Mediaeval History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Mediaeval History’
An austere Bishop of Winchester scolded St Edith for her comely nun’s habit, but the young woman’s eyes saw further than his.
St Edith of Wilton was a daughter of King Edgar (r. 959-975). The nuns of the convent, which was ruled by her mother Wulfthryth, wore rather nice habits and the Bishop of Winchester did not did not think them suitable. Edith, however, was not one to judge a book by its cover.
Four knights thought they were helping their King, but they could not have made a greater mistake.
Henry II (r. 1154-1189) appointed his friend Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury, thinking he would always do as he was told. But Becket proved very independent-minded, and even had to flee to France to escape his King’s anger.
Soon after Athelstan became England’s first king, he played a trick on the King of Norway which demanded a reply.
According to the Norse chronicler Snorro Sturluson, King Harald Fairhair of Norway struck up a curious friendship with King Athelstan of England, Alfred’s grandson. It all began when Athelstan played a trick on the ageing Harald, which involved a magnificent jewelled sword.
Charles Dickens explains how King Alfred the Great overcame the Great Heathen Army in 878, with the help of a little music.
In 865, the Great Army of the Vikings from across the North Sea had been swarming over England, intent on all-out conquest of a country by then better known for its science and art than for its military readiness. But as Charles Dickens tells us, in 878 King Alfred of Wessex turned the tables on his enemy, and not just with battlefield courage.
King John had already lost most of the Crown’s lands in France, but when Aquitaine was threatened Edward III knew he must act fast.
‘The Hundred Years’ War’ is a nineteenth-century term for the Anglo-French wars of 1337-1453, a tussle for control of various provinces in France inherited by the English kings, chiefly the highly lucrative Aquitaine. But some famous victories in battle could not hide that for England the war was a long and costly defeat.
With the Lambert Simnel affair not yet forgotten, another boy claims to be the rightful King of England.
After Henry Tudor seized the crown in 1485, he could take some comfort in the fact that his most credible rivals, Edward IV’s sons Edward and Richard, had been murdered by their uncle Richard III. But as their fate was only a rumour, they became magnets for impostors, first Lambert Simnel in 1487, and in 1491 the rather more dangerous Perkin Warbeck.