All Categories - Meandering Through Time

Eleanor of Provence

14/1/2021

On this day in 1236 the marriage of Eleanor of Provence to Henry III.

'Marriage of his Majesty Henry III and Eleanor of Provence', c1860 by John Leech.

Eleanor was twelve when she arrived in England to marry the twenty-eight-year-old Henry, who she had never met.
A beauty by all accounts Eleanor was dressed in a shimmering golden outfit that 'fitted tightly at the waist and flared out to wide pleats at her feet. The sleeves were long and lined with ermine.'

There was talk that Eleanor could not give Henry an heir, but their first child, the future Edward I, was born three years later, and other children followed in quick succession. Henry was very fond and loving towards his five children and detested spending long periods of time apart from them.

Eleanor outlived Henry by nineteen years.

Henry and Eleanor were the last of my monarch ancestors, it was a long long descent via their son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, through princesses, nobility, gentry and farmers before my arrival in the world.

Funeral of Horatio Nelson

9/1/2021

Horatio Nelson had died on board the HMS Victory on the 21st October 1805. Of this Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood wrote

'a victory, such a this, has never been achieved, but at such an expense, in the loss of the most gallant of men, and best of friends, as renders it to me a victory I never wished to have witnessed'

The body of the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar had been preserved in a 'cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh for preservation' and transported to Gibraltar onboard the Victory. Nelson’s body finally arrived at Greenwich Hospital on 23rd December 1805, and from the 5th January it lay in state in for three days. Four days later his coffin was carried from Greenwich in 'one of the greatest aquatic processions that ever was beheld on the River Thames' and then escorted by ten-thousand soldiers to St Pauls. Following a four-hour service, Nelson was laid to rest in a crypt within a sarcophagus that was originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey.

Nelson's death was received by the nation as a personal grief, much like that of the death of the Princess of Wales in 1997. Just like that day, hundreds of thousands of people turned out to get a glimpse of his coffin as it passed by them carried on a monumental funeral car modelled on the Victory.

On the 9th January in 1806 Nelson's funeral took place at St Paul's Cathedral in London. He was the first commoner to have been given a State Funeral.

There's more about Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar here

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

Whitehall Palace Burns

4/1/2021

In 1666 the cause of the Great Fire of London was blamed on 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.

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

The Palace of Whitehall as seen from St James's Park by Hendrick Danckerts, c. 1675

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.

Death of a Kings Favourite

22/11/2020

On the 22nd November in 1392 Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford, a favourite of Richard II, died near Louvain in Belgium. He had received the Earldom of Oxford when he was nine years old and was knighted along with the king, Henry, the Earl of Derby, the future Henry IV and Richard's uncle Thomas of Woodstock.

Robert de Vere benefited greatly from his friendship with the king, he was given his own rooms in Richard's castles, granted estates, gifts and other nobles' inheritances. He was also given the title Marquess of Dublin, yet he never set foot in Ireland. However, he is mostly remembered for his opposition to the Lords Appellant, a group of nobles who sort to bring the king to task over his reliance on his favourites, at Radcote Bridge.

Robert de Vere's forces were soon surrounded and after a short clash of weapons, de Vere was quick to realise the danger of his position and abandoned his men, leaving many of them to the mercy of their enemy and made his cowardly escape by crossing the river, supposedly in disguise, and headed to the Netherlands.

A year later, in what has come to be known as the Merciless Parliament he was found guilty of treason and a death sentence was passed in his absence.

Robert de Vere spent the rest of his life in exile, thus avoiding the executioner's blade. His death left Richard II bereft. Three years later, on the anniversary of his death, the king had de Vere's embalmed body brought back to England for burial in the Priory at Earl's Colne, in Essex.

Death of Oliver Cromwell

2/9/2020

On the 3rd September in 1658 Oliver Cromwell died due to complications relating to Malaria and the effects of a kidney stone.

To this day Oliver Cromwell continues to be one of England's most controversial and fascinating figures whose notoriety revolves around his views on monarchy and his attempts to turn the country into a republic. Cromwell had appointed Richard, his son, as his successor, but by May the following year he had renounced power, thus ending the protectorate.

I used to straddle the line when it comes to liking/disliking Oliver Cromwell (I was felt much the same about Simon de Montfort) Montfort over the years he has gone up in my estimation as has Oliver Cromwell. Therefore I ask this question -

Should we look at Cromwell as good or bad or should we at least consider him a victim of propaganda?

William Wallace

22/8/2020

On the 5th August in 1305, Scottish knight John de Menteith, turned William Wallace over to English soldiers following information received from Wallace's servant Jack Short.

According to Walter Scott in his "The Lord of the Isles",

William Waleis in nomen that master was of theves
Tiding to the king is comen that robbery mischeves
Sir John of Mentest sued William so nigh
We tok him when ween'd last, on night, his lemam him by
That was through treason of Jack Short his man
He was encheson so that Sir John so him ran
Jack's brother he had slain, the Waleis that is said
The more Jack fain to do William that braid

Wallace was taken to London and put on trial in Westminster Hall for the crime of high treason on August 23, 1305. He maintained, however, that “I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject.”

William Wallace was executed on the 23rd of August, he was hanged, drawn and quartered. His head was placed on London Bridge, and his limbs displayed in Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth.

Execution of Catherine Howard

28/7/2020

On the 28th July in 1540 just nineteen days after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves, King Henry VIII took, as his fifth bride, the twenty-year-old Catherine Howard. Catherine was said to have been pretty - Henry's "rose without a thorn."

No doubt it never crossed Henry's mind what Catherine thought of him the fat 49-year-old - whose youthful physique had long gone.

Why did Catherine marry Henry then? The answer is quite simple, she married him because she had too.

Sadly, Catherine had let her new position as England's new queen go to her head and by the following year, she had begun a physical relationship with Henry's favourite courtier, Thomas Culpepper, which as we all know was her undoing.

While he was marrying Catherine, his friend and the fixer of his problems, Thomas Cromwell was climbing the scaffold to his execution. I have every sympathy with all of Henry's wives, each of them had to suffer this menacing tyrant in their own different ways. Poor Catherine's problem was that she was young and naive and you could argue easily lead, notably by Henry's onetime sister in law Jane Boleyn - but that's another story.

Execution of Thomas Cromwell

28/7/2020

On this day in 1540 the execution of Thomas Cromwell, adviser and one-time friend to Henry VIII.

James Frain as Thomas Cromwell in the 2009 series The Tudors

Chronicler Edward Hall wrote of Cromwell’s last words:

“I am come hether to dye, … for … I am by the Lawe comdempned to die, and thanke my lorde God that hath appoynted me this deathe, for myne offence: For … I have lived a synner, and offended my Lorde God, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes. And … beyng but of a base degree, … have offended my prince, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes, and beseche you all to praie to God with me, that he will forgeve me. O father forgeve me. O sonne forgeve me, O holy Ghost forgeve me: O thre persons in one God forgeve me. And now I praie you that be here, to beare me record, I die in the Catholicke faithe … . Many hath sclaundered me, and reported that I have … mainteigned evill opinions, whiche is untrue, but I confesse that like as God by his holy spirite, doth instruct us in the truthe, so the devill is redy to seduce us, and I have been seduced: but beare me witnes that I dye in the Catholicke faithe … . And I hartely desire you to praie for the Kynges grace, that he maie long … reigne over you. And once again I desire you to pray for me, that so long as life remaigneth in this fleshe, I waver nothyng in my faithe”.

And of his last moment Hall writes:

“.... committed his soule, into the handes of God, and so paciently suffered the stroke of the axe, by a ragged and Boocherly miser, whiche very ungoodly perfourmed the Office.
After his execution, Cromwell's head was boiled and placed on a spike on London Bridge, his face it was said, looking away from the city. I often wonder about men like Cromwell - why were they so eager to take the place of others who had gone to the block for not giving Henry what he wanted. Cromwell was in the pay of Cardinal Wolsey when he fell from grace in 1529, if he didn't learn anything then surely he must have been aware of the consequences of failing Henry when Thomas More was executed in 1535.

Or did he really think he was invincible?

Death of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March

20/7/2020

On this day in 1398 the death of Roger Mortimer, the 4th Earl of March aged twenty-four.

Roger Mortimer was killed in a skirmish in Ireland fighting against two of the country's rebellious clans, rashly riding out alone towards the enemy he was hacked to death. Mortimer was considered heir presumptive to Richard II.

However, the Mortimer History Society writes:

"Richard II identified Roger as the heir to the throne, apparently in an attempt to thwart the claims of Henry of Lancaster (the future Henry IV). In so doing Richard was ignoring both the accepted rules of succession and the entailment of the throne drawn up by Edward III*. It filled the Mortimers with false hope. Richard never officially recognised the Mortimers as having a claim; in fact, he placed them in an inferior position to his uncles in the order of precedence, and pointedly refused to acknowledge Roger as his heir in 1394. Nevertheless, it was widely believed that Roger would be the next king if Richard died childless."

Mortimer was buried at Wigmore Abbey, which incidentally is now owned by John Challis who played Boycie in the television series Only Fools and Horses.

I wonder how different history would have been if he had lived?

St Columb Major - The Arundell Charter

19/7/2020

In 1333 Cornish born John Arundell had aided Edward III by supplying the king with troops at Battle of Halidon Hill on the 19th July of that year.

This battle was the result of Edward's support of Edward Balliol's claim to the throne of Scotland. Edward III's actions had broken the terms of the Treaty of Northampton, which he had agreed to three years earlier.

On this day in 1333 at Berwick on Tweed, for this service to the crown, John Arundell was rewarded with the granting of a charter which gave his manor of St Columb Major the right to hold a market every Thursday, also granted was the right to hold an annual fair on the ‘day and the morrow of the Feast of St Columba the Virgin.' This charter was issued at Berwick on Tweed by Edward III and signed John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, Edward III younger brother

The text of the charter reads:

Roll 7th, Edward the Third. For Sir John de Arendel, the king to the same, health.

Know ye, that we of our especial grace, have granted and, by this our charter, have confirmed to our beloved and faithful John de Arendel, that he and his heirs, for ever, may have a market every Thursday at his Manor of St Columb Magna, and a fair every year, on the eve and on the day and the morrow of St Columba the Virgin, to these being witness..........given by our hand at Berwick on Tweed, the 23rd day of July 1333 at the battle of Halidown Hill, the 19th day of July 1333.

By writ of our Privy Seal.

St Columb Major's Charter, courtesy of Denise and Phil Tremain

The growth of the Cornish market town of St Columb Major owes much to the Arundell family. Known as the Great Arundells they were a powerful and noteworthy family. You can read more about them here:

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/scoboryo-of-st-columb-major.html