All Categories - Meandering Through Time

Death of Eleanor of Castile

28/11/2022

On the 28th November in 1290 in the Nottinghamshire village of Harby, Eleanor of Castile, the beloved wife of Edward I died.

It is thought that Eleanor had not properly recovered from catching malaria a few years earlier, and it was on her journey to pray at the Shrine of St Hugh in Lincoln Cathedral that she became ill. On the 13th November, once parliament had concluded at King’s Clipstone, the royal party began their journey into Lincolnshire, but Eleanor's health deteriorated so they stopped at Harby, the home of Richard de Weston, in the hope that she regain her strength. According to Edward’s itinerary, they arrived at Harby on the 20th November, it was here eight days later that Eleanor died. The king was with her at her request, Oliver Sutton, the Bishop of Lincoln, and Harby’s parish priest, William de Kelm were also in attendance.

Eleanor’s body was conferred to St Catherine’s Priory in Lincoln where it was embalmed. The queen's viscera were buried in Lincoln Cathedral, where Edward would place a copy of her Westminster Abbey tomb.

King Edward’s grief at the loss of his wife is well known as is the fact that at each place his queen's body rested on her journey to London he erected crosses, all different and all beautifully ornate. The first one placed was at St Catherine’s, sadly nothing but a stump remains, and this can be found in the grounds of Lincoln Castle.

At Harby, a chantry chapel was established in 1294 where prayers were said for the queen's soul and this was done until the dissolution, however the building itself survived until 1877.

We were at Harby last year, it was a cold and wet day, much like the day in 1290. The manor house in which Queen Eleanor died is long gone, but you can walk to the site on which it stood, also to be seen are the remains of the moat that once surrounded it.

The aforementioned Chantry Chapel once stood behind the iron railings, on the spot where the above was taken.

Henry VIII Receives a Note

2/11/2022

In the October of 1541, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was told by John Lascelles, a member of Thomas Cromwell's household, that he had knowledge that Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII had had intermate relations with three men while living at Chesworth House, a place where she had spent her childhood.

Chesworth House near Horsham, West Sussex, Photograph by Dave Spicer

Cranmer disliked Thomas Howard, Catherine's grandfather, and used this information to discredit the Howard family by informing Henry of Catherine's teenage activities. He left the king a note as he celebrated All Souls Day in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court. In this note, Cranmer wrote that Catherine Howard had been accused of

"dissolute living before her marriage with Francis Dereham, and that was not secret, but many knew it."

Events soon escalated with the arrest and torture of the so-called lovers of the queen. This was followed by the execution of Dereham, along with Thomas Culpepper, on the 10th of December and Catherine went to her death on the 13th of February the following year. The third man accused was Henry Manox, he was fortunate to escape death.

What of the troublemaking John Lascelles, the instigator of this affair? He would be burnt at the stake for the crime of heresy on the 12th of July 1546. Cranmer would suffer the same fate in 1556.

Death of King Athelstan

23/10/2022

King Athelstan is considered by many to be the first king of England; he was the grandson of Alfred the Great. He died on this day in 939 and was buried in Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire.

Athelstan, says the Anglo-Saxon chronicles was 'the lord of warriors and patron of heroes" and by the time of his death, he had secured England’s borders and introduced new laws.

Of Athelstan's funeral, 12th-century chronicler William of Malmesbury wrote that 'many gifts in gold and silver were carried before the body, as well as many relics of saints, bought in Brittany, for such were the objects on which he expended the treasure accumulated and left untouched by his father.' William of Malmesbury also viewed the king's remains and of what he saw he wrote 'the king as not above the average height, slim in build with fair hair 'as I have seen for myself in his remains, beautifully intertwined with golden threads.'

Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon

18/10/2022

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

This marriage had been previously arranged, but Isabella would only consent if she met with the future king of Aragon before the marriage took place, this meeting had been organised 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 must have found attractive.

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

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

Isabella of Angouleme

1/10/2022

There seems to be a bit of a disagreement among historians as to the reasons King John married his second wife Isabella of Angouleme, some say it was born out of lust, others out of the need to control the areas that neighboured Angouleme.

John, it has been said, took an immediate fancy to Isabella, the daughter of Audemar the Count of Angouleme, and was quick to make a play for her. John certainly loved women, he was unfaithful to both his wives and kept numerous mistresses, some of them married women, so it is easy to believe that he was determined to have her and was not going to take no for an answer.

There was a big difference in their ages, John was nearly thirty-four and Isabella was about fifteen when they married on the 24th of August 1200. The birth of their firstborn suggests that the king may have respected her tender age and stayed out of the marriage bed until at least the end of 1206.

Following their marriage, the couple arrived back in England, where on this day, the 8th October 1200, Isabella was crowned at Westminster Abbey.

The view that most historians put forward, that King John was a tyrant and a thoroughly bad chap with absolutely no redeeming features, makes it difficult to find anything positive to say about his twelve-year marriage to Isabella, but from what I have read it looks to be an exact copy of that of John's parents Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. John was a philanderer, so was Henry, Isabella a been a strong and forceful woman, so was Eleanor.

Soon after John's death in 1216, Isabella left her children, the youngest just a year old, in the care of the English court, and made a new life for herself with a new husband in her home of Angouleme.

Lea Seydoux as Isabella in the 2010 film Robin Hood.

Birth of Horatio Nelson

17/9/2022

On the 29th September in 1758, Horatio Nelson, the sixth child and third surviving son of Revd Edmund Nelson and Catherine Suckling, was born at Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk.

Nelson's mother, who died when he was nine, was the great-niece of Prime Minster Robert Walpole. She named her son after her second cousin, Horatio Walpole, who served as his godfather. In the baptism register of the parish church of Burnham All Saints, you can see that someone had entered information about his career.

At the age of ten, Nelson learned to row and sail a dinghy at Burnham Overy Staithe, a hamlet just a few miles away from his home. At the age of twelve, he finished his schooling at Sir John Paston's School at North Walsham and joined the navy as an ordinary seaman aboard the HMS Raisonnable. Thirty-five years later, as Horatio, Lord Nelson he would captain the HMS Victory.

The Battle of Trafalgar is what Horatio Nelson is remembered for. This battle resulted in the loss of nineteen French and Spanish ships and 6,953 enemy casualties. The English lost no ships but there were 1,690 casualties including Nelson himself.

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/history-blog/death-of-a-hero-horatio-nelson

Coronation of William Rufus

17/9/2022

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it was on this day in 1087, that William Rufus, the second son of William the Conquer was hastily crowned King William II at Westminster Abbey by Bishop Lanfranc. The records state that 'all the men in England bowed themselves before him and swore oaths.' That wasn’t entirely true.

William arrived in London two weeks after the death of his father, enough time, writes historian Franck Barlow for those English men of importance to have their say but not enough time for rebel barons to cross to Normandy, to muster support from Robert Curthose, Rufus's older brother.

On their father's death bed, Curthose and Rufus had agreed to be each other's heir, but this peace did not last long, by 1088 Curthose was on his way to join the rebellious barons and remove Rufus from the throne.

The Treaty of Saint Clair Sur Epte

14/9/2022

The Treaty of Saint Clair Sur Epte was signed in the autumn of 911, the signatories were Viking leader Rollo and the Frankish Charles the Simple. This treaty gave what is present-day Upper Normandy to Rollo and the City of Rouen to Charles.
Rollo would hold the title of Duke of Normandy and by 1020 his descendants, the ‘Normans’ would continue to conqueror lands west of the duchy that included the island of Mont Saint Michel.

The signing of this treaty was not a matter of sealing a document or signing a name along the dotted line, it was the swearing of allegiance to a king in an official ceremony. Rollo had to 'shake hands' with Charles after which the king is said to have offered Gisele, his daughter, in marriage to Rollo.

Legend has it that those officiating suggested that Rollo kiss the king’s foot, an act of submission which Rollo, it is said, did not take very well so one of Rollo's men did it for him. The story goes that this man lifted the king’s foot without bending down, causing the king to fall over amid much hilarity on the Viking's part no doubt.

The existence of Gisele is disputed, and this story is probably a myth, there was a lot of forced 'bending of the knee' in those days

You can read more about this period in time in my blog on my website at

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/tosny-of-normandy.html

Inheritance Tax

30/7/2022

On the 2nd August 1894, Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary introduced the tax of Death Duty, we know this as Inheritance Tax.

This new law was introduced to raise money to pay off a four million pound government shortfall.

In the story of Downton Abbey, it was taxes and a medieval inheritance system that was the real root of the family's troubles.
Both together, these two things threatened to ruin the life that Earl of Grantham's ancestors had built up over many years.
Robert Crawley and his wife had daughters and no sons and because of the laws of primogeniture, none of them could inherit their father's title, house, or land. It was Robert's first cousin James and his son Patrick who stood to inherit, but when they died on the Titanic, it was Matthew Crawley, Robert's third cousin once removed, who became heir presumptive.

Primogeniture is centuries old however the taxation of a person's wealth at the time of their death dates from the end of the 17th century.

It's a good job a person wasn't taxed on the amount of names he had isn't it?

Henry Handley

11/7/2022

Henry Handley, entrepreneur and member of Parliament was described by one James Grant as

"a tall, stout, good-looking man. He has a jolly, countrified countenance, with a complexion redolent of health. His face is full, and his features are regular and pleasing. His hair is of a light brown, and he sports a pair of whiskers of which any Spanish Don might be proud."

Handley inherited his estates in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire on the death of his father Benjamin Handley who had helped to establish the canalisation of the River Slea, known as the Sleaford Navigation, and who also founded the first bank in the town.

Following his move to Culverthorpe Hall, his new home just outside the town, Handley became interested in agricultural affairs and the plight of the land working people in regard to the Malt Tax stating

" it was impossible for the present system to continue long; the voice of the people must prevail...."

Proud of their son, the town erected a monument to commemorate the life of Henry Handley who had been born in the town in 1797.

Handley died in the June on 1846.