St Illtud was one of the most famous scholar-saints in pre-Norman Wales and throughout Medieval Britain, having founded a renowned monastery and school of divinity in Wales during the 6th century. St Illtud was devoted to spreading the teachings of Christianity, and for centuries his monastery was the epicenter of Celtic Christianity in Sub-Roman Britain.… Read more St Illtud, Welsh Saint and Scholar
Queen Elizabeth I was a charismatic leader who inspired a cult around her unmarried status and continues to fascinate historians and history buffs to the the present day. She was often associated with the virginal Roman goddess of the moon and hunting, Diana, and was often called by one of Diana’s more celestial alternate titles, Cynthia,… Read more Moonset: The Death of Cynthia
Empress Catherine II of Russia didn’t earn the title of “the Great” by being a sweetie. She was, like almost all successful rulers, capable of playing hardball and cagey about maintaining her power. She was determined to make Russia a world power, and that she would force Europe to give her adopted country the respect… Read more Trying to Save Russia From Itself Was a Thankless Job
Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury under King Edward VI and Queen Jane, was a brilliant writer and theologian, finishing the Book of Common Prayer in 1549, revising it again in 1552, and basically creating the Anglican church. On March 21, 1556 the elderly prelate was burned at the stake on the ordered of… Read more Cranmer’s Coerced Confessions
Alexander III became King of Scotland at the tender age of 7 following the death of his father, Alexander II, on 8 July 1249. The king showed himself to be strong willed even as a child, when power in the realm was being fought for by two rival guardians, Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, and… Read more The Strange Death of Alexander III, King of Scots
Christian VII, King of Denmark-Norway and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, shuffled off his mortal coil on 13 March 1808, leaving his son – who had already been ruling as Prince Regent of Denmark-Norway since 1784 – to become monarch Frederick VI in name as well as in fact. Christian was born on 29 January… Read more The Madness of King George’s Cousin
Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire and 1st Viscount Rochford, passed away on 12 March 1539 at his family home of family home, Hever Castle, Kent, where he had been born some 61 years before. The only members of his family to survive him were his eldest daughter, Mary Boleyn, and his three grandchildren, Catherine… Read more Thomas Boleyn, Villain or Victim?
The sheela-na-gig, once seen, are hard to forget. These carvings can be found on medieval churches and buildings across Northern Europe, but more frequently in the British Isles and in the greatest numbers in Ireland. A popular hypothesis is that sheela na gigs represent a pagan goddess, but academics believe the situation was more complex,… Read more Sheela-na-gig and Cultural Function
Ferdinand II of Aragon, husband and co-ruler with Isabella I of Castile, was born on 10 March 1452 and I don’t like him very much. For one thing, he and his wife were rabid Catholics who expressed the their religion less through Christ’s tenants of mercy and kindness and more along the lines of slaughtering… Read more Happy Birthday to Ferdinand II of Aragon and His Grandson, Ferdinand I of Bohemia and Hungary
The beloved Georgina era author, poet, and editor Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld passed away on 9 March 1825, and she was largely forgotten until feminists dragged her work back out into the spotlight and made the literati admit that the woman was immensely talented. Her most controversial work was her epic poem Eighteen-Hundred and Eleven.… Read more Remembering Regency Poet Anna Barbauld