Category: August - Meandering Through Time

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.

April 12th, 2020

12/4/2020

On the 2nd August in 1894, Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary introduced the tax of Death Duty, we know it 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 families 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 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?

Battle of Tettenhall

5/8/2019

In 910 a large Viking army raided England's shores, they were defeated by an allied army from Mercia and Wessex under the leadership of Aethelflaed and her brother Edward, the children of Alfred the Great.

On the 5th of August, the Battle of Tettenhall, in modern-day Wolverhampton, would be the last major Norse invasion of England.

Aethelflaed's husband was Athelred, King of Mercia, it was on his death in 911 that Aethelflaed took the title of "Lady of the Mercians." Her succession has been described as the 'only case of a female ruler of a kingdom in Anglo-Saxon history' and 'one of the most unique events in early medieval history.'

Some twenty years earlier Aethelflaed had founded an abbey in Gloucester not too far from the original 7th century St Peter's Abbey. In 909, following a Saxon and Mercian raid into Lindsey, a Danish territory, they seized the remains of Saint Oswald. This relic had rested at Bardney Abbey in Lincolnshire since 642, it was taken to St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester were Aethelflaed renamed it St Oswald’s Priory.

Following the Battle of Maserfield, also on the 5th August, St Oswald's remains arrived in Bardney in Lincolnshire, you can read how the abbey's monks refused them entry here.

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/history-blog/battle-of-maserfield-and-the-death-of-oswald-of-northumbria

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.

King Duncan I and Macbeth

12/8/2018

The numerous clans of Scotland had been fighting each other for centuries and would continue to do so right up to the 18th century. One of these battles, in the middle of the 11th century, saw the death of King Duncan I at the hands of one Macbeth.

Duncan, who had a claim to the throne through his mother was king for just six years and Macbeth or mac Bethad mac Findlaich to give him his true name, was a clan leader from the north of Scotland. Like many a monarch in history, Duncan's time as king lasted as long as he could hold onto the crown before another with what they considered an equal claim ripped it from his head. In Duncan's case, his forays into the lands held by Macbeth at Moray cost him his life.

It was on this day that the aforementioned Duncan was slain in battle by Macbeth's forces at Bothnagowan or Pitgaveny near Elgin in Moray.

If you think of Macbeth then your mind automatically thinks of William Shakespeare who used Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle of Scottish History as a basis of his famous play and it is from his work that we, on the whole, view Duncan and Macbeth. Holinshed's work and Shakespeare play should be taken with a pinch of salt, they were written over five hundred years after the event. Shakespeare wrote Macbeth when James I of Scotland was on sitting on the English throne.

There is a painting of a dark-haired bearded Duncan depicted as one, among ninety-three other paintings, of Scotland's heroic kings, it has him wearing a red cloak over his armoured shoulders (the image below is probably based on this work)

The original painting is by a Dutch artist and dates to the reign of Charles II and forms part of the aforedmentioned set commissioned to decorate the Great Gallery at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The inscription on the painting reads - Duncanvs I. The inscriptions on each of the paintings are taken from the work of a 16th-century Scottish historian and together they are an attempt to represent the 'symbolic power' of Scottish kingship.

Duncan's portrait has the following inscription -

'Son of Beatrix, daughter of Malcolm II a good and modest Prince. He was slain by Macbeth, traitorously, in the 6th Year of his Reign’ Duncan I is number eighty-four in the series.

Duncan I's body is stated to be buried on the island of Iona.

Battle of Crecy

25/8/2017

Today in 1346, at Crecy-en-Ponthieu in northern France, a battle was fought that historians argue was the most important battle of the Hundred Years war.

Dr Ian Mortimer wrote of Crecy:

"In July 1346 Edward landed at St Vaast-la-Hogue with about twelve thousand men and proceeded to fight his way across Normandy. He knew that a French army, when it gathered, was bound to outnumber him; but he knew that if he could force the French men-at-arms to charge uphill within range of his carefully arranged archers, he would be able to destroy them with the minimum of actual hand-to-hand fighting. Edward’s victory over the French at Crécy on 26 August 1346 astounded all of Christendom. It was doubly astonishing, for it was not just unexpected, it had obviously been carefully planned. Edward had achieved a military superiority over all his enemies. In later campaigns in France and Scotland in the 1350s he sought to repeat his success; he was never defeated."

An account of the Battle of Crecy, was written by a Colins de Beaumont, who may have been a witness to the battle. The poem is in the form of a dream where soldiers mourn the deaths of the fallen and recall their heroic deeds.

There I saw cast in the middle of the floor
Many a ragged standard
And many a defouled coat,
And many a shield so shattered and so scratched
That no colour nor hue appeared upon them
Ah, Lord! I was so anguished
That I was seeing so many insignia there
And none that I could recognize,
Whether it were a little pennant or a standard,
A shield, a surcoat, or a pommel ornament:
All were dismantled and all were broken.

Colins de Beaumont “On the Crecy Dead”

Deaths of Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley

15/8/2017

Thomas Penn, in his book The Winter King, referred to Henry VII as a miser and stated that ‘money was dearest to his heart.’

In the image below we can see Henry with two of his ministers, Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson, no doubt discussing fiscal policy.

Richard Empson was in charge of recovering money owed to the king and was associated with Edmund Dudley in this capacity, both men, despite following Henry's orders, were hated by the kings subjects, they also had a number of person within court who they may have crossed. When Henry VII died in the April of 1509 and his son ascended England's throne, both Empson and Dudley's days were numbered, who was whispering in the new king's ear?

Henry VIII had both men arrested the day after he became king, and they were the first to fall victim to Henry ridding the court of men who were disliked in his fathers time, and who he considered would damage to his new reign.

Dudley, whose descendants would go on to do rather well in the reign of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, was thought to pay too much attention to feathering his own nest and both men were considered to be tough enforcers of the law.

Following their arrest they were convicted of treason in the October of 1509 and executed this day in 1510 on Tower Hill.

Marriage of Margaret Tudor to Archibald Douglas

5/8/2017

The death of King James IV of Scotland in the September of 1513, whilst he was leading his troops in the Battle of Flodden, left Margaret a widow with an infant son. Just under a year later Margaret would marry Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus.

Of this marriage Polydore Virgil wrote

"This year also Margaret, queen of Scots, wife of James IV killed at Flodden in the fifth year of the king's reign, and elder sister of the King, after the death of her husband married Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, without the consent of the King her brother or the council of Scotland, with which he was not pleased. But after that there arose such strife between the lords of Scotland that she and her husband came into England like banished persons, and wrote to the King for mercy and comfort. The King, ever inclined to mercy, sent them clothing and vessels and all things necessary, wishing them to stay in Northumberland until they knew further of his wishes. And the queen was there delivered of a fair lady called Margaret, and all the country were commanded by the King to do them pleasure."

Her marriage to Douglas gave the Scottish Parliament an excuse to replace her with John Stewart, Duke of Albany.

In this extract from a 1950's tale of Margaret defending herself and the rights of her son.

"My lord," she said, her fingers clutched together to still their trembling, "be you sure no person in the world desires the good of my bairns so much as I do. No man will I support who seeks to harm the rights and privileges of my son's crown, but rather will I do all in my power to bring him justice." She looked round at the lords, her adversaries, but the most of them, playing nervously with quill or sand-box, would not meet her gaze. Only Albany stared at her steadfastly, his thoughts hidden behind the curtain of his eyes. "Do not think," she went on, "that I ever consented to such things as you accuse me of. It will never be found that I did aught to hurt the privilege of my son's crown or mine own honour. I pray you, therefore, my lord Duke, give no credence to such vile slanders of me."

With Douglas, Mary would have one child, a daughter, Margaret who would later give birth to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the ill fated husband of Mary Queen of Scots.

The Bloody Assizes

25/2/2017

On the 19th August in 1685, trials began in Winchester that have come to be known as the Bloody Assizes.

On trial were over one thousand men - rebels who took part in the Monmouth Rebellion. Nearly all would die the horrible death by hanging, disembowelling and quartering, others were transported to the West Indies.

The judges were Sir Henry Pollexfen, Sir Creswell Levinz, Sir Francis Wythens, Sir Robert Wright and Sir William Montague and at their head, Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys.

Judge Jeffreys was a hard, bitter and vengeful man, who Gilbert Burnet in his History of My Own Time writes of Jeffrey.

"His behaviour was beyond anything that was ever heard of in a civilized nation. He was perpetually either drunk or in a rage, liker a fury that the zeal of a judge. He required the prisoners to plead guilty. And in that case he gave them some hope of favour, if they gave him no trouble; otherwise he told them, he would execute the letter of the law upon them in its utmost severity."

Whether you were old and female made no difference as Lady Alice Lisle would find out to her cost.

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/history-blog/category/battle-of-sedgemoor

The Death of Louis XI of France

30/8/2016

Louis XI of France believed that the end justified the means, in 1475 he bought off Edward IV for a payment of 75,000 crowns with the promise of 50,000 a year and the marriage of his son to Edward’s daughter - peace with England meant that he could sort out his problems with Burgundy.

His reign saw the beginning of the end of feudalism and he left France in a better position than that of his father. However he had his critics, for modernising the French army with the use of the Swiss idea of a permanent royal infantry and no temporary contracts Machiavelli called him shortsighted and imprudent. Regardless of the fact that he achieved much in his reign, he was overall generally disliked.

Louis is famously known by a number of nick-names, Louis the Purdent for his skills in the world of diplomacy, and for his scheming and plotting he was known as the Universal Spider.

Loving a good conspiracy did him no good in the end though, he died at the end of August 1483, of what you could argue was the over use of his little grey cells - a brain hemorrhage.