February 17, 1461 was the date of the second battle of St Albans, in which the Earl of Warwick was soundly routed by the Lancastrians, who recovered poor hapless King Henry. What saved the hopes of the House of York was the victory two weeks earlier by Edward at Mortimer’s Cross. The soldiers had seen three suns in the sky before the battle (a phenomenon known as a parhelion) and the quick-thinking Edward calmed their fears by shouting out that the suns symbolized the Holy Trinity and meant victory would go to York. Not bad for a youth not yet nineteen. It was this victory that gave the Londoners the courage to refuse to allow Marguerite’s troops into the city; nor did it help her cause that her men had been plundering the English countryside like the Huns sacking Rome. When I went onto Wikipedia to verify the date of this battle, I found that the article mentions that this event was dramatized by William Shakespeare and by me in Sunne. Actually I did not dramatize it, having the story related to Cecily Neville by Will Hastings, but I thought it was sort of cool to be in the Bard’s company! Of course he was still wrong about Richard.
And here is a fun video showing the rescue of two deer stranded out on a frozen lake. It will likely bring a smile to the faces of most people watching, it, but I couldn’t help thinking how baffled the medievals would have been by this.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/vid...
Published on February 17, 2014 06:37