#historian: chris given-wilson

[une-sanz-pluis]

It was later this same year, on 6 July 1406, that [Jean de] Clermont sent a letter to Thomas of Lancaster, Henry IV's second son, challenging him to personal combat.  Although written and sealed by Clermont, this challenge was in fact issued jointly by him and Jean de Foix (eldest son of Count Archambaud). The two counts, together with six other 'knights and esquires, gentlemen of renown and of arms and without reproach', challenged Prince Thomas and any other seven similarly irreproachable knights or esquires on the English side to meet them in a combat a oultrance at a time and place to be agreed, before mutually-chosen judges and with mutually-agreed weapons. The aim, said Clermont, was for all concerned to win honour and renown, and more specifically to 'deliver' him and Jean de Foix from the vows which they had sworn, 'for love of our ladies', to wear certain chivalric tokens on their persons until such time as liberation might prove forthcoming. It is interesting, moreover, to see from Clermont's letter that he had apparently already heard that Thomas had expressed an interest in 'delivering' him from his vow. In other words, this was not a challenge sent out of the blue, but rather the formalization in writing of some earlier, more informal, approach. What is more, Thomas did later formally accept this challenge, for on 28 February 1410 Henry IV issued a letter saying that his second son had been asked by 'our dear cousin' the count of Clermont to respond to certain points of arms; that Thomas in turn had asked the king to be allowed to do so; and that as a result the king was granting a safe-conduct to Clermont, three hundred of his servants and their horses and equipment to come to England pour les ditz pointz d'armes accom-pliers. Whether Jean de Clermont ever followed Werchin across the Channel to joust with Prince Thomas is unclear (given the lack of confirmatory evidence, it seems unlikely), but Anglo-French combats were certainly being planned...

Chris Given-Wilson, "'The Quarrels of Old Women': Henry IV, Louis of Orléans, and Anglo-French Chivalric Challenges in the Early Fifteenth Century', The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival (York Medieval Press 2008)

[waynecowles]

Daily Jot: The American Chronicles: A heritage tour - Bill Wilson – www.dailyjot.com

People often ask what they can do as something special to get away. Whether you are camping or just touring, a heritage tour might be fun. But make sure you don’t forget essentials. Last fall, we drove up the coast of New England. Kind of a heritage tour. We had finished church on time and I rushed everybody out the door so Chris, Service Dog Charlie, and I could get on the road. We were on the toward our first stop—Valley Forge. Two hours into the trip through some of the most beautiful farmland in Pennsylvania, I received a work text where a particular file was needed. It was then that I had that shot of adrenalin like when you see the blue lights in the mirror. I had forgotten my laptop. We had to turn back.

Arriving at our campsite later that evening, we had to postpone our Valley Forge visit to the next morning. Flexibility is key when you forget things. The Valley Forge camp was where General George Washington brought his Continental Army to face one of its most important battles of the Revolutionary War. Historians would say that Washington’s army of over 8,000 men fought no battles during their winter encampment. I beg to differ. From December 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778, the fledgling army fought its most important battle—some 2,000 soldiers lost their lives.

Washington was leading his men in a battle against attrition, disease, cold weather, exposure, and starvation within a few miles of the much stronger British forces. This winter encampment tested the will of the Americans and inspired the tenacity it took to defeat the British. My 5th great grandfather David Wilson was one of them. I’m reminded of the first winter endured by the Pilgrims in Plymouth some 150 years earlier. They, too, suffered disease, starvation, exposure and cold weather. Over half of them died. But their will to survive combined with their faith in the Lord, brought them through.

Not common knowledge about Valley Forge are the books given to the men to read in their free time. Those books encouraged the men to endure through faith. They were: “The Duty of Standing Fast in Our Spiritual and Temporal Liberties,” a sermon preached in Christ Church, 1775; “The Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” 1776; and “A Sermon on the Present Situation of American Affairs,” preached in Christ Church 1775. There is often a test of the will and Spirit to achieve something important. It’s what inspires one another to work together to live. This is a lesson I’ve learned in life and it is confirmed by many instances of history. We can also see through our travels examples of the faith and will that it took to build this great nation and shape the people in it. Leaving Valley Forge for our next stop in Connecticut, we experienced one of the great people in our nation.

We were headed toward an overpass that would have clipped the top off of our camper and a man pulled along-side us motioning for us to pull over. He told us what was going to happen, then offered to take us around the overpass and put us on the path to our next stop. We didn’t get his name, but from the goodness of his heart, he saved us from ruin. Hebrews 13:2 says, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Strangers or angels, our faith is our bond and inspiration. We headed on to Plymouth, MA., to visit the site of my first direct ancestors’ who came to America on the Mayflower—William Bradford, my 10th great grandfather on my father’s side and Richard Warren, my 11th great grandfather on my mother’s side.

[heartofstanding]

Blanche of England’s death

I talked about this a little bit earlier but I wanted to give it its own space because it seemed important to do so.

I'd been very confused about what happened to Henry IV’s daughter Blanche of England after she left England, primarily because every historian seems to have tell us different things about her about whether she had children and when she had them and how she died.

Mary Anne Everett Green provides the most detailed account of her in the romanticised Victorian history, Lives of the Princess of England. She tells us Blanche had a stillbirth when she was not more than 15 and when she was “advanced in her second pregnancy”, she suffered a fever, recovered, then remained feverish with frequent nosebleeds before a “premature” confinement, and died  on 22 May 1409, giving birth to a son who was named Rupert who died at around nineteen years of age in 1426.

James Hamilton Wylie in History of England Under Henry the Fourth provides the second-most detailed account Blanche’s life but his account of her death is much simpler. He mentions a sickness but states she died in childbirth. As for her son, Rupert, Wyle says he was five years old at Blanche’s death, meaning she would have given birth when she was 12.

Ian Mortimer states Blanche died in childbirth and makes reference to her “infant” son but does not mention when this child was born. The inference meant to be drawn may be that Blanche died giving birth to this son.

Chris Given-Wilson states she died from a fever but does not mention her son.

In Blood Roses, Kathryn Warner says Blanche married “the elector Palatine of the Rhine, Ludwig von Wittelsbach, and died childless in 1409 at the age of 17″ and goes on to say that Henry IV had only one legitimate grandchild - Henry VI. 

A few blog posts give more detail - but being blogposts, it’s hard to know what their sources are and if they’re just cribbing off Wikipedia, which tells us that Blanche’s son was born in 1406 and nicknamed “Rupert the English“, and that Blanche died of a fever with symptoms of nosebleeds and fainting.

Ian Mortimer quotes from the letters from Blanche’s husband and father-in-law to Henry informing him of Blanche’s death and these letters, according to the blog posts, are the source of the fever story.  So I looked up Mortimer’s reference to the letters and found, happily, they were online on archive.org. Unhappily, they’re all in Latin and I can’t read Latin and they were lengthy enough that there was no way I was going to pester anyone into translating them for me.

Happily, it was possible to select, copy and paste the text of the letters so I began the process of doing just that with the painstaking bonus experience of checking each and every word to make sure it’d copied accurately (which was an issue due to the scan quality and the text’s use of letters fallen into disuse like the æ, which never copy correctly). And then I’d paste a passage into Google Translate, thinking that it’d at least give me at the very least an indication of what was being said so I could find the relevant passage(s) on Blanche’s death and send them to someone to check over. Amazingly, unlike previous attempts to Google Translate Latin, it didn’t read like some bullshit.

Here’s what Rupert, King of the German says about Blanche’s death:

Cogimur nempe flebilem casum inclitissimae filiae vestrae, quondam nurus nostrae dilectissimae, reserare, quae cum de prolis jam esset genuine impregnata, et apud illustrem primogenitum nostrum, quem tenerrimo amore prosequebatur,  in Alsatiae partibus moraretur, continuatis quibusdam febribus tacta, tandem invalescente morbo, sumptis devotissime ecclesiasticis sacramentis, sicut Altissimo placuit, cujus judicia abyssus multa, ab hujus caducae vitae ergastulo ie vicesima secunda mensis praeteriti, est avulsa

[We are compelled to open the lamentable case of your dearest daughter, once our most beloved daughter-in-law , who, when she was already truly impregnated with children, and stayed with our illustrious first-born, whom she pursued with the most tender love, in the parts of Alsace, being touched by some continued fevers, at last succumbing to an illness, most devoutly by the ecclesiastical sacraments, as it pleased the Most High, whose judgments are many in the abyss, she was torn from the prison of this transitory life, that is, the twenty-second of the past month.]

And here’s Louis, Blanche’s husband:

Placuit Altissimo, Cujus judicia colligere nemo potest, super illustrem filiam vestram, amabilissimam atque suavissimissam quondam conjugem, meam, paulo ante principium mensis Maii proximo praeteriti febre quadam triduana pereutere, per ante sex ut puto mensibus inpregnatam. Qua aliqualiter temperata, cum jam salus adesse speraretur, quotidiana febris supervenit, quae debilem ac teneram juvenculam adeo fatigavit, quod fere quotidie videbatur spiritum exhalare. Admixta erat frequens sincopis et sanguinis per nares effluxus nimium copiosus, quae omnia fuerunt paulatim, Dei auxilio et physicorum ministerio, refraenata. Fuerunt nihilominus inter haec sibi devote suscipienti ministrata ecclesiastica sacramenta; sed tandem cum vires essent interiores exhaustae, nullus fuit digestioni locus, nec amplius natura aliquod habuit sustentamentum; unde infaustissima mihi die, xxii.

[It pleased the Most High, Whose judgments no one can gather, to smite your illustrious daughter, my most lovely and sweet wife once, a little before the beginning of the month of May last past, with a three-day fever, having been pregnant for six months, as I think. This being in some measure moderated, when it was now hoped that she would be safe, a daily fever came on, which exhausted the weak and tender young woman so much, that almost every day she seemed to give up her breath. It was mixed with frequent syncope and excessive flow of blood through the nose, all of which were gradually controlled by the help of God and the service of physicians. Nevertheless, among these there were ecclesiastical sacraments administered to the devout recipient; but at last, when the inner forces were exhausted, there was no room for digestion, and nature no longer had any support; hence the most unlucky day for me, the 22nd.]

Both say, clearly, that she died of fever and that she was pregnant - Louis is the most explicit, saying she was believed to be around six months pregnant. Neither mention her giving birth or suffering a stillbirth. It’s possible she suffered a stillbirth and this wasn’t mentioned but it’s quite a leap to claim that she died in childbirth. Unless Louis was extremely off in his estimation, too, there is no way the child could have survived. Today, babies born at around 24 weeks/six months gestation are classed as extremely preterm and without modern medicine, there’s no way that the baby would survive.

Both letters do mention (as does Henry IV’s reply) taking comfort in Blanche’s surviving son but they do not state this is the child Blanche was pregnant with at the time of her death. They also don’t mention when he was born or how old he was. I wouldn’t know where to start in order to check that detail, particularly because I don’t speak German. I’m inclined to trust, though, that the German authors of an English article on Blanche’s crown when they state her son Rupert was born in 1406 (these claims are also in the German Wikipedia page for Blanche), particularly because they cite an academic (?) reference for it. 

So, in short: Blanche gave birth to her first and only child, Rupert the English, in 1406, when she was 14, and died three years later on 22 May 1409 at age 17 when she was around six months pregnant with her second child. Her cause of death is explicitly given as an illness causing fever, fainting and nosebleeds. Nothing is mentioned of childbirth, miscarriage or stillbirth.

I get it, you know. Blanche died when she was 17 years old. She was young and never had the chance to do anything important, much less leave her mark on history in a way that tells us anything about her. She’s most often talked about in the context of her crown (known as the Palatine or Bohemian Crown) and even there, she’s of only interest as the means by which the crown came to be returned to or came to be owned by the House of Wittelsbach, with more attention given to the crown’s make-up or construction and its origins as a crown of Anne of Bohemia and whether it was part of her trousseaux  or not.* Blanche left England when she was 10 years old and never returned. Beyond the fact of her short-lived marriage, she had little impact on English history. She never became Electress Palatine in her own right, never had the chance to act as a diplomat between her husband and her father or her brother. Her own son died young (older than his mother but only by two years) and made little mark on history himself - easily, it seems, forgotten by English historians, including some that erase his entire existence.

Blanche is one of those forgotten women, thrice cursed for her early death, by moving out of English history and for her son’s early death. It’s hard to pull the shreds of her life together to tell her story in a way that centres her and not her husband or her father. I can work out how she died but stymied by the barriers of language, geography and training, I can’t work out how she lived. But at the very least, historians should do her the dignity of getting the few details of her life right.

* I don’t say this as a sort of “boohoo, Blanche never gets any attention, even when she’s talked about she plays third fiddle to a beautiful but inanimate object and its original owner, she should be talked about instead of them”. We can say a lot more about the crown’s construction and origins than we can about Blanche. I say this to point out how little can be and is said or known about Blanche.

[ivraeas]

In many respects historical scholarship has been prepared to go along with the sentiments of the St. Albans chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, who in a series of brilliantly developed vignettes cast Alice as a great villain exposed to temporary humiliation in the Good Parliament. Walsingham’s famous scene at the deathbed of Edward III, where the unworthy mistress spent the king’s dying moments stripping the rings from his fingers, seems to have had a particularly enduring impact on scholarship, which repeatedly emphasises Alice’s love of fine things as an outward sign of her greed and vulgarity. This is not to say that recent generations of scholarship have neglected to consider Alice’s significance in the substance of politics during the 1370′s. In particular, George Holmes and Chris Given-Wilson have established much fuller contexts for the accusations that led to her banishment in 1376 and the confiscation of her property in 1377. Even so, in recent years it is only James Bothwell and Ian Mortimer who have explicitly questioned the need continually to reinvent Alice in the defamatory terms used by her contemporaries. Meanwhile, historians of gender appear to regard her as so much a one-off, an exception or anomaly to the experience of most late-medieval Englishwomen, as to avoid her altogether. It is particularly remarkable in that respect how infrequently Alice appears in studies of the female condition in the later Middle Ages, even those focusing on the most obvious of her gendered attributes, her status for much of the period of her ascendancy as femme-sole, free of male “coverage” and able to assert her own independent status at law.  - (The Trials of Alice Perrers)

FC: Adina Galupa as Alice Perrers

[shredsandpatches]

Bringing together the goal of childbearing and the concept of beata stirps, Anne’s marriage to Richard may inform us of his own political agenda. What led Richard attempt to canonize his grandfather, Edward II? Chris Given-Wilson has argued that after 1397, the desire for canonization was fueled by both vindication for Edward II and the desire to acquire Lancastrian lands. But what drove the original petition in 1385? This is before the events of the Merciless Parliament and any desperate motion by Richard to salvage power. Richard would have been well aware of his wife’s heritage; it would be fitting for his to somehow match, and adding Edward II to the company of the Confessor would help toward this. And if we must ascribe French influence to Richard II, then the model of Capetian sanctity and legitimacy, substantiated by a royal saint, would be appropriate here. I suggest that Anne the person and her family history were the inspiration for this effort. A child would have continued a saintly line of Bohemia and hopefully connected it to an English one as well. Richard did not pursue this aggressively; we may well have seen a push for a new English saint if Anne reached a certain stage of pregnancy or had given birth. By 1397, the utility of a royal saint had, in Richard’s mind, changed, but initially, it was something that was much more personal on both a spiritual and dynastic level.

Anna Duch, "Anne of Bohemia: A Political Post-Mortem" (here)

This is a really good article on Anne's legacy and the tendency of historians to treat Anne as though the only significant thing she ever did was to die childless. I've read it before but I was looking something up and I hadn't remembered this part, which I think is really rather sweet. Richard wanted a lineage full of royal saints to match his wife's! 😍

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Worst of 2019 (So Far)

And now we get to the opposite of yesterday’s post: the worst of what we’ve seen so far. Time to give them a proper thrashing before they (hopefully) fade into obscurity. Disappointingly, there's a general lack of films that were bad but in an interesting way. Mostly, it’s either been the same sorta dreck we usually get with a couple of unusually offensive stories and a couple of soul-crushingly bad superhero flicks. Curious? Read on.

10. Serenity

I like to save my #10 spot on the “Worst of” list for a movie that has a chance of becoming a favorite among those who love bad movies. Serenity is competently enough made that it does not belong in the same category as The Identical or Runaway. It’s another kind of bad movie, the kind that baffles anyone who sees it and who will have film historians scratching their heads in the future. It’s not quite on the same level as 2017’s “The Book of Henry” but close. Top-notch actors at the top of their career in a story so poorly conceived it would’ve been brilliant if it weren’t awful and utterly absurd.

The revelation that everything we've been seeing is actually part of a video game programmed by an angry teen who hates his abusive father, and that his actions are tied to those of Matthew McConaughey's character is the kind of nutty decision someone at some point should've questioned. My advice? Surprise some unsuspecting friends with it. Periodically pause the movie so they can write down how they think it'll all fit together and then watch their faces as they're proved wrong.

9. After

I’m not going to remember After down the line so this is my opportunity to give it another flogging. I can’t believe fan-fictions of real people is a real thing and that one of them was deemed legitimate and popular enough to be turned into a movie. It plays out like the clone of a clone of a clone of Twilight. At least that movie had danger in the form of vampires and werewolves. This has nothing to offer except embarrassing drama and a prepubescent’s idea of what romance and love look like. I saw it in the theater with a friend and thank goodness she was there; it made what would've been a chore... slightly more bearable.

8. Dumbo

I’ve already gone on about how I feel about Disney’s string of live-action remakes. For the most part, they fail to validate their own existences; they’re just copies of the original but with “real” actors dancing around animated backgrounds, objects and locations instead of everything being traditionally animated. Dumbo isn’t like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. It does try new things. It diverges from the source material significantly in the worst way. The titular character winds up playing second banana to a bunch of circus performers no one cares about and in the end didn’t contain an inkling of the emotion the 1941 version did.

7. Dark Phoenix

This one’s a triple-whammy. Not only was it a deeply disappointing way for Fox’s X-Men series to end, it retreaded old material in a way that was worse than X-Men 3: The Last Stand AND it was a box office bomb. By the time the story finally comes alive… it’s just about over. The whole thing feels like a mistake, bringing in aliens and asking us to invest in characters we just haven’t had enough time to fall in love with. Makes me wonder what the future of the characters is going to be like. Yes there are a number of heroes and heroines we haven’t yet seen, but are people going to care, even when the brand gets a new coat of paint from Marvel Studios?

6. Men in Black: International

Was anyone asking for the Men in Black series to return? Maybe if they'd had a dynamite story this could’ve overcome the public’s general disinterest, but this was an extremely generic plot you could figure out easily minutes in and lost touch with what endeared us to the first. Even with the combined forces of Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth failed, it to generate many laughs. Worse, to make sure I got any references or Easter egg it might drop, I re-watched all of the previous Men in Black movies, including the horrific Men in Black 2.

5. Replicas

This movie goes about itself in such a convoluted way. First, Keanu Reeves plays a scientist working for a company that wants to transplant the mind of dead soldiers into androids. Then, his family is killed in a car crash, prompting him to use the mind transfer tech to put their memories into new clone bodies of themselves. Problem is, he only has the means to clone three out of four family members. This means he has to erase all memories of his youngest daughter from the others’ brains. Following me so far? Good because it keeps going from there. Actually, that’s just the start of it. It’s a classic case of TMSGO - too much sh*t goin’ on. Even with all that, it STILLL managed to have gaping plot holes. No surprise it came and went as quietly as possible.

4. Hellboy

This one hurt. I wanted to see a superhero horror film badly. The early interviews I read about them wanting to adapt Mike Mignola’s books more closely than the Del Toro films got me excited. I was a little apprehensive when the trailers showed some goofy stuff but I figured these were included to draw people in. I should've listened to that sinking feeling. The actual film is awful, one giant mistake after another. Without a doubt, this featured the year’s worst special effects and even this I could've forgiven but the would-be humorous tone was badly misjudged and the story bloated with way too many elements that might've worked... if we weren't also trying to tell the character's origin at the same time. Hellboy ends with a teaser promising more and there’s no way we would’ve seen a sequel even if this had made money at the box office. Cool demons though, for what it’s worth.

3. Shaft

Looking back, I’m struggling to think of anything worth seeing in Shaft. I hated the film’s approach at comedy, particularly when it reverted Samuel L. Jackson’s John Shaft into the kind of man who proudly doesn’t understand modern sensibilities and spews out one homophobic joke after another. The plot was uninspired and uninteresting - not to mention generic - and none of it felt like it belonged on the big screen. On the upside, it prompted me to view the original trilogy with Richard Roundtree and those were enjoyable.

2. Simmba

Simmba is unlikely to be on the “Worst of 2019” list next January. It probably won’t be at the #2 spot. The film mixes two wildly different tones but not well. It begins as a romantic crime comedy, a dated one, sure. Simmba staging a phoney crime in order for the woman he’s attracted to to call him for help and then use the call as an excuse to stay with her through the night is creepy but I guess it might’ve passed like 20 years ago in North America. What makes this a bad film is the way it then introduces a character’s gang rape and murder as a way to prompt the anti-hero onto a righteous path. From there, it turns into this vigilante revenge film that has disturbing implications. You probably haven’t heard of it before now, much less seen it. I don’t recommend you check it out.

Runner Ups:

Aladdin

A controversial choice, as many casual filmgoers seem to have fallen madly in love with it (similar to the way they ate up 2017’s Beauty and the Beast) but honestly, what does this film do better than 1992’s Aladdin? Add an unmemorable song for Princess Jasmine to sing? Reduce the number of talking animals in order to give us more… nothing? Pile on the CGI to the point you wonder why it was made with live-actors in the first place? Like the innumerable direct-to-video sequels of classic films who've been all but forgotten, I tell you this Arabbian adventure won't endure.

Tolkien

So much potential squandered on a boring story. It didn’t take an astute viewer to recognize the film was crippled by the studio failing to obtain the rights to Tolkien’s actual work. I get the feeling we'll see another shot at a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien in a couple of years and this will be the Christopher Robin to the much superior Goodbye Christopher Robin.

The Hustle

It’s an unfunny comedy, what more is there to say? Rebel Wilson makes yet another bad career choice playing the same character she always plays. I only realized it was a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels while writing my review, which is unfortunate. Hopefully I can expunge this film from my memory soon enough and forget anything it might’ve spoiled about the original Bedtime Story or the 1988 remake.

1. Unplanned

The numerous instances of technical incompetence - mostly coming from the performers who are given lackluster material - would be enough to condemn Unplanned to this list. What made me hate the film is the way it blatantly lies and attempts to manipulate the audience into further entrenching themselves in a certain point of view through cheap, manipulative means. I can respect that genuine passion was poured into the project but the way it goes about it is shameful. Do not go see it, even if you're curious.

Yuck. That last one really left a bad taste in my mouth so I'm going to talk about a movie I did enjoy and am enthusiastic to direct you towards Alita: Battle Angel. Rosa Salazar as the titular Alita impressed me and I really dug the action scenes. I'll also right a wrong from last year by reminding you to find and watch Paddington and Paddington 2, both movies I should've put on my "Best of" lists the years they came out. I don't know what I was thinking but I keep coming back to these in my head. They're excellent for kids and adults.

And with that said, the list is over. Back to our regularly-scheduled film reviews until something big comes up. Thoughts or comments on the list are welcome and I hope you enjoyed reading.

[heartofstanding]

You might want to read Edward II close to Richard II too because they’re both dealing with the same themes. Also going to punt for Thomas of Woodstock, which is sometimes described as Richard II, Part One but imo they don’t fit together well enough for Thomas of Woodstock to be considered the prequel. It is awesome, though. @shredsandpatches​ is the resident Thomas of Woodstock expert so she might have more to say about it.

In terms of historical works, I can’t talk too much about the Wars of the Roses but I am your girl for everything from Edward II to Henry VI.

There are some broad overviews of the era but they’re mostly crap and written by notoriously crap historians like Alison Weir, Dan Jones, Lisa Hilton and John Julius Norwich but they’re mostly crap and I don’t read them as a rule. The Yale Monarch Series is a pretty decent place to start and they’re generally considered the academic standard for their king though some are more academic than others. I also really like the Penguin Monarch series because they’re generally ~100 page biographies written by reputable historians. They might be a bit a limited in what they say but they’re good, bite-sized chunks and they’re pretty affordable overall. Beneath the cut are more a hell of a lot more recs divided into separate topics.

Edward II: Chris Given Wilson’s Edward II: The Terrors of Kingship (Penguin Monarch), short and brief but very good. If you want more depth, Kathryn Warner, Edward II: The Unconventional King. Warner’s bios of Isabella of France (definitely avoid Weir’s incredibly homophobic Isabella: She-Wolf of France) and Hugh Despenser the Younger are also worth a look. If you want even more depth, Seymour Philip’s Edward II (Yale Monarch), though he does no-homo Edward.

Edward III: W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (Yale Monarch/YM) or Richard Barber, Edward III and the Triumph of England. I haven’t read either of these but I’ve read enough of their other works to know they’re pretty damn good. The Penguin Monarch bio by Sumption is pretty much a condensed military history and, as you might guess from the title, Ian Mortimer’s The Perfect King is pretty “Edward III is the bestest ever”.

Philippa of Hainault: Kathryn Warner has the only in-print biography and I’m pretty ‘meh’ on it.  Philippa is also covered in Louise Tingle’s Chaucer’s Queens (alongside Joan of Kent and Anne of Bohemia) and Lisa Benz St John’s Three Medieval Queens (alongside Marguerite of France and Isabella of France).

Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince: Michael Jones’s The Black Prince is good and very readable, Richard Barber’s Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine is more academic and the standard. Barber also has a sourcebook on the Prince. I also really enjoyed The Black Prince and the Capture of a King: Poitiers 1359 by Morgan Witzel and Marilyn Livingstone.

Joan of Kent: Anthony Goodman’s Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent: A Fourteenth-Century Princess and Her World and Louise Tingle’s Chaucer’s Queens. Penny Lawe’s biography, The First Princess of Wales, is highly speculative.

Richard II: Kathryn Warner’s Richard II: A True King’s Fall if you made me pick one. She’s pretty good around talking about Richard II’s mental state and sexuality and it’s a decent overview, though she doesn’t really unpack the work she cites and makes a couple of errors. Nigel Saul’s Richard II (Yale Monarch) is the definitive biography but it’s considerably more expensive than Warner’s and he’s crap about Richard’s mental state and sexuality. I adore Lauren Ashe’s Richard II: A Brittle Glory (Penguin Monarch) but it’s more of an analysis of Richard’s image than biography. Dillian Gordon’s The Wilton Diptych is also a good overview of Richard’s regal image (there are other books about the diptych but this is the most affordable and also gorgeous to look at). Manchester University Press have two sourcebooks that cover Richard’s reign (The Reign of Richard II) and his deposition (Chronicles of the Revolution). Juliet Barker’s England, Arise is about the Peasants Revolt in 1381 and excellent.

John of Gaunt: Anthony Goodman’s John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe but it is expensive (maybe try getting it secondhand). Helen Carr’s The Red Prince is apparently doing well and Kathryn Warner has a bio of Gaunt due out next year but I’m not... excited by what I’ve heard of either of them.

Katherine Swynford: Jeanette Lucraft’s Katherine Swynford: The History of a Medieval Mistress is really awesome and I want to get my hands on Goodman’s booklet on Katherine. Avoid: Alison Weir’s biography.

Henry IV: hands down, Chris Given-Wilson’s Henry IV (Yale Monarch). It basically combines the most recent research Ian Mortimer (Fears of Henry IV) did but without the hagiography and dick-measuring that Mortimer fills his commentary with. The Penguin Monarch bio isn’t out yet (it’s due out in March 2022 but it was first due out in like, 2018, so I’m rapidly losing hope of ever seeing it). Paul Strohm’s England’s Empty Throne is also an excellent look at the narratives of usurpation and legitimization at play through Henry IV and Henry V’s reign.

Shrewsbury: disappointingly, the biographies about the Percies all seem to be out-of-print and the one I read (Andrew W. Boardman’s Hotspur) wasn’t all that great. The Osprey guide (Shrewsbury 1403: Struggle for a Fragile Crown) and John Barratt’s War for the Throne: The Battle of Shrewsbury 1403 are both decent guides.

Henry V: I’d start with Anne Curry’s Henry V: From Playboy Prince to Warrior King (Penguin Monarch). It’s a very good overview that has includes all the most recent research. Teresa Cole’s Henry V was where I started and I found it readable and a solid overview, but as time as gone on, I’ve realised it was outdated before it was even published. Christopher Allmand wrote the Yale Monarch bio in 1992 and it’s follows the old structure of half-biography and half-political analysis - it is the standard biography but it’s less interesting if you want a more personal look at Henry V. There are a couple of excellent essay collections, Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (out of print but super awesome) and Henry V: New Interpretations. The BEST book on Henry V, by far, is Malcolm Vale’s Henry V: The Conscience of a King which studies Henry V’s kingship outside of his military successes and I basically think it’s something you HAVE to read if you want to talk about Henry V at all. Having said that, I wouldn’t read it if you don’t already have a good grasp on his reign. Katherine J. Lewis’s Kingship and Masculinity is also highly recommended.

Agincourt: Juliet Barker, Agincourt is my go-to rec. It’s very readable and informative and her information is pretty good. Anne Curry is the expert, though. She has The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (translated selections from chronicles about the battle), Agincourt: A New History (definitive, has a lot of the new research on the battle) and Agincourt: Great Battles (more of a historiography). The Battle of Agincourt: An Illustrated Companion is a catalogue of the Royal Armouries exhibition for the 600th anniversary and worth looking at, as is Stephen Cooper’s Agincourt: Myth and Reality (another historiography). For broader takes on the Hundred Years War, Jonathon Sumption as a four-part history that ends with Henry V’s death (there’ll be more volumes eventually). Barker has a sequel to Agincourt - Conquest - which covers the war’s end in Henry VI’s reign.

Henry VI: James Ross, Henry VI: A Good, Simple King (Penguin Monarch). Absolutely my favourite biography of Henry VI, the most thoughtful and thought-out - my only complaint is that it’s too short and I would adore Ross to write a full length biography. Lauren Johnson’s The Shadow King is close to excellent - she’s really good about Henry’s mental health - but I really hate the simplistic way she talks about the figures of Henry’s minority. Ralph A. Griffiths has the most comprehensive coverage of Henry’s reign (it’s a brick and it’s terrifying) and Bertram Wolffe has the Yale Monarch but it’s now considered out of date. Again, Katherine J. Lewis’s Kingship and Masculinity is amazing.

Margaret of Anjou: Helen Maurer’s Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power In Late Medieval England is a must-read for Margaret. Maurer has a volume of Margaret’s letters (incredibly expensive) and there’s Amy Licence’s Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou: A Marriage of Unequals which is OK but not great.

The Wars of the Roses: For the women of the Wars of the Roses, I’d start with Sarah Gristwood’s Blood Sisters which isn’t the best academically but is just a solid, incredibly readable coverage of WOTR. Gemma Hollman’s Royal Witches covers both Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Elizabeth Woodville as well as earlier royal women (Joanna of Navarre, Henry IV’s queen, and Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester) and the accusations of witchcraft against them. For a much more academic, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 by J. L. Laynesmith and The Last Plantagenet Consorts by Kavita Mudan Finn are both AMAZING and highly recommended. Keith Dockray has source books with excerpts from chronicles, letters and records for Henry VI & Margaret of Anjou, Edward IV and Richard III. I haven’t read anything else to recommend them, though.

pspspspp histories folks. hey

1) when is the “right” time to read edward ii, king john, and/or merry wives? (”right” meaning in terms of sequence) because all of those are main-histories-adjacent (i know edward ii is marlowe but i’ve heard it’s quite good), but i’m just working on the tetralogies at the moment lmfao i haven’t slipped any of the other ones in chronologically

2) does anyone have recommendations for good history books about the era(s) the histories cover? (particularly henry v i think) i’m not like… Burning to research this stuff but if anyone’s out there like “no no this biography is high quality and enjoyable”

3) have any of you read tessa gratton’s lady hotspur. and should i read it. on the one hand i didn’t particularly like queens of innis lear and it was about 300 pages too long to disappoint me like that and i’m worried lady hotspur will be the same way but On The Other Hand it’s wlw hotspur so i feel almost legally obligated

[reddragdiva]

the australian history they don’t teach in schools

this is a book by dr chris owen, a historian at the university of western australia. i have known this guy since we were four, at kindergarten and primary school and again from the perth indie rock scene when he was playing hardcore punk. his book is vastly more important to the world than mine. here’s a blurb about it from the facebook page The Australian Holocaust:

Over recent years, Members of the Australian Government have waged war on the Black History of Australia. Politicians have claimed stories of massacres were just myths.

Chris Owen's latest book (Every Mothers Son Is Guilty) exposes some of the colonisers worst crimes that are far from fabrication: http://bit.ly/2jDlB0P

A recurring feature of Kimberley Aboriginal oral history are accounts that detail the practice of colonists  killing and burning Aboriginal people (including women and children) by piling the bodies up (after, it appears, the condemned had gathered the wood for the fire) and incinerating them with kerosene. These large scale killings were known as punitive expeditions.

Stories such as this are typical. Frank Budbaria at Turkey Creek ‘They used to do em down here, they shot big mob just down the bottom camp here (Turkey Creek) that side of the flat rock there. Just past the bottom camp, they shot big mob there. Burn em up on the flat rock on top.’

Biddy Malingal on massacres at Lightman Creek, Violet Valley and Panton River: ‘They kartiya [white people] went back and shot all the babies, kids and teenage girls and all the old ladies, their mothers and grandmothers, and all the old men. They had all climbed up trees, poor things. They shot them like birds and they fell down like birds. Finished. They got all the wood, and piled it up. They pulled all the people and put them on top of the wood, put kerosene on it and lit the fire.’ (p.466.)

These oral history accounts are often challenged by some who claim they are ‘fabrications’ or ‘myths’ and are offensive to white Australians as their ancestors would never do such a thing. There is however a considerable body of evidence from police themselves that this occurred.

In December 1897 PC Ritchie received information from an Aboriginal prisoner who showed him the sites on McPhee’s Creek where four pastoralists shot three women and one man and burnt their bodies. ‘The camp was quite visible’, Ritchie wrote. ‘Saw the place where the bodies were burnt. Saw one skull and lower jaw in the sand and ashes also some smaller bones much burnt.’ Despite the evidence of murder no prosecution was even attempted. (p.395)

These killings went well into the 20th century. Burning Aboriginal bodies to hide evidence appeared to escalate in the 1900s as more public attention was given to the Kimberley.

In late October 1901 PC James Campbell Thomson from Argyle police camp investigated allegations of the murder of two Aboriginal men on Texas Downs Station and the burning of their bodies. In the course of his investigations he visited the site where the bodies were burnt and found the remains of both visible. He gathered five independent Aboriginal witnesses who could corroborate the fact that Texas Downs stockman Thomas McLaughlin shot and killed two Aboriginal men and burnt their bodies at a spot 48 kilometres east of Turkey Creek telegraph station. East Kimberley colonists rallied behind McLaughlin and collected £300 enabling him to escape to South Australia; as a consequence charges were never brought against him.

Aboriginal witness statement - Merriemerrie

1905 Roth Royal Commission 14 Year old Aboriginal prisoner Boodungarry (serving two years in gaol for cattle killing) said: ‘I had been working for a white man but left and went to the bush. PC Wilson asked if I killed cattle. I said ‘no’. Wilson and Inglis then talked together and they said they would shoot me. PC Inglis put a cartridge in his rifle, pointed it at me, and said he would burn me at a rock. It frightened me, and then I said I did kill a bullock.’ (p.409)

1915 Mistake Creek Massacre. Constable John Franklin Flinders reported that Mick Rhatigan and his two native workers, Nipper and Wyne, ‘shot and burned five or six Aborigines’. The ‘charred remains’ of two bodies were found at Mistake Creek and the bodies of five others were found some distance away. (p.438)

1916 Mowla Bluff massacre. Nyikina Elder John Watson said, was a punitive expedition by police and other colonists that took place after a station manager was assaulted by some Mangala people over a small dispute. Instead of just arresting those involved the punitive expedition wreaked havoc on men, women and children from the Nyikina Mangala people. They were rounded up, ordered to collect firewood, and then shot and their remains burnt. Watson says he was told that three or four hundred were killed and only three escaped. (p.439)

1924 Bedford Downs massacre. Kija Elder Dottie Watby describes how, in response to the killing of a valuable bullock, Kija and Worla people were forced to cut wood. They were then given damper (bread) that was poisoned. After they were poisoned (as Dottie stated, they ‘drop down’) managers and stockmen from adjacent stations started shooting everyone. She remembered that they: ‘Killem all dem blackfellas, family for us mob.’

Then: Right, dem bin gettem dat wagon, gettam dat donkey and pullem la fire. They loadem in big pile like dat and chuckem allawood,  chuckem, chuckem, chuckem, kerosene,  chuckem kerosene, Dey bin light dat fire – terrible. (p,441)

The most notorious case is the 1927 Forrest River Massacres 13 men including two police officers (all armed with 500 rounds of ammunition) went on a punitive expedition over six weeks the resulting publicity generated a royal commission. G.T. Wood, ‘Royal Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Killing and Burning of Bodies of Aborigines in East Kimberley and into Police Methods when Effecting Arrests.’

In the Royal Commission Inspector Douglas gave evidence that ‘sixteen natives were burned in three lots: one, six and nine’. Commissioner Wood reduced this figure and found that eleven people had been murdered and their remains burnt. Wood noted that the ‘conspiracy of silence’ around the massacre was so extensive it was almost impossible to get evidence. PCs Regan and St Jack were the only members of the expedi¬tion charged with murder, though with the absence of eyewitness testimony, a magistrate found the evidence insufficient to go to trial and the police were reinstated. (p.443)

i went to school in australia in the 1980s. i literally learnt more about Aboriginal history and issues from punk fanzines than i did at school.

so yeah, looks like a good book, you should probably buy a copy.

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Asia and Australia Edition: Paul Manafort, Kevin Spacey, Catalonia: Your Tuesday Briefing

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Asia and Australia Edition: Paul Manafort, Kevin Spacey, Catalonia: Your Tuesday Briefing

The U.S. sent a nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber over undisclosed parts of the Pacific region ahead of President Trump’s visit to Asia, which starts in Japan over the weekend.

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• Spain’s attorney general said that Catalan leaders will be prosecuted for declaring Catalonia’s independence from Spain.

Judges will now decide whether to charge them with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for organizing the independence referendum held on Oct. 1.

But some reports said the Catalan leaders may be seeking asylum in Belgium.

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Credit Michael Klimentyev/Kremlin, via European Pressphoto Agency

• Russia’s strategy of using oil as a geopolitical tool to spread its influence faces a crucial test this week in Venezuela, where Moscow is effectively taking China’s place as principal banker.

The government of President Nicolás Maduro must come up with $1 billion to avert default — and Russia has been making loans and deals that could save it from collapse. What does Moscow get in return? Influence in Washington’s backyard.

_____

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• Harvey Weinstein faces new sexual assault accusations that extend the span of the allegations to the 1970s.

The emotional toll is vivid for women who say they felt ashamed and isolated as they watched the Hollywood producer walk red carpets and pile up Oscars. “This has haunted me my entire life,” said a woman who accused him of raping her nearly 40 years ago.

And Kevin Spacey apologized after he was accused of sexually accosting a 14-year-old actor 31 years ago, but came under fire for using the same statement to come out as gay.

_____

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• The U.S. and China and something in common: a taste for French butter.

But rising global demand is causing prices hikes and sporadic shortages in France — prompting both mock panic and real anxiety.

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“Not having butter in France,” one woman said, “that’s appalling,”

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Business

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• The iPhone X goes on sale in 55 countries and territories on Friday, after a week of booming pre-orders. Here’s our review.

• Two Silicon Valley titans, Tim Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, met in Beijing with President Xi Jinping at an annual gathering of advisers to Tsinghua University’s business school, but few details have emerged.

• President Trump is expected to name his nominee to lead the Federal Reserve this week. The names on his short list don’t appear to share his taste for aggressive financial deregulation.

• Executive expertise: Our departing Corner Office columnist interviewed 525 chief executives through the years. Here’s what he learned.

• U.S. stocks were weaker. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

In the News

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• The resignation of Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan since 2005, represents more fallout from a Kurdish independence vote that many now see as a catastrophic blunder. He has no clear successor. [The New York Times]

• In Afghanistan, the Taliban are increasingly refining their own opium in Afghanistan, lifting their profits and resulting in a troubling turn for the war. [The New York Times]

• Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is in Israel to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Australian troops’ victory in the Battle of Beersheba today. Some of those attending are descendants of rarely recognized indigenous soldiers. [ABC]

• The deaths of three underage girls in a fire at the Indonesian fireworks factory where they worked underscores the country’s struggles with workplace safety and child welfare. [The New York Times]

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• Formal approval for the two-year trial of a medically supervised drug injecting center in inner Melbourne is expected today. [ABC]

• Chris Gayle, the Jamaican cricketer, won a defamation case against Fairfax Media. A jury in New South Wales found insufficient evidence that he exposed himself to a massage therapist in Sydney during the 2015 World Cup. [ESPN]

• The Japanese government ordered hotels, stadiums and public buildings to dumb down their language when helping foreigners during a disaster. [The Asahi Shimbun]

Smarter Living

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

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• Should your spouse be your best friend?

• Clocks’ seasonal shifts offer the opportunity to assess your sleep habits.

• Recipe of the day: monster Halloween cookies.

Noteworthy

Video

Murakami Balances Modernity and Tradition in Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, features works by Takashi Murakami, one of Japan’s most famous contemporary artists, alongside traditional Japanese art.

By JEAN YVES CHAINON and JOSHUA THOMAS on Publish Date October 26, 2017. Photo by Photo by Jean Yves Chainon / The New York Times. Technology by Samsung.. Watch in Times Video »

• Takashi Murakami, the master of Pop Japanese anime playfulness, has teamed with Louis Vuitton and Kanye West. But his collaboration with a senior Japanese art historian has created a profound shift in his work.

• Mali’s anti-poaching brigade, formed to protect its few hundred, extremely endangered desert elephants, has not lost a single one to poachers in nine months.

• And Luke Skywalker speaks, at last. Since “Star Wars” went supernova in 1977, Mark Hamill has been placed on a pop-cultural pedestal. It’s been a conflicted relationship, but Mr. Hamill, 66, isn’t bitter or jaded, and he isn’t just Luke. Here’s our extensive profile.

Back Story

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We begin Halloween with a ghost story.

Stingy Jack invited the devil for a drink.

As Irish folklore goes, Jack didn’t want to pay for the drinks, and instead convinced the devil to turn himself into a coin that could be used to settle the tab.

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The devil agreed, but Jack ditched the tab and kept the coin. When he finally died, Stingy Jack was denied entry to both heaven and hell and instead was given a burning coal to light his way as he roamed the earth for eternity. He placed the coal in a carved-out turnip, turning it into a lantern.

Stingy Jack became known as “Jack of the Lantern,” or Jack-o’-Lantern, by the late 17th century. Elsewhere in Europe, making lanterns out of potatoes and beets was part of a fall harvest celebration. Lights were also thought to ward off evil spirits.

By the end of the 19th century, European immigrants in America switched their carving tradition over to pumpkins.

“The fortunate pumpkin is a noble fruit, a joy in the mouth of mankind, a paean of Autumn on the happy palate,” a 1942 Times article proclaimed. “The unfortunate pumpkin becomes a jack-o’-lantern.”

Remy Tumin contributed reporting.

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[une-sanz-pluis]

It was Gaunt who arranged Henry's marriage. The object of his attentions was Mary, the co-heiress to Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton, who had died at the age of thirty in January 1373, leaving no sons, two underage daughters, and a very substantial inheritance. The elder daughter, Eleanor (born in 1366), was married to Gaunt's brother, Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Buckingham, probably in 1374. What now happened to Mary (born in 1369–70) was naturally a matter of considerable interest to Buckingham. As long as she remained single, the entire Bohun inheritance would fall to him; were she to marry, he would be obliged to share it with her husband. Inconveniently, other duties now deflected his attention. On 3 May 1380, he indented with the king and council to lead an expedition to Brittany with a retinue of 5,000 men. During the following two months he did what he could to ensure that the Bohun patrimony did not slip from his grasp during his absence: on 8 May he obtained a royal grant of the custody of Mary's share of the inheritance during her minority; on 22 June Eleanor came of age and Thomas performed his fealty to the king for his wife's share of the lands. Shortly before leaving he even took the precaution of bringing Mary to stay with her sister at Pleshey castle (Essex), where he arranged for her to be instructed by nuns with the intention that she should join the order of St Clare. According to Froissart, ‘the young lady seemed to incline to their doctrine, and thought not of marriage’. Hopeful of having ensured the integrity of his inheritance, Buckingham shipped his troops to Calais and, on 24 July 1380, set out with his army on a campaign from which he would not return for nine months. No sooner had he done so than Gaunt made his move. Three days after his brother's crossing, he secured a royal grant of Mary's marriage, ‘for marrying her to his son Henry’, and shortly after this induced her mother, Joan countess of Hereford, to spirit her away from Pleshey and take her to Arundel, where the young couple were rapidly betrothed. They were married on 5 February 1381 in a service held at Countess Joan's manor of Rochford (Essex). The connivance of the king and council, who would have been aware of the blow this inflicted on Buckingham, is a measure of the financial and political leverage Gaunt exercised in Richard II's minority government. Gaunt attended and presented Mary with a ruby, as well as paying for the festivities; Henry's sisters, Philippa and Elizabeth, each gave their new sister-in-law a goblet and ewer. The king and Edmund earl of Cambridge (Gaunt's younger, and Buckingham's older, brother) may also have been there, for ten royal minstrels and four of Cambridge's minstrels received gratuities from Gaunt for enlivening the proceedings. There was nothing hasty or clandestine about the wedding.

Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (Yale University Press, 2016)

[shredsandpatches]

Chris Given-Wilson is A+ in general. So is Mark Ormrod (I think he’s usually W.M. Ormrod in his publications). I also recommend the Saul bio, which is very much a political bio and doesn’t have a ton to say about, for instance, court culture, but in terms of Richard’s political activities it’s very thorough. The last chapter, which is all about trying to diagnose Richard with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, is stupid though--like, Richard was a medieval king and died over 600 years ago (well, just under 600 years ago when the book was published, but still). That’s not really a personality issue. And his major point of confusion was “Richard was capable of both great love and warmth, and great cruelty and vindictiveness,” which, yes? That’s not really grounds for an NPD diagnosis? So take that part with an entire saltshaker. I’ve heard good things about Laura Ashe’s entry on Richard in the Penguin Monarchs series (I think it’s called A Brittle Glory) but I haven’t gotten to that one yet--the bits I’ve skimmed have been solid though. Michael Bennett’s Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 is a good book on the end of the reign.

For primary source documents, there are two really good sourcebooks for the reign -- Chris Given Wilson’s Chronicles of the Revolution (covering the events of 1397–99) and A.K. McHardy’s The Reign of Richard II: Minority to Tyranny (covering Richard’s reign up to 1397). Both of them have a great selection of documents; the McHardy book is the one you’d go to for the Appellant Crisis, obviously. Some of her comments on the documents are a little weird; for instance, she says the account of Simon Burley carrying small exhausted Richard out of his coronation gives a bad impression of Burley.

For the Appellants specifically, people generally cite Anthony Goodman’s The Loyal Conspiracy although it’s pretty old by now (published in the late seventies, iirc) but I must admit I have not read it because the title annoys me so much.

There are a few essay collections out there with good stuff in them: Goodman and James Gillespie’s Richard II: The Art of Kingship; Gillespie’s The Age of Richard II; and Gwilym Dodd’s The Reign of Richard II. All of these have takes from a wide range of authors with differing opinions. 

For court culture stuff, Jenny Stratford’s Richard II and the English Royal Treasure is a detailed account of Richard’s 1399 treasure roll, with a lot of excellent essay and commentary on the pieces involved and their material significance. Gervase Mathew’s The Court of Richard II is somewhat dated but a really fun read. The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych uses the eponymous altarpiece as an entry into examining various aspects of court culture and kingly image-making (as well as talking about the physical creation of the diptych).

Richard’s reign saw a major boom in English vernacular literature -- most famously, he was a patron to Geoffrey Chaucer, albeit mostly in his day job -- so there’s a ton of literary criticism in which he features. Paul Strohm’s work is always great; most pertinent is his terrific England’s Empty Throne, which is an analysis of various stripes of Lancastrian propaganda and how Henry IV and later Henry V dealt with the breach in the line of succession. There are also some excellent chapters in Hochon’s Arrow, particularly the one about queenly intercession (which has some A+ Anne of Bohemia content) and the one about “The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse.” David Wallace’s Chaucerian Polity is also really good in this regard (and also has A+ Anne of Bohemia content). Similarly to Strohm’s England’s Empty Throne, Louisa Desaussure Duls’ Richard II in the Early Chronicles examines the picture of Richard II created by medieval historians in order to establish the information available to early modern historians such as the Holinshed syndicate and dramatists such as Shakespeare.

And I haven’t even gotten into stuff about Shakespeare’s Richard II and that’s actually what my dissertation was about--but I feel like this has been enough recommendation spam for now. 

Does anyone have some Medieval history book recommendations?

So, for context I’ve been homeschooled since kindergarten. There are a fucking ton of school books in my basement, so since I’m on my R2 kick atm I decided i wanted to do some research on the Lords Appelant. In all of the history books we have down there, NOT ONE OF THEM TALKS ABOUT RICHARD II. Either it’s the wrong time period, or just skips straight from Richard the Lionhearted to Henry V. Very disappointed and I need new history books.

[newagesispage]

                                                                              April 2017

PAGE RIB

*****Welcome to sexual assault awareness month.. Be vigilant and help your fellow man or woman!

*****Lady Gaga will replace Beyonce at Coachella

*****Will they ever air the Gary Cole episode of Law and Order SVU?

*****Things are heating up in the impeachment trial of Alabama’s Gov. Robert Bentley. His lawyer claims he was denied due process. The other side says that this is just delay.

*****Does ABC have a hacking problem? I can’t even remember how many times certain people start to talk on different programs and boom.. cuts ou, jammed or temporarily interrupted with something out of left field. Is it local.. Does this happen to everyone?

*****Madonna is adopting 4 year old twins.

*****Ten percent of the bidders for the border wall are Hispanic.

*****The second to last season of The Americans is rockin’!!

*****”We know he’s crazy, we have to start protecting ourselves.” This is just one of the lines from Dave Letterman in a New York magazine interview that centered mostly on Trump. He has no qualms about calling things out. “How is a white supremacist the chief advisor to our President?” “If we get a President sometime soon who does not have a mental disorder, twitter will be useful.” You must look it up, it is worth a read!

*****Rihanna received Harvard’s Humanitarian award.

*****Roger Stone, big supporter and surrogate for Trump tried to discredit the FBI over the Iraq war. Charlie Rose had to set him straight and tell him it was a CIA report that had revealed the possible weapons of mass destruction. The man, who has a Nixon tattoo that spans his shoulders, is also under investigation for collusion with the Russians.

*****The White house is talking about creating propaganda to whip up the anti- immigrant hysteria even more: VOICE: Victims of immigration crime engagement. Some call this racist and how genocide begins.

*****Dancing with the stars is back with Charo, Mr.T, Nancy Carrigan, Simone Biles and Chris Kattan.

*****Radio shows have come full circle to become podcasts. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We still seem to like to just listen to people talk. Check out Karina Longworth with You Must Remember This. With Feud (next up for Feud: Charles and Di) going strong on FX, it is a good time to listen to her Bette/Joan episode. With Manson in the news again, there is a 12 part episode on his part in Hollywood.

*****Ann- Margret is back with Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin in Going in Style.

*****Baskets has been given the greenlight for season 3!

*****Louis CK and Albert Brooks are bringing the animated The Cops to TBS.

*****Shemar Moore will be making an appearance on the season finale of Criminal Minds. His character will be bringing the team some info about ‘Scratch.” Shemar recently told ET that he wanted Morgan to call Penelope ‘Sugar tits’ instead of ‘baby girl” , but the writers wouldn’t go for that. He is also filming a CBS pilot reboot of S.W.A.T. The Criminal Minds finale airs on May 10.

*****Should we have to put up with Jeff Sessions and his lies about the Russian ambassador? We have direct evidence of deception. Comey made it official that the Trump camp is under investigation for possible collusion with the Russian involvement with the campaign. Funny that he always shot his mouth off about Hillary but was mum on this. The Republicans questioned Comey mostly about the leaks which is important but also a great distraction.  The FBI reveals that Russia did not even try to hide their tracks. It is possible they were just gathering and then when they dumped the info they went through an intermediary. **Sean Spicer claims that Paul Manafort, (who seems to have many ties to Russia and who ran the campaign for a time and ran the RNC) had a very limited role with the campaign.  The bugging of Trump tower was laid to rest but just not by scary clown and co. They seem to believe that GCHQ, British intelligence was involved as well. Why don’t the Republican Senators get some fucking balls and quit defending this freak? Let’s hone in on this Russian connection and get this freak out of there.**Ivanka is getting an office and top clearance? Is this an Edith Wilson situation? Does the family have to keep an eye on him? Is it time to face the sad fact that he may have dementia or a mental disorder? BTW Wendy Williams mentioned that she would rather be Tiffany than Ivanka because of all the responsibility and the whole wife and daughter thing going on. Tiffany gets to be out there living it up.  Love that!**Pence is no prize either, he is always behind Trump looking like a bobble head doll. Be aware if we end up with him!

*****Hillary B. Smith is on General Hospital for a stint. Oh how I missed ya, Nora!!

*****Everyone is giving backlash about cutting funding for PBS and meals on wheels. Mick Mulvaney, director of the office of management and budget tells us it is only a 3% cut but I am guessing we will now have 3% more hungry people. He explains that a lot of people do not want their tax dollars to fund the National endowment for the arts. I do not want mine to add millions to the military budget or Mar a Lago trips or Melania’s NY shutdown (the gossip is that Trump and the first lady are basically separated). They don’t seem to give a fuck about that.**It is so great that the ‘Trump health care plan’ fell apart but Pelosi and Hoyer et al. need to stop crowing and keep fighting against the rest of the crap the majority is trying to get by with and fix the things that need fine tuning on the ACA.

***** Does anybody else find Feud and The American’s Alison Wright absolutely irresistible?? She is so fabulous!!

*****It looks like Sears and Kmart may be in the verge of going out of business.

*****Jared Kushner’s role just gets bigger and bigger. He has been appointed to reconfigure the government and deal with the border wall and negotiate peace in the Middle East. One guy? OK!

***** CBS Sunday morning informed us about the wonders of Denmark. They do have the highest cancer rates and taxes but they have the highest wages and lowest poverty rates too. They live by the word Hygge which means live simply.

*****The White House did not even send an official rep to This Week, they just sent some old buddy of Trumps. Will they start to run out of new faces to defend them? ** Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The president clings to his assertions like a drunk to an empty gin bottle.” And Bill Moyers wrote,” There’s a smell of treason in the air.” Samantha Bee likens Trumps military spending to an insecure guy who tries to make his penis look bigger. Bill Maher wonders if constitutionalist Judge Gorsuch will wonder ‘What would the slaveholders do?’ Michael Moore wrote, “Historians in the near future will mark today,3-28-17, as the day the extinction of human life on earth began, thanks 2 Donald Trump.”** Donald Trump Jr. criticized the London Mayor after the attacks.

*****And just as Scary clown 45 signed the repeal to wipe out Obama’s climate change record, An inconvenient truth sequel Truth to Power is coming out.

*****The Rolling Stones are nominated for best blues act and best blues album in the Jazz FM awards.

*****There is no clean coal!

*****The Daytime Emmy’s were announced. The Talk and Ellen lead the pack with 8 nominations. There are 5 for the View and the announcement fucked up their names. I’ll be routing for CBS Sunday morning and CBS this morning. I can’t believe that The Pioneer woman was not nominated for outstanding culinary program. I guess I will route for Trisha’s Southern Kitchen. Days of our Lives was nominated for show, directing and writing. There was best actor noms for Billy Flynn (Chad) and Vincent Irizarry (Deimos). Kate Mansi (the old Abigail) was nominated for best supporting actress and John Aniston (Victor) for supporting actor. Go Days!!!

*****The small Illinois town of West Frankfurt stood up for Carlos Hernandez. Hernandez was picked up when the immigrant ban enforcers were looking for someone else. The town vouched for him and called this out as unfair.

*****The FDA has approved food to protect food. Edipeel is a spray made out of food that can put a thin shield on fruit and protect it 5 times longer than normal. It is edible and tasteless. It will be invaluable in places with no refrigeration and help with waste.

*****Patrick Stewart is applying for American citizenship to help with the fight we are having in here at home. Agitate..Agitate..Agitate.

*****Looks like NBC has given the greenlight to an Ellen DeGeneres game show.

*****Tom Hanks sent the White house press corps an espresso machine with a note that read: “Keep up the good fight for truth, justice and the American way. Especially for the truth part.” This is a tradition he started with the Bush administration.

*****Get ready for a Big band theory spinoff.

*****Steve Martin will teach an online comedy course. The cost is $90 on Masterclass. Others who have taught are Christina Aguilera, Kevin Spacey, James Patterson, Dustin Hoffman, Werner Herzog and Aaron Sorkin. They will soon be joined by Shonda Rhimes and Hans Zimmer.

***** Caterpillar was raided by the Feds which included the IRS, CID, Inspector General and export enforcement. Word is they may be indicted for tax evasion. This could be from a 2009 lawsuit alleging the company shifted profits overseas and to offshore shell companies to avoid paying more than 2 billion in taxes.

*****Hall and Oates and Tears for Fears are set to tour.

*****This time it’s real. You see warnings on the internet all the time about your privacy rights but this time look out! The Senate has voted to repeal a set of rules aimed at protecting online data. Once again the big companies win under this administration. This could let internet providers share info. New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. states “At a time when our personal data is more vulnerable than ever, it’s baffling that senate republicans would eliminate the few privacy protections Americans have today.” The word is that millions are pouring in for their votes. Ted Cruz reportedly got 2 mil. We will be paying the big cable giants to sell our info to the highest bidder and this could keep the FCC from ever again establishing similar consumer privacy protections. And this from a man who wants privacy with his taxes. Some of the wealthy are claiming they will buy all the info of those that voted to sold us down the river and release it to the public.

*****Robert Redford has me excited about 2 films. The first is out now about the afterlife called The Discovery. It also stars Riley Keough, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Segel and Rooney Mara. The other has distribution rights just coming together. The Old man and the gun is the true story of a thief with Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover and Casey Affleck.

*****A tribute to the music of Merle Haggard will be held in Nashville with Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Loretta Lynn, The Avett Brothers, Alison Krauss and Billy Gibbons.

*****Microfiber is causing great problems with water pollution. I knew I hated fleece.

*****There has been an official request for scary clown’s tax returns.

*****”These are not good times.” –John McCain. McCain is also very worried that North Korea’s leader is not rational and needs to be handled. It is kind of frightening when our own leader is not rational.

*****Look for the live album Charlie Watts meets Danish Radio Big Band. The music which includes Stones covers was recorded in 2010 and will drop on April 21.

*****As soon as the ACA was saved, the blame game started! Scary clown and his cohorts blamed Washington for cancelling the health care vote stating that “It’s a lot more rotten than we thought.” Trump said “I’m glad it’s behind me” and then tweeted blame to the republicans and the democrats and the very conservative republicans and it just goes on. He invited us to watch his beloved friend Judge Jeanine who minced no words in that Paul Ryan needs to step down. He is adamant that he does not blame Ryan. Ok. Jeanine scolded that we all knew a businessman would not know how to legislate but he made it clear during the election that he knew more than anybody. Is the world  laughing at our “art of the deal”  tough New Yorker president who was suckered by the Wisconsin dude. Trump is like the armchair quarterback who is finally thrown into the game and does not have a clue. **Bannon bullied and threatened the night before the “vote”, telling the house members that they had no choice but it seemed to work against him and wouldn’t that be the President’s job? ** The topper was Colbert using the schoolhouse rock song, “I’m just a bill” which ended with the bill blowing his brains out.

*****Some high school kids came up with We Dine Together for the new or loner kids to make some new friends. Look it up and help to open chapters locally!!

*****Zac Brown is coming out with new music.

*****Trump has now rescinded the order Obama signed requiring firms that do business with the federal government prove compliance with federal laws and executive orders. This makes Trump look like he’s doing the right thing by leaving one of Obama’s executive orders in place that prohibits the federal government from contracting with firms that discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity. People from the LGBT community would have to take steps to enforce it now.** College basketball in North Carolina sort of forced the repeal of the bathroom law but they leave a regulation of bathroom access solely to the control of the legislature. It prevents local government from passing or amending their own non -discrimination ordinances pertaining to private employment.

*****There is a growing number of the French who want President Obama to run for President of France. It is possible if he were so inclined. One only has to be a resident, not a natural born citizen to run for President in Great Britain, Israel, Germany, France, Canada and France.

*****The Mount Kushmore Wellness retreat tour is coming to 16 cities with Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Cypress Hill, Method Man and Redman.

*****Are all the Russians visiting Trump and his cohorts buying their vodka at Costco?

*****Apparently Beau Biden’s widow is dating his brother Hunter Biden.

*****This year’s Seattle Hemp fest runs August 18-20.

*****Who knew that Bryan Cranston dubbed a lot of the monster voices from Japanese to English for the original Power Rangers.

*****Dimitri Rybolovlev, a Russian fertilizer businessman bought a Trump home in Florida for twice what it was worth. This was the most expensive home sale in U.S. history.  He and the Presidents planes cross paths all the time though there have been many denials of this. A Russian ambassador was sitting in the front row of Trumps first press conference as President. Reports say that Scary clown went ballistic in the oval office when he discovered that Sessions recused himself. He left for Florida without his senior staff.** Now there is an inquiry about his business with an Iranian family known as the Corleoni’s of the Caspian.

*****Ben Carson called slaves immigrants and then walked it back.

*****Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are making a film about The Pentagon Papers to be called The Post.

*****North Korea fired 5 missiles into the ocean.

*****Beef Products Inc. is suing ABC over a story they did on a meat product they called pink slime. The judge said the suit could move forward.

*****Rachel Maddow got some backlash for overdoing it on her big Trump taxes show. Some think the President himself put them out.

*****SNL’s Weekend Update is going prime time. They are also going live in all time zones on April 15th.

*****Mischa Barton has filed a lawsuit over a sex tape that was filmed without her consent.

*****A tweet from Mcdonald’s had some pretty bad things to say about our President. The tweet was taken down in 20 minutes and they claim they were compromised.

*****Days alert: Did we see Nicole on the run with that poor baby? She is more street smart than to be taken advantage of by a street hustler at the little hotel. C’mon! I hate it when characters I like leave and the way they write them off seems more exciting than when they were there. Like, I want to see Teresa’s character on her secret adventure right now. I am sick of Chad thinking about Gabby moments from his past, enough! And then bam!!,  Deimos hits him where it hurts. Since Roman has retired, are they putting him in charge of the Brady Pub? I think that is perfect, he wants to take it a little easier and everybody’s favorite meeting place in Salem needs the next generation to take over.** Everyone in this country was talking about health care but I think most soap characters must have great insurance. Especially lately on Days, transplants, cancer, poisoning.. the hospital has been full up.** Hooray.. Adrienne picked Lucas, it’s about fucking time!!

*****Ben Affleck is recently out of rehab.

*****It looks like they are talking about remaking ‘The Fly’.

*****Netflix has the global rights to Orson Welles unfinished final film ’The Other Side of the Wind’.

*****Robert Blake is getting married again. His third wife is Pam Hudak that he had dated back in 1991 and previously lived in his guest house.

*****Can we all vote by mail yet?? What is the problem??

*****Looks like Kyle Bush is a bit of a hot head. He went after Joey Lagano after a race.

*****The Japanese prime minister was telling us what happened in some meetings he had with the Pres. I guess we are getting official news by way of Japan now since scary clown tells us nothing of any real importance.

*****Will Scary Clown 45 bring war as a jobs program? Where are the jobs he promised? There are many empty offices in Washington right now that could be filled with employed workers. He has many jobs to give and he won’t do it and they are firing people left and right. Look at the money we spend on getting him to Mir a Lago and the delusional investigations he wants into wiretapping etc. Just think of what a poor family could do with that money. This administration is gutting the EPA and that is just the beginning. The only good news is the stock market is up. He really behaves more like a cult leader than a President. He talks only in front of the people who worship him. I’m sure he can’t believe his dumb luck that so many Americans are uninformed. He communicates in “facts” that only he seems to understand. He sends out his minions to spread HIS intellectual pollution back to their audience of one. Charles Manson is of ill health and perhaps is not long for this world so I guess scary clown 45 is the new evil, the deplorables are the new ‘family’.

*****The liberal rednecks of comedy make me wonder when those raised with hate and or narrow teachings will rebel against their parents and become liberals filled with acceptance.

*****What is all this touching on late night talk shows?

*****Climate March on March 29. Scientists March on April 22.

*****Charlie Rose is back.

*****”The level of complete corruption from the fossil fuel industry that marks this administration is like nothing we’ve ever seen.”- Environmentalist Bill Mckibben.

*****What kind of a person could actually believe that a ‘billionaire’ who has tried to buy up sanctuaries to put up more towers with his name on them would help the environment? Will these same people who allowed themselves to be whipped up into a frenzy of fear and anxiety love it when Yellowstone disappears? Well, they do seem to be on board with everything else so perhaps they don’t care. The pain of this election is unbearable but will some good come of it? Will he and friends who say no to everything that isn’t their idea or does not help the richest of us learn anything from this? Will their eyes be open to what it really feels like when they all get on top of you? I mean are they capable of seeing what it really fucking feels like? If they hate government so much, why do they want to be a part of it? Well, of course to tip the scales in their favor.

*****Arnold Schwarzenegger has quit Celebrity Apprentice.

*****The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and Time will not attend White House briefings if other outlets (CNN, New York Times etc.) are not allowed in. Good for them but perhaps they need to keep working behind the scenes on digging for the truth about scary clown 45 but not reporting every little thing he distracts us with. For instance the ‘wiretap’ stuff is proven wrong so quit talking about it and move on!** Rex Tillerson told a reporter, “I didn’t want this job.” Sources say Tillerson shuffles in and out through back doors ignoring important diplomats and his minions are not allowed to look him in the eye. Tell me this is not true!

*****Sam Rodriguez Jr., who led a prayer at the Trump Inauguration is giving a safe haven to those worried about immigration raids. His New Season Christian Worship Center also gives shelter to victims of domestic violence.

*****A young intruder jumped the fence at the White House and 2 more followers have tried to get in too.

*****Trivia lovers: We have a new worst President!

*****The Brexit process began on March 29.

*****Beauty and the Beast set some records. It was the biggest March opening ever and the biggest PG opening ever.

*****The newest Monopoly tokens are a T. Rex, a rubber ducky and a penguin.

*****Thank you Martin Sheen for inspiring Malibu to become a sanctuary city.

*****Two stolen Van Gogh’s that were found last September were put on display again in Amsterdam.

*****The 9th season of RuPauls drag race is here!

*****Florida has a wheel of fugitives that spin to focus in on certain missing law breakers.

*****The new health care plan is loaded with massive tax cuts for the rich and no budget for it. The AMA and AARP do not support it. They kept a little of the good parts of Obamacare and changed wording on some things that Dems had wanted and they had previously refused. Estimates say that 60% of Trump voters will get their repeal of the ACA but it will cost them more for health care. Big drug companies get a healthy tax break and it is like a gift to insurance companies. All the Obama haters that wanted everything repealed sound a little mixed on the tax breaks for the rich. Did they not realize that the money was coming from somewhere? It is bad enough when I see people believe a story or two from the enquirer or wonder about a conspiracy theory but the things that pass for fact in the White House is delusional. The swamp is thriving just fine!

*****Lizzie Borden is coming to the big screen with Chloe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart.

*****OMG.. The new Twin peaks has added Laura Dern, Michael Cera and Jennifer Jason Leigh!!!!

*****Way to go Ted Koppel for giving Sean Hannity a reality check. Somebody has to be the voice of reason.

*****We still don’t know much about season 7 of American Horror Story. The cast gathered at the Paley center to talk about last season. It looks like it may be about the 2016 election and we know that Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters are on board and that it will come back in the fall.

*****Funny or die is bringing us 10 episodes of Sarah Silverman’s,’ I love you America.’

*****George Conway (Kellyanne’s husband) has been nominated to lead the justice department.

*****There is a new Jack Cassidy (son of Patrick), who is joining the family in entertainment.

*****Scary Clown 45 says Obama released 122 prisoners from Gitmo when we know 113 of them were by Bush.

*****Rob Reiner, I am so glad you are out there fighting the good fight for us!

*****Hawaii has filed the first lawsuit on the new travel ban. Federal judges agree but the Trump supporters want to boycott Hawaii.

*****This is not Sean Spicer’s first time at the White house. He used to be the Easter bunny in the 2000’s.

*****A DC restaurant filed suit against the Trump hotel across the street.

*****The whole ‘Janet Jackson has a daughter’ thing is back in the news.

*****In Cold Blood killer Dick Hickock wrote his own manuscript, with some help from Kansas City journalist Mack Nations called The High Road to Hell and it has just now surfaced. Before Hickock was executed, it seems that Truman Capote would not have wanted it published. Random House had a deal with Capote and some digging has shown that he fought against the other publication.

*****The new Avatar land, Pandora in Florida looks like Summer camp and it will open around the same time at the end of May.

*****Conan tweets have been on fire lately.

*****Ski joring that mixes skiing with horses is becoming more popular. I expect to see my cousin Cat doing it real soon.

*****A study of 6,000 UK teens showed that high achieving students were 50% more likely to use Marijuana occasionally.

*****Worldwide poverty has been cut in half.

*****Tomi Lahren has been suspended from her show Tomi on The Blaze network. She told the ladies of The View that she is pro -choice. Glenn Beck has spoken out against her. The network tag line is ”a platform for a new generation of authentic and unfiltered voices.” Hmmm.

*****Can’t wait for The Pollinator from Blondie. The new LP drops on May 5 with some help from Joan Jett, Laurie Anderson and Dev Hynes.

***** So.. Obama could not even get his Supreme Court nominee looked at but a President who is under investigation expects his pick to sail right thru?

*****Studies show that Subway chicken is only 50% chicken.

*****How wonderful that Michael Moore is showing Taylor Hackford’s Hail Hail Rock ‘n Roll in his Michigan theatre to honor Chuck Berry.

***** Look for Michael Nesmith’s new book and cd,  Infinite Tuesday: Autobiographical riffs!

*****R.I.P. Robert Osborne, Fred Weintraub, Joni Sledge, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Breslin, Chuck Barris. Robert James Walker, the victims of the London attack,

[une-sanz-pluis]

Just as these tussles were reaching their climax, tragedy struck: on 24 March 1394 John of Gaunt's wife Constanza died, then three months later Mary de Bohun also died, giving birth to her sixth child and second daughter, Philippa, at Peterborough. The last time that Henry saw his wife alive was probably when he spent a few days at Peterborough in the spring. Since Constanza's funeral had already been planned for 5 July at the Lancastrian mausoleum at the Newark in Leicester, it was decided that Mary would also be buried there on the following day. No record of her funeral expenses has survived, although the large sum of £608 spent on Constanza's funeral might have included Mary's service as well. On the other hand, she may have left instructions to be buried without pomp, for her religious inclinations were of that stamp. It is difficult to imagine that Henry did not mourn their unshared future. Although she was no more than twenty-five, and none of her children was aged more than seven at the time of her death, between them she and Henry had already succeeded in instilling in their offspring an inclination towards a reflective mode of personal religion and a passion for beautiful prayer-books. The fact that three of the Bohun psalters ended up in Germany or Austria and another two in Copenhagen was almost certainly a consequence of the marriages of their two daughters, Blanche and Philippa, to the son of the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of Denmark, respectively: that is to say, they took with them the psalters bequeathed to them by their parents, which suggests that they valued and used them. As to their sons, John and Humphrey were among the most noted bibliophiles of their age, while the future Henry V's literary sensibility and pietistic devotion are well documented. It would be strange to imagine that their upbringing played no part in the development of these traits. Her children certainly did not forget Mary. Nineteen years after her death, when Henry V came to the throne, one of his first acts was to pay a coppersmith to make an effigy of his mother to be placed over her tomb.

Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (Yale University Press, 2016)

[une-sanz-pluis]

Yet the Vie du Prince Noir was in other respects also a poem for its time, ‘very much a political work, designed to encourage his son Richard II to live up to a romanticized ideal of his father’. The early 1380s, after all, was a time when almost every aspect of England’s military policy was being bitterly fought over in a succession of angry parliaments, while nobles and knights eager for the chance to emulate their forefathers waited to see which way the impressionable young king would turn. In the event, while Richard undoubtedly understood the need, and had the desire, to project an image of chivalric ardour, he showed little inclination to pursue an aggressive foreign policy in Continental Europe. As Nigel Saul and others have shown, Richard disliked war. He had ‘a genuine abhorrence of the shedding of blood between Christians’; he also understood that for as long as the war lasted, he would forever be having to ask his parliaments for subsidies, affording them the opportunity to criticise and bargain for concessions. And once this disinclination began to reveal itself, around 1383–84, it set him on a collision course with some of England’s greatest men, including the prince’s brothers, the royal uncles John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock. For Gaunt and Woodstock, as for other leading aristocrats such as the earls of Arundel and Warwick, men who were descended from the Black Prince’s comrades-in-arms, the dream of foreign glory and the example of the prince, burnished by the Herald, remained a lodestar. Whoever commissioned the Vie, and whether or not they had a specific purpose in doing so, it was clearly conceived within an aristocratic milieu that advocated the belligerent pursuit of England’s rights abroad under the leadership of kings and princes of prowess and renown. To be portrayed as the heir to a heroic tradition was something that another king, another person, might have turned to advantage, but in Richard’s case the exemplary knight of the Vie du Prince Noir was simply not an image he could live up to.

Chris Given-Wilson, "Edward, the Black Prince, and Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France: Chivalry and Rivalry in Life and Death" in Creativity, Contradictions and Commemoration in the Reign of Richard II (ed. Jessica A. Lutkin and J. S. Hamilton, The Boydell Press, 2022).

[une-sanz-pluis]

A Book of Hours made for Mary following her marriage indicates the quality of her piety. Its opening folio has a miniature of a praying woman wearing the arms of Bohun and England, while its contents place striking emphasis on the penitential psalms and the saving of sinners. One of the prayers which she added to another psalter asked God to ‘breathe into my heart that interior sweetness of spirit with which you inspired your child David [and] open, O Lord, the ear of my soul to the voice of your love . . . a comfort in adversity, a counsel in time of doubt, a caution in time of prosperity and a cure in time of sickness'. Such sentiments locate Mary within that stream of late fourteenth-century aristocratic piety which emphasized contemplation and self-examination, a movement owing much to the writings of the hermit and mystic Richard Rolle (d.1349). She probably imbibed this from her mother, but it was a devotional preference which she also shared with members of her husband's family such as Henry's grandfather Henry of Grosmont, who composed the remarkable Livre de Seyntz Medicines, a sustained exercise in personal penitence and soul-searching, and his father Gaunt, whose search for a more meaningful form of religious expression had led him to dabble with the Lollards. Mary's household accounts also suggest that her tastes were modest. Her personal servants were not numerous: a receiver (William Burgoyne), a tailor (William Thornby), three ladies-in-waiting (Agnes Burgoyne, Alice Tinneslowe and Mary Hervy), two esquires (Peter de Melbourne and Robert Hartfeld), and an ever-expanding array of nurses and governesses for her family. Her wardrobe expenses in 1387–8 amounted to £202, of which £167 was spent on drapery, mercery and furs; by 1390 she was receiving an annual allowance from Henry of £166 for personal items, and there is no evidence that she exceeded this, although her expenses are not itemized.

Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (Yale University Press, 2016)

[une-sanz-pluis]

The survival of Mary's 1387–8 wardrobe account and a number of her devotional books makes it possible to know considerably more about her than about most aristocratic women of the fourteenth century. In 1387–8 she was based at Kenilworth, but from 1390 onwards Peterborough was her home. Henry spent a good deal of his time at Peterborough in the intervals between his travels and his public engagements, and often sent Mary gifts of cloth or delicacies such as fruit and nuts, oysters, mussels and sprats when he was away. Sometimes she travelled with him, but for the most part her social circle comprised other noble women. She remained close to her mother, Joan countess of Hereford, and her sister, Eleanor duchess of Gloucester, exchanging gifts, livery robes and visits with them, as she did with Gaunt's duchess, Constanza, his mistress, Katherine Swynford, and Katherine's daughter, Joan (Beaufort). A particular friend in 1387–8 was Margaret, wife of William Bagot, a confidence conducive to their husbands' relationship. Mary certainly did not shut herself off from public affairs: she kept abreast of developments during the Appellant rising, and in September 1388 William Bagot sent her a message with news of the Cambridge parliament. She also received messengers from Gaunt in Bayonne and his ally the king of Portugal, the husband of her sister-in-law Philippa. However, it was her musical, artistic and religious interests that are most likely to have influenced Henry, for Mary came from a family more closely identified with the discerning patronage of art and literature than any other in fourteenth-century England. Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex (d.1361) – ‘a retiring, priest-dominated bachelor’ – was an early patron of the alliterative revival in English vernacular poetry in the mid-fourteenth century, while his nephew Humphrey (Mary's father) was a patron of Froissart. Mary herself paid for a Latin primer to be bound in London, for strings for a harp (cithara), and for a ruler with which to line parchment ‘for singing notes to be added’, suggesting that she did not just sing and play but also composed music, as Henry may have done. He too owned a harp and bought a ‘pipe called a recorder’ in the same year. They kept ten minstrels in their household and regularly rewarded itinerant pipers, fiddlers, trumpeters, clarioners, nakerers (cymbal-players). A payment to ‘singing clerks’ indicates an interest in polyphony as well as minstrelsy.

Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (Yale University Press, 2016)