Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘it is impossible not to connect she queen’s remorse with the persecution being suffered by those who were being imprisoned and burned for her faith - and, surely, Anne Askew would have been the uppermost in her mind. That girl Catherine had heard of and, perhaps, met as a lively teenager in Lincolnshire was now boldly upholding her faith, with her eyes fixed on martyrdom while she, the queen, lived in luxury’

‘She felt deeply that reports of her denial of the truth had been a blow to her brothers and sisters in the faith. She would now allow the same thing to happen again. Crome, Shaxton, and others might fall into the sin of backsliding; she would not. She was resolved to stand by the Gospel, as she understood it - whatever the cost. From the moment of her third arrest she had become a martyr in her own mind.’

‘Anne was returned to prison to await the final stage of her humiliating climbdown. The next day she was taken to the Guildhall where she had to listen while her confession was publicly read aloud. Only on the following day was Anne finally set at liberty. She wisely decided not to remain in London. The Court of Chancery had ordered her to return to her husband; the bishop had urged her to go back to her county’

I wish the Medieval, Tudor and Ancient sections hadn’t been so short.

‘From Lascelles and the bolder spirits to whom he introduced her, Anne learned more extreme views than those she had held previously. She arrived in London as a Bible student with a remarkable knowledge of the Scriptures but now she encountered believers who were grappling with complex theological issues.’

‘What inclined Henry to seek the new widow’s hand? Probably that calm acceptance of duty she was demonstrating. He had had his fill of meddlesome beauties and also of foreign princesses. Catherine was still young and attractive, and combined with these attributes had maturity and intelligence. The king was also well disposed towards the Parr family.’

“I don’t mind talking of my life as a cutpurse.” Now it was Jack’s turn to rescue him. Crispin appreciated the gesture.
“You were an orphan, were you not?”
“Aye, m’lord. Not a soul on this earth to care for me. It was do the deed or starve. And what does the Church say about this moral dilemma, sir? Should I have starved to death for the good of my soul? For I was later reformed and now I do good in the world.”

‘Anne Askew’s religion was of an extremist hue. It is very likely that she was driven farther along the heretical path by her unhappy domestic situation. Oral tradition claims that she had two children by Thomas Kyme. Bearing and rearing will have occupied much of her time and energy in the early years of her marriage but her zeal could not be muzzled and she believed she had a mission to go gospelling.’

‘many prominent people, certainly including Lady Latimer, were exposed to the new teaching by hearing radical preachers, talking with friends and relatives and by clandestinely reading Tyndale’s New Testament. Catherine was exposed to the New Learning as much as most ladies of her class and more than many of them. She can hardly have failed to encounter the beliefs of Bigod and his entourage of preachers.’

‘Clarence acknowledged nothing by his expression or gestures. Could it be he did not know? The man hadn’t been the most intelligent in Crispin’s estimation, and denial of the truth had been the hallmark of many a cuckolded husband, but could it truly be so? When Clarence looked at his black-haired son, did he truly think he was his? Yet, he hadn’t denied him, and that was a mercy.’

‘Seven weeks later the young prince was dead... It must have been about this time that the Parrs suffered the same sorrow. Their firstborn son also died soon after birth. This may have created a special bond between Maud and the queen, for they became and remained very close. When, a year later, a baby girl appeared in the Parr household she was named Catherine, after the queen.’

‘He could have had her. He could have had a child and more with her, but his stubborn pride had not allowed it. What was it about him that foiled every chance at happiness over and over again? Was it his curse, his penance for dashing his greatest honour against the rocks, forswearing his oaths to the old king? Had his treason been the cause of his damnation?’

‘When he (Bede) has never been fully canonised, and bears the title ‘Venerable’ more often than ‘Saint’, he has been remembered and treasured the world over. His significance to the English is unparalleled. He wrote the first history of the English people, and every historical text that has followed has based its information about Anglo-Saxon England upon his words.’

‘Poster boy of the Anglo-Saxon Church in the north, Cuthbert’s cult was finely engineered both by Bede (who wrote two official hagiographies of him) and the monks of Lindisfarne. At a time when the Irish Church was positioning itself against pagan Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Roman Christian ideas, Cuthbert was crafted as a paradigm for all that was good in the Insular tradition.’

‘In the eyes of the first Anglo-Saxon converts, it was he who brought their souls to salvation - something we might find difficult to grasp today. As far as the early converts were concerned, Gregory was offering the pagan Anglo-Saxons a chance to sign up for the opportunity of a lifetime and beyond. They were guaranteed a place in paradise for all eternity - a pretty exciting prospect!’

‘What can be known with some certainty about George is that he was born to a Greek Christian family around AD 280, and served as a soldier under Diocletian. When an edict was passed arresting all Christians that served in the Roman army in AD 303, George refused to concur with the Emperor’s wishes by sacrificing to the pagan gods, and so suffered a brutal martyrdom.’

‘character of St Brigid also raises interesting problems about the early Church in Ireland, the role of the first monastic settlements and the real figure behind the hagiography. She is remembered as the founder of a particularly powerful and influential monastery at Kildare. Here, women could embrace the harsh monastic ideals and mirror the extreme ascetic exploits of their male counterparts’

‘states that he took in and gave shelter to a fugitive priest who was hiding from the authorities... When he was finally discovered, Alban managed to deceive the authorities by switching his clothes with the priest’s, and went with the soldiers in his place. This deception, and his declaration that he would not sacrifice to the old gods, but instead embrace the new Christian God, led to his martyrdom.’

‘Alban was a rebel, a non-conformist and a religious activist. He died for his faith; a faith whose founder also died for his beliefs by being crucified. Although not an Anglo-Saxon (he was Romano-British), he was England’s first saint and martyr... Alban’s body was destroyed during the Reformation. Now a reliquary containing a single shoulder blade is all that sits in the heart of the magnificent cathedral’

‘The alcohol consumption of people in the past often seems prodigious. For a start, everyone drank ale or beer in preference to water. The amounts consumed are impressive. The household of Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, for example consumed more than forty thousand gallons annually, while the monks of Fountains Abbey had a malthouse capable of producing sixty barrels... every ten days.’

‘This ideal of the kitchen being in a semi-separate building persisted into the eighteenth century, when the increasing gentility of the upper classes made them ever less tolerant of the dirt, smells and noise of food preparation. When Kedleston Hall was designed, the kitchen was placed more than thirty metres from the main guest dining room, and separated from it by a long curving corridor.’

“Did it gall you that much for Richard to be king? That you would lose so much?”
...”It was never that! How little you know me. It was for England! Not myself. What did I care for myself if my country failed me? Lancaster was the better man and Parliament knew it, though the whoresons were too cowardly to set him on the throne. A boy of ten! Untried. Underaged.”

‘And TV was much slower to catch on than radio had been. It was the Coronation of 1953 that brought the set into many living rooms, as many people bought theirs especially for the occasion. People rushed round to their neighbours’ houses (and those who had attempted to keep up with the Joneses by installing an aerial on their roofs to suggest that they too had TV were caught out).’

‘This craze to possess had in fact started long before the nineteenth century. The late-seventeenth-century invention of shops and shopping by an urban middle class who lived by trade was mirrored by the growth of a new type of domestic space. What might be termed the ‘middle-class’ living room was full of superfluous objects, chosen for ornament rather than use yet cheap and not truly beautiful’

Well I didn’t see that one coming!

‘The book of poems by Charles, Duc d’Orléans, written while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London after his capture at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, contains an excellent illustration of a medieval living room. The duc sits in the best place, before the fire, while his retainers await his orders (his chaplain in red). The floor of the room is beautifully tiled; its walls have been hung with the tapestries’

‘One strange byway through the history of dentistry was a short-lived craze for live tooth transplantation, which took place in the comfort of your own home. The surgeon John Hunter (1728-93) was a pioneer of the new art of transplanting live organs from one body to another, and this included the teeth. A rich patient requiring teeth would buy from a pauper’

‘One strange byway through the history of dentistry was a short-lived craze for live tooth transplantation, which took place in the comfort of your own home. The surgeon John Hunter (1728-93) was a pioneer of the new art of transplanting live organs from one body to another, and this included the teeth. A rich patient requiring teeth would buy from a pauper’