Marie de Guise was born on 22 November 1515 in Lorraine, France. She was the eldest daughter of Claude of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and quite the matrimonial catch. A tall and lithesome woman, she was also intelligent and brave, and proved her worth many times over as both a duchess and the Queen of… Read more Mary of Guise
Radicalization is always political, and any religion can serve as a metaphorical base camp for terrorism. Thanks to both public amnesia and sociopolitical eliding of some forms of terrorism once the terrorists are rebranded “freedom fighters”, people don’t seem to know much about historically recent occurring in Europe. For example, the 20th century Fight for… Read more Sunday, Bloody Sunday
The future King Edward VI of England was baptized at Hampton Court on 15 October 1537, with all the holy pomp his father, King Henry VIII, could muster. Every caution was taken to preserve the baby from illness or cold, and no expense was spared on ceremony. As Margaret Beaufort had dictated decades before, the… Read more Baptizing Edward VI
Up until 1066 most of England was Anglo-Saxon and proud of it. There had been a few decades of Danish rule on and off, but for the last 24 years the King of England had been Edward the Confessor, the son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, who had been given the throne… Read more The Battle of Hastings: Making England French in 1066
Edward of Westminster, the disputed Prince of Wales, was called by that name because he born at the Palace of Westminster on 13 October 1453. He was the only child of King Henry VI of England and Margaret of Anjou, and his birth infuriated Richard, 3rd Duke of York and plunged England into a civil… Read more The Short Life of Edward of Westminster
King Edward VI of England was born on 12 October 1537 to the great rejoicing of the populace and profound relief of his father, Henry VIII. Few children have been welcomed into the world with the eagerness in which an entire nation awaited the birth of Edward VI. The pregnancy of Jane Seymour, the third… Read more Happy Birthday to Edward VI!
On 11 October 1549 King Edward VI was rescued from Windsor Castle, where his uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, had taken him after kidnapping the young king in an attempt to keep the Privy Council from deposing Somerset’s reign as Lord Protector. Somerset had done such a good job of convincing Edward that the… Read more Saving Edward VI
The first week of October in 1549 was a tumultuous time in the reign of the young King Edward VI, who was just shy of 12 years old. The Privy Council was trying to un-throne Edward Seymour, the 1st Duke of Somerset and the king’s maternal uncle, from his de facto kingship and Somerset was… Read more Surrender, Somerset!
Anna of Cleves was born on 22 September 1515, and would be Queen of England for 1/2 of 1540 before becoming King Henry VIII’s “sister” until her death on 16 July 1557. Although she was well liked by Henry’s court, she got off on the wrong foot with the king himself. He came in “disguise”… Read more Anna of Cleves, the Six Months Queen
King Jean II of France met Edward, the Black Prince of Wales in battle at Poitiers on 19 September 1356 in one of the most decisive English victories of the Hundred Years’ War. It really sucked to be French during the Hundred Years War, and the decades before and after the Battle of Poitiers were… Read more The Battle of Poitiers