#Lord Mountjoy

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1600 – O'Neill engages Mountjoy's forces in the Battle of Moyry Pass.

In September of 1600, the Irish forces of Hugh O’Neill, whom the English had made Earl of Tyrone, were in rebellion against the crown. Two years earlier O’Neill and his principle ally “Red” Hugh O’Donnell had routed an English army under Sir Henry Bagenal at Yellow Ford, expelling the English completely from the lands of O’Neill. Now Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, was marching on Tyrone with…

[werewolfetone]

& btw genuinely cannot stop thinking about how lord mountjoy's secretary was really out there writing about him like dear queen elizabeth don't even worry your wee head about the war effort because his lordship is getting really into healthy living. for instance he makes sure to smoke as much as possible so he can limit the amount of fresh air he has to breathe to the absolute minimum necessary

[fideidefenswhore]

Chapuys had taken up Catherine's cause upon his arrival in London after the recess of the court of Blackfriars. Until Anne's succession, her uncle often communicated with Chapuys, ingratiating himself with the diplomat in the hope that he might learn secret information concerning Charles V. In this context, the Duke [of Norfolk]'s statement that both Anne's father and he were opposed to the King's decision to marry her was significant because this information enabled the hostile ambassador to assume that Anne, presumably acting without family support, had bewitched Henry into divorcing Catherine. Following this assumption to its logical conclusion, Chapuys could then blame Anne instead of the King for the European crisis the marital dispute had created. Far from being a valid private account of the royal household, Chapuys's dispatches provide an intriguing history of what he thought, and of what others wanted him to think, about court politics. The fact is that after 1531, when Catherine of Aragon was rusticated, no major courtier was willing to plead with the king of her behalf and, with the break-up of her household, her support at court ceased to exist. Even Thomas More's continuation as Lord Chancellor rested on the assumption that King and Parliament could decide the succession, and when he resigned it was to defend a Church whose unity was under attack. In 1533, the King's councillors, including William, Lord Mountjoy, Catherine's own chamberlain, attempted to persuade her to accept the title of Princess Dowager.

Tudor Political Culture, Dale Hoak

[cto10121]

One of my increasingly favorite pastimes is imagining Shakespeare as an actor performing roles in his own plays, so without further ado, here are the roles we think Shakespeare he performed (per stylistic analysis and contemporary accounts):

The Lord (Induction) (Taming of the Shrew)

Antonio, the Duke (Two Gentlemen of Verona)

Suffolk (Henry VI Part 2)

Warwick, Old Clifford (Henry VI Part 3)

Mortimer or Exeter (Henry VI Part 1)

Aaron (Titus Andronicus)

Clarence, Scrivener, and Third Citizen (Richard III)

Egeon (Comedy of Errors)

Friar Lawrence and Chorus (Romeo and Juliet)

Duke Theseus (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Old Gaunt and/or the Gardener, the Lord (Richard II)

Leonato, the Friar (Much Ado About Nothing)

King Henry, Rumor (Henry IV Parts I & II)

The Garter Inn’s Host, Master Ford (The Merry Wives of Windsor)

Old Kno’well (Every Man In His Humor by Ben Jonson)

Chorus, Ely, and Mountjoy (Henry V)

Adam, later Corin (As You Like It)

Flavius (Julius Caesar)

Ghost, First Player (Hamlet)

Antonio (Twelfth Night)

Ulysses (Troilus and Cressida)

Macro and Sabinus (Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson)

Brabantio (Othello)

The King (All’s Well that Ends Well)

The Poet (Timon of Athens)

Duncan, perhaps Banquo later on (Macbeth)

Antiochus and Simonides, Cleon (Pericles)

[jenreadsstuff]

FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC

...and later...

"This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off... What you've got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?"

Love those Dirty Harry moments in G!G!

[thedudleywomen]

ON THIS DAY - 25 December 1634

On This Day (25 Dec) in 1634, 91 year old Lettice Knollys, Countess of Leicester, died at her home in Drayton Bassett, Staffordshire.

Lettice had made Drayton Bassett her primary residence in c.1593. The manor had been bequeathed to her following her husband Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester's death in September 1588. Initially, her right to inherit the manor and its lands, the lease of which Dudley himself had purchased in 1579, had been disputed; however, with the support of her son, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Lettice was able to rightfully claim her inheritance.

Following her marriage to Sir Christopher Blount in 1589, the couple resided between Drayton Bassett and other properties previously belonging to Dudley, including Wanstead Hall, Essex and the eponymous Leicester House, on The Strand, Westminster. However, in the early 1590s, Lettice bestowed these properties on her son Robert, who renamed Leicester House as 'Essex House'; Essex House soon became a gathering place for the younger (and increasing disillusioned) Elizabethan generation, including where Lettice's daughter Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich continued her long-standing affair with Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy.

On moving to Drayton Bassett, Christopher Blount, who had previously acted as Dudley's Master of Horse and had accompanied him on military campaigns, also began his political career, being elected as a Member of Parliament for Staffordshire from 1593, and Justice of the Peace from 1594. However, Blount continued with his military career, accompanying his stepson on his military campaigns, including the disastrous Ireland campaign in 1599; whilst Essex was imprisoned, Blount returned to Drayton, and his life with Lettice. Be it misguided support, or boredom of the country, but Blount was invited by Robert Devereux to join his ill-fated attempted rebellion, known as 'Essex's Rebellion' in February 1601, which ended in the arrest and execution of both men.

Lettice does not appear to have been alone at Drayton, with visits from multiple generations of her family. In 1593, her sister Catherine came to live with her, on the death of her husband, and her daughter Penelope (and her children) were also regular visitors, until her own death in 1607. Lettice also hosted the wedding of her granddaughter Frances Devereux in 1617, to William Seymour, the grandson of Katherine Grey and Edward Seymour. 

As per her request set out in her will, Lettice was buried with her second husband Robert Dudley, within the Beauchamp Chapel, St Mary's Church, Warwick, in February 1635, with an elaborate tomb with matching effigies, funded by herself.

[cruger2984]

THE DESCRIPTION OF BLESSED DOMINIC COLLINS Feast Day: October 30

Dominic Collins (aka Doiminic Ó Coileáin) gave up the life of a soldier for the peace of religious life, but was executed when he accompanied a military force as a chaplain in a campaign to free Ireland from English Rule.

Collins was born to a well-established family in Youghal in County Cork about the year 1566 when Elizabeth I was queen of England and Ireland. The Irish Parliament had established Anglicanism six years earlier as the official religion of the land.

These laws were not fully enforced yet in Youghal, but young Catholic men had few careers open to them so young Collins chose to leave Ireland to seek his fortune in France. He managed to enlist in the army of the Duke of Mercoeur who was fighting against the Huguenots in Brittany. He served with distinction in the cause of the Catholic League for over nine years and rose through the ranks. His greatest moment came when he captured a strategic castle and was appointed military governor of the region.

With the passing of time, Collins became less and less enamored of soldiering, even though King Philip II had granted him a pension and placed him in the garrison at La Coruña on Spain’s Bay of Biscay.

During Lent 1598, he met a fellow Irishman, a Jesuit priest called Thomas White, whom he told of his desire to do something else with his life. He decided that he wanted more than anything else to join the Jesuits and serve as a brother. The superiors were initially reluctant to accept him because they felt that a battle-hardened soldier would never be able to settle into religious life. Dominic bombarded the provincial with requests and was finally admitted to the novitiate in Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain.

If he was seeking peace and quiet in religious life, he was not to find it. He had barely arrived in Santiago when the Jesuit College was struck by plague.

Seven of the community were infected and many others fled for fear of catching the awful disease. Collins stayed on and tended the victims for two months, nursing some of them back to health and comforting the others in their last hours. He had proved his worth and completed his novitiate without further question. A report sent to Rome by his superiors states that he was a man of sound judgment and great physical strength, mature, prudent and sociable, though inclined to be hot-tempered and obstinate.

Ireland was in turmoil at this time. In Ulster O'Neill and O'Donnell were defying the power of the English crown and trying to call all of Ireland into revolt. In 1601, King Philip III of Spain decided to send an army to the help of the Irish rebels. A number of priests traveled with the expedition including an Irish Jesuit, Father James Archer who asked that Brother Collins be sent as his companion for the journey even though the priest had never met Collins.

The two set sail on different vessels, however, which became separated during a storm. Collins' ship had to return to La Coruña before finally reaching Ireland. Collins arrived at Castlehaven on Dec. 1, 1601, only 30 miles from his native Kinsale, where the main part of the Spanish fleet was already ensconced. A large English army under Lord Mountjoy had laid siege to the town.

Irish forces converged on Kinsale from North and South. The leaders were Hugh O'Neill, Red Hugh O'Donnell and O'Sullivan Beare from West Cork. The Irish army surrounded the English on the outside while the Spanish faced the English from inside the town. The Irish attacked at dawn on Christmas Eve, but for reasons never fully understood, suffered a humiliating defeat, with no help from the Spaniards who remained within the town.

The Irish scattered, with the O'Neill and O'Donnell armies marching northward while O'Sullivan Beare led his people home to the Beare peninsula. Dominic Collins accompanied him in his retreat. Thus he found himself some months later besieged inside Dunboy Castle with 143 defenders.

As a religious, Dominic Collins could not take part in the fighting but tended the wounded. After a bitter siege, with huge casualties, the defenders surrendered.

Almost all were put to the sword, but on June 17, the Jesuit was taken off in chains for interrogation. He was savagely tortured and promised rich rewards if he would renounce his Catholic faith. Even though some of his own family visited him and encouraged him to pretend a conversion in order to save his life, he stood firm.

On October 31, 1602, Dominic was taken to Youghal for execution. Before he ascended the scaffold to be hanged, he addressed the crowd in Irish and English, saying that he was happy to die for his faith.

He was so cheerful that an officer remarked: "He is going to his death as eagerly as I would go to a banquet."

Collins overheard him and replied: "For this cause I would be willing to die not once but a thousand deaths."

[danmoorhouse]

Derbyshire Lawlessness

On the 1st January 1434 90 men under Thomas Foljambe attacked their rivals, the Longfords in Chesterfield. Parish Church.

Henry Longford + William Bradshaw were killed & Sir Henry Pierrepont was maimed as detailed in an oyer and terminer commission of March 1434 issued to the duke of Bedford, Humphrey Stafford duke of Buckingham, William de la Pole Earl of Suffolk and two judges

The parish churches were frequently the scene of open conflict in the 15th century where the pulpit could be used to whip up support!

In 1434 alone there were 200 juries assembled to try to deal with the Foljambe-Pierrepont / Longford dispute. Pierrepont is known to have sat on at least one and others were definitely pro Foljambe.

The original source of the quarrel is largely obscure but may have been an attempt by one Richard Brown g Replan to get Thomas Foljambe acquitted g felony by 'trickery' and it appears that Foljambe had the key support of the Vernons. It also became apparent that Foljambe had prevented Pierrepont from collecting profits from Chesterfield Fair which was licensed to him by Joan Holland, Countess of Kent. Foljambe was also accused of illegally issuing 21 liveries - the most ever recorded in a session - highlighting the wider political sympathies as his co-accused included Sir Ralph Cromwell, Henry, Lord Grey & Joan Beauchamp, Lady Bergavenny.

The largest skirmish reported was in 1454 when 1,000 men attacked Walter Blount at Elvaston including Longfords and Vernons, now apparently working together!

Such large numbers of gentry were involved that it was almost impossible to recruit a jury at all. Richard, duke g York, John, Earl of Shrewsbury and 2 judges eventually heard the case at Derby in July 1454 and continued in September 1454 and at Chesterfield in March 145S, still without enough jurors to try the key figures.

Despite the undoubted truth of Blount's case, the family were almost completely isolated and Vernon and Longford refused to attend the sessions. It is probably that greater forces were at work: Humphrey Stafford duke of Buckingham may well have encouraged the attack on Blount who was a retainer of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, Buckingham and Warwick being rivals in Warwickshire and although Buckingham had supported York's protectorate, he was a staunch supporter of Henry VI and Somerset.

Buckingham retained Vernon after the first session and Vernon responded by bringing men from across the Peak to join the fray. Buckingham was clearly lining up against Warwick's man, showing that it was not only in the north that local rivalries and national politics were intertwined.

The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century

Susan M. Wright

Derbyshire Record Society Volume VIII, 1983

Image: Garter stall plate of Walter Blount, 1st Baron Mountjoy (c.1416-1474), KG. St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Image published in: Hope, W. H. St. John, The Stall Plates of the Knights of the Order of the Garter 1348 – 1485

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1641 – Rory O’More, Lord Maguire and Sir Pheilim O’Neill initiate a major revolt in Armagh.

The Irish Uprising of 1641 was a long-term result of the “plantation” policy of Tudor and Stuart monarchs under which Ireland was aggressively colonised by Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. From the mid-16th century, Irish landowners were dispossessed to make way for the settlers and a vicious cycle developed whereby rebellion against the English government was followed by further…

[mortonmattd]

Amazing Historical Events That Occurred on 3/30🎉 #shorts #history

March 30th has seen some truly amazing historical events! In 1282, the people of Sicily rose up in revolt against King Charles I in the famous Sicilian Vespers. This event was a major turning point in the history of Sicily, and helped to spark a large-scale revolt against the monarchy.

In 1603, the English army led by Lord Mountjoy was victorious in the Battle of Mellifont against the Irish. This battle was decisive in the Nine Years' War and resulted in the treaty of Mellifont that would bring an end to the conflict.

Fast forward to 1814, where the Sixth Coalition forces marched into Paris after their successful defeat of Napoleon. This marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and many consider it to be one of the most amazing historical events of all time.

In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for the sum of $7.2 million in the famous Alaska Purchase. This was an incredibly important event that shaped the future of the US, and still has major implications today.

Finally, in 1945, the Soviet Union invaded Austria, marking the beginning of the Cold War. This was the start of a decades-long conflict that would shape much of the world for the rest of the 20th century.

March 30th is certainly a day that has seen some amazing historical events, from the Sicilian Vespers to the beginning of the Cold War. It's an important day in history that deserves to be remembered and celebrated.

Amazing Historical Events That Occurred on March 30th

In 1282, the people of Sicily rose up in revolt against King Charles I in the historic Sicilian Vespers. Fast forward to 1603, where the English army led by Lord Mountjoy was victorious in the Battle of Mellifont against the Irish.

In 1814, the Sixth Coalition forces marched into Paris after their successful defeat of Napoleon. Over 50 years later, in 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for the sum of $7.2 million in the famous Alaska Purchase. Finally, in 1945, the Soviet Union invaded Austria, marking the beginning of the Cold War.

https://bit.ly/freebetwithCrypto

https://splinterlands.com?ref=mortonmattd1

https://bit.ly/getonHive

https://ecency.com/signup?referral=m0rt0nmattd

https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=m0rt0nmattd

https://exode.io/?ref=790e9e1

https://bit.ly/WinCryptoWithMe

https://bit.ly/FreeCryptoDrip

https://bit.ly/FreeZECdrip

[voxmyriad]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CONvergence Con (@convergencecon)

My Lady Sybil! With Lord Mountjoy Gayscale Talonthrust III of Ankh, used to win prizes you know, retired now of course.

I also gave out "Whinny If You Love Dragons" badge ribbons and lumps of (chocolate) coal.

I LOVE your Vimes cosplay! I just did a Sybil feeding her dragons cosplay for CONVergence over the 4th of July in Minneapolis, and I'll probably bring her to Twin Cities Con. Just really fun to see a Vimes in the wild!

A Sybil cosplayer?

Also love to see it!

[dwellordream]

“Henry's marriage to Catherine had long since grown cold. Though his wife remained, and would remain, loyal and devoted, Henry was in very different case. The raptures of the early days had faded and the consequent demands upon him for self-discipline and generosity had found him wanting. Catherine was five years his senior. In I527 he was still in his prime, in his mid-thirties, she over forty. As king he could satisfy desire all too easily, for who would refuse a king easily, especially a king such as he? Fidelity was rare among monarchs and the temptation besetting him, in particular, strong.

At first Henry had been a gallant husband. Catherine had accompanied him to every feast and triumph, he had worn her initials on his sleeve in the jousts and called himself 'Sir Loyal Heart'. He had shown her off to visitors, confided in her, run to her with news. Though there had been talk of a lady to whom he showed favour while campaigning in France, he had slipped home ahead of his army and galloped to Catherine at Richmond in order to lay the keys of the two cities he had captured at her feet.

We cannot know when he first succumbed to the temptation of adultery, but it must have been within five years of his marriage, when there appeared on the scene one Elizabeth Blount, a lady-in-waiting of Queen Catherine and a cousin of Lord Mountjoy - and she may not have been the first. She caught the king's eye during the New Year festivities in I5I4, that is, shortly after he had returned from the first campaign in France. Bessie Blount eventually bore him a son, in I519. Subsequently she married into a gentle family, the Talboys of Lancashire, with a dower of lands in that county and Yorkshire assigned by act ofParliament. Hers, then, was a fate less than death; and her son, the duke of Richmond, was occasionally to acquire considerable political and diplomatic significance.

Next there was Mary Boleyn, since 1521 wife of William Carey, daughter of a royal councillor and diplomat, and sister of Anne. That Mary was at one time Henry's mistress, and this presumably after her marriage, is beyond doubt. Years later there was a strong rumour that she too had born Henry a son, but we cannot be sure. Anyway we may guess that the liaison was over by l526, and when her younger sister climbed on to the English throne, with perhaps pardonable pique, she dismissed Mary from the court. The latter was to do well enough, with her family at the centre of affairs during the reign of her niece, Elizabeth I - which was more than could be said of Bessie Blount. And finally there was Anne, Thomas Boleyn's younger daughter.

Following in the wake of her sister, who had been in the entourage that accompanied Mary Tudor to France in 1514, Anne had crossed the Channel about 1519 to enter the household of Queen Claude, wife of Francis I, an amiable lady who had several young girls in her care and supervised their education. The newcomer to the royal school must have been about twelve years old. She stayed in France until the out- break of war in 1522 and then came home, by which time she was on the way to becoming an accomplished and mature girl. She does not seem to have been remarkably beautiful, but she had wonderful dark hair in abundance and fine eyes, the legacy of Irish ancestors, together with a firm mouth and a head well set on a long neck that gave her authority and grace.

On her return, if not before, her future had apparently been settled, ironically by Henry and Wolsey. She would marry Sir James Butler, an Irish chieftain and claimant to the earldom of Ormond, to which the Boleyns, rivals of the Butlers, had long aspired. Anne was therefore to mend the feud by uniting families and claims. Had this familiar kind of device been executed, and had this been the sum total ofher experience ofhow marriage and politics could interweave, things might have been very different for England, if not for Ireland. But Butler's price was too high and Anne remained in England.

Her father, aided perhaps by her grandfather, the second duke of Norfolk, had meanwhile brought her to Court, as he had her sister before her. There she eventually attracted attention, first from Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, a cousin of hers; then from Henry Percy, son of the earl of Northumberland and one of the large number of young men of quality resident in Wolsey's household. Alas, Percy was already betrothed. At the king's behest, Wolsey refused to allow him to break his engagement and, summoning him to his presence, rated him for falling for a foolish girl at Court. When words failed, the cardinal told the father to remove his son and knock some sense into him. Percy was carried off forthwith- and thus began that antipathy for Wolsey that Anne never lost.

But it may well be that, when Henry ordered Wolsey to stamp on Percy's suit, it was because he was already an interested party himself and a rival for the girl's affection of perhaps several gay courtiers, including Thomas Wyatt. The latter's grandson later told a story ofhow Wyatt, while flirting once with Anne, snatched a locket hanging from her pocket which he refused to return. At the same time, Henry had been paying her attention and taken a ring from her which he thereafter wore on his little finger. A few days later, Henry was playing bowls with the duke of Suffolk, Francis Bryan and Wyatt, when a dispute arose about who had won the last throw.

Pointing with the finger which bore the pilfered ring, Henry cried out that it was his point, saying to Wyatt with a smile, 'I tell thee it is mine.' Wyatt saw the ring and understood the king's meaning. But he could return the point. 'And if it may like your majesty,' he replied, 'to give me leave that I may measure it, I hope it will be mine.' Whereupon he took out the locket which hung about his neck and started measuring the distance between the bowls and the jack. Henry recognized the trophy and, muttering something about being deceived, strode away.

But the chronology ofAnne's rise is impossible to discover exactly. All that can be said is that by I525-6 what had probably hitherto been light dalliance with an eighteen or nineteen year-old girl had begun to grow into something deeper and more dangerous. In the normal course of events, Anne would have mattered only to Henry's conscience, not to the history of England. She would have been used and discarded - along with those others whom Henry may have taken and who are now forgotten. But, either because of virtue or ambition, Anne refused to become his mistress and thus follow the conventional, inconspicuous path of her sister; and the more she resisted, the more, apparently, did Henry prize her.

Had Catherine's position been more secure she would doubtless have ridden this threat. Indeed, had it been so, Anne might never have dared to raise it. But Catherine had still produced no heir to the throne. The royal marriage had failed in its first duty, namely, to secure the succession. Instead, it had yielded several miscarriages, three infants who were either still-born or died immediately after birth (two of them males), two infants who had died within a few weeks ofbirth (one ofthem a boy) and one girl, Princess Mary, now some ten years old. His failure to produce a son was a disappointment to Henry, and as the years went by and no heir appeared, ambassadors and foreign princes began to remark the fact, and English diplomacy eventually to accommodate it, provisionally at least, in its reckoning.

Had Henry been able to glimpse into the second halfofthe century he would have had to change his mind on queens regnant, for his two daughters were to show quality that equalled or outmeasured their father's; and even during his reign, across the Channel, there were two women who rendered the Habsburgs admirable service as regents ofthe Netherlands. Indeed, the sixteenth century would perhaps produce more remarkable women in Church and State than any predecessor - more than enough to account for John Knox's celebrated anti-feminism and more than enough to make Henry's patriarchal convictions look misplaced. But English experience of the queen regnant was remote and unhappy, and Henry's conventional mind, which no doubt accorded with his subjects', demanded a son as a political necessity.

When his only surviving legitimate child, Mary, was born in February 1516, Henry declared buoyantly to the Venetian ambassador, 'We are both young; if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God sons will follow.' But they did not. Catherine seems to have miscarried in the autumn of 1517 and in the November of the following year was delivered of another still-born. This was her last pregnancy, despite the efforts of physicians brought from Spain; and by 1525 she was almost past child-bearing age. There was, therefore, a real fear of a dynastic failure, of another bout of civil war, perhaps, or, if Mary were paired off as the treaty of 1525 provided, of England's union with a continental power.

Catherine, for the blame was always attached to her and not to Henry, was a dynastic misfortune. She was also a diplomatic one. Charles's blunt refusal to exploit the astonishing opportunity provided by his victory at Pavia and to leap into the saddle to invade and partition France had been an inexplicable disappointment. Of course, had Henry really been cast in the heroic mould he would have invaded single- handed. But established strategy required a continental ally. Eleven years before, in 1514., Ferdinand of Spain had treated him with contempt and Henry had cast around for means of revenge, and there had been a rumour then that he wanted to get rid of his Spanish wife and marry a French princess.

Whether Henry really contemplated a divorce then has been the subject of controversy, which surely went in favour of the contention that he did not - especially when a document listed in an eighteenth-century catalogue of the Vatican Archives, and thought to relate to the dissolution of the king's marriage - a document which has since disappeared - was convincingly pushed aside with the suggestion that it was concerned with Mary Tudor's matrimonial affairs, not Henry's. Undoubtedly, this must dispose of the matter even more decisively than does the objection that, in the summer of 1514, Catherine was pregnant. In 1525, however, the situation was different. Charles had rebuffed Henry's military plans and, by rejecting Mary's hand, had thrown plans for the succession into disarray.

For a moment the king evidently thought of advancing his illegitimate son - who, in June 1525, was created duke of Richmond. But this solution was to be overtaken by another which Henry may have been contemplating for some time, namely, to disown his Spanish wife. Catherine, therefore, was soon in an extremely embarrassing position. Tyndale asserted, on first-hand evidence, that \Volsey had placed informants in her entourage and told of one 'that departed the Court for no other reason than that she would no longer betray her mistress'.' When Mendoza arrived in England in December 1526, he was prevented for months from seeing the queen and, when he did, had to endure the presence of Wolsey who made it virtually impossible to communicate with her. It was the ambassador's opinion that 'the principal cause of [her] misfortune is that she identifies herselfentirely with the emperor's interests'; an exaggeration, but only an exaggeration.

The king, then, had tired of his wife and fallen in love with one who would give herself entirely to him only if he would give himself entirely to her; his wife had not borne the heir for which he and the nation longed, and it was now getting too late to hope; he had been disappointed by Catherine's nephew, Charles V, and now sought vengeance in a diplomatic revolution which would make the position of a Spanish queen awkward to say the least. Any one of these facts would not have seriously endangered the marriage, but their coincidence was fatal. If Henry's relations with Catherine momentarily improved in the autumn of 1525 so that they read a book together and appeared to be very friendly, soon after, probably, Henry never slept with her again.

The divorce, which came into the open in early 1527 was therefore due to more than a man's lust for a woman. It was diplomatically expedient and, so some judged, dynastically urgent. As well as this, it was soon to be publicly asserted, it was theologically necessary, for two famous texts from the book of Leviticus apparently forbade the very marriage that Henry had entered. His marriage, therefore, was not and never had been, lawful. The miscarriages, the still-births, the denial of a son were clearly divine punishment for, and proof of, transgression of divine law. Henry had married Catherine by virtue of a papal dispensation of the impediment of affinity which her former marriage to Arthur had set up between them.

But Leviticus proclaimed such a marriage to be against divine law - which no pope can dispense. So he will begin to say. And thus what will become a complicated argument took shape. Henry had laid his hand on a crucial weapon - the only weapon, it seemed, with which he could have hoped to achieve legitimately what he now desired above all else. How sincere he was is impossible to determine. More than most, he found it difficult to distinguish between what was right and what he desired. Certainly, before long he had talked, thought and read himself into a faith in the justice of his cause so firm that it would tolerate no counter-argument and no opposition, and convinced himself that it was not only his right to throw aside his alleged wife, but also his duty - to himself, to Catherine, to his people, to God.

At the time, and later, others would be accused of planting the great scruple, the levitical scruple, in Henry's mind. Tyndale, Polydore Vergil and Nicholas Harpsfield (in his life of Sir Thomas More) charged Wolsey with having used John Longland, bishop of Lincoln and royal confessor, to perform the deed. But this was contradicted by Henry, Longland and Wolsey. In 1529, when the divorce case was being heard before the legatine court at Blackfriars, Wolsey publicly asked Henry to declare before the court 'whether I have been the chiefinventor or first mover of this matter unto your Majesty; for I am greatly suspected of all men herein'; to which Henry replied, 'My lord cardinal, I can well excuse you herein. Marry, you have been rather against me in attempt- ing or setting forth thereof' - an explicit statement for which no obvious motive for misrepresentation can be found and which is corroborated by later suggestions that Wolsey had been sluggish in pushing the divorce forwards.

Longland too spoke on the subject, saying that it was the king who first broached the subject to him 'and never left urging him until he had won him to give his consent'. On another occasion Henry put out a different story: that his conscience had first been 'pricked upon divers words that were spoken at a certain time by the bishop of Tarbes, the French king's ambassador, who had been here long upon the debating for the conclusion of the marriage between the princess our daughter, Mary, and the duke of Orleans, the French king's second son'. It is incredible that an ambassador would have dared to trespass upon so delicate a subject as a monarch's marriage, least of all when he had come to negotiate a treaty with that monarch.

Nor was it likely that he should have sug- gested that Mary was illegitimate when her hand would have been very useful to French diplomacy. Besides, the bishop of Tarbes only arrived in England in April 1527, that is, a few weeks before Henry's marriage was being tried by a secret court at Westminster. The bishop could not have precipitated events as swiftly as that. No less significantly, another account ofthe beginnings of the story, given by Henry in 1528, says that doubts about Mary's legitimacy were first put by the French to English ambassadors in France - not by the bishop of Tarbes to his English hosts.

He and his compatriots may have been told about the scruple or deliberately encouraged by someone to allude to it in the course of negotiations, but did not invent it; nor, probably, did Anne Boleyn - as Pole asserted. It is very likely that Henry himselfwas the author ofhis doubts. After all, he would not have needed telling about Leviticus. Though he might not have read them, the two texts would probably have been familiar to him if he had ever explored the reasons for the papal dispensation for his marriage, and he was enough of a theologian to be able to turn to them now, to brood over them and erect upon them at least the beginnings of the argument that they forbade absolutely the marriage which he had entered.

Wolsey said later that Henry’s doubts had sprung partly from his own study and partly from discussion with 'many theologians'; but since it is difficult to imagine that anyone would have dared to question the validity of the royal marriage without being prompted by the king, this must mean that the latter's own 'assiduous study and erudition' first gave birth to the 'great scruple' and that subsequent conference with others encouraged it. Moreover, Henry may have begun to entertain serious doubts about his marriage as early as 1522 or 1523, and have broached his ideas to Longland then - for, in 1532, the latter was said to have heard the first mutterings of the divorce 'nine or ten years ago'.'

By the time that Anne Boleyn captured the king, therefore, the scruple may already have acquired firm roots, though probably not until early 1527 was it mentioned to Wolsey who, so he said, when he heard about it, knelt before the king 'in his Privy Chamber the space of an hour or two, to persuade him from his will and appetite; but I could never bring to pass to dissuade him therefrom'. What had begun as a perhaps hesitant doubt had by now matured into aggressive conviction.”

- J.J. Scarisbrick, “The Repudiation of the Hapsburgs.” in Henry VIII

[dailytudors]

Celebrating the New King of England & his Queen Consort:

On the 24th of June 1509, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon were jointly crowned at Westminster Abbey amidst huge pomp, greeted with public acclaim go from their subjects, high and low. 

As some historians point out from contemporary sources, the coronation was a success and up to that point, one of the biggest demonstrations of dynastic power of the century. These contemporaries paint not just a portrait of an impressive king but two young monarchs who were both alike in royal dignity. "... the following morning Catherine and Henry processed from the palace into the abbey, where two empty thrones sat waiting on a platform before the altar. A contemporary woodcut shows them seated level with each other, looking into each other’s eyes and smiling as the crowns are lowered on to their heads. It is a potent image of the occasion, intimate in spite of the crowds behind them, suggesting a relationship of two people equal in sovereignty, respect and love. In reality, the positioning of Henry’s throne above hers, and her shortened ceremonial, without an oath, indicates the actual discrepancy between them. He had inherited the throne as a result of his birth; she was his queen because he had chosen to marry her. Above his head the woodcut depicted a huge Tudor rose, a reminder of his great lineage and England’s recent conflicts; Henry’s role was to guide and rule his subjects. Over Catherine sits her chosen device of the pomegranate, symbolic of the expectations of all Tudor wives and queens: fertility and childbirth. In Christian iconography, it also stood for resurrection. In a way, Catherine was experiencing her own rebirth, through this new marriage and the chance it offered her as queen, after the long years of privation and doubt. Westminster Abbey was a riot of colour. Quite in contrast with the sombre, bare-stone interiors of medieval churches today, these pre-Reformation years made worship a tactile and sensual experience, with wealth and ornament acting as tributes and measures of devotion. Inside the abbey, statues and images were gilded and decorated with jewels, walls and capitals were picked out in bright colours and walls were hung with rich arras. All was conducted according to the advice of the 200-year-old Liber Regalis, the Royal Book, which dictated coronation ritual. The couple were wafted with sweet incense while thousands of candles flickered, mingling with the light streaming down through the stained-glass windows. Archbishop Warham was again at the helm, administering the coronation oaths and anointing the pair with oil. Beside her new husband, Catherine was crowned and given a ring to wear on the fourth finger of her right hand, a sort of inversion of the marital ring, symbolising her marriage to her country. She would take this vow very seriously. The coronation proved popular. Henry wrote to the Pope explaining that he had ‘espoused and made’ Catherine ‘his wife and thereupon had her crowned amid the applause of the people and the incredible demonstrations of joy and enthusiasm’. To Ferdinand, he added that ‘the multitude of people who assisted was immense, and their joy and applause most enthusiastic’. There seems little reason to see this just as diplomatic hyperbole. According to Hall, ‘it was demaunded of the people, wether they would receive, obey and take the same moste noble Prince, for their Kyng, who with great reuerance, love and desire, saied and cryed, ye-ye’. Lord Mountjoy employed more poetic rhetoric in his letter to Erasmus, which stated that ‘Heaven and Earth rejoices, everything is full of milk and honey and nectar. Our king is not after gold, or gems, or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality.’ In his coronation verses Thomas More agreed with the general mood, explaining that wherever Henry went ‘the dense crowd in their desire to look upon him leaves hardly a narrow lane for his passage’. They ‘delight to see him’ and shout their good will, changing their vantage points to see him again and again. Such a king would free them from slavery, ‘wipe the tears from every eye and put joy in place of our long distress’. " ~The Six Wives and Many Mistresses Henry VIII by Amy Licence In his book on the Wars of the Roses (Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors), Dan Jones also highlights Henry's good looks and the similarities between him and his maternal grandfather, Edward IV, and the reason for his popular appeal: "Young Henry came to the throne confident and ready to rule. He was well educated, charming and charismatic: truly a prince fit for the renaissance in courtly style, tastes and patronage that was dawning in northern Europe. He had been blessed with the fair coloring and radiant good looks of his grandfather Edward IV: tall, handsome, well built and dashing, here was a king who saw his subjects as peers and allies around whom he had grown up, rather than semialien enemies to be suspected and persecuted." Henry VIII understood the power of propaganda. Like his father, he used powerful imagery to push Tudor propaganda but taking a page from his maternal grandfather, Edward IV, Henry also relied on popular acclaim. He knew how to win the people over and dance his way around every argument; his illustrious court and physical prowess won over foreign ambassadors who like Lord Mountjoy and Sir Thomas More also noted his wife's virtues.

[isadomna]

Katherine of Aragon and Erasmus of Rotterdam

The famous Dutch humanist Desiderus Erasmus held an important place in ensuring humanism became a driving force in England. He visited England at the end of the 1400s where he forged important relationships with English scholars such as Thomas More, John Colet and his former pupil, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy. It was then that he met an eight-year old Prince Henry. He went on to live in England between 1511 and 1514 and lectured at Cambridge University. He advised Henry that to be a great king it was important not just to win wars but also to be educated and show the world that the English court was a court of intellectuals. 

Erasmus was so well respected by the king and queen that Katherine wanted him to be her Latin tutor; however, he could not be lured back to England. “The Queen has tried to get me to be her preceptor; and everyone knows that if I cared to live even a few months at Court, I might heap as many benefices as I likes. But I allow nothing to interfere with my leisure and studious labours.”  However, Erasmus was fascinated by Henry’s studious wife: “As for the Queen, not only is she prodigiously learned for one of her sex, but no less respected for her piety than for her knowledge … The Queen loves literature, which she has studied with good result since her childhood.” 

For Erasmus and others, indeed, the fact that Katherine and women like Sir Thomas More’s clever daughters joined in debates ‘afore the king’s grace’ was truly remarkable. This they put down, in part, to Katherine’s own education under her mother Isabel. ‘Who would not wish,’ asked Erasmus, ‘to live in such a court as hers?. Erasmus called Queen Katherine ‘a unique example in our age … who, with a distaste for the things of no account that women love, devotes a good part of her day to holy reading’. Serious, pious Katherine was a contrast to those women who ‘waste the greatest part of their time in painting their faces or in games of chance and similar amusements’, Erasmus said approvingly.

Although he chose not to return to England, he still held the English court in high regard as a place of intellectuals. He described Henry as “the wisest of contemporary princes and a great lover of literature.” Erasmus believed that the English court had become a place of high learning, writing that “your court is a model of Christian instruction, frequented by persons of the very highest erudition, so that there is no university that could not be jealous of it.” Of course this may be mere flattery of a scholar to his potential patron. But Erasmus also extolled the virtues of the English court in correspondence to other people in Europe. He wrote to Bombasius: “You know how adverse I have always been from the courts of princes; it is a life which I can only regard as gilded in misery under a mask of splendour; but I would gladly give move to a court like that, if only I could grow young again … The men who have the most influence [with Henry and Katherine] are those who excel in the humanities and in integrity as wisdom”.

Both Henry and Katherine continued to be active supporters of the humanist scholars and often both commented on books presented to them. One example is a book written by Erasmus, which Vives presented to the king and queen in 1524. In a letter to Erasmus, Vives explained how the book was received: “[Your] book De Libero Arbitrio was yesterday given to the King, who read a few pages, seemed pleased, and said he should read it through. He pointed out to [me] a passage … which he said delighted him much. The Queen also is much pleased. She desired [me] to salute [you] for her, and says that she thanks him for having treated the subject with so much moderation.” This is a fascinating example which shows that both the king and the queen took a personal interest in the works of the great Erasmus as well as other humanist scholars.

In 1526, Erasmus wrote a lengthy book on marriage entitiled Christiani Matrimonii Institutio (The Institution of Christian Matrimony). Queen Katherine, through her chamberlain Lord William Mountjoy, had commissioned Eramus to write this book. With unforeseeable irony Erasmus refers to her ʹmost sacred and fortunate marriageʹ as exemplary. The book itself explained the essential importance of chastity in women within a Christian marriage and less about female education before marriage. It shows that Katherine was asking various humanist scholars in her acquaintance to write books that may have helped with the moral education of her daughter. The book took Erasmus two years to write and was a bulky 300 pages long. A year later William, Lord Mountjoy wrote to Erasmus explaining that the queen was pleased with the book. “But be well assured that our glorious queen is favourably impressed with your Institution of Christian Marriage. She is most grateful to you for this devoted act of yours, and you will learn amply of her good will towards you from the servant to whom I myself have made it known in some detail.”

However, Erasmus, still bitterly regretting his involvement in the Lutheran controversy, had no intention of becoming entangled in Henry’s matrimonial problems. At the same time, Erasmus refused to be drawn in on the queen’s side. Vives asked him at least twice for an opinion on the marriage, but in a letter of September 1528 Erasmus merely reiterated his suggestion that it would be better for Jove to take two Junos than to put one away. Allen, the editor of Erasmus’s letters, conjectured that a mysterious letter enclosed in one addressed to More was an apology to Katherine for his indiscreet references to divorce in Christiani Matrimonii Institutio. Certainly, Erasmus had previously told More of his fear that she had taken offence, though a letter from Mountjoy had reassured him about her attitude. Is however, his only services to the queen were a letter of cautious consolation sent in March 1528 and a recommendation to Mountjoy that she should read his Vidua Christiana: scarcely a tactful suggestion, in view of Katherine’s defence of her status as Henry’s wife rather than Arthur’s widow. 

Moreover, Erasmus emphasized his neutrality by accepting comissions from Thomas Boleyn, fully aware, as he told Sadoleto, that this was precisely the Boleyns’ object, since his book on marriage for Katherine had given arguments for the indissolubility of the marriage bond. It is a telling comment on the characters of the king and queen that while Henry ignored Erasmus after his refusal to come to England, Katherine continued to read his works and sent him two gifts of money in 1528 and 1529. In 1529 in his treatise De Vidua Christiana (On the Christian Widow), dedicated to Mary of Hungary (niece of Katherine of Aragon) Erasmus mentions the English queen’s masculine gendering of herself: “Catherine, the queen of England -a woman of such learning, piety, prudence, and constancy that you would find nothing in her that is like a woman, nothing indeed that is not masculine, except her gender and her body”

Sources:

María Dowling,  Humanist Support for Katherine of Aragon

Leanne Croon Hickman, Katherine of Aragon : a "pioneer of women's education"? : humanism and women's education in early sixteenth century England

Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen

Allyna E. Ward, Women and Tudor Tragedy: Feminizing Counsel and Representing Gender

[theygotlost]

lol since i took these from the ebook i just copy and pasted the full text for readability. if you care.

Excerpt 1 (from Guards! Guards!)

A streak of green fire blasted out of the back of the shed, passed a foot over the heads of the mob, and burned a charred rosette in the woodwork over the door.

Then came a voice that was a honeyed purr of sheer deadly menace.

“This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off.”

Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows.

A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail.

The rioters watched it, hypnotized.

“Now I know what you’re thinking,” Vimes went on, softly. “You’re wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y’know, I ain’t so sure myself…”

He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon’s ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade:

“What you’ve got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?”

They swayed backward as he advanced.

“Well?” he said. “Are you feeling lucky?”

For a few moments the only sound was Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV’s stomach rumbling ominously as fuel sloshed into his flame chambers.

“Now look, er,” said the leader, his eyes fixed hypnotically on the dragon’s head, “there’s no call for anything like that—”

“In fact he might just decide to flare off all by himself,” said Vimes. “They have to do it to stop the gas building up. It builds up when they get nervous. And, y’know, I reckon you’ve made them all pretty nervous now.”

The leader made what he hoped was a vaguely conciliatory gesture, but unfortunately did it with the hand that was still holding a knife.

“Drop it,” said Vimes sharply, “or you’re history.”

The knife clanged on the flagstones. There was a scuffle at the back of the crowd as a number of people, metaphorically speaking, were a long way away and knew nothing about it.

“But before the rest of you good citizens disperse quietly and go about your business,” said Vimes meaningfully, “I suggest you look hard at these dragons. Do any of them look sixty feet long? Would you say they’ve got an eighty-foot wingspan? How hot do they flame, would you say?”

“Dunno,” said the leader.

Vimes raised the dragon’s head slightly. The leader rolled his eyes.

“Dunno, sir,” he corrected.

“Do you want to find out?”

The leader shook his head. But he did manage to find his voice.

“Who are you, anyway?” he said.

Vimes drew himself up. “Captain Vimes, City Watch,” he said.

This met with almost complete silence. The exception was the cheerful voice, somewhere in the back of the crowd, which said: “Night shift, is it?”

Vimes looked down at his nightshirt. In his hurry to get off his sickbed he’d shuffled hastily into a pair of Lady Ramkin’s slippers. For the first time he saw they had pink pompoms on them.

And it was at this moment that Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV chose to belch.

It wasn’t another stab of roaring fire. It was just a near-invisible ball of damp flame which rolled over the mob and singed a few eyebrows. But it definitely made an impression.

Vimes rallied magnificently. They couldn’t have noticed his brief moment of sheer horror.

“That one was just to get your attention,” he said, pokerfaced. “The next one will be a little lower.”

“Er,” said the leader. “Right you are. No problem. We were just going anyhow. No big dragons here, right enough. Sorry you’ve been troubled.”

“Oh, no,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “You don’t get away that easily!” She reached up onto a shelf and produced a tin box. It had a slot in the lid. It rattled. On the side was the legend: The Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons.

The initial whip-around produced four dollars and thirty-one pence. After Captain Vimes gestured pointedly with the dragon, a further twenty-five dollars and sixteen pence were miraculously forthcoming. Then the mob fled.

Excerpt 2 (from Feet of Clay):

There was a flicker in the glass.

He moved sideways and ducked.

The mirror smashed.

There was the sound of feet somewhere beyond the broken window, and then a crash and a scream.

Vimes straightened up. He fished the largest piece of mirror out of the shaving bowl and propped it up on the black crossbow bolt that had buried itself in the wall.

He finished shaving.

Then he rang the bell for the butler. Willikins materialized. “Sir?”

Vimes rinsed the razor. “Get the boy to nip along to the glazier, will you?”

The butler’s eyes flickered to the window and then to the shattered mirror. “Yes, sir. And the bill to go to the Assassins’ Guild again, sir?”

“With my compliments. And while he’s out he’s to call in at that shop in Five And Seven Yard and get me another shaving mirror. The dwarf there knows the kind I like.”

“Yes, sir. And I shall fetch a dustpan and brush directly, sir. Shall I inform her ladyship of this eventuality, sir?”

“No. She always says it’s my fault for encouraging them.”

“Very good, sir,” said Willikins.

He dematerialized.

Sam Vimes dried himself off and went downstairs to the morning-room, where he opened the cabinet and took out the new crossbow Sybil had given to him as a wedding present. Sam Vimes was used to the old guard crossbows, which had a nasty habit of firing backwards in a tight corner, but this was a Burleigh and Stronginthearm made-to-measure job with the oiled walnut stock. There was none finer, it was said.

Then he selected a thin cigar and strolled out into the garden.

There was a commotion coming from the dragon house. Vimes entered, and shut the door behind him. He rested the crossbow against the door.

The yammering and squeaking increased. Little gouts of flame puffed above the thick walls of the hatching pens.

Vimes leaned over the nearest one. He picked up a newly hatched dragonette and tickled it under the chin. As it flamed excitedly he lit his cigar and savored the smoke.

He blew a smoke ring at the figure hanging from the ceiling. “Good morning,” he said.

The figure twisted frantically. By an amazing piece of muscle control it had managed to catch a foot around a beam as it fell, but it couldn’t quite pull itself up. Dropping was not to be thought of. A dozen baby dragons were underneath it, jumping up and down excitedly and flaming.

“Er…good morning,” said the hanging figure.

“Turned out nice again,” said Vimes, picking up a bucket of coal. “Although the fog will be back later, I expect.”

He took a small nugget of coal and tossed it to the dragons. They squabbled for it.

Vimes gripped another lump. The young dragon that had caught the coal already had a distinctly longer and hotter flame.

“I suppose,” said the young man, “that I could not prevail upon you to let me down?”

Another dragon caught some thrown coal and belched a fireball. The young man swung desperately to avoid it.

“Guess,” said Vimes.

“I suspect on reflection, that it was foolish of me to choose the roof,” said the assassin.

“Probably,” said Vimes. He’d spent several hours a few weeks ago sawing through joists and carefully balancing the roof tiles.

“I should have dropped off the wall and used the shrubbery.”

“Possibly,” said Vimes. He’d set a bear-trap in the shrubbery.

He took some more coal. “I suppose you wouldn’t tell me who hired you?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. You know the rules.”

Vimes nodded gravely. “We had Lady Selachii’s son up before the Patrician last week,” said Vimes. “Now, there’s a lad who needs to learn that ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘yes, please’.”

“Could be, sir.”

“And then there was that business with Lord Rust’s boy. You can’t shoot servants for putting your shoes the wrong way round, you know. It’s too messy. He’ll have to learn right from left like the rest of us. And right from wrong, too.”

“I hear what you say, sir.”

“We seem to have reached an impasse,” said Vimes.

“It seems so, sir.”

Vimes aimed a lump at a small bronze and green dragon, which caught it expertly. The heat was getting intense.

“What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why you fellows mainly try it here or at the office. I mean, I walk around a lot, don’t I? You could shoot me down in the street, couldn’t you?”

“What? Like some common murderer, sir?”

Vimes nodded. It was black and twisted, but the Assassins’ Guild had honor of a sort. “How much was I worth?”

“Twenty thousand, sir.”

“It should be higher,” said Vimes.

“I agree.” If the assassin got back to the guild it would be, Vimes thought. Assassins valued their own lives quite highly.

“Let me see now,” said Vimes, examining the end of his cigar. “Guild takes fifty per cent. That leaves ten thousand dollars.”

The assassin seemed to consider this, and then reached up to his belt and tossed a bag rather clumsily towards Vimes, who caught it.

Vimes picked up his crossbow. “It seems to me,” he said, “that if a man were to be let go he might well make it to the door with no more than superficial burns. If he were fast. How fast are you?”

There was no answer.

“Of course, he’d have to be desperate,” said Vimes, wedging the crossbow on the feed table and taking a piece of cord out of his pocket. He lashed the cord to a nail and fastened the other end to the crossbows string. Then, standing carefully to one side, he eased the trigger.

The string moved slightly.

The assassin, watching him upside-down seemed to have stopped breathing.

Vimes puffed at his cigar until the end was an inferno. Then he took it out of his mouth and leaned it against the restraining cord so that it would have just a fraction of an inch to burn before the string began to smolder.

“I’ll leave the door unlocked,” he said. “I’ve never been an unreasonable man. I shall watch your career with interest.”

He tossed the rest of the coals to the dragons, and stepped outside.

It looked like being another eventful day in Ankh-Morpork, and it had only just begun.

As Vimes reached the house he heard a whoosh, a click, and the sound of someone running very fast towards the ornamental lake. He smiled.

Willikins was waiting with his coat. “Remember you have an appointment with his Lordship at eleven, Sir Samuel.”

“Yes, yes,” said Vimes.

“And you are to go and see the Heralds at ten. Her ladyship was very explicit, sir. Her exact words were, ‘Tell him he’s not to try to wriggle out of it again’, sir.”

“Oh, very well.”

“And her ladyship said please to try not to upset anyone.”

“Tell her I’ll try.”

“And your sedan chair is outside, sir.”

Vimes sighed. “Thank you. There’s a man in the ornamental lake. Fish him out and give him a cup of tea, will you? Promising lad, I thought.”

sorry for posting such long excerpts but there are my top 2 vimes moments that are so irresistably sexy to me. i want him so bad

[datsderbunnyblog]

Decided to open my copy of Guards! Guards! at a random page and now I’m giggling at the phrase “This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off”

I’d give anything to see the look on Sybil’s face at that moment, like... “he remembered the whole name”