All Categories - Meandering Through Time

Sir Humphry Davy

26/3/2020

The death of Sir Humphry Davy in Geneva, Switzerland, on 29 May 1829

One of Cornwall's famous sons, Sir Humphry Davy was born in Penzance in 1778. Davy was later educated in the Cornwall's county town of Truro and this was followed by an apprenticeship to a Penzance surgeon. In 1797, Davy took up chemistry and was taken on as an assistant at the Medical Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. It was here he experimented with various new gases by inhaling them which nearly cost him his life on more than one occasion, eventually though, this experimentation led to the discovery of the anesthetic effect of what we know as laughing gas.

In 1815, George Stephenson, from Newcastle, claimed he was the inventor of a safety lamp for the use in coal mines but it is Davy who is credited with the invention. This lamp allowed coal to be mined from deep coal seams reducing the dangers of explosions from methane gas. The lamp, consisted of a wick with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen, Davy discovered that if the mesh was fine enough, it would not ignite the methane.

The Road to Magna Carta

26/3/2020

On the 5th May 1215, King John was in the Berkshire town of Reading, it was while he was there that he received a message brought to him by a monk on behalf of a number of disenchanted barons. This message was a formal renouncement of their fealty to the crown.

The rebels had chosen Essex baron Robert Fitzwalter as their leader. Following a meeting in Northampton, the rebellious army marched to London. As part of their cause they took the cities of Lincoln and Exeter and with London taken their numbers increased, Stephen Langton the Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent to make peace.

Talks between the rebels and the king ended with the signing of Magna Carta on the 15th June.

Robert Fitzwalter is one of a number of men who are associated with the legend of Robin Hood.

Maud de Charworth

2/3/2020

Maud de Charworth was a wealthy heiress, the only daughter of Welsh baron Patrick de Charworth. At the age of just one Maud inherited the manor of Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire, Southwest Wales when her father and his older brother died whilst in the Holy Land.

Maud, due to her young age, became the ward of Edward I's queen Eleanor. Her marriage in 1291 was granted to the king's brother, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, who gave Maud in marriage to his son Henry of Lancaster and it was on this day in 1296/7 that the pair were married.

Maud gave birth to seven children. Her eldest was her son Henry of Grosmont, whose daughter Blanche would become the first wife of John of Gaunt. Their sixth child their daughter Eleanor was my 20x great grandmother via her marriage to Richard Fitzalan.

Kidwelly Castle, seen here, may have been the birth place of Maud, was held by the in the 12th century by Maurice de Londres. The castle was lost to the Welsh during the uprising in the 13th century and then granted to Hawise de Londres and then to the Charworths on Hawise's marriage to Maud's father. In the mid 14th century the castle and the Charworth lands landed into the lap of John of Gaunt.

Death of Henry VIII

28/1/2020

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.

There more about Henry in Tracy Boreman's article in this month's History Extra entitled Five things you (probably) didn't know about Henry VIII.

www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/king-henry-viii-facts-wives-spouse-execution-weight-reformation-cromwell/?fbclid=IwAR2XUlKbmSbIIKT5KmkYDtgJxJF1Zv49ucjVzBttIIiONVN4xX1oeQrEKRo

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

Medieval Women: Philippa of Hainault

24/1/2020

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 III - St Mary's Church Shrewsbury

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 died as a result of the Black Death in 1348.

Anne of Bohemia

20/1/2020

On this day in 1382, the marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia, Richard was eight months younger than Anne, they were both fifteen years of age.

Image: Manuscript held at the Bodleian Library shows Richard with Anne.

Anne was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and Elizabeth of Pomerania and was described at the time of her marriage by a Westminster chronicler as a ' tiny scrap of humanity'

Criticism of the match began when the king was forced to pay Wenceslas of Bohemia, Anne's brother, £4,000,000 (in today's money) for the right to marry his sister. Adding insult to injury Anne brought no dowry and her large entourage was paid for, in part, by the king.

Anne was crowned queen of England two days later.

Their twelve-year marriage was considered to have been a happy one but despite that there were no children and therefore no heir. Following Anne's death of the plague at the Sheen in 1394 Richard had the building demolished.

In 1396 Richard would marry the seven-year-old Isabella of Valois.

Tudor Women: Jane Dorma

13/1/2020

On this day in 1612 the death of Jane Dorma, Duchess of Feria. Jane was a longtime friend of Queen Mary I.

Jane's family were not strangers in the royal court, her maternal grandfather William Sidney had been tutor to Edward VI and her father William Dormer had been in the service of Thomas Cromwell.

On the death of her mother, Jane was cared for by her paternal grandmother, also named Jane. It was from her home that Jane was sent to be a member of the household of Princess Mary to whom she would become a lady in waiting.
Loyal to the queen until her death, Jane was at Mary's bedside when she died in 1558 and it was into her hands that Mary placed her jewellery to be passed to her sister Elizabeth.

Considered a beauty, Jane was courted by a number of English nobles, but after Mary's death, she married Gomez Suarez de Figueroa of Cordova, the Duke of Feria who had accompanied Philip of Spain when he arrived in England to marry Mary. However, following Mary's death and the accession to the throne of Elizabeth, the duke was replaced as an ambassador and the couple left for Spain.

In 1609 the seventy-one-year-old duchess broke her arm and over the next few years her health slowly deteriorated. Anticipating death Jane Dorma wore a deaths head, a terminal bead attached to her rosary and ordered a coffin to be made which she kept in the house. She was buried at the monastery of Santa Clara in Zafra in Spain twelve days following her death.

Joan, Countess of Toulouse

4/10/2019

The first week of October 1165 is thought to be the date of birth of Joan, Countess of Toulouse, the third daughter and seventh child of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In 1176, a Sicilian ambassador, who was in England to discuss Joan's marriage to William II of Sicily, wrote that he found the eleven-year-old princess to be a beauty. The image below is taken from a genealogical roll of the kings of England, it certainly shows she was a pretty girl.

William of Sicily and Joan were married in 1177 in Palermo, their marriage lasted twelve years until his death in 1189. There were no children born of the marriage.

History tells us that Joan and her brother, King Richard I had a close relationship, but this did not stop her being angered by his suggestion that she marry a brother of Saladin, the leader of the Islamic forces during the Crusades. However, negotiations came to nothing and Joan married Raymond, Count of Toulouse, in 1196.

It has been written of Joan that she was 'a woman whose masculine spirit overcame the weakness of her sex' a reference maybe to her heading a force during a siege of a castle while her husband was elsewhere. It is also claimed that showed that she was made of stronger stuff when she avenged her brother's death by having the man who killed him blinded and then flayed alive. However, this story if it be true at all has been linked to their mother, or to Marcadier, a general in the king's army.

In her marriage to Raymond of Toulouse, Joan gave birth to two children, Raymond in 1197 and a child in 1199, however, within a few weeks of the birth Joan was dead.

As a mark of her devotion, she was buried at her brother's side at Fontevraud Abbey.

Anthony Babington

20/9/2019

On 19th of September 1589, Anthony Babington, a one time page in the household of George Talbot, wrote to Queen Elizabeth begging her for mercy despite the fact that he and his fellow conspirators had attempted to assassinate her and place her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne.

When his plea fell on death ears he offered to pay for his release. All this was to no avail, and it was on this day that Babington was drawn on a hurdle from Tower Hill to St Giles in the Fields where he was to suffer the barbaric execution of hanging and quartering.

In the plot that now bears his name should we consider Babington as naive, an idealistic a young man caught in the slip-stream of insurrection and dazzled by the thought of the rewards that would be lavished upon him when the deed was done or did he enter into this dangerous game with malice aforethought? Either way, Anthony Babington had been approached by John Ballard, a Catholic priest, who told him that the plot was supported by Spain, but what Babington didn't know was that Elizabeth's spymaster had already uncovered the plot.