cradle. Sadly tests prove that the cradle dates to a much later century, the cradle posts however are dated to the 15th century. It is linked to the village of Newland in Gloucestershire just a few miles from where Henry was cared for as a baby.

He was born the second son of Henry IV, he had, by the age of seventeen taken part in the Battle of Shrewsbury and topped that with five years fighting against Welsh and the legendary Owen Glendower, the last Welsh leader to be known as the Prince of Wales. Henry also put down a rebellion led by Richard of Conisburgh grandfather to Richard III, Henry Scrope and Thomas Grey and their attempt to put Edmund Mortimer on the English throne. This later became known as the Southampton Plot. We also remember King Henry V for his involvement with France where between 1415 and 1420 he was successful in taking the port of Harfleur, the town of Rouen, and managed to force the French to sign the Treaty of Troyes.

Following his success in France, Henry was recognised as the heir to the French throne which was sealed by his marriage to Charles VI's daughter Catherine of Valois. The couple returned home to England, six months later Catherine was crowned queen and two months later, Henry returned to France. The young queen gave birth to her son Henry, later Henry VI, in the December of 1421, but the of hero of Agincourt lay dying from dysentery at the Chateau de Vincennes, in France, where he died on the 31st of August, leaving his lands and titles in the tiny hands of his nine-month-old son.

The Towton Signet Ring

30/7/2018

Held by the British Museum, who acquired it in 1897, is this late medieval gold signet-ring. It is engraved with a lion and a scroll with the motto 'Now ys Thus' or Now is Thus.

The ring was found in a field in Yorkshire in 1798, an article placed in The Gentleman's Magazine asked

"If any of your correspondence could favour the public with an interpretation it would oblige many of your readers here"

The ring was once considered to have been the property of Henry Percy, the 3rd Earl of Northumberland. One of the reasons for this assumption was because it was found on the site of the Battle of Towton and many of you will know that Henry Percy met his death. A second reason has to do with the image of the lion on the face of the ring.

Henry Percy's seal did indeed depict a lion, three of them in fact, over a shield and plumed helmet. The Percy Arms, as shown on the seal of Henry de Percy 1st Baron Percy who died in 1314, does show one lion rampant. With all this evidence it is understandable why its associated with the Percy's.

However, it probably did not belong to Henry Percy as we can dismiss the lion, many medieval families used it on their insignia, after all its a Plantagenet icon, Henry II and his son John probably used it and we know it was on the Great Seal of Richard I. Also, there is no evidence that the motto "Now is Thus" was ever used by the Percy family.

Whoever owned this ring was a high-status individual who, not only lost his ring but probably his life, along with twenty-eight thousand other men, on that day at Towton in 1461.