#Master William Rufus

[usernamesarehard1]

For pride month I want to share once again that as far as I am concerned:

Call is gay, demiromantic, arohaze, asexual, demiboy, and laesumianromantic (aromanticism impacted by trauma)

Aaron is gay and demisexual

Tamara is unlabeled and arospec

Jasper is bi

Master Rufus is gay

Constantine is gay

And Alastair is bi

Thank you. And happy pride 🏳️‍🌈

[citrusscale-remastered]

Master Rufus: There is a fine line between insanity and genius. Master Rufus, thinking back to both of his apprentice groups: My apprentices snorted that line every day since they first met.

[theenemyod]

I think Alex gave Master Rufus a lot of useless advice on how to catch the spy or information he knows can't be used to catch him, which both took any suspicion off Alex because how can he be the spy when he's helping catch the spy, and also distracted the masters and assembly with information that won't help and make them waste their time putting useless things in place.

[medievalandfantasymelee]

THE HOT MEDIEVAL & FANTASY MEN MELEE

QUALIFYING ROUND: 140th Tilt

Adhemar, Count of Anjou, A Knight's Tale (2001) VS. Sir Bowen, Dragonheart (1996)

Propaganda

Adhemar, Count of Anjou, A Knight's Tale (2001) Portrayed by: Rufus Sewell

“Okay, I get it, he's a terrible person. He cheats at jousting, he's mean to his herald, he ranks women somewhere below trophies and horses. But reader, I DON'T CARE. I can't help it. I admit that when I was younger (and perhaps more sensible) it was all about William/Ulric and his charming smile. But Adhemar... I would commit CRIMES for this man. Those eyes, the cheekbones, the glower! Do I think I could fix him? No. But, god, we could make each other worse!”

Sir Bowen, Dragonheart (1996) Portrayed by: Dennis Quaid

“Alright, here is why Bowen from Dragonheart is hot: He's an honorable English knight from Camelot, but he fights like a badass Japanese sword master (because they hired a real one to train the actor!). He's got that big, beautiful Dennis Quaid smile that makes his eyes go all crinkly cute. And then with the perfect beard and hair? Hot!”

Additional Propaganda Under the Cut

Additional Propaganda

For Adhemar:

[Photoset]

[Gifset]

For Sir Bowen:

No Additional Propaganda Submitted

[ulkaralakbarova]

The employees of an independent music store learn about each other as they try anything to stop the store being absorbed by a large chain. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Joe Reaves: Anthony LaPaglia Rex Manning: Maxwell Caulfield Jane: Debi Mazar Lucas: Rory Cochrane A.J.: Johnny Whitworth Debra: Robin Tunney Gina: Renée Zellweger Marc: Ethan Embry Berko: Coyote Shivers Warren: Brendan Sexton III Corey Mason: Liv Tyler Eddie: James ‘Kimo’ Wills Mitchell Beck: Ben Bode Croupier: Gary Bolen Woman at Craps Table: Kimber Sissons High Roller: Tony Zaar Reporter: Patt Noday Kathy: Julia Deane Autograph Girl: Kessia Embry Cop #1: Michele Seidman Cop #2: Diana Taylor Cop #3: Bernard Granger Cop #4: Michael Harding Lead Singer: Dave Brockie Flower Delivery Guy: Kawan Rojanatavorn Roulette Table Man: Corey Joshua Taylor Ballet Dancer: Melissa Caulfield Veronica: Lara Travis Film Crew: Director: Allan Moyle Screenplay: Carol Heikkinen Editor: Michael Chandler Production Design: Peter Jamison Art Direction: John Huke Set Decoration: Linda Spheeris Costume Design: Susan Lyall Producer: Tony Ludwig Producer: Arnon Milchan Producer: Michael G. Nathanson Producer: Alan Riche Co-Producer: Paul Kurta First Assistant Director: Joel Segal Second Assistant Director: Philip A. Patterson Camera Operator: Mitchell Amundsen Steadicam Operator: Rick Raphael First Assistant Camera: John Verardi Second Assistant Camera: Ken Hudson “B” Camera Operator: Jeff Moore Still Photographer: Jim Bridges Second Unit Director of Photography: Carolyn Chen Director of Photography: Walt Lloyd Casting: Gail Levin Music Supervisor: Mitchell Leib Negative Cutter: Mo Henry Color Timer: Bob Putynkowski Music Consultant: Karen Glauber Music Editor: Sally Boldt Supervising Sound Editor: Randle Akerson Sound Effects Editor: Joe Earle Sound Effects Editor: Linda Keim Sound Effects Editor: David M. Horton Dialogue Editor: Adam Sawelson Dialogue Editor: Benjamin Beardwood Assistant Sound Editor: Jonathan Phillips Assistant Sound Editor: Bill Ward ADR Supervisor: Linda Folk ADR Editor: Sukey Fontelieu ADR Mixer: Dean Drabin ADR Mixer: Paul J. Zydel ADR Mixer: Christina Tucker ADR Voice Casting: Barbara Harris Foley Supervisor: David Horton Jr. Foley Mixer: Brian Ruberg Foley Artist: Sarah Monat Foley Artist: Robin Harlan Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Gary Alexander Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Don Digirolamo Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Scott Ganary Dolby Consultant: Douglas Greenfield Dialogue Coach: Naomi Joy Todd Craft Service: Theresa Honeycutt Transportation Coordinator: William “Bill” Pitts Transportation Captain: Jeff Long Construction Coordinator: Jeffrey Schlatter Construction Foreman: Ralph Woollaston Location Manager: Mary Weisgerber Meyer Location Manager: Molly Allen Casting Associate: Tricia Tomey Stunt Coordinator: Jery Hewitt Key Makeup Artist: Jeff Goodwin First Assistant Makeup Artist: Rick Pour Key Hair Stylist: Aaron F. Quarles First Assistant Hairstylist: Lizz Scalice Costume Supervisor: Carolyn Greco Costumer: Sevilla Granger Special Effects Coordinator: Greg Hull Sound Mixer: Douglas Axtell Boom Operator: Robert Maxfield Key Grip: Randy Tambling Best Boy Grip: Dennis Zoppe Dolly Grip: Rufus Granger Jr. Dolly Grip: Clarence Brown Gaffer: George Ball Rigging Gaffer: Scott Graves Production Coordinator: Cynthia Streit Assistant Production Coordinator: Amy Chance Script Supervisor: Annie Welles Second Second Assistant Director: Stefania Girolami Goodwin Unit Publicist: Alex L. Worman Production Accountant: Karen Eisenstadt Assistant Accountant: Rick Baer Property Master: Robert Beck Assistant Property Master: Beth Giles Assistant Art Director: John Frick Set Designer: Evelyne Barbier Set Designer: Tim Eckel Set Designer: Alan Hook Set Dresser: Colleen Broderick Art Department Coordinator: Susan Agnoff First Assistant “B” Camera: Joe D’Alessandro First Assistant Editor: Thomas J. Nordberg Assistant Editor: Pamela Jule Yuen Movie Reviews: Filipe Manuel Neto: **An animated film, full of rebellion and energy.** Remember the stores that sold...

[lboogie1906]

William Bell (né Yarbrough; born July 16, 1939) is a soul singer and songwriter. As a performer, he is known for his debut single, 1961’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water”; 1968’s top 10 hit in the UK “Private Number”, a duet with Judy Clay; and his only US top 40 hits, 1976’s “Tryin’ to Love Two”, which hit #1 on the R&B chart. Upon the death of Otis Redding, he released the well-received memorial song “A Tribute to a King”.

As a songwriter, he co-authored the Chuck Jackson hit “Any Other Way” (which was a cover since Bell issued it first) as a follow-up to “You Don’t Miss Your Water”; Billy Idol’s 1986 hit “To Be a Lover”, which was first a hit for him under its original title “I Forgot to Be Your Lover”; and the blues classic “Born Under A Bad Sign”, popularized by both Albert King and Cream.

In 2017, he was awarded a Grammy for Best Americana Album for his record This Is Where I Live. He performed his hit “Born Under a Bad Sign” alongside Gary Clark Jr. at the 2017 Grammy Awards. He was featured on Rolling Stone’s “Best of the Grammys” for that year.

He was born in Memphis. He took the last name “Bell” as a stage name in honor of his grandmother, whose first name was Belle.

He sang in church as a child and considered himself a student of The Soul Stirrers, the popular gospel group led by Sam Cooke. At age ten, he began songwriting with the original composition “Alone on a Rainy Night”. At the age of 14, he won a talent contest and began making a name for himself singing in Memphis-area clubs.

He made his first leap into the music scene backing Rufus Thomas. In 1957, he recorded his first sides as a member of the Del Rios, a teenage vocal group that caught the eye of Stax Records.

In mid-2023, he released One Day Closer to Home on his Wilbe Records label, cited by critics as “a master at work”.

In 2024, the Recording Academy announced that his 1961 hit single “You Don’t Miss Your Water” would be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[aestheticvoyage2023]

Day 85: Sunday March 26, 2022 - “Draft Days”

Absolutely my favorite hobby is Fantasy Baseball, and this was the last weekend before Id be paying close attention to baseball games for the next 7 months, in a campaign to repeat as Champion, and also build out a league of my own, Victorious Secret!

I had two fantasy drafts this year, including one warm up draft last Wednesday, that I had to pull over in a place that was having “Rib Night” and Mac & Jacks on tap.  I was the only person in the place worried about baseball.  But I had a masterful draft and really like my team in the ole league with D2 and the Hnidas.   Then today, I setup for the big draft in my home office where William delivered me beers in my ball glove and enjoyed talking with Papa who was piped in with me on facetime for our funky 9 team keeper league with Chad and Cory, Jose, and others.     That draft didn’t go quite according to plan but I wound up with 2 of the top 4 players,  But for this draft, for whatever odd reason, I wound up drafting a lot of Starting Pitching and I never do that!   Should save me from having to do a ton of streaming but this is going to be a competitive league and I am less optimistic of my chances against this crew, with $160 on the line!

I really believe its going to be a remarkable and memorable season here in 2023, and as non-sensical as it is for a bunch of grown men to choose their teams and spend 7 months following them all so closely, this little tradition makes me more connected to it.

Song: Rufus Thomas - The Breakdown

Quote:  “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”  ― Dr. Seuss

[kindtobechurlish]

Big Tune put his mom in the Carter IV, so now I’m applying the science of Eros and telling you about my mom every chance I get. Some people are racialist, I am not going to say, “I’m not like those negroes” and try to prove it by means of me showing I am not a bastard - and I understand the mould of NOT wanting to work for family/father. Big Tune was calling himself Birdman Jr in 2012, and people act like I was wacky for saying another man would be “lord.” Well, I would still have him as my “lord” if I didn’t go to the US Government to know I couldn’t take it to the FBI. Now an asshole knows Rufus, the act of the retreat, but no matter what I’m oppressed. You have people acting like I am the threat, and I don’t want to sit around and smoke marijuana with negroes to listen to music. Those days are over. I want a car, and me getting a car is leaving many people in the dust. I’m not getting a car just to park on Sunday, I want to go all out in New York City. So, I did the necessary to remember slavery by reading, advice, and now I have the moral to do bigger things like my Patron said. Many whites never heard of the planter class until me, they just said slave master, so now they don’t see the relationship between master and servant. I’m not an anti-Semite, I know about William Goodell and William Whipple.. so I can’t see a relation between master and servant to hate it. I know it.. many want to abolish it, and I would say, “did you see Kanye?”

You aren’t laughing. Go figure

[usernamesarehard1]

I wish I could write some nice Magisterium fluff. For some reason everything I write ends up getting kinda dark. But I really wanna read some calron fluff or some wholesome stuff about the relationship dynamics between Call, Aaron and Tamara, Call and Alastair, the group and Master Rufus, etc.

I just wanna read some nice stuff about all of these characters caring about each other and being happy, but everything I write for them ends up becoming a story about all the trauma they go through in the books and just gets dark and depressing

[alex-is-the-king-11111]

Master Joseph gave his child unsupervised use of chaos elemental and was sad for like five seconds when he died. He was "like a father" to Constantine, and manipulated him into getting his brother killed and starting a war which eventually got himself killed. One of the only things I agree on with Aaron is that he needed to go.

On that note happy father to William Rufus, who did a better job at raising his apprentices + assistant than their own parents (or lack of in Aaron's case)

happy father’s day to alastair hunt he tried his best raising a son while working through his ptsd and depression (but ultimately let his own fears and trauma bleed out and thus projected onto call)

also happy father’s day to master joseph. he is my daddy and drew’s father ig

[citrusscale-remastered]

This is the quality content youre here for

[lovermyme]

I love master Rufus & Sammy, his husband 😭😭 theres nothing of they so im making it

His name is Samuel, he has no last name yet but he uses Rufus last name, so its Samuel Rufus. Everybody calls him Sammy.

He calls Rufus by his first name: William. "Will my beloved 🥺💕" he says.

[nonbinary-androids]

Magisterium Characters As Aesthetics

[Quick note, there’s some mentions of blood and dead bodies in here! Avoid Jericho and Constantine if that upsets you.]

Callum Hunt: A forest drenched in mist, black jeans, the nearby howl of a hungry wolf, an old but still-sharp knife, sarcastic t-shirts, gummy bears with the heads bitten off, the bite of fingernails against your palm.

Aaron Stewart: Nails bitten to the quick, the radiance of the sun, the tentativeness of a first kiss, a fistful of dirt, the heavy weight of a golden crown, a smile shared between friends.

Tamara Rajavi: A drawer of neatly folded shirts, two braids flying in the wind, the colours green and gold, the tense feeling in a room in which someone has gone too far, the taste of raspberry sorbet.

Constantine Madden: Screams of grief, a burial shroud, the waxy hand of an embalmed corpse, eyes flittering around the room but seeing nothing, blood trickling down the side of a bowl.

Alastair Hunt: Hands covered in grease, books with notes scribbled in the margins, old cars with sleek exteriors, a hunk of iron ore, a wolf prepared to kill in the name of the pack, tools organized in metal drawers.

Master Rufus: A library in hues of red, an old, worn river rock, narrowed eyes, sealed lips, a darkened version of the pride flag, strength from age, a sturdy book, the weight of the world in the creases of a face.

Celia: Colourful, warm sweaters, gentle smiles, bright hair clips, vibrant flowers, clenched fists, a refusal to let go, a doe hidden amongst the trees, chipped nail polish.

Jericho Madden: A broken doll, a clock with a shattered face, abandoned sanatoriums, the ghosts of children long dead, fungus going on a log, the glassy eyes of a fresh corpse.

Master Joseph: Hands blackened with ash, a smile full of sharp, pointed teeth, gray robes, the whisper of “you trust me, don’t you?”, flowers for a grave, the smoke from a raging fire.

[ragnaei]

magisterium

lgbtq headcanon

call - biromantic/asexual

aaron - gay

tamara - bisexual

jasper - bisexual

celia - transgender

rufus - gay/ace

alastair - pansexual

[dwellordream]

“Eleanor experienced almost fifteen years of regular childbearing after marrying Henry Plantagenet. It was during her early years as queen, while she was bearing a child almost annually, that she was busiest acting as Henry’s regent in England. She would give Henry II nine children within thirteen years. If Eleanor of Aquitaine was a distant figure as mother to her children, so were other aristocratic mothers responsible for supervising complex households. As queen, she had even less time than most for child-rearing. Contact with her children would have been limited while they were growing up. 

This was due to circumstances and social custom, not to a lack of maternal feeling, and it is not necessary to conclude that Eleanor was indifferent toward her young children nor that she made little “psychological investment” in them. There is no evidence to show that she and Henry failed to cherish their children, to provide for their care, to place their hopes in their futures, or to experience grief at their deaths. It seems fruitless from a distance of eight centuries to calculate Eleanor’s role in shaping her children’s adult psyches, when thinking on the topic is still influenced by nineteenth-century bourgeois models modified by twentieth-century Freudian psychology. 

Yet one fact that stands out is the devotion to Eleanor demonstrated by her sons in their adult lives, and it testifies that their experience of her love was more powerful than their father’s fitful affection. Clearly, the queen had cemented solid ties of affection with them at some point, whether during their infancy or adolescence; and strong maternal feelings would prod her to furious activity after Henry II’s death, struggling to assist first Richard and then John in securing their thrones. As one writer observes, “It is difficult to believe that the devotion shown [Eleanor] by her adult sons and daughters did not grow out of childhood experience, experience that simply left no record in the account books and annals of the court.”

Possibly Henry’s difficulties with his sons were caused by their early and prolonged separations from their father. The fact that they were near-strangers to one another, in some years together only on great festive occasions, can explain in part the ease with which they took up arms against their father and against each other. Along with all medieval mothers, Eleanor was unaware of the significance of earliest childhood for shaping adult personality that modern psychology teaches. The early Fathers of the Church had not shown great interest in questions centering on family life, and twelfth-century churchmen with their ambivalent feelings about women provided mothers with little more direction in carrying out their maternal responsibilities. 

Although concern for the care of children was growing in the twelfth century, encouraged in great part by Christian teaching, spiritual counselors offered mothers little counsel beyond advocating emulation of the Virgin Mary, the ideal mother. An exception to the dearth of literature on motherhood is a biography of Queen Margaret of Scotland, written in the first years of the twelfth century as a guide for her daughter Edith-Matilda, Henry I’s queen. It praises Margaret as a model mother, intimately involved with her children’s upbringing; yet the daughter who commissioned it hardly knew her mother, having been sent away at age six to be brought up at an English convent where her aunt was abbess.

Like many other great ladies living in the twelfth century, Eleanor had larger duties in politics and government that she regarded as equally important and perhaps greater than her responsibility for her children’s upbringing. In Henry and Eleanor’s household were retainers of many ranks, ranging from dependent relatives and high-ranking nobles to simple knights or domestic servants of peasant origin, any of whom could be charged with caring for the royal children. As a result, the royal children’s ties of affection would not have been focused uniquely on their parents, but diffused among household members of many ranks. 

While differing from typical nuclear families today, the medieval English royal household, overflowing with servants and retainers, had much in common with other medieval aristocratic families. Like them and like European aristocrats or American plutocrats even in the twenty-first century who turn their children over to a series of servants, Eleanor and Henry did not think it unnatural to hand their children into the care of others in the royal household, or even to custodians far from court. Sons and daughters were often sent away at early ages, daughters to be reared in the households of their betrothed and sons given over to the care of others until early adolescence, when they were established in households of their own. 

Yet these practices do not negate royal parents’ caring instincts or an awareness of the uniqueness of childhood that is innate in all societies. It is clear that Eleanor and Henry showed great concern for the upbringing of their offspring, choosing with care the personnel who were to supervise them even if their personal participation was limited. The rapidity with which Eleanor gave birth shows that she did not nurse her infant children, for it was uncommon for great ladies to nurse their own babies. As queen, her chief responsibility was ensuring continuity of the royal line by bearing children, not rearing them, and it was widely known that breast-feeding inhibited pregnancy. 

Names of some of the royal children’s wet-nurses survive, and they indicate that they were selected from women of free, not servile, status, probably from wives of servants in the royal household. Alexander of Neckham, a scientific writer, Oxford master, and later abbot of Cirencester, proudly claimed that he and Richard Lionheart were “milk-brothers,” for his mother had been the prince’s wet-nurse. Eleanor felt so fondly toward Agatha, one of her children’s wet-nurses, that in 1198, three decades after her child-bearing years, she rewarded her service with a gift of land in Hertfordshire and a year later a more valuable gift, a Devonshire manor. 

Agatha was a woman whose ambition Eleanor could admire, and such generous gifts would have made her former servant a woman of some means. Some time, probably before becoming John’s wet-nurse, Agatha entered into a long-term relationship with Godfrey de Lucy, son of the chief justiciar and himself a royal clerk who would win the bishopric of Winchester in 1189 despite being encumbered with a “wife.” Wet-nurses of Eleanor’s children must have resembled nannies in their relations with their charges, providing not only nourishment, but also affection and companionship and remaining with them long after weaning. 

After John was brought to England during the great rebellion of 1173–74, the pipe roll records a grant of ten marks to “the nurse of the king’s son,” although he was at least seven years old then. The wet-nurses of Richard Lionheart and John earned their fond feeling, and their affection was returned. When Richard became king, he granted a pension to his nurse, Hodierna. After John’s death, his former nurse Agatha, by then a prosperous widow, remembered him and his son when making a gift of land to the nuns of Flamstead “for the soul of King Henry [III] son of King John.”

When Henry II’s sons were little more than infants, each of them was assigned a “master” or “preceptor” from among members of the royal household. He was assigned responsibility for the young boy, charged with spending on his needs and supervising the servants caring for him. He was not necessarily a cleric, and he did not give lessons; teachers—also called masters—could be recruited from the clerks and chaplains present in any great household. Choosing such a master was Henry’s duty, for noble fathers made major decisions about their sons’ upbringing, although he was likely to have discussed his selection with Eleanor. 

A master named Mainard took charge of Young Henry in 1156 when the boy was only a year old, and he remained with him for at least three more years. The division of authority between this official and the child’s mother is unknown, but it must have meant that Eleanor was denied full responsibility for her son’s care, even in early childhood. Forced to share responsibility for her young sons with a male named by her husband, she nevertheless succeeded at some point in their youths in knitting the affective bonds normally binding sons to their mothers. 

In 1159, when Young Henry was only four years old, his father placed him in the household of his chancellor Thomas Becket, where sons of nobles were “educated in gentlemanly upbringing and teaching.” There was precedent for Henry’s sending his heir away at such an early age: William the Conqueror had placed his second son, William Rufus, the designated heir to the English Crown, in Archbishop Lanfranc’s household. Henry II may already have been thinking of naming Becket his archbishop of Canterbury and having his eldest son crowned as king while still a boy. 

When relations between Henry and Archbishop Becket began to cool, Henry, in October 1163, rebuked his newly installed primate by removing Young Henry from his custody. When the king left for his French territories the next month, he did not send the boy, then about eight years of age, back to Eleanor; instead, he continued to live apart from his mother’s household with a new master, William fitz John, a royal administrator. Young aristocrats were knighted as part of their initiation into manhood, and fathers would find them a mentor to join their household: an older, experienced knight who could prepare them for knighthood with training in the noble occupations of hunting, hawking, and warfare. 

After Young Henry’s coronation in 1170, his father assigned such a mentor to the fifteen-year-old youth, the knight-errant William Marshal, much admired for chivalry, but an illiterate with little interest in administration. According to the History of William Marshal, he served as the sort of companion-guide who accompanied heroes of the romances, charged with the Young King’s instruction in courtesy and martial arts, preparing him to take up arms as a knight. Hunting sharpened warrior skills, and all of Henry and Eleanor’s sons shared their ancestors’ love for the chase. 

Richard during his youth in Poitou would find pleasure in hunting in his mother’s ancestral forests in the Vendée. Roger of Howden wrote of Henry II’s sons, “They strove to outdo others in handling weapons. They realized that without practice the art of war did not come naturally when it was needed.” Sons of royalty needed to know more than skill in handling horses and weapons, and at twelfth-century princely courts, clerics were advocating a courtly ideal of conduct, challenging old-fashioned knights upholding the traditional warrior ethos of the knightly class. 

The counts of Anjou had long prized learning in Latin letters, seen in the excellent schooling that Henry II’s father provided for him, and Eleanor too knew the value of learning. While less is known about Henry’s sons’ formal education than his own, it is certain that they acquired a sound grounding in Latin grammar, although no formal office of royal schoolmaster yet existed at the English court. A letter in the archbishop of Rouen’s name, addressed to the king when Young Henry was only ten years old, however, expresses a fear that the knightly side of the future king’s education was taking precedence over study of the liberal arts.

Perhaps the concern stemmed from Henry’s removal of his heir from Thomas Becket’s custody, and it hints at rivalry between the boy’s clerical and knightly tutors over the two groups’ diverging values. Richard Lionheart knew Latin well, although he is better known for his French verses. Gerald of Wales’s anecdote of the Lionheart’s correcting the Latin spoken by his archbishop of Canterbury gives evidence of his competence as a Latinist. John gained an interest in literature during his youth, and as king he built up a considerable library of classics and religious works. He deposited his books at Reading Abbey for safekeeping and sometimes wrote to the abbot requesting that certain volumes be sent to him.

Although great ladies had responsibility for their sons’ upbringing only until they reached their sixth or seventh year, aristocratic daughters could remain in their mother’s care until adolescence, unless they were betrothed as pre-adolescents and sent away to be brought up by their future in-laws. Like other queens throughout the Middle Ages, Eleanor saw her daughters affianced at early ages to foreign princes chosen for political considerations, and promptly sent far away to grow up at foreign courts. Personal contact by Eleanor with her daughters was difficult once they were sent off to their future husbands’ lands in Germany, Spain, and Sicily, and she had little prospect of seeing them again. 

Yet contacts between royal daughters and their birth-parents were seldom entirely severed, and Eleanor doubtless corresponded with her daughters, although no copies of her letters survive. Royal parents maintained contact with daughters married to foreign princes, for their marriages had been arranged for the purpose of serving the family interest, creating or securing alliances. Matilda, Eleanor, and Joanne, married to princes who were conspicuous as cultural patrons, were almost certainly literate. 

Late twelfth-century romances depict noble maidens learning their letters, and a renowned preacher, Adam of Perseigne (d.c. 1208), sent the countess of Chartres Latin texts that she could give to her daughters to read with the help of her chaplain or a learned nun. Although instruction in letters must have begun before Eleanor’s daughters left the English royal household, the major portion of their education would have taken place at the courts of their in-laws.”

- Ralph V. Turner, “Once More a Queen and Mother: England, 1154–1168.” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England

[uwmspeccoll]

Wood Engraving Wednesday

GEORGE TUTE & PETER REDDICK

These two prints come from our recent acquisition 2020 Vision: Nineteen Wood Engravers, One Collector, and the Artists Who Inspired Them, compiled and introduced by collector Nigel Hamway, edited by English wood engraver Peter Lawrence, and printed in 2020 by Patrick Randle’s Nomad Letterpress at the Whittington Press in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in an edition of 340 copies for the 100th anniversary of the Society of Wood Engravers. Hamway asked nineteen of his favorite engravers to choose a major artistic influence, write an introduction about why they feel this way and, wherever possible, to work on a new engraving which sits side-by-side in the book with an engraving or illustration by their inspirer. The result is a unique collection, linking past with present, and a fitting tribute to the skills of the engravers and the part played by the Society in the history of wood engraving. We will be showing more examples from this book over the next several weeks.

In chapter 19, English wood engraver Paul L. Kershaw writes about his inspiration, the British printer and founder of the Fleece Press, Simon Lawrence, a scion of the Lawrence family, manufacturers of fine engravers' boxwood blocks, and “a master printer” who “has set me the best example I could have hoped for; I’m blessed,” writes Kershaw. In an unusual presentation for this volume, the Lawrence example is a folded Fleece Press printing of these two wood engravings by Lawrence’s own inspirations: Piers the Dragon Slayer by George Tute and The Death of William Rufus by Peter Reddick. Of these two English engravers, Lawrence writes:

A few years before I found wood engraving, Peter and George collaborated on mythological subjects for the Reader’s Digest Folklore, Myths & Legends of Britain (1973). I couldn’t distinguish their work at that time and the two Bristolians seemed to form a strong regional style. These artists were among the few who kept the craft alive at a quiet time, & have always been among the brightest stars in the engravers’ firmament. The engravings have been printed by hand on my 1853 Albion Press, the type first printed on dry paper which was then dampened to take the engravings, as I always do. Simon Lawrence, March 2019.

View more posts with wood engravings!