Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘when they returned to London it was to move into Buckingham Palace - only a few days after the proclamation that had affirmed the enduring primacy of the House of Windsor. In the course of a few months, the Duke of Edinburgh had lost three of his young life’s most cherished components - his naval career, his family home and his family name. It did not make for a happy husband.’

‘The young radical believed that the garrison commander had gone to get help and he had made the decision that Charles must be removed to somewhere more securely in the army’s control. Charles agreed to leave if Joyce offered him assurances that he would not be harmed, that his servants might accompany him, and that he would now be allowed to practise his religious beliefs. Joyce accepted his terms.’

‘The party associated with Cromwell was called the Independents. They were set on the absolute defeat of the king and included (but were not limited to) many members of the old war-party faction. These men had previously agreed to Scottish demands that Presbyterianism be imposed on England because it was the price of the military support that would achieve Charles’s defeat.’

‘George V’s widow Queen Mary, an inveterate smoker, died of lung cancer in 1953 at the age of 83, and Princess Margaret, who smoked 30 cigarettes a day for many years and suffered from migraines, laryngitis, bronchitis, hepatitis and pneumonia, died of a heart attack aged 71... At her son’s suggestion, Queen Elizabeth II cancelled the supply of all smoking products to the royal households.’

‘the Commons began investigating Henrietta Maria for treason and drew up articles of impeachment accusing her of ‘having levied war against Parliament and kingdom’. A Royalist newsletter now wondered that ‘good women live the while in a wretched age, who cannot be assisting their husbands in their great necessities... without being traitors to master Pym and some of the good members of both houses’’

‘The list of over 1,500 wedding gifts displayed extraordinary generosity from ordinary members of the public, with many women saving up their ration coupons to send the Princess the most coveted feminine asset of the times: ‘351 - Mrs David Mudd: a pair of nylon stockings. 352 - Miss Ethel Newcombe: a piece of old lace. 353 - Mrs E. Klarood: a pair of nylon stockings.’’

‘Already power in England was slipping from Charles’s grasp. The majority of Parliament’s electorate had been troubled by his authoritarianism. They wanted Parliament to reassert its place in the ‘ancient constitution’ and MPs to ensure that the ‘liberties of the subject’ were secured... A new law was passed that Parliament must be called every three years. There could be no further eleven years of personal rule.‘

‘It was dusk when Charles approached London from York on 31 October 1640. A humiliating armistice had been signed with the Scots. Under its terms the Covenanters had been promised £850 a day to maintain their armies on English soil. Newcastle, and the northern counties of Northumberland and County Durham, remained in enemy hands, along with the Tyneside collieries.’

‘On 13th May 1572, the same day that Pope Gregory XIII was invested, a ‘monstrous dragon’ was founded in the countryside near Bologna. Recognised as a bad omen, the dragon’s body was consigned for analysis to the Pope’s cousin, the celebrated naturalist and collector Ulisse Aldrovandi. Although Aldrovandi quickly wrote up his findings, his work was not published for nearly 60 years’

‘Oracle bones were used in ancient divination rituals. Questions relating to subjects such as warfare, agriculture and natural disasters would be engraved on the bone before heat was applied with metal sticks, causing it to crack. The diviners interpreted the patterns of the fractures to determine the answer to the question posed. The bones are carved with the Shang Dynasty script’

There is a picture of a real mandrake root on this page and I can see why people used to think they were alive. It does look like a real person and, combined with the fact that the root and leaves are poisonous and can induce hallucinations, it is not surprising that some swore they saw them move and come alive.

‘When seeking inspiration for naming her herbs and potions, J.K. Rowling used the herbal of the apothecary Nicholas Culpeper. The book was first published in 1652 as The English Physician. It has subsequently appeared in over 100 editions, and was the first medical book to be published in North America. Culpeper’s herbal provides a comprehensive list of native medicinal herbs, indexed against specific illnesses’

‘Archbishop Laud was said to have personally given the king £3,000. These actions were seen less as a mark of patriotic loyalty than as offering support for authoritarianism, since the money raised for the royal army helped - if only in a modest way - to ensure Charles did not have to call Parliament to pay for it. England had not gone to war without a parliament being called since 1323.’

‘Henrietta Maria was six months pregnant and already she was in labour. When the town midwife at Greenwich examined her, she found the baby was breech and promptly fainted. With the midwife carried from the room, and Henrietta Maria in great pain, the king’s surgeon was left to manage alone. The doctor asked Charles whether he should save mother or child. Charles said the mother. Their son died two hours later.’

‘The Tudors managed their parliaments by intimidation, messy compromises and words of love. For Charles, appeals to the emotions smacked of populism. His enemies used such tactics to raise ‘new and causeless fears’ to turn his people against him. He also found it difficult to gauge people’s feelings and motives and so lacked confidence in his ability to manage his MPs as the Tudors had done.’

‘Henrietta Maria’s priests were, meanwhile, punishing the young king for his persecution of Catholics by persuading his wife to refuse him sex on the church’s many Holy Days. They also ruined mealtimes by saying grace as loudly as possible, in competition with his Protestant chaplains. More seriously, with war approaching, Charles feared her household was riddled with spies.’

‘Nicolas Flamel’s reputation as an alchemist derives ultimately from posthumous accounts of his life. According to these 16th- and 17th-century legends, Flamel had a prophetic dream that led him to discover a rare manuscript revealing the true composition of the Philosopher’s Stone.‘

‘The cauldrons used to concoct potions are one of the most potent symbols of witchcraft... one magical example, dredged out of the Thames in 1861, was forged from riveted bronze sheets dating from the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age, between 609 and 800 BC. It would take the publication of On Witches and Female Fortune Tellers in 1489 however, the earliest illustrated treatise on witchcraft, to demonstrate one in use’

‘Charles pushed ahead with the marriage to Henrietta Maria to seal the French alliance. Unfortunately his bride was already proving an unpopular choice. Women had been key to the survival of Catholicism in England. Catholic men could be - and were - stripped of their property if they refused to attend Protestant services. Wives owned no property and were more defiant.’

‘Charles, meanwhile, had continued to struggle with his disabilities. Some of his earliest memories must have been of trying to talk and communicate. His garrulous father once threatened to have the tendons under Charles’s tongue cut to help him articulate. Besides the problems with his speech, Charles’s legs lacked strength and he had trouble walking.’

‘Being a second son, in a hereditary monarchy, Charles had to grow used to being treated as second best. When James spent £800 on a ‘chain of stone’ and an insignia of the Order of the Garter for Henry, he gave Charles a jewel worth only £130. In letters James wrote to Henry as ‘our dearest son’ and to Charles as merely his ‘dear son’.’

Weir’s theory is that Jane suffered with several things which contributed to her death - food poisoning first which then led to dehydration and embolism, causing heart failure. I’m not sure if I believe it, I know historians are divided, but this is very different to what anyone else has proposed.

‘They laid the child in her arms. He was wailing lustily, a fine child with a heart-shaped face and a pink, healthy colour; he had Henry’s blue eyes and her own fair hair and pointed chin. She had triumphed. She had borne England an heir, and as she gazed down in wonder at her son, she was consumed with the most powerful love she had ever felt in her life.’

‘“It is wrong for subjects to rebel against their Prince, but perhaps God has permitted this rebellion as a punishment for the ruin of so many churches.”
“You forget yourself, Madam!” he snarled. “This has nothing to do with you. I might remind you that the last Queen died in consequence of meddling too much in state affairs. Go and attend to other things!”’

‘It came to Jane forcibly that they looked like an ordinary happy family: father, mother and two daughters. Who, watching them, could have guessed at the tragedies and dramas that lay behind this touching tableau? She realised that she herself was in no small way responsible for restoring harmony, and that made her feel infinitely better. Good had come out of bad, and that was something to thank God for.’

“Do not meddle in this, sweetheart,” Henry said. “I do not want to quarrel with you. God knows, I had enough of that with Anne!”
“I am sorry if I spoke out of turn,” she said. “I was hoping that the Lady Mary could return to court and keep me company.”
...”What I do with my own daughter is my affair!” he snarled, his anger erupting. “And you, Madam, would do well not to meddle in matters that do not concern you.”

‘intercourse with a consenting queen was not an act of treason, and the term used during the men’s trials was that of violation, not rape. The only legal aspect to the case was that Henry’s life was in danger, as a result of their reputed plotting against him. Bernard has also entertained the possibility of Anne’s guilt, her weakening under duress, but majority of scholarship, and evidence, stands against this’

‘29 January, Catherine of Aragon was laid to rest in Peterborough Cathedral... Later that same day, Anne lost the child she was carrying, at around fifteen weeks, which had the appearance of being male... Court speculation suggested it was ‘owing to her own incapacity to bear children’ or due to ‘fear that the King would treat her like the late queen’, especially in the light of his recent interest in Jane Seymour.’

‘It was at nine o’clock that she heard the thunderous sound of a distant cannon, followed by a dreadful silence interrupted only by the merry sound of birdsong. Feeling faint and dizzy, she gripped the altar rail for support. It was done. Now she must live with the guilt. She doubted it would ever leave her.’