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Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke Of Buckingham

Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham

Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (4 September 1454–2 November 1483) played a major role in Richard III of England's rise and fall. He is also one of the primary suspects in the disappearance (and presumed murder) of the Princes in the Tower. Buckingham was related to the royal family of England so many different ways that he was his own cousin many times over, but his connections were all through daughters of younger sons. His chances of inheriting the throne would have seemed remote, but eventually the internecine conflicts among the descendants of Edward III of England and within the Houses of Lancaster and York brought Buckingham within striking distance of a crown. Some historians claim Buckingham's deliberate plotting to seize the throne started as early as the reign of Edward IV, and if they are correct then his elaborate and lengthy plan very nearly succeeded.

Early life

Buckingham was born in 1454 during the reign of Henry VI. His father, Humphrey, Earl Stafford, a Lancastrian, was killed at the First Battle of St Albans in 1455 when Henry was an infant, and his grandfather, the First Duke of Buckingham, another leading Lancastrian, was killed five years later, in 1460. In 1465, at the age of 11, he was recognized as Duke of Buckingham. The new Duke eventually became a ward of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, consort of Edward IV of England. The next year he was married to the queen's sister Catherine Woodville — she was 24. Buckingham never forgave Elizabeth for forcing him into that marriage, and he resented his wife and the other Woodvilles, as well. When Edward IV died in 1483, and the Woodvilles struggled with Edward's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, over the guardianship of the young Edward V, Buckingham first sided with Richard. Parliament subsequently declared Edward V illegitimate offering Richard the throne, and he accepted it, becoming Richard III. After initially supporting Richard, Buckingham subsequently started working with John Morton, Bishop of Ely, in support of Buckingham's second-cousin Henry Tudor against the King, even though this placed him on the same side as his Woodville in-laws.

Reign of Richard III

When Henry Tudor tried to invade England to take the throne from Richard in October 1483, Buckingham raised an army in Wales and started marching east to support Henry. By a combination of luck and skill, Richard put down the rebellion: Henry's ships ran into a storm and had to go back to Brittany, and Buckingham's army was greatly troubled by the same storm and deserted when Richard's forces came against them. Buckingham tried to escape in disguise but was turned in for the bounty Richard had put on his head, and he was convicted of treason and beheaded in Salisbury on 2 November. Following Buckingham's execution, his widow, Catherine, married Jasper Tudor, 1st Duke of Bedford.

The Bohun Estate

Buckingham's motives in these events are disputed. His antipathy to Edward IV and his children probably arose from two causes. One was his dislike for their mutual Woodville in-laws, whom Edward greatly favoured. Another was his interest in the Bohun estate. Buckingham had inherited a great deal of property from his great-great-grandmother, Eleanor de Bohun, wife of Thomas of Woodstock and daughter of the Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton. Eleanor's younger sister and co-heir Mary de Bohun married Henry Bolingbroke, who eventually became Henry IV, and her share of the de Bohun estates became incorporated into the holdings of the House of Lancaster, being eventually inherited by Henry VI. When Henry VI was deposed by Edward IV, Edward appropriated that half into the Crown property under the House of York. Buckingham claimed those lands should have devolved to him instead, and it is likely that Richard III promised to settle the estate on Buckingham in return for his help seizing the throne. Indeed, after Richard's coronation he did award the other half of the Bohun estate to Buckingham, but it was conditional on the approval of Parliament. Historians disagree on whether this condition was in fact a way for Richard to appear to keep his promise while actually breaking it, but this may have been a motivation for Buckingham to turn against Richard.

The Princes in the Tower

Richard III is alleged to have consolidated his power by eliminating his brother's children, who preceded him in succession to the throne. However, there is some question about Buckingham's relationship to the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. According to a manuscript discovered in the early 1980's in the Ashmolean collection, the Princes were murdered "be [by] the vise" of the Duke of Buckingham. There is some argument over whether "vise" means "advice" or "devise," and, if the former, in what sense; for a discussion of the matter, see the article by Richard Firth Green, who discovered the manuscript, in the English Historical Review of 1984. If Richard was responsible for killing the Princes in the Tower, the murders may have caused Buckingham to change sides. On the other hand, Buckingham himself had motivation to kill the Princes, being a Lancastrian contender for the throne with a viable claim potentially equivalent to that of Henry Tudor, depending on one's view of the legitimacy of the Tudor branch of the House of Lancaster. According to this perspective, if Buckingham killed the Princes and blamed Richard, he could foment a Lancastrian rebellion, putting the throne into play with only Henry Tudor as a rival. Indeed, a Lancastrian rebellion followed, but it was Henry Tudor who succeeded in deposing Richard III.

Relationship to Edward III

Three of Buckingham's four grandparents were descended from Edward III of England:
- Buckingham's paternal grandfather was Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, who was the grandson and senior descendant of Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III.
- Buckingham's paternal grandmother Anne Neville was a granddaughter of John of Gaunt through his daughter Joan Beaufort, making her a great-granddaughter of Edward III.
- Buckingham's maternal grandfather Edmund Beaufort was a grandson of John of Gaunt, the youngest son of his son John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset.
- Buckingham's maternal grandmother Eleanor Beauchamp was descended from a daughter of William Marshal but not from Edward III. Buckingham's grandparents Anne Neville and Edmund Beaufort were also first cousins for their respective parents Joan Beaufort and John Beaufort were sister and brother.

Important relatives

Buckingham was the son of Humphrey, Earl Stafford and Margaret Beaufort. Four of Buckingam's first and second cousins became King of England, and two of his second cousins became Queen:
- Edward IV and his brother Richard III were Buckingham's first cousins once removed. Buckingham's father Humphrey, Earl Stafford, was son of Anne Neville (~1411-1480). Anne's sister Cecily, Duchess of York was the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Edward's son Edward V was thus Buckingham's second cousin, as was the younger Edward's sister Elizabeth of York, later wife and Queen Consort of Henry VII of England.
- Henry Tudor, later King Henry VII was Buckingham's second cousin. Buckingham's mother was Margaret Beaufort (~1427-1474), daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. Margaret's first cousin, also named Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509) was the mother of Henry VII, the latter Margaret being the daughter of the 1st Duke of Somerset.
- Anne Neville, in line to become Queen as the wife of Lancastrian Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, eventually did become Queen as the wife of Richard III of England. Her paternal grandfather Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury was the brother of Buckingham's paternal grandmother (also named Anne Neville) making Buckingham the Queen's second cousin. If you look on the ancestral chart below you will see that two of his great-grandparents were brother and sister (John Beaufort and Joan Beaufort). This made Buckingham's parents second cousins.

The Ancestry of Henry Stafford

Buckingham, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of

4 September

September 4 is the 247th day of the year (248th in leap years). There are 118 days remaining.

Events

- 476 - Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself King of Italy.
- 1260 - The Senese Ghibellines, supported by the forces of King Manfred of Sicily, defeat the Florentine Guelphs at Montaperti.
- 1781 - Los Angeles, California, is founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (the City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of the Little Portion) by a group of 44 Spanish settlers.
- 1870 - Emperor Napoleon III of France is deposed and the Third Republic is declared.
- 1886 - Indian Wars: After almost 30 years of fighting, Apache leader Geronimo surrenders with his last band of warriors to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona.
- 1867 - Establishment of Sheffield Wednesday, England's fifth oldest League Club.
- 1888 - George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak, and receives a patent for his camera which uses roll film.
- 1894 - In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
- 1923 - In Lakehurst, New Jersey, the first U.S. airship, the USS Shenandoah, takes to the sky for the first time.
- 1940 - World War II: The USS Greer becomes the first United States ship fired upon by a German submarine in the war, even though the United States is a neutral power. Tension heightens between the two nations as a result.
- 1944 - World War II: The British 11th Armoured Division liberate the Belgian city of Antwerp.
- 1945 - World War II: Japanese forces surrender on Wake Island after hearing word of their nation's surrender.
- 1948 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons.
- 1949 - Maiden flight of the Bristol Brabazon.
- 1950 - The "Beetle Bailey" comic strip begins.
- 1951 - The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.
- 1957 - American Civil Rights Movement: Little Rock Crisis - Orville Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the National Guard to prevent black students from enrolling in Central High School in Little Rock.
- 1957 - The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel.
- 1963 - Swissair Flight 306 crashes near Dürrenäsch, Switzerland, killing all on board.
- 1964 - Scotland's Forth Road Bridge, near Edinburgh, officially opens.
- 1967 - The last new episode of the television sitcom Gilligan's Island airs on CBS-TV.
- 1967 - Vietnam War: Operation Swift begins: U.S. Marines launch a search-and-destroy mission in Quang Nam and Quang Tin Provinces. The ensuingfour-day battle in Que Son Valley kills 114 Americans and 376 North Vietnamese.
- 1971 - A Boeing 727 carrying Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashes into the side of a mountain near Juneau, Alaska, killing all 111 people on board.
- 1971 - In the U.S., The Lawrence Welk Show airs its last show.
- 1972 - Mark Spitz wins his seventh swimming gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, becoming the first Olympian to win seven gold medals.
- 1995 - The Fourth World Conference on Women opens in Beijing with over 4,750 delegates from 181 countries in attendance.
- 1996 - War on Drugs: Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) attack a military base in Guaviare, starting three weeks of guerrilla warfare that will claim the lives of at least 130 Colombians.
- 1997 - In Lorain, Ohio, United States, the last Ford Thunderbird rolls off the assembly line.
- 1997 - A U.S. Air Force C-141 cargo plane and a German TU-154 collide in mid-air over southwest Africa killing 33.

Births

- 1241 - King Alexander III of Scotland (d. 1286)
- 1454 - Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, English politician (d. 1483)
- 1563 - Wanli, Emperor of China (d. 1620)
- 1596 - Constantijn Huygens, Dutch poet and composer (d. 1687)
- 1717 - Job Orton, English dissenting minister (d. 1783)
- 1768 - François-René de Chateaubriand, French writer and diplomat (d. 1848)
- 1803 - Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the United States (d. 1891)
- 1824 - Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (d. 1896)
- 1832 - Antonio Agliardi, Italian diplomat (d. 1915)
- 1851 - John Dillon, Irish nationalist (d. 1927)
- 1891 - Fritz Todt, Nazi official (d. 1942)
- 1892 - Darius Milhaud, French composer (d. 1974)
- 1895 - Nigel Bruce, English actor (d. 1953)
- 1896 - Antonin Artaud, French playwright, actor, and director (d. 1948)
- 1905 - Mary Renault, English novelist (d. 1983)
- 1906 - Max Delbrück, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1981)
- 1908 - Edward Dmytryk, American film director (d. 1999)
- 1908 - Richard Wright, American writer (d. 1960)
- 1913 - Stanford Moore, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1982)
- 1918 - Paul Harvey American radio broadcaster
- 1920 - Teddy Johnson, British singer
- 1924 - Joan Aiken, English writer (d. 2004)
- 1925 - Forrest Carter, American author
- 1927 - John McCarthy, American computer scientist
- 1928 - Dick York, American actor (d. 1992)
- 1931 - Mitzi Gaynor, American actress
- 1932 - Dinsdale Landen, English actor (d. 2003)
- 1934 - Clive Granger, Welsh-born economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1937 - Dawn Fraser, Australian swimmer
- 1941 - Sushilkumar Shinde, Indian politician
- 1946 - Gary Duncan, American guitarist (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
- 1946 - Greg Elmore, American drummer (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
- 1948 - Samuel Hui, Hong Kong singer
- 1957 - Khandi Alexander, American actress
- 1957 - Patricia Tallman, American actress
- 1959 - Kevin Harrington, Australian actor
- 1960 - Damon Wayans, American actor and comedian
- 1968 - Mike Piazza, baseball player
- 1970 - Igor Cavalera, Brazilian drummer (Sepultura)
- 1970 - Daisy Dee, West Indian-born singer and actress
- 1971 - Maik Taylor, Northern Irish goalkeeper (football)
- 1973 - Jason David Frank, American actor
- 1977 - Ian Grushka, American musician (New Found Glory)
- 1979 - Michael Bowen, A nobody who decided to add his own name
- 1981 - Beyoncé Knowles, American singer
- 1982 - Alessandra Rubi Streignard Villarreal, Spanish singer

Deaths

- 799 - Musa al-Kazim, Shia Imam (b. 745)
- 1037 - King Bermudo III of Leon (b. 1010)
- 1063 - Toghrül, Turkish conqueror of Persia and Baghdad
- 1199 - Joan of England, queen of William II of Sicily (b. 1165)
- 1537 - Johann Dietenberger, German theologian
- 1588 - Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, English politician (b. 1532)
- 1767 - Charles Townshend, English politician (b. 1725)
- 1780 - John Fielding, English magistrate and social reformer (b. 1721)
- 1784 - César-François Cassini de Thury, French astronomer (b. 1714)
- 1794 - John Hely-Hutchinson, Irish statesman (b. 1724)
- 1804 - Richard Somers, American naval officer
- 1852 - William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist (b. 1796)
- 1864 - John Hunt Morgan, American Confederate military leader (b. 1825)
- 1907 - Edvard Grieg, Norwegian composer (b. 1843)
- 1909 - Clyde Fitch, American dramatist and playwright (b. 1865)
- 1916 - José Echegaray y Eizaguirre, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1832)
- 1965 - Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian physician and missionary, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1875)
- 1974 - Marcel Achard, French playwright (b. 1899)
- 1977 - E. F. Schumacher, German economist and statistician (b. 1911)
- 1986 - Hank Greenberg, baseball player (b. 1911)
- 1987 - Bill Bowes, English cricketer (b. 1908)
- 1989 - Georges Simenon, French author (b. 1903)
- 1989 - Ronald Syme, New Zealand-born classicist and historian (b. 1903)
- 1991 - Tom Tryon, American actor and novelist (b. 1926)
- 1991 - Dottie West, American singer (b. 1932)
- 1993 - Hervé Villechaize, French actor (b. 1943)
- 1995 - William Kunstler, American lawyer and activist (b. 1919)
- 1997 - Aldo Rossi, Italian architect (b. 1931)
- 2003 - Tibor Varga, Hungarian violinist and conductor (b. 1921)
- 2003 - Lola Bobesco, Romanian-Belgian violinist (b. 1921)
- 2004 - Alphonso Ford, American basketball player (b. 1971)
- 2004 - Moe Norman, Canadian golfer (b. 1929)
- 2004 - James O. Page, American paramedic (b. 1936)

Holidays

- Roman festivals - start of the Ludi Romani a.k.a. Ludi Magni, until 19 September.
- RC Saints - Saint Rosalia, Saint Rose of Viterbo Also see September 4 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
- 2005 - Father's Day in Australia and New Zealand (first Sunday in September)
- 2006 - Labour Day in Canada (first Monday of September)

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/4 BBC: On This Day] ----- September 3 - September 5 - August 4 - October 4 – more historical anniversaries ko:9월 4일 ms:4 September ja:9月4日 simple:September 4 th:4 กันยายน

1454

Events

- February 4 - In the Thirteen Years' War, the Secret Council of the Prussian Confederacy sends a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master.
- March 6 - Casimir IV of Poland renounces allegiance to the Teutonic Knights
- March 27 - Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York becomes Protector for the insane King Henry VI of England
- April 18 Treaty of Lodi: Francesco Sforza forms a triple alliance between the duchy of Milan, republic of Florence and kingdom of Naples
- September 18 - In the battle of Chojnice, the Polish army is defeated by a smaller but more professional Teutonic army during Thirteen Years' War.
- December - King Henry having regained his sanity, the Duke of York is dismissed as Protector

Births

- March 9 - Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer (died 1512)
- July 14 - Poliziano, Italian humanist (d. 1494)
- September 4 - Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, English politican (died 1483)
- Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (died 1510)
- Jeanne Hachette, French heroine
- Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara, Italian astronomer (died 1504)
- Pinturicchio, Italian painter (died 1513)
- Poliziano, Florentine classical scholar and poet (died 1494)

Deaths

- July 20 - King John II of Castile (born 1405)
- John Kemp, Archbishop of Canterbury
- Robert Wingfield, English politician (born 1403) Category:1454 ko:1454년

2 November

November 2 is the 306th day of the year (307th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 59 days remaining.

Events

- 676 - Donus becomes Pope.
- 1772 - American Revolutionary War: Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren form the first Committee of Correspondence.
- 1783 - In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, US General George Washington gives his "Farewell Address to the Army".
- 1861 - American Civil War: Western Department Union General John C. Fremont is relieved of command and replaced by David Hunter.
- 1868 - Time zone: New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally, and is perhaps the first country to do so.
- 1889 - North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
- 1895 - The first gasoline-powered race in the United States. First prize: $2,000
- 1899 - The Boers started their 118 day siege of British held Ladysmith during the Boer War.
- 1914 - Russia declares war on the Ottoman sultanate.
- 1917 - Zionism: The Balfour Declaration proclaims support for Jewish settlement in Palestine.
- 1920 - In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast was the results of the U.S. presidential election, 1920.
- 1930 - Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.
- 1936 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established.
- 1936 - Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaims the Rome-Berlin Axis, establishing the alliance of the Axis Powers.
- 1936 - the British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, high-definition (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.
- 1947 - In California, Designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.
- 1948 - U.S. presidential election, 1948: Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey for the US presidency.
- 1953 - The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan names the country The Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
- 1959 - Quiz show scandals: "Twenty-One" game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.
- 1959 - Ice Hockey: After being struck in the face with a puck, goalkeeper Jacques Plante returns to play wearing a protective mask for the first time in professional play.
- 1959 - The first section of the M1 motorway, the first in Britain, was opened between the present junctions 5 and 18.
- 1960 - Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case
- 1963 - South Vietnamese President Ngô Ðìhn Diệm is assassinated following a military coup.
- 1964 - King Saud of Saudi Arabia was deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother King Faisal.
- 1966 - The Cuban Adjustment Act enters force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
- 1967 - Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and "the Wise Men" conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.
- 1974 - 78 die as the Time Go-Go Club in Seoul, South Korea burns down. Six of the victims jumped to their deaths from the seventh floor after a club official barred the doors after the fire started.
- 1976 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War.
- 1981 - Antigua and Barbuda become independent from Britain.
- 1982 - Channel 4 in the United Kingdom was launched.
- 1983 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King Day.
- 1984 - Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
- 1988 - The Morris worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, was launched from MIT.
- 1991 - Bartholomew I becomes the Patriarch of Constantinople.
- 1991 - Jermaine Jackson's single "Word to the Badd!", which attacks his brother Michael, is leaked to radio station KPWR in Los Angeles.
- 2000 - The first crew arrives at the International Space Station.
- 2001 - Monsters, Inc. debuts with the best ticket sales ever for an animated film.
- 2004 - President George W. Bush wins election over John Kerry.

Births

- 1082 - Emperor Huizong of China (d. 1135)
- 1636 - Edward Colston, English merchant and philanthropist (d. 1721)
- 1667 - James Sobieski, Crown Prince of Poland (d. 1737)]])
- 1692 - Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, Dutch composer (d. 1766)
- 1699 - Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French painter (d. 1779)
- 1734 - Daniel Boone, American frontiersman (d. 1820)
- 1739 - Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Austrian composer (d. 1799)
- 1741 - Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol, Dutch politician (d. 1784)
- 1755 - Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (d. 1793)
- 1766 - Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, Austrian field marshal (d. 1858)
- 1795 - James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States (d. 1849)
- 1808 - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, French writer (d. 1889)
- 1815 - George Boole, English mathematician and philosopher (d. 1864)
- 1821 - Sir George Bowen, British provincial governor (d. 1899)
- 1844 - Mehmed V, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1918)
- 1865 - Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States (d. 1923)
- 1877 - Joseph De Piro, Maltese founder of the Missionary Society of St. Paul (d. 1933)
- 1877 - Victor Trumper, Australian cricketer (d. 1915)
- 1885 - Harlow Shapley, American astronomer (d. 1972)
- 1894 - Alexander Lippisch, German scientist (d. 1976)
- 1897 - Vito Genovese, American gangster (d. 1969)
- 1906 - Daniil Andreev, Russian poet, writer, and mystic (d. 1959)
- 1908 - Fred Bakewell, English cricketer (d. 1983)
- 1911 - Odysseus Elytis, Greek writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1996
- 1911 - Raphael Robinson, US mathematician (d. 1995)
- 1913 - Burt Lancaster, American actor (d. 1994)
- 1927 - Steve Ditko, American artist
- 1929 - Muhammad Rafiq Tarar, President of Pakistan
- 1929 - Richard E. Taylor, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- [[1934]] - [[Ken Rosewall, Australian tennis champion
- 1936 - Jack Starrett, American actor and director (d.1989)
- 1938 - Pat Buchanan, American journalist and politician
- 1938 - Queen Sofia of Spain
- 1941 - Bruce Welch, rhythm guitarist and songwriter (The Shadows)
- 1942 - Shere Hite, American author
- 1942 - Stefanie Powers, American actress
- 1944 - Keith Emerson, British keyboardist and composer (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
- 1946 - Alan Jones, Australian race car driver
- 1946 - Giuseppe Sinopoli, Italian conductor and composer (d. 2001)
- 1954 - Pat Croce, American entrepreneur
- 1958 - Willie McGee, baseball player
- 1961 - k.d. lang, Canadian singer
- 1965 - Shahrukh Khan, Indian actor
- 1966 - Tim Kirkman, American filmmaker
- 1969 - Reginald Arvizu, American bassist (KoЯn)
- 1974 - Nelly, Rapper (St. Lunatics)
- 1976 - Ricardo Dinis, KFC clone engineer, chicken specialist
- 1979 - Julie Lund, Danish actress
- 1986 - Erika Jo, American musician
- 1986 - Lara Sacher, Australian actress
- 1989 - Steven Jones, Musician (guitarist)

Deaths

- 1327 - King James II of Aragon (b. 1267)
- 1483 - Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, English politician (b. 1454)
- 1610 - Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1544)
- 1618 - Archduke Maximilian III of Austria (b. 1568)
- 1716 - Engelbert Kaempfer, German physician and traveler (b. 1651)
- 1807 - Baron de Breteuil, French statesman (b. 1730)
- 1863 - Theodore Judah, American railroad engineer (b. 1826)
- 1877 - Friedrich Graf von Wrangel, Prussian field marshal (b. 1784)
- 1887 - Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano (b. 1820)
- 1898 - George Goyder, English-born surveyor-general of South Australia (b. 1826)
- 1905 - Albert von Kölliker, Swiss anatomist (b. 1817)
- 1935 - Jock Cameron, South African cricketer (b. 1905)
- 1944 - Thomas Midgley, American chemist and inventor (b. 1889)
- 1950 - George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856)
- 1960 - Dimitri Mitropoulos, Greek conductor, pianist, and composer (b. 1896)
- 1961 - James Thurber, American humorist (b. 1894)
- 1963 - Ngo Dihn Diem, President of South Vietnam (b. 1901)
- 1966 - Peter Debye, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1884)
- 1975 - Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian film director (b. 1922)
- 1984 - Velma Barfield, American murderer (executed) (b. 1932)
- 1986 - Paul Frees, American voice actor (b. 1920)
- 1992 - Hal Roach, American director and producer (b. 1892)
- 2002 - Tonio Selwart, German actor (b. 1896)
- 2002 - Charles Sheffield, American author and physicist (b. 1935)
- 2004 - Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, President of the United Arab Emirates (b. 1918)
- 2004 - Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker (b. 1957)

Holidays and observances

- Catholicism - All Souls Day (unless on a Sunday)
- Ancient Latvia - Dveselu Diena held
- Mexico and the United States - Day of the Dead (Spanish: El Dia de los Muertos), a Mexican and Mexican-American celebration of dead ancestors.
- USA - admission day (1889) of North Dakota and South Dakota as 39th and 40th states.
- Rastafari movement - The coronation of Haile Selassie (1930) celebrated

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/2 BBC: On This Day] ---- November 1 - November 3 - October 2 - December 2 -- listing of all dates ko:11월 2일 ms:2 November ja:11月2日 simple:November 2 th:2 พฤศจิกายน

Richard III of England

:For the play Richard III by William Shakespeare, see Richard III (play) Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was the King of England from 1483 until his death and the last king from the House of York. After the death of his brother King Edward IV, Richard briefly governed as a regent for Edward's son King Edward V, but he imprisoned Edward and his brother Richard in the Tower and acquired the throne for himself (crowned on 6 July 1483). A rebellion rose against Richard and he fell in the Battle of Bosworth Field as the last English king to die in battle, when he faced Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond (later King Henry VII). William Shakespeare's play Richard III has made his name particularly famous.

Childhood

Richard was born at Fotheringay Castle, the fourth son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (who had been a strong claimant to the throne of King Henry VI) and Cecily Neville. The withered arm, limp, and crooked back of legend are most likely fabrications, asserted primarily by Thomas More in his questionable history, which made a deep impression upon Shakespeare. Richard spent much of his childhood at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale, under the tutalege of his uncle Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. He was involved in ongoing battles between different alliances of the House of Lancaster and the House of York factions during the last half of the 15th Century. At the time of his father's death at the Battle of Wakefield, Richard was still a boy, and at that time he was taken into the care of Warwick, known to history as "The Kingmaker" because of his strong influence on the course of the Wars of the Roses. Warwick was instrumental in deposing Henry VI and replacing him with Richard's eldest brother, Edward. While Richard was at Warwick's estate, he developed a close friendship with Francis Lovell, a friendship that would remain strong for the rest of his life. Another child in the household was Warwick's daughter Anne Neville, whom Richard would later marry.

Marriage

Following the decisive Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard married the widowed Anne Neville, younger daughter of the late Earl of Warwick. Anne's first husband had been Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI. Following his death at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, she disappears from the records for a while, her whereabouts unknown. It is popularly believed that she had fallen under the dubious control of George of Clarence, who had an interest in preventing her from marrying again, because it gave him full control over the joint inheritance of Anne and her elder sister Isabel, George's wife. In a scene straight out of "Cinderella", Richard is said to have found Anne working as a scullery maid in a London chophouse and "rescued" her; but the truth is not known. Their marriage took place on 12 July 1472. Richard and Anne had one son, Edward Plantagenet (also known as Edward of Middleham, 1473 – 9 April 1484), who died not long after being created Prince of Wales. (Richard had two illegitimate children as well, John of Gloucester and a daughter named Kathryn.) Anne also died before her husband.

Reign of Edward IV

During the reign of his brother, King Edward IV, Richard demonstrated his loyalty, as well as his prodigious skill as a military commander, and was rewarded with large estates in Northern England, given the title Duke of Gloucester and the position of Governor of the North, becoming the richest and most powerful noble in England and a loyal aide to Edward IV. (By contrast the other surviving brother, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, was executed by Edward for treason.) Richard continued to control the north of England until Edward's death. In 1482 Richard recaptured Berwick-upon-Tweed from the Scots, and was noted as being fair and just, endowing universities and making grants to the church.

Accession to the Throne

On the death of King Edward IV, in April 1483, the late King's sons (Richard's young nephews), King Edward V, aged 12, and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, aged 9, were next in the order of succession. Appointed Lord Protector of the Realm in his brother's will, Richard was warned by Lord Hastings, that the Woodvilles were intending to isolate Richard from the position and to consolidate their power at Richard's expense. When the boy King's retinue was on its way from Wales to London, for his coronation, Richard and Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham joined them at Northampton. He had the king's guardian, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, (brother of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward's Queen Consort) and other advisors arrested and taken to Pontefract Castle, allegedly for planning to assassinate Edward V. Richard then took Edward to stay at the Tower of London (then a royal palace), a move widely supported since much of the country distrusted the former queen's family. Richard called himself Lord Protector and was also made Chief Councillor (head of government). John Morton, Bishop of Ely and later Archbishop of Canterbury, is considered by some to be an important source of the Tudor propaganda against Richard III. According to Sir Thomas More's History, which may be based in part on Morton's accounts, Lord Hastings (a regular visitor to the young Edward V in the Tower of London) was arrested for alleged treason on 13 June 1483 at a meeting of the Royal Council, at the Tower. A few minutes later, he was beheaded on Tower Green, a clear violation of his rights (i.e., execution without due process) as a Peer guaranteed under Magna Carta. It has been argued that Hastings, whose execution was the first recorded at the Tower of London, was indeed arrested on 13 June, but later formally charged with treason, tried, convicted and sentenced, and legally executed on 18 June; no record of such proceedings survives. Edward's younger brother, Richard, was removed to the Tower on 16 June, following Lord Hastings' arrest and (presumed) execution. It is thought that Hastings had allied himself with the Queen Dowager because of the rise in influence of Buckingham and what he saw as Richard's usurpation of the throne. Morton claimed to have been in the council room when Hastings was arrested, and may have been one of several men who were detained for participating in the conspiracy with Hastings. Three other members of the alleged conspiracy — the queen's brother Lord Rivers, her second son Richard Grey, and another chamberlain Sir Thomas Vaughan — were also convicted and executed elsewhere. Jane (or Elizabeth) Shore, who had been a mistress of King Edward IV, and then of his step-son Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset (who avoided prosecution in the conspiracy by going into sanctuary at Westminster with his mother), and was now Hastings's mistress, was convicted of only lesser offences and was made to do public penance and briefly imprisoned. John Morton is also thought to be the source of other accusations against Richard, notably
- the murder of the Princes in the Tower
- the murder of Henry VI himself
- the "private execution" of his brother George, Duke of Clarence
- the murder of his wife's first husband, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales
- the murder of William, Lord Hastings
- of forcing his wife, Anne Neville, to marry him against her will
- of planning an incestuous marriage to his niece Elizabeth of York (and perhaps killing his wife so he could)
- of accusing his own mother of adultery and his late brother the king of being illegitimate
- of accusing Jane Shore and Elizabeth Woodville of witchcraft in withering his arm
- of being illegitimate himself Each of these stories first appears in writing either in Sir Thomas More's The History of King Richard III, believed by some to be based on Morton's account, or on the writings of someone else who had heard the stories. (Historians are divided on the issue of Morton's importance as a source, some pointing out that More's own father was an Edwardian loyalist and well-connected in the governmentof the City of London.) The question of whether these stories were true was not of great interest to either Morton or More, history then still being regarded as a branch of literature. Not only that, but Morton, having been arrested by Richard III, had fled to exile in Flanders. He only returned when Henry VII was on the throne and was quickly promoted. It was customary for histories to also serve as propaganda on both sides, to support and strengthen one's patron's cause. On June 22, 1483, outside St Paul's Cathedral, a statement was read out on behalf of Richard declaring for the first time that he was taking the throne for himself. When the members of Parliament met on June 25, it apparently heard evidence from a priest that he had conducted a marriage or betrothal between Edward IV and one Lady Eleanor Talbot (or Butler) before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Since even a betrothal was a legally binding "pre-contract" in the customs of the time, Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been bigamous, therefore all their children were illegitimate. Some of the proceedings of that Parliamentary session survive in a document known as Titulus Regius, which Parliament issued some months later explaining its actions and of which a single copy escaped the destruction of all copies of the Titulus Regius later ordered by Henry VII. The identity of the priest in question - thought to have been Edward IV's sometime Chancellor, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells - is known from only one source, the French political commentator, Philippe de Commines. Despite rumours that Richard's claims were true, evidence was lacking, and until recently it has generally been accepted that Richard's chief motive for taking the crown was that he felt that his own power and wealth would be threatened under Edward V, who was presumably sympathetic to his Woodville relatives. However, a recently-published theory has reopened the question of the additional claim that it was Edward IV who was illegitimate -see was Edward illegitimate? for details.

Coronation

Richard's three elder brothers were all dead. His elder brother George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence had been attainted in connection with a treason charge, meaning that his children Margaret and Edward, Earl of Warwick were also removed from the line of succession - although they were not personally accused of treason and had been given other honors. On July 6 1483, Richard was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Except for three Earls not old enough to participate and a few lesser nobles, the entire peerage attended his coronation. He was the last Plantagenet king.

Death

Richard was, at least outwardly, a devout man and an efficient administrator. However, he was a Yorkist and heirless, and had ruthlessly removed the Woodvilles and their allies; he was therefore vulnerable to political opposition. His apparently loyal supporter, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, turned against him and was executed late in 1483. Richard's enemies united against him. According to local tradition in Leicester Richard went to see a seer in the town before heading off for the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22 1485 to meet Lancastrian forces led by Henry Tudor. She told him "where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return". On the ride into battle his spur struck the bridge stone of the Bow Bridge; as he was being carried back over the back of a horse his head struck the same stone and was broken open. Tudor succeeded Richard to become Henry VII, and cemented the succession by marrying the Yorkist heir, Elizabeth of York. Legends notwithstanding, Richard was abandoned at Bosworth by the Lords William Stanley and Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, Stanley switching sides, which severely depleted his army's strength. It is said that Richard's body was dragged naked through the streets before being buried at Greyfriars Church, Leicester. According to one tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries his body was thrown into the nearby River Soar, although other evidence suggests that this may not be the case and that his burial site may currently be under a car park in Leicester. There is currently a memorial plaque in the Cathedral where he may have once been buried. A body dragged from Soar and initially believed to be Richard was later found to be an Anglo-Saxon warrior who died nearly 500 years before Richard was killed. This conclusion was made through both carbon dating and the size of the body and the thickness of the bones. Richard is described in contemporary accounts as being rather short and stocky.

Succession

By the time of his last stand against the Lancastrians, he was a widower without a legitimate son. After his son's death, he had initially named his nephew, Edward, Earl of Warwick, Clarence's young son and also the nephew of Queen Anne Neville, as his heir. After Anne's death, however, Richard named another nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, as his heir.

Legacy

Richard's Council of the North greatly improved conditions for Northern England, as commoners of that region were formerly without any susbtantial economic activity independent of London. In the wake of the Neville family's Kingmaker and the Council's founding, they became powerful enough to return to open revolts a la Jorvik times. From the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Province of Maryland and Jacobitism as united forces in the Catholic Reformation, the people were initially Tory and also courted the Irish in immigration after Catholic Emancipation. Its descendant position the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, provided a rebirthing in Northern Britain that hadn't existed since the time of the Vikings and sparked the Scottish Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution in the UK was largely a product of these beginnings. Since his death, Richard III has become one of England's most controversial kings. Modern historians recognise the damage done to his reputation by "historians" of the next reign, and particularly by William Shakespeare. Amongst other things, Richard was represented as physically malformed, which in those days was accepted as evidence of an evil character. However, it has been demonstrated that he could not have carried out most of the crimes attributed to him. The major exception is the question of whether he was responsible for the deaths of his nephews, the "Princes in the Tower". The Richard III Society was set up during the 20th century in an attempt to rehabilitate Richard, and has gathered considerable research material about his life and reign. Its members, known as "Ricardians", hold events, raise monuments and attempt to preserve the king's memory.

Popularity

Richard appears in the 2002 List of "100 Great Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public), alongside such others as David Beckham, Aleister Crowley, and Johnny Rotten. The BBC History Magazine lists him under "doubtful entrants, based on special interest lobbying or 'cult' status", and comments: "On the list due to the Ricardian lobby, but a minor monarch".

Fiction about Richard III

A lasting mystery surrounding the accession of Richard was the disappearance and presumed death of Richard's nephews, known as the Princes in the Tower. One of the most readable accounts of the evidence on all sides of the question is Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, written in 1951 (when some of the sources now available had not yet come to light). Another extremely rich view of the reign of Edward IV and Richard III is The Sunne in Splendor, by Sharon Kay Penman. An award-winning novel published in 2003, The Rose of York: Love & War by Sandra Worth, also presents the account of Richard III from the Ricardian viewpoint. Worth argues that Richard III's contribution to shaping a just society by improvements to the legal system was buried by the Tudors because it conflicted with the image of a villainous and hated monarch that they wished to present. The American Branch of the Richard III Society carries out its own review of all the suspects in the case of Richard III, in "Whodunit?" in the online library at http://www.r3.org/bookcase/whodunit.html (external link). Another fictional representation is the 1939 film Tower of London, where Basil Rathbone is Richard and Boris Karloff his evil henchman. Interestingly, while this Richard is clearly the monster of Tudor legend, most of his deformity appears to be transferred to Mort, who almost resembles "Igor" of Frankenstein legends! Additionally, a secret history of Richard III is presented in the British sitcom Blackadder.

Bibliography

Source material on all aspects of Richard's reign is neatly and impartially brought together by Keith Dockray in Richard III: A Reader in History (Sutton, 1988).
- The Trial of Richard III by Richard Drewett & Mark Redhead (ISBN 0862991986)
- Royal Blood by Bertram Fields (ISBN 006039269X)
- Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field by Peter Hammond & Anne Sutton (ISBN 009466160X)
- Richard the Third by Michael Hicks (Tempus, 2001) (ISBN 0752423029)
- Richard III: A Study in Service by Rosemary Horrox (ISBN 0521407265)
- Richard III and the North edited by Rosemary Horrox (ISBN 0859580660)
- Richard III: The Great Debate edited by Paul Murray Kendall (ISBN 0393003108)
- Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall (ISBN 0393007855)
- The Betrayal of Richard III by V.B. Lamb (ISBN 086299778X)
- Richard III and the Princes in the Tower by A.J. Pollard (ISBN 0312067151)
- Good King Richard? by Jeremy Potter (ISBN 0094646309)
- Richard III by Charles Ross (Methuen, 1981) (ISBN 0413295303)
- Richard III: England's Black Legend by Desmond Seward (ISBN 0140266348)
- The Coronation of Richard III by Anne Sutton & Peter Hammond (ISBN 0904387752)
- Richard III's Books by Anne Sutton & Livia VIsser-Fuchs (ISBN 0750914068)
- The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir (ISBN 0345391780)
- Joan of Arc and Richard III by Charles Wood (ISBN 019506951X)
- History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill, Vol. 1, The Birth of Britain

External links

- [http://www.richardiii.net/ Richard III Society, headquartered in London, England]
- [http://www.r3.org/ Richard III Society, American Branch -- includes links to online editions of many primary texts and secondary sources]
- [http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/ The Richard III Society of Canada]
- [http://www.riiinsw.com Richard III Society of New South Wales]
- [http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Society_and_Culture/History/Monarchy/Plantagenet/Richard_III/ Richard III article at dmoz.org] Category:1452 births Category:1485 deaths Category:Natives of Northamptonshire Category:House of York Category:English monarchs Category:Lord High Admirals Category:Knights of the Garter Category:Wars of the Roses Category:Dukes in the Peerage of England ja:リチャード3世 (イングランド王)

Princes in the Tower

The Princes in the Tower Edward V of England (1470–1483?) and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, (1473–1483?) were the two young princes, sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville, who were declared illegitimate by the Act of Parliament known as Titulus Regius. Their uncle, Richard III of England, placed them both in the Tower of London (then a palace as well as a prison) in 1483, and no one knows what happened to them after that, although they are presumed to have been killed there. 1483]]

Suspects

Five major suspects have been identified, and the arguments in favour of each potential culprit are, in short: Richard had eliminated the princes from the succession. However, his hold on the monarchy was insecure, and the princes remained a threat as long as they were alive. Rumours of their death were in wide circulation by early 1484, but Richard never attempted to prove that they were alive by having them seen in public. The Duke of Buckingham was Richard's right-hand man and sought personal advantage through the new king. Many regard Buckingham as the likeliest suspect: his execution, after rebelling against Richard in October 1483, might signify that he and the king had fallen out because Buckingham had taken it on himself—for whatever reason—to dispose of Richard's rival claimants. Buckingham was also descended from previous kings and, after Henry Tudor's line he was the next Lancastrian claimant—some even think his claim was stronger than Henry's. King Henry VII of England was undoubtedly a ruthless man, who, following his accession, proceeded to find a legal excuse to execute rival claimants to the throne. He married the princes' eldest sister, Elizabeth of York, to reinforce his hold on the throne, but her right to inherit depended on both her brothers being already dead. Realistically, Henry's only opportunity to murder the princes would have been after his accession in 1485, but it has been suggested that Buckingham, if he was responsible, was acting on Henry's behalf rather than Richard's. If Richard had killed the Princes, why did Henry not accuse him of the murder upon coming to the throne? The implication is that they were still alive in 1485. John Howard, later the first Duke of Norfolk of the current creation, was a claimant to the estate of the Mowbray Dukes of Norfolk. He was given custody of the Tower of London under less than regular circumstances the night the Princes are supposed to have disappeared from the Tower. He had opportunity and motive—Richard, Duke of York was also Duke of Norfolk in right of his deceased child bride Anne, the daughter of the last Mowbray Duke. Henry VII's mother Margaret Beaufort, as Henry Stafford visited the Beaufort Castle earlier that year, and was possibly bribed to kill the princes.

Evidence for the rumours

The Croyland Chronicle, Dominic Mancini, and Philippe de Commines all state that the rumour of the princes' death was current in England by the end of 1483. In his summary of the events of 1483, Commines says quite categorically that Richard was responsible for the murder of the princes, but of course he had been present at the meeting of the Estates-General of France in January 1484, when the statement was taken at face value. The other two sources do not suggest who was responsible. Only Mancini's account, written in 1483, is truly contemporary, the other two having been written three and seven years later, respectively. The Great Chronicle, compiled 30 years later from the contemporary London municipal records, says the rumour of the princes' death did not start circulating in London until after Easter of 1484. Historians have speculated, on the basis of these contemporary records, that the rumour that the princes had been murdered was deliberately created to be spread in England as an excuse for the October 1483 attempt of Henry Tudor and Buckingham to seize the throne. If the princes were not already dead by the end of 1483, this of course removes any possibility that Buckingham, who was executed on November 2, 1483, could have murdered them. No discussion of this episode would be complete without mention of Sir James Tyrrell, the loyal servant of Richard III whose "confession" to having murdered the princes has always been taken with a pinch of salt. It is mentioned by Tudor sources (which, naturally, must be treated with caution) as having taken place in 1502, under torture. A confession under torture would not nowadays be regarded as reliable, and Tyrrell was unable to say where the bodies of the princes were. In 1674, some workmen remodelling the Tower of London dug up a box containing two small human skeletons. They threw them on a rubbish heap, but some days or weeks later someone decided they might be the bones of the two princes, so they gathered them up and put some of them in an urn, which Charles II of England ordered interred in Westminster Abbey. In 1933 the bones were taken out and examined and then replaced in the urn in the vault under the Abbey. It is not possible to say the sex of the skeletons, but if they were the princes then they must have died before the Battle of Bosworth. (One skeleton was larger than the other, and many of the bones were missing, including part of the smaller jawbone and all of the teeth from the larger one.)

Why were the princes barred from the throne?

Part of the controversy still surrounding Parliament's ruling that Edward (and his brother Richard) could not be rightful heirs to the throne arises from confusion about why Parliament ruled that their parents' marriage was invalid. There were two separate but related issues: As a matter of law, the marriage was, indeed, invalid if the story of the precontract between their father and Lady Eleanor Talbot was true. Under both canon law and civil law, a "precontract of marriage" was a promise to marry, and it was enforceable in court as if the promised marriage had actually taken place (the concept of a "precontract" still exists in law, but it usually arises today in the context of precontracting to make a contract for a business deal, like a sale of property or a corporate merger). A precontract with Eleanor Talbot would have invalidated the king's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. This was the law in England, and many other contemporary examples can be pointed to. The purpose of publishing the "banns of marriage", and then asking in the wedding ceremony if anyone knows of just cause why the marriage should not take place, was to prevent marriages that were invalid, because of a precontract or for any other reason. Marrying in "secret" (or "private", which usually meant "not in a church") wedding (without the calling of the banns, as Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville did) was considered virtually an admission that there was a legal impediment. If Parliament was presented with evidence of Edward's marriage to Eleanor Talbot or his precontract to marry her, it was bound to rule that his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous, and therefore any children born to them were bastards. The fact that the princes were technically bastards (following his deposition from the throne, Edward V was referred to by his uncle's followers as the "Lord Bastard") did not necessarily mean they could never inherit—William the Conqueror was neither the first nor the last bastard to inherit lands and titles. "Bastardy," the legal term for illegitimacy, was a legal status that could be changed by fiat, ecclesiastical or civil, as shown by the number of times King Henry VIII changed the status of his children. Parliament could have legitimized the princes and allowed Edward V to remain king, but it used that excuse for what it wanted to do for practical reasons. Boy kings (Henry III, Richard II, Henry VI) had always been disasters for England—and the Wars of the Roses had been halted by the accession of Edward IV as a capable adult. The Yorkists were in power, and Edward V's numerous Woodville relatives had always been Lancastrians at heart and had already made many enemies. Richard III, on the other hand, was considered the Yorkists' best all-round candidate for the job of king at the time. It has also been argued that once Edward V was proclaimed as king by Richard and everybody else on the death of Edward IV then legally he was king, his alleged illegitimacy was irrelevant. Several former Yorkists joined Henry when he landed, which suggests that they saw Richard as a usurper. Although this issue has generated, and continues to generate, a good deal of debate, the view of most professional historians is that Richard did it. Category:Disappeared people Category:Princes Category:Wars of the Roses

Edward III of England

Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377) was one of the most successful English kings of medieval times. His fifty-year reign began when his father Edward II of England was deposed on 25 January 1327, and lasted until 1377. Among his immediate predecessors, only Henry III ruled as long, and it would be over 400 years before another monarch would occupy the throne for that duration. Edward's reign was marked by an expansion of English territory through wars in Scotland and France. Edward's parentage and his prodigious offspring provided the basis for two lengthy and significant events in British and European history, the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of the Roses, respectively.

Early life

Edward, the son of Edward II of England and Isabella of France, daughter of King Philip the Fair, was born in 1312 at Windsor Castle. In 1320, he was created Earl of Chester. In 1325, his father ceded the Duchy of Aquitaine to him, and the young Edward was sent to France along with his mother to meet his uncle, the French King Charles IV. Upon their return from France, the powerful Queen and her lover, Roger Mortimer, forced the weak and unpopular Edward II to abdicate, installing Edward III as king in 1327. Edward II was subsequently imprisoned (allegedly murdered, he was in fact well-treated in captivity), and Isabella and Roger Mortimer effectively ruled England during the young king's first few years on the throne.

Early reign

Edward III was crowned on 25 January 1327, at the age of 14, and married Philippa of Hainault in 1328. The couple eventually produced thirty seven children, including five sons who reached maturity. Their eldest son and Edward's heir, Edward the Black Prince, born in 1330, would become a famed military leader. In the same year as Edward's marriage, his uncle Charles IV of France died without male heirs, leaving a pregnant wife, thus making Edward (through Isabella) the senior surviving male descendant of King Philip IV, Charles' and Isabella's father, and potentially giving Edward the senior Capetian dynasty claim to the French throne. (Edward's younger brother John, Earl of Cornwall, was then the only other living male descending from Philip IV. Later, daughters of Louis X and Philip V produced further male issue, such as King Charles II of Navarre, Hereditary Duke Philip of Burgundy and Count Louis of Flanders.) In 1330, the eighteen-year old Edward seized control over the English court, overthrowing Mortimer, who was executed, and removing Isabella from power but sparing her life. The reign of Edward III was marked by continued war with Scotland, but much more by the war with France. His first major military success was the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, which he won in support of his puppet, the new Scottish king, Edward Balliol, in detriment to his own brother-in-law David II of Scotland, the Bruce claimant and husband of Edward's sister Joan of the Tower, princess of England.

The Hundred Years' War

Edward's claim to join the English and French thrones was contested by French nobles who invoked Salic law, which held that the royal succession could not pass through a female line (such as Edward's mother Isabella, or Queen Joan II of Navarre), and who therefore asserted that the legitimate King of France was Philip VI, Edward's cousin and heir to Charles of Valois, a younger son of Philip III. Edward declared war on Philip VI in 1337, and declared himself king of France on January 26 1340. The conflict thus commenced eventually became known as the Hundred Years' War, continuing sporadically to the 1450s. In 1346, Edward defeated the French at the Battle of Crecy, accompanied in this campaign by his sixteen year old son the Black Prince. The Black Prince commanded England's victorious army at the Battle of Poitiers, in 1356. The first phase of the Hundred Years' War was concluded in 1360 with the Treaty of Brétigny, marking the height of English influence in France and providing three million crowns' ransom for the capture of the French King John II. While these victories were eventually reversed, and then won and lost again in the resulting generations of war, English and, later, British monarchs would continue to claim the title "King of France" until the Act of Union which led to the creation of the United Kingdom in 1801. Edward III quartered his coat of arms with "France Ancient", the Azure semé-de-lis (a blue shield with a tight pattern of small golden fleur de lis of the French royal house), and it remained a part of the English Coat of Arms until removed by George III. For more information see English Kings of France.

Domestic events and personal life

English Kings of France While the king and the prince campaigned abroad, the government was left largely in the hands of the prince's younger brother, John of Gaunt. Economic prosperity from the developing wool trade created new wealth in the kingdom, but the ravages of the bubonic plague, or Black Death, had a significant impact on the lives of his subjects. Commercial taxes became a major source of royal revenue, which had previously been largely from taxes on land. Parliament became divided into two houses. During Edward's reign, French was still the language of the English noblesse following the Norman invasion, but this was changed. The king also founded an order of knighthood, the Order of the Garter, allegedly as a result of an incident when a lady, with whom he was dancing at a court ball, dropped an item of intimate apparel (possibly a sanitary belt, though sources describe it as being made of velvet). Gallantly picking it up to assuage her embarrassment, Edward tied it around his own leg, and remarked Honi soit qui mal y pense ('Shame on him who thinks evil of it'), which became the motto of the Order of the Garter. The woman in the case is known only as the "Countess of Salisbury". Some say it was Edward's daughter-in-law, Joan of Kent, but a more likely candidate is Joan's mother-in-law from her first marriage. Despite having an unusually happy marriage, and producing thirteen children with Philippa, Edward was a notorious womaniser. After Philippa's death in 1369, Edward's mistress, Alice Perrers, became a byword for corruption. Facing a resurgent French monarchy and losses in France, Edward asked parliament to grant him more funds by taxing the wine and wool trades, but this was badly received in 1374-1375 as a new outbreak of bubonic plague struck. The "Good Parliament" of 1376 criticised Edward's councillors, including Alice Perrers' family, and advised him to limit his ambitions to suit his revenues. Edward died of a stroke in 1377 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Prince Edward pre-deceased him in 1376, and Edward III was succeeded by his young grandson, King Richard II of England, son of Edward the Black Prince.

Issue

The sons and the Wars of the Roses

Richard II of England The Wars of the Roses were a civil war over the throne of England fought among the descendants of King Edward III through his five surviving adult sons. Each branch of the family had competing claims through seniority, legitimacy, and/or the gender of their ancestors. (1) Edward, the Black Prince (1330-1376), Duke of Cornwall, Prince of Wales The eldest son of Edward III predeceased his father and never became king. Edward's only surviving child was Richard II who ascended to the throne but produced no heirs. Richard II designated as his heir presumptive his cousin Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March, senior heir in female line, the grandson of Lionel of Antwerp, but this succession never took place as Richard II was eventually deposed and succeeded by another of Richard's cousins: Henry IV, "Bolingbroke", who was senior heir in male line. (2) William (16 February 1335-8 July 1335), he was buried at the cathedral by York. (3) Lionel of Antwerp (1338-1368), Duke of Clarence Lionel also predeceased his father. Lionel's only child, Philippa, married into the powerful Mortimer family, which as noted above had exerted enormous influence during the reigns of Edward II and Edward III. Philippa's son Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March was the designated heir of Richard II (but predeceased him, leaving his young son Edmund as heir presumptive. Anne Mortimer, Edmund's eldest sister, Lionel of Antwerp's great-granddaughter, married Richard, Earl of Cambridge of the House of York, merging the Lionel/Mortimer line into the York line. (4) John of Gaunt (1340-1399), Duke of Lancaster. From John of Gaunt descended legitimate male heirs, the Lancasters (Henry IV, who deposed Richard II, and then Henry V and Henry VI). This line ended when Henry VI was successfully deposed by Edward IV, of the York faction, and Henry's son Edward was killed. The Lancaster Kings derived their ancestry also, through Blanche, wife of John Gaunt, from Edmund of Lancaster the Crouchback, who was son of Henry III of England - a legend without foundation was developed to claim that Edmund was elder than his brother Edward I but overpassed in succession of Henry III because of physical infirmity. John of Gaunt's illegitimate heirs were the Beauforts, his descendants through his mistress (later, his wife) Katherine Swynford; Gaunt's great-granddaughter Margaret Beaufort married into the House of Tudor, producing a single child who would become Henry VII. While the Beaufort offspring had been legitimized after Gaunt's eventual marriage to Swynford, this was on the condition that they be barred from ascending the throne. Undeterred by this, upon the failure of the primary Lancastrian line, the Tudors claimed precedence to the Yorks and eventually succeeded them. [Note: John of Gaunt also had legitimate descendants through his daughters Philippa, Queen of Portugal, the mother of King Duarte of Portugal, Elizabeth, Duchess of Exeter, the mother of John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter, and Queen Catalina of Castile, a grand-daughter of King Pedro I and the mother of King Juan II, but these Castilians engaged in their own wars over the Spanish succession and did not assert any claims to the English throne in the Wars of the Roses - and they all were of female line, something the Lancaster Claim avoided because they were originally secondary to certain senior female descents such as Mortimers.] (5) Edmund of Langley (1341-1402), Duke of York. His descendants were the Yorks. He had two sons: Edward, Duke of York, killed fighting alongside Henry V at the battle of Agincourt, and Richard, Earl of Cambridge, executed by Henry V for treason (involving a plot to place heir presumptive Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, Cambridge's brother-in-law and cousin, on the throne). As noted above, Richard had married Anne Mortimer, this giving their son and the House of York, through Lionel of Antwerp, a more senior claim than that of both the Lancasters, who were descended from a younger son than Lionel, and the Tudors, whose legitimized Beaufort ancestors had been debarred from the throne. (6) Thomas (1347). (7) William (24 June 1348-5 September 1348). (8) Thomas of Woodstock (1355-1397), Duke of Gloucester. Duke of Gloucester Thomas, who was one of the Lords Appellant influential under Richard II, was murdered or executed for treason, likely by the order of Richard II; his eventual heir was his daughter Anne, who married into the Stafford family, whose heirs became the Dukes of Buckingham. Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, descended on his father's side from Thomas of Woodstock, and on his mother's side from John Beaufort, rebelled against Richard III in 1483 but failed to depose him. This failed rebellion left Henry Tudor as the Lancasters' primary candidate for the throne. Thus, the senior Plantagenet line was ended with the death of Richard II, but not before the execution of Thomas of Woodstock for treason. The heirs presumptive through Lionel of Antwerp were passed over in favour of the powerful Henry IV, descendant of Edward III through John of Gaunt. These Lancaster Kings initially survived the treason of their Edmund of Langley (York) cousins but eventually were deposed by the merged Lionel/Edmund line in the person of Edward IV. Internecine killing among the Yorks left Richard III as King, supported and then betrayed by his cousin Buckingham the descendant of Thomas of Woodstock. Finally, the Yorks were dislodged by the remaining Lancastrian candidate, Henry VII of the House of Tudor, another descendant of John of Gaunt, who married the eldest daughter of Yorkist King Edward IV. ----

The daughters

- Isabella Plantagenet (1332-1382), married Enguerrand VII de Coucy, 1st Earl of Bedford
- Joan Plantagenet (1335-1348), died of the plague in Bordeaux, on her way to marry Peter I of Castile
- Blanche Plantagenet (1342)
- Mary Plantagenet (1344-1362), married John V, Duke of Brittany
- Margaret Plantagenet (1346-1361), married John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke See also : English monarchs family tree

External link

- [http://www.shadowedrealm.com/articles/exclusive/article.php?id=2 Chivalry during the Reign of King Edward III] Edward III of England Edward III of England Category:Natives of Berkshire Category:House of Anjou Category:Heirs to the English & British thrones Category:English monarchs Category:Hundred Years' War Category:Earls in the Peerage of England ja:エドワード3世 (イングランド王)

Henry VI of England

Henry VI (December 6, 1421 – May 21/22, 1471) was King of England from 1422 to 1461 (though with a Regent until 1437) and then from 1470 to 1471.

Childhood

Henry was the only child and heir of King Henry V of England, and therefore great things were expected of him from birth. He was born on December 6, 1421 at Windsor, but his father died when he was only a few months old. His mother, Catherine of Valois, was the daughter of the French King and only twenty years old. Because of general suspicion of her origin, she was prevented from having much to do with her son's upbringing. During Henry's infancy, England was ruled by a regency government which came to be dominated by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Henry IV's youngest son, and Bishop Henry Beaufort (Cardinal Beaufort from 1426) who was Henry V's half-uncle. Henry IV's elder surviving son, John, Duke of Bedford, was the senior regent, having been appointed Regent of France (in charge of running the ongoing war) as well as replacing Gloucester as Regent of England whenever Bedford was personally in the country. From 1428, Henry's tutor was the Earl of Warwick, whose father had been instrumental in the opposition to Richard II's reign. Henry was also influenced by Henry Beaufort, and later William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Henry came to favour a policy of peace in France. Henry's half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper, the sons of his mother's second marriage, were later given earldoms, Edmund being the father of Henry Tudor, later King Henry VII of England.

Coronation

Henry was eventually crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey on November 6, 1429 a month before his eighth birthday, and King of France at Notre Dame in Paris on December 16, 1431. However, he did not assume the reins of government until he was declared of age in 1437—the year in which his mother died. Early in the child king's reign, the most powerful of the regents were his uncles, John, Duke of Bedford and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. The former died in 1435; the latter was disgraced, accused of treason and probably murdered in 1447.

Henry's marriage to Margaret of Anjou

As a result of his successes in the Hundred Years' War, Henry V had left England in possession of considerable territories in France, but the momentum was lost on his death. While Henry VI was still a child, and England was ruled by a regency government, much of the ground his father gained was lost. A revival of French fortunes, beginning with the military victories of Joan of Arc, led to the repudiation of Henry's title to rule France, and the crowning of the French dauphin at Reims. Diplomatic errors as well as military failures resulted in the loss of most of the English territories in France. On gaining his majority, Henry VI proved to be a deeply spiritual man, lacking the worldly wisdom necessary to allow him to rule effectively. Right from the time he assumed control as king in 1437, he allowed his court to be dominated by a few noble favorites, and the peace party (which was in favour of ending the war in France) quickly came to dominate, while the voices of Richard, Duke of York and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the leaders of the pro-war faction, were sidelined and generally ignored. Cardinal Beaufort and Suffolk meanwhile persuaded the king that the best way of pursuing peace with France was through a marriage with Charles VII’s niece, Margaret of Anjou. Henry agreed, especially when he heard reports of Margaret’s stunning beauty, and sent Suffolk to negotiate with King Charles. Charles agreed to the marriage on condition that he would not have to provide the customary dowry and instead would receive the lands of Maine and Anjou from the English. These conditions were agreed to in the Treaty of Tours, but the cession of Maine and Anjou was kept secret from parliament. It was known that this would be hugely unpopular with the English populace. The marriage went ahead in 1445 and Margaret’s character seems to have complemented that of Henry’s in that she was prepared to take decisions and show leadership where he was content to be led by her. In this much Margaret proved a more competent ruler than Henry ever was, even though she was only sixteen at that time. Now came the thorny issue of Maine and Anjou. Henry had procrastinated about keeping his end of the bargain with Charles VII, knowing that it would be a hugely unpopular move and that Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and the war party would be especially critical of it. However, Margaret was determined to make him see it through and finally it became public knowledge in 1446. Most public anger was directed at Suffolk, for having negotiated the Treaty of Tours, but Henry and Margaret were determined to protect him, knowing they were vulnerable too, having also had full knowledge of the conditions of the marriage. In 1447, the king, the queen and the group surrounding them (Suffolk, Somerset, and the ageing Cardinal Beaufort) summoned Gloucester before parliament on a charge of treason in Bury St Edmunds, and he died in captivity, whether of natural causes or foul play was not clear. The death of Gloucester left York as Henry’s heir apparent, but Henry never officially acknowledged this and York continued to be excluded from the court circle, being banished to govern Ireland, while Henry and Margaret promoted Suffolk and Edmund Beaufort to Dukedoms, (a title normally reserved for immediate relatives of the monarch). Beaufort, the new Duke of Somerset (and Cardinal Beaufort's nephew) was sent to France to lead the war.

Increasing unpopularity and insanity

France The government’s increasing unpopularity was due to a breakdown in law and order, corruption, the distribution of royal land to the king’s court favourites, the troubled state of the crown’s finances, and the steady loss of territories in France. In 1447, this unpopularity took the form of a Commons campaign against the Duke of Suffolk, who was the most unpopular of all the King’s entourage and widely seen as a traitor. Henry was forced to send him into exile, but his ship was intercepted in the English Channel, and he was murdered. His body was found on the beach at Dover. The Queen was distraught. In 1449, Somerset, leading the campaign in France, reopened hostilities in Normandy, but by the autumn had been pushed back to Caen. By 1450, the French had retaken the whole province, so hard won by Henry V. Returning troops, who had often not been paid, added to the sense of lawlessness in the southern counties of England, and Jack Cade led a rebellion in Kent in 1450, calling himself ‘John Mortimer’ in sympathy with York and setting up residence at the White Hart Inn in Southwark (the white hart had been the symbol of the deposed Richard II). Henry came to London with an army to crush the rebellion, but was persuaded to keep half his troops behind while the other half met Cade at Sevenoaks. Cade triumphed and went on to occupy London. In the end, the rebellion achieved nothing, and London was retaken after a few days of disorder, but the rebellion showed that feelings of discontent were running high. In 1450, the Duchy of Aquitaine, held since Henry II's time, was also lost, leaving Calais as England's only remaining territory in France. By 1452, York was persuaded to return from Ireland, claim his rightful place on the council, and put an end to bad government. His cause was a popular one, and he soon raised an army at Shrewsbury. The court party, meanwhile, raised their own similar-sized force in London. A stand-off took place south of London, with York presenting a list of grievances and demands to the court circle, including the arrest of the Duke of Somerset. The king initially agreed, but Margaret intervened to prevent the arrest of Somerset. By 1453, his influence had been restored, and York was again isolated. In the meantime, an English advance in Aquitaine had retaken Bordeaux and was having some success, and the queen announced that she was pregnant. However, English success in Aquitaine was short-lived, and on hearing the news of the English defeat in August 1453, Henry slipped into a mental breakdown and became completely unaware of everything that was going on around him. This was to last for more than a year, and Henry failed even to respond to the birth of his own son and heir, who was christened Edward (Edward of Westminster and Prince of Wales). York, meanwhile, had gained a very important ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, one of the most influential magnates and possibly richer than York himself. York was named regent as Protector of the Realm in 1454. He finally had the position of influence he had wanted, the queen was excluded completely, and Somerset was detained in the Tower of London, while many of York's supporters rumoured that the king's child was not his, but Somerset's (there is no proof of this). Other than that, York’s months as regent were spent tackling the problem of government overspending. On Christmas Day 1454, however, Henry regained his senses.

Henry's character

Henry’s character as king is best summed up as pious, indecisive and easily-led, and of course later in life, he became severely mentally unstable. He was kind and generous to those he cared about (which did not help the dire financial situation of his government) giving away land and titles to his advisors. He avoided the ostentatious trappings of his role, preferring simple dress. He was keen on reading and 'book-learning' but showed no inclination whatsoever towards leading his country in battle — ironic, considering his reign was one of the bloodiest in English history. He disliked making war on his fellow Christians and he was keen for justice to be done in his name — again ironical, considering the widespread corruption and collapse of law and order which occurred under him. Henry seems to have used religion and piety as a means of escape from the harsh world of bitter rivalries and power struggles which surrounded him at court. He was excessively prudish, which was encouraged by his confessor who advised him to abstain from sex with his wife as much as possible. Keen on the promotion of education, Henry gave generous grants for the foundation of both Eton College near Windsor (the King's College of Our Lady at Eton near Windsor), for the education of students from poor backgrounds, and King's College, Cambridge (the King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge), where they could continue their education. Henry seems to have been a decent man, but completely unsuited to kingship. He allowed himself to be totally dominated by the power-hungry factions which surrounded him at court and was later powerless to stop the outbreak of bloody civil war. It was clearly too much for him to cope with, as his recurring mental illness from 1453 onwards showed. During the Wars of the Roses it was his queen, Margaret, who was the driving force behind the Lancastrian faction, while Henry was captured first by one side, then the other. Whoever had the king in their possession was able to claim to be ruling in his name.

The Wars of the Roses

Disaffected nobles who had grown in power during Henry's reign (most importantly the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury) took matters into their own hands by backing the claims of the rival House of York, first to the Regency, and then to the throne itself. After a violent struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York, (see Wars of the Roses), Henry was deposed on March 4, 1461 by his cousin, Edward of York, who became King Edward IV of England. But Edward failed to capture Henry and his queen, and they were able to flee into exile abroad. During the first period of Edward IV's reign, Lancastrian resistance continued mainly under the leadership of Queen Margaret and the few nobles still loyal to her in the northern counties of England and Wales. Henry was captured by King Edward in 1465 and subsequently held captive in the Tower of London. Queen Margaret, exiled in Scotland and later in France, was determined to win back the throne on behalf of her husband and son, and with the help of King Louis XI of France eventually formed an alliance with Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who had fallen out with Edward IV. After marrying his daughter to the Prince of Wales, Warwick returned to England, defeated the Yorkists in battle, liberated Henry VI and restored him to the throne on October 30, 1470. Henry's return to the throne lasted a very short time. By this time, years in hiding followed by years in captivity had taken their toll on Henry, who had been weak-willed and mentally unstable to start with. By all accounts Henry looked lethargic and vacant as Warwick and his men paraded him through the streets of London as the rightful King of England, and the constrast with the imposing King Edward whom he had replaced must have been marked. Within a few months Warwick had overreached himself by declaring war on Burgundy, whose ruler responded by giving Edward IV the assistance he needed to win back his throne by force. The Prince of Wales was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471.

Death and legacy

Henry VI was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was murdered on 21st May 1471. Although legend has accused Richard, Duke of Gloucester of his murder, Richard is an unlikely suspect, having been only nineteen at the time. Each year on the anniversary of his death, the Provosts of Eton and King's College, Cambridge, lay roses and lilies on the altar which now stands where he died. King Henry VI was originally buried in Chertsey Abbey; then, in 1485, his body was moved to St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. He was succeeded by Edward IV, son of Richard, Duke of York. Ironically for one so personally pious and peace-loving, Henry left a great legacy of strife and civil war. Perhaps his one lasting positive achievement was his fostering of education—he founded both Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. In the 1590s, William Shakespeare wrote a trilogy of plays about the life of Henry VI: Henry VI, part 1, Henry VI, part 2, and Henry VI, part 3. Henry also appears as a ghost in Richard III.

First Battle of St Albans

The First Battle of St Albans was the first battle of the Wars of the Roses and was fought on May 22, 1455 in the town of St Albans.

Story of the Battle

Richard, Duke of York and his ally, Richard, Earl of Warwick defeated the Lancastrians under Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, who was killed. York captured King Henry VI and had himself appointed Constable of England. In an attempt to avoid becoming outflanked, Henry's 2,000 strong army had pulled back into the town and barricaded themselves in the streets with 3,000 Yorkist troops ranged in the surrounding fields against them. The Lancastrians attempted to hold St. Albans behind two blockades in Hollywell and St. Peter’s Streets against a Yorkist attack from the east. Whilst the bulk of Henry's forces were surprised and fully occupied by the speed of Richard's attack (most of the army was expecting a peaceful resolution like the one at Blackheath in 1452. In fact the leaders had been negotiating minutes prior to the attack), two frontal assaults down the narrow streets made no headway and resulted in heavy casualties for the Yorkists. Warwick took his reserve troops through an unguarded part of the town’s defences by following a path through the back lanes and gardens. Suddenly the Earl appeared in the Market Square where the main body of Henry troops was sitting around talking and resting. There is evidence they were not yet expecting to be involved in the fighting, as many were not even wearing their helmets. Warwick charged instantly with his small force of reserves and smashed the Lancastrian line in two, making military history. The Earl then ordered his archers to fire at the men around the King, killing some and injuring many nobles including the King and his commander the Duke of Buckingham. Warwick killed one of his own enemies, the Duke of Somerset outside the Castle Inn. The men manning the barricades realising the enemy was in the main square and fearing an attack from behind abandoned them to the Yorkists who soon climbed over and joined the rout. In military terms St. Albans was trivial, perhaps 300 dead, but in political terms the battle was a complete victory, for York captured the King, returning himself to complete power, his rival Somerset was dead and the Neville's arch enemies Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland and Lord de Clifford fell during the rout.

Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham

Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1402 – July 10, 1460) was best-known as a military commander in the Hundred Years' War and in the Wars of the Roses. He was the son of Edmund Stafford, 5th Earl of Stafford, and Anne of Gloucester, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock and a grand-daughter of Edward III of England. When Humphrey was a small child his father died and he became 6th Earl of Stafford, inheriting a large estate with lands in more than a dozen counties. In 1444 he was created 1st Duke of Buckingham for his military services in France. He died at the Battle of Northampton. Humphrey had three sons, two of whom married first cousins with the same name. The eldest, Humphrey, Earl of Stafford (d. 1455), married Margaret Beaufort, daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. The middle son, Lord Henry Stafford (d. 1481), married Margaret Beaufort, daughter of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and widow of Edmund Tudor. The youngest son, John, later became Earl of Wiltshire. His eldest son having already died, Humphrey was succeeded by his grandson Henry. Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of

1460

Events

- The first Portuguese navigators reach the coast of modern Sierra Leone.
- March 5 - King Christian I of Denmark declares the unity of the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, who have been treated as one ever since (albeit under different national affiliations).
- March 6 - Treaty of Alcacovas - Portugal gives Castile the Canary Islands in exchange for claims in West Africa
- June - The Earl of Warwick and Edward, Earl of March, eldest son of the Duke of York, land in England with an army and seize London.
- July 18 - Battle of Northampton - Warwick and March defeat a Lancastrian army and seize King Henry. It is agreed that York will be Henry's heir, disinheriting the King's son Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales.
- December 30 - Battle of Wakefield - A Lancastrian army under Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland defeats a Yorkist army under the Duke of York and his son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland. Both York and Rutland are killed, the latter murdered after the battle. York's son Edward becomes leader of the Yorkist faction.

Births

- May 8 - Frederick I, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach (died 1536)
- Judah Leon Abravanel, Jewish philosopher, physician, and poet
- Antoine Brumel, Flemish composer (died 1515)
- Elijah Delmedigo, Italian philosopher (died 1497)
- Edward Sutton, 2nd Baron Dudley (died 1532)
- Juan Pérez de Gijón, Spanish composer (died 1500)
- Konstanty Ostrogski, Grand Hetman of Lithuania (died 1530)
- Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, Spanish navigator (died 1523)
- Tilman Riemenschneider, German sculptor (died 1531)
- Arnolt Schlick, German organist and composer
- Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester (died 1526)
- Tristão da Cunha, Portuguese explorer (died 1540)

Deaths

- July 10 - Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, English military leader (born 1402)
- August 3 - King James II of Scotland (born 1430)
- September 20 - Gilles Binchois, Flemish composer
- November 13 - Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese patron of exploration (born 1394)
- December 14 - Guarino da Verona, Italian humanist (born 1370)
- December 30 - Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, claimant to the English throne (killed in battle) (born 1411)
- December 31 - Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, English politician (executed) (born 1400)
- December 31 - Edmund, Earl of Rutland, brother of Kings Edward IV of England and Richard III of England (executed) (b. 1443)
- Francesco II Acciajouli, last Duke of Athens
- Israel Isserlein, German Jewish scholar
- Reginald Pecock, English prelate and writer Category:1460 ko:1460년

Edward IV of England

Edward IV (April 28, 1442 – April 9, 1483) was King of England from March 4, 1461 to April 9, 1483, with a break of a few months in the period 1470-1471.

Biography

Edward of York was born on April 28, 1442, at Rouen in France, the eldest son of Richard, Duke of York (a leading claimant to the throne of England) and Cecily Neville. York's challenge to the ruling family marked the beginning of the conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. When his father was killed in 1460, at the Battle of Wakefield, pressing his claim against the Lancastrian king, Henry VI of England, Edward inherited his claim. With the support of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick ("The Kingmaker"), Edward, already showing great promise as a leader of men, defeated the Lancastrians in a succession of battles. While Henry and his militant queen, Margaret of Anjou, were campaigning in the north, Warwick gained control of the capital and had Edward declared king in London in 1461. Edward strengthened his claim with a decisive victory at the Battle of Towton in the same year, in the course of which the Lancastrian army was virtually wiped out. Edward was tall, strong, handsome, affable (even with subjects), generous, and popular. Warwick, believing that he could continue to rule through him, pressed him to enter into a marital alliance with a major European power. Edward, who had appeared to go along with the wishes of his mentor, then alienated Warwick by secretly marrying a widow, Elizabeth Woodville (possibly having previously married another widow, Lady Eleanor Talbot, even more secretly). Elizabeth had a large group of relatively poor but very ambitious, and until the Battle of Towton, Lancastrian relations. While it is true that these relations did dominate the marriage market and were given numerous titles, they were given little land which was the true source of power and thus were not a threat to Warwick's own power. However, Warwick resented the influence they had over the King and was angry at the emergence of a rival group for the King's favour, so with the aid of Edward's disaffected younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, the Earl led an army against Edward. The main part of the king's army (without Edward) was defeated at the Battle of Edgecote Moor, and Edward was subsequently captured at Olney. Warwick attempted to rule in Edward's name, but the nobility, many of whom owed their preferments to the king, were restive. With the emergence of a rebellion, Warwick was forced to release Edward. Edward did not seek to destroy either Warwick or Clarence, instead seeking reconciliation with them. However, shortly afterwards Warwick and Clarence rebelled again. After a failed rebellion in 1470, Warwick and Clarence were forced to flee to France. There, they made an alliance with the wife of Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou, and he agreed to restore Henry VI in return for French support in an invasion which took place in 1470. This time, Edward was forced to flee when he learned Warwick's brother, John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu, had also switched to the Lancastrian side, making his military position untenable. Henry VI was briefly restored to the throne in an act known as the Readeption of Henry VI, and Edward took refuge in Burgundy. The rulers of Burgundy were his brother-in-law Charles, Duke of Burgundy and his sister Margaret of Burgundy. Despite the fact that Charles was initially unwilling to help Edward, the French declared war on Burgundy and so Charles decided to give his aid to Edward, and from there he raised an army to win back his kingdom. When he returned to England with a relatively small force he avoided capture by potentially hostile forces by stating his claim, just as Henry Bolingbroke had done seventy years earlier, that he merely desired to reclaim his dukedom. The city of York however closed its gates to him, but as he marched southwards he began to gather support, and Clarence (who had realised that his fortunes would be better off as brother to a king than under Henry VI) reunited with him. Edward defeated Warwick at the Battle of Barnet. With Warwick dead, he eliminated the remaining Lancastrian resistance at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. The Lancastrian heir, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, was killed either on the battlefield or shortly afterwards, and a few days later, on the night that Edward re-entered London, Henry VI, who was being held prisoner, was murdered in order to completely remove the Lancastrian opposition. Edward's two younger brothers, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later King Richard III of England) were married to Isabella Neville and Anne Neville. They were both daughters of Warwick by Anne Beauchamp and rival heirs to the considerable inheritance of their still-living mother. Clarence and Gloucester were at loggerheads for much of the rest of his reign. Clarence was eventually found guilty of plotting against Edward and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was "privately executed" (later tradition states he drowned in a vat of Malmsey wine) on February 18, 1478. Edward did not face any further rebellions after his restoration, as the Lancastrian line had virtually been extinguished, and the only rival left was Henry Tudor, who was living in exile. Edward declared war on France in 1475, and came to terms with the Treaty of Picquigny which provided him with an immediate payment of 75,000 crowns and a yearly pension thereafter of 50,000 crowns. Edward backed an attempt by Alexander, Duke of Albany, brother of the Scottish king James III to take the throne in 1482, and despite the fact that when Gloucester invaded he was able to capture Edinburgh and James III, Albany reneged on his agreement with Edward, and Gloucester decided to withdraw from his position of strength in Edinburgh. However, Gloucester did acquire the recovery of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Edward fell ill at Easter 1483, but lingered on long enough to add some codicils to his will, the most important being his naming of his brother Gloucester as Protector after his death. He died on 9 April 1483 and is buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. He was succeeded by his twelve-year-old son, Edward V of England. Although his son was quickly barred from the throne and succeeded by Richard of Gloucester, Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth of York, later became the Queen consort of Henry VII of England.

Children

He had ten legitimate children by Elizabeth Woodville though only seven survived him:
- Elizabeth of York, Queen Consort of Henry VII of England (February 11, 1466 - February 11, 1503).
- Mary of York (August, 1467 - May 23, 1482).
- Cecily of York (March 20, 1469 - August 24, 1507). She married first John Welles, 1st Viscount Welles and second, Thomas Kymbe
- Edward V (November 4, 1470 - 1483?)
- Margaret of York (April 10, 1472 - December 11, 1472)
- Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York (August 17, 1473 - 1483?).
- Anne of York (November 2, 1475 - November 23, 1511. She married Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
- George, Duke of Bedford (March, 1477 - March, 1479).
- Catherine of York (August 14, 1479 - November 15, 1527). She married William Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon.
- Bridget of York (November 10, 1480 - 1517), who became a nun Edward had numerous mistresses, the most well-known of whom is Jane Shore (whose name in actuality was Elizabeth). He reportedly had several illegitimate children:
- By Lady Eleanor Talbot
- Edward de Wigmore (d. 1468). Reportedly died as an infant along with his mother.
- By Elizabeth Lucy or Elizabeth Waite.
- Elizabeth Plantagenet. Born circa 1464. She married Sir Thomas Lumley in 1477..
- Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle (1460s/1470s- March 3, 1542).
- By unknown mother. Recent speculations suggests them as children by Lucy or Waite.
- Grace Plantagenet. She is known to have been present at the funeral of her stepmother Elizabeth Woodville in 1492. No further information.
- Mary Plantagenet. She married Henry Harman of Ellam, son of Thomas and Elizabeth Harman and widower of Agness.
- A daughter said to have been the first wife of John Tuchet, 6th Baron Audley. Perkin Warbeck, an impostor claimant to the English throne reportedly resembled Edward. There is unconfirmed speculation that Warbeck could be another illegitimate son to Edward.

Was Edward illegitimate?

Until recently, evidence of Edward's illegitimacy was lacking. Despite some concerns raised by some scholars, it was generally accepted that the issue was raised as propaganda to support Richard III. In his time, it was noted that Edward IV looked nothing like his father. Questions about his paternity were raised during Edward's own reign, for example by Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick in 1469, and repeated by Edward's brother, George, shortly before his execution in 1478, but with no evidence. It was suggested that the real father may have been an archer called Blaybourne. Prior to his succession, on June 22, 1483, Richard III declared that Edward was illegitimate, and three days later the matter was addressed by parliament. In Titulus Regius (the text of which is believed to come word-for-word from the petition presented by Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham to the assembly which met on June 25, 1483, to decide on the future of the monarchy). It describes Richard III as "the undoubted son and heir" of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and "born in this land" -- an oblique reference to his brother's birth at Rouen and baptism in circumstances which could have been considered questionable. Dominic Mancini says that Cecily Neville, mother of both Edward IV and Richard III, was herself the basis for the story: When she found out about Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, in 1464, "Proud Cis" flew into a rage. One of the things she is reported to have then said was that she was of a good mind to declare he was illegitimate and so have him kicked off the throne for his foolishness. As historical novelist Sharon Kay Penman believes, paid propagandists for Henry Tudor, after he became Henry VII (and King Richard was dead), concocted out of whole cloth the story that Richard III had said his brother Edward was illegitimate: "Tudor's official historian, Polydore Vergil, . . . contend[ed] that Richard based his claim to the crown upon his brother Edward's illegitimacy. This was, of course, an out-and-out lie." Richard III's claim to the throne is generally believed to be based on his claim that Edward IV's children were illegitimate. Additionally, Alexander Canduci, author of "Getting It Right... or Why The World is so Monumentally Screwed: The Manipulation of History" (Publisher: Lulu.com, ISBN: 141164249X) makes the case that "...Edward IV was not the son of Richard, Duke of York and thus not one of the Plantagenet descendents. His two brothers were, however. Richard III would have been aware of this, but couldn’t say anything without destroying all that had been gained by the House of York during the wars [of the Roses], and calling into question the legitimacy of their claims as the rightful kings. So this was let go. But, after Edward’s death, Richard would have been all too aware of the children’s unlawful claim to the throne, due their father’s own illegitimacy. To ensure the continuation of the true Plantagenet line, he needed to remove the children and install himself as king, ensuring the true blood succession. (His elder brother George had been killed, and his descendents debarred from the throne). To this end, he probably fabricated the charges against the children and their mother." The matter is also raised in William Shakespeare's Richard III, in the following lines from Act 3 Scene 5: :Tell them, when that my mother went with child :Of that unsatiate Edward, noble York :My princely father then had wars in France :And, by just computation of the time, :Found that the issue was not his begot

Evidence of illegitimacy

In 2003, historian Dr Michael Jones revealed in a Channel 4 documentary (first broadcast January 3, 2004) previously overlooked evidence from Rouen, cathedral, France, discovered while researching the Hundred Years' War. In the cathedral register, an entry in 1441 records that the clergy were paid for a sermon for the safety of the Duke of York, going to Pontoise (near Paris) on campaign. He would have been on campaign from July 14 to August 21, 1441, several days' march from Rouen. If a child with a claim to the throne was born small or sickly it would normally have been recorded, and there is apparently no such record, consequently, proponents of the theory of illegitimacy claim it is likely that Edward was not born prematurely. By calculating back from Edward's birth on April 28, it seems apparent that Richard was not present at the time of Edward's conception around the first week of August 1441. Additionally, the cathedral records reveal that Edward's christening took place in private in a side chapel, whereas for the christening of Richard's second son the whole cathedral was used for a huge celebration, again suggesting to proponents of the theory that Edward was indeed illegitimate, although in spite of this, the Duke never disclaimed his paternity of his wife's eldest son. Some historians have raised the criticism that it is logistically possible for Richard Duke of York to have returned briefly from battle to Rouen because often military leaders led their forces from the rear. Dr Jones argues that, if it were true that Edward IV was illegitimate, this would have invalidated his claim to the throne of England thus rendering the existing royal family path as illegitimate. Dr Jones argues that tracing through Edward's younger brother, George Duke of Clarence (whom Jones argues was the legitimate heir), the current heir would be Michael Abney-Hastings, 14th Earl of Loudoun who resides in Australia as a rice researcher. However, since King Henry VII claimed the throne of England through right of conquest, it can be argued that Michael Abney-Hastings is no more legitimate to the throne than the blood line that would have continued if William the Conqueror had not taken over. Furthermore, under English law, the son of a married woman is automatically considered the son of her husband unless he is disclaimed at birth. Since Richard did not do this, Edward remained his legal son and heir, whether or not he was actually Richard's biological son. Author Alexander Canduci also argues that George, Duke of Clarence and his heirs could not have succeeded to the throne of England, principally as they were barred from the throne by Parliament under a Bill of Attainder, and only another Act of Parliament could ever rescind this. In the absence of such an Act, the Plantagenet-Hastings line were in the same situation as the male Stuart line after the overthrow of James II with no legal avenue to the throne short of conquest. Edward IV of England Edward IV of England Category:Natives of Haute-Normandie Category:House of York Category:English monarchs Category:Knights of the Golden Fleece Category:Wars of the Roses Category:Dukes in the Peerage of England Category:Earls in the Peerage of Ireland ja:エドワード4世 (イングランド王)

Catherine Woodville

Catherine (or Katherine) Woodville (c. 1458 - c. 1513) was an English medieval noblewoman, best known for marrying a number of influential husbands and producing several illustrious children. She owed her position largely to her sister, Elizabeth Woodville, the queen of King Edward IV of England. Catherine and her sister were the daughters of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers and Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Catherine's dates of birth and death are unknown, but she was born before 1458. Her first husband was Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who is thought to have been some years her junior; he was a boy of eleven when they married in February, 1466. It was not a successful marriage, even though they had four children, the first born in 1478. Following Buckingham's execution for treason, she married Jasper Tudor, 1st Duke of Bedford, who died in 1495. Her third and last husband was Sir Richard Wingfield, who outlived her. She was mother to four children by her first husband: #Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham #Elizabeth Stafford, Countess of Sussex #Henry Stafford, 3rd Earl of Wiltshire #Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon Woodville, Catherine Woodville, Catherine Woodville, Catherine

Edward V of England

Edward V (4 November 1470 – 1483?) was an English monarch, although never crowned. Edward was born in sanctuary within Westminster Abbey on November 4, 1470, while his mother was taking refuge from the Lancastrians who dominated the kingdom while his father, the Yorkist King Edward IV of England, was out of power. He was created Prince of Wales in June, 1471, following his father's restoration to the throne, and appeared with his parents on state occasions. Edward IV, having established a Council of Wales and the Marches, duly sent his son to Ludlow Castle to be its nominal president. It was at Ludlow that the prince was staying when news came of his father's sudden death. Edward inherited the throne on April 9, 1483, at the age of twelve. His father's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was entrusted with the role of protector to his young nephews, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. He intercepted Edward's entourage on its return journey from Wales and escorted the princes to London. Less than three months later, Richard took the throne himself. On June 25, Parliament declared his nephews illegitimate after a priest (believed to be the Bishop of Bath and Wells) presented evidence that Edward had contracted to marry Lady Eleanor Butler before he married Elizabeth Woodville; this would have made his marriage to Elizabeth invalid. Richard's other brothers, Edmund and George, Duke of Clarence, had both died before Edward, leaving Richard next in line for the throne. Once the two boys went into the Tower of London, they were never seen in public again. What happened to them is one of the great mysteries of history, and many books have been written on the subject. It is generally believed that they were killed, and the usual suspects are: their uncle, King Richard; Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham; and Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard and took the throne as Henry VII. After the princes' disappearance, there was much uncertainty as to their fate. If they were killed, the secret was well kept; conversely, there was no evidence of their survival or of their having been shipped out of the country. When a pretender, Perkin Warbeck, turned up claiming to be Prince Richard, in 1495, William Stanley (younger brother of King Henry's stepfather, Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby), who, despite his Yorkist sympathies, had turned against Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field and helped King Henry win it, said that, if the young man was really the prince, he would not fight against him, thus demonstrating that some Yorkists had not given up hope of the princes being still alive. Battle of Bosworth Field] In 1674, some workmen remodelling the Tower of London dug up a box containing two small human skeletons. They threw them on a rubbish heap, but some days or weeks later someone decided they might be the bones of the two princes, so they gathered them up and put some of them in an urn that Charles II of England ordered interred in Westminster Abbey. In 1933 the bones were taken out and examined and then replaced in the urn in the vault under the Abbey. The experts who examined them could not agree on what age the children would have been when they died or even whether they were boys or girls. (One skeleton was larger than the other, and many of the bones were missing, including part of the smaller jawbone and all of the teeth from the larger one.) Category:1470 births Category:1483 deaths Category:Londoners Category:House of York Category:Heirs to the English & British thrones Category:English monarchs Category:Knights of the Garter Category:Wars of the Roses Category:Dukes in the Peerage of England Category:Disappeared people ja:エドワード5世 (イングランド王)

Richard III of England

Childhood

Marriage

Reign of Edward IV

Accession to the Throne

Coronation

Death

Succession

Legacy

Popularity

Fiction about Richard III

Bibliography

External links

John Morton

:This article is about the 15th century English Bishop, for other uses see John Morton (disambiguation). The English cleric John Morton was born in Dorset c.1420 and died at Knowles, Kent, on September 15, 1500. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Bishop of Ely and then Archbishop of Canterbury (1486-1500) during the reign of Henry VII, Morton was an implacable foe of the preceding Yorkist regime, most notably King Richard III, and a mentor of Sir Thomas More. In 1493 he was appointed Cardinal of St. Anastasia by Pope Alexander VI. He built the "Old Palace" of Hatfield House where Queen Elizabeth I of England spent much of her girlhood. Morton may be best known for the Catch-22 situation known as "Morton's Fork." Appointed Lord Chancellor of England in 1487, Morton said, "If the subject is seen to live frugally, tell him because he is clearly a money saver of great ability he can afford to give generously to the King. If, however, the subject lives a life of great extravagance, tell him he, too, can afford to give largely, the proof of his opulence being evident in his expenditure."

Morton and the history of Richard III

Bishop Morton's second claim to fame is that he is thought to be the source of most Tudor propaganda against Richard III, including the story that King Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower, the murders of his brother George, Duke of Clarence, of his wife's first husband, Edward, Prince of Wales, of Henry VI himself, and of William, Lord Hastings; forcing his wife, Anne Neville, to marry him against her will; planning (before his wife died) to marry his niece Elizabeth of York incestuously (and maybe killing his wife so he could); accusing his own mother of adultery (and his late brother the king of illegitimacy); accusing Jane Shore and Elizabeth Woodville of witchcraft in withering his arm; and being himself illegitimate. Each of these stories first appears in writing either in Sir Thomas More's The History of King Richard III, which was based on Morton's account (although historians are divided on whether More substantially rewrote it or essentially copied Morton's manuscript, with the majority thinking its style came from More) or in the writings of someone else who had heard the story from Morton. Each of those stories is demonstrably untrue. Like most contemporary "historians", Morton was uninterested in facts, historiography being seen as a branch of literature, a precedent set by the Greek and Roman tradition. Morton had been present at some of those events and knew the truth of the matter, but his purpose in relating these stories was two-fold: to entertain his readers and to vilify the memory of the king who had been overthrown by his own master. Many later historians consider that Morton deliberately falsified the record to depict King Richard as a villain. Morton wrote in his History that at the lords' council meeting in the Tower of London on 13 June 1483, Richard suddenly called his men at arms into the room and had them arrest Hastings for treason and take him outside and chop his head off on a log they found handy. Morton was either in the council room when Hastings was arrested or was one of several men there who were detained on suspicion of involvement in a conspiracy with Hastings, held in another room for a short time, and later released without charge. However, it has been claimed by other historians that Hastings, having been arrested as Morton described, was later formally charged with treason, tried for it, convicted and sentenced, and not executed until 18 June, in the usual way the law prescribed. Morton, John Morton, John Morton, John Morton, John Morton, John Morton, John Morton, John

Decapitation

Decapitation, or beheading, is the removal of a living organism's head, inevitably resulting in death. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, or knife, or by means of a guillotine. Accidental decapitation can be the result of an explosion, automobile or industrial accident or other violent injury. Suicide by decapitation is rare, but not unknown. In 2003 a British man killed himself by means of a home-made guillotine, constructed over a period of several weeks. Separation of the head from the rest of the human body results in death: there is heavy bleeding from both the head and decapitated body, causing a massive drop in blood pressure and rapid loss of consciousness followed quickly by brain death. Even if the bleeding were stopped, the lack of circulation to supply oxygen to the brain would rapidly lead to brain death. No known medical emergency treatment can save a decapitated patient. In theory, connecting a cardiac pump to a severed head might keep it alive, but this is not known to have ever been tried in practice. However, head transplants have been carried out successfully in monkeys (see Robert J. White); the first stage of such a transplant, of course, is a surgical decapitation (in which, however, great care is taken to maintain the blood supply by means of catheterization). Thus, survival of a head separated from its body is not an inherent impossibility. An even more gruesome issue is whether a decapitated head retains consciousness after separation from the body. The issue has been debated many times, especially in the context of whether beheading is or is not a humane form of execution (see below). No definitive answer has ever emerged. Many have argued that loss of consciousness would be virtually instantaneous, either as a result of the massive drop in cerebral blood pressure, or because of the impact of the severing implement. Nevertheless, anecdotal evidence, of varying degrees of credibility, has circulated for centuries that severed heads may, under some circumstances, retain consciousness for at least a few seconds. The body of a decapitated chicken was once known to live for an additional 18 months. See Mike the Headless Chicken. The word decapitation can also refer, on occasion, to the removal of the head of someone who is already dead, i.e., to a corpse. This would have probably made the most sense for the purpose of displaying the head to prove the fact of the individual's death or to instill fear in the populace by illustrating the likely fate of an enemy of the authorities.

Decapitation throughout history

Decapitation has been used as a form of capital punishment for millennia. The terms capital offence, capital crime, and capital punishment derive from the punishment for serious offences being the removal of their head (from Latin, caput, capitis, meaning head). Political prisoners (labelled traitors) and serious criminals often had their heads removed and placed on public display for a period of time. For instance, in medieval England, the heads were placed on spikes along the walls of the Tower of London. On the other hand, execution by beheading with a sword (or axe, a military weapon as well) was considered the "honourable" way to die for an aristocrat, who, presumably being a warrior, could generally expect to die by the sword in any event; in England for example, it was a privilege of noblemen to be beheaded. This would be distinguished from a "dishonourable" death on the gallows or through burning at the stake. If the headsman's axe or sword was sharp and his aim was true, decapitation was a quick and relatively painless form of death. If the instrument was blunt or the execution clumsy, however, multiple strokes might be required to sever the head, which presumably was considerably more painful. The person to be executed was therefore advised to give a gold coin to the headsman so that he did his job with care.
- Decapitation by guillotine was a common, mechanized form of execution invented shortly before the French Revolution (although an earlier version of the guillotine, the gibbet, was used in Britain until the 17th century). The aim was that only one form of execution, involving no torture, should exist.The executioner, after chopping off the head, would hold it up to the crowd.It was believed that the head could still see for around 10 seconds. They held the head up so it could see the crowd laughing at it before it fully died. It was used in France on an unprecedented 'industrial' scale during the French Revolution and remained the normal judicial method in peace time, in use until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981. Many German states had used guillotine-like device, Fallbeil, since the 17th-18th centuries, and decapitation by guillotine was the usual means of execution in Germany until abolition of the death penalty 1949. In Nazi Germany, guillotine was reserved to criminal convicts; it is estimated some 40,000 persons were guillotined in Germany and Austria 1933-1945.
- In Scandinavia, decapitation was the usual means of carrying out the capital punishment. Noblemen were beheaded with a sword, commoners with an axe. The last decapitation in Sweden 1910 was carried out with a guillotine.
- It is of note that in the biblical Book of Revelation beheading is named as a method of execution of Christian martyrs during a great persecution (Rev. 20:4). There is no historical record of such an event, so certain commentators believe that this verse refers to the last great persecution of the church that some Christians believe will occur shortly before the Second Coming of Christ.
- In traditional China decapitation was considered a more severe form of punishment than strangulation in spite of the fact that strangulation led to more prolonged suffering. This was because the Chinese believed that their bodies were gifts from their parents and that it was very disrespectful to their ancestors to return one's body to the grave dismembered.
- In Japan, decapitation was historically performed as the second step in seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment). After the victim had sliced his own stomach open, another warrior would strike his head off from behind with a katana to hasten death and to ease the suffering. As skill was involved, only the most trusted was honoured to take the part. In the late Sengoku period, decapitation was performed as soon as the man to commit seppuku had made the slightest wound to his stomach. Decapitation was also the highest form of punishment. One of the most brutal forms of decapitation was that of a samurai, Ishida Mitsunari, who had betrayed Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was buried in the ground and his head was sawed off with a blunt wooden saw. This punishment was abolished in the early Meiji era.

Decapitation in the modern world

The use of decapitation has been discontinued in many parts of the world in part because of suspicion that the severed head may in certain cases continue to be alive to some extent and capable of feeling pain. Some evidence for this was gathered by studying the presence of death-related chemicals in the brains of beheaded animals. There have also been many apocryphal stories from France about the severed heads of guillotined persons that would change facial expression or move their lips. Certainly another major reason for the end of the practice of beheading is the violent and messy nature of the practice. Decapitation by sword has in modern times occurred in jurisdictions subject to Islamic Sharia, and by militant Islamists during the US-led invasion of Iraq. As of 2005, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and Qatar had laws allowing decapitation but only Saudi Arabia was known to practice the sentence. Less orthodox instances of decapitation have also occurred in recent times in some areas of Colombia. Right wing paramilitary groups such as the AUC have sometimes used this method to intimidate local populations and it has not been uncommon for their Left wing guerrilla enemies in the FARC as well as criminal gangs of druglords to also make limited use of decapitation on occasion. The primary means of decapitation in these cases has been the use of machete or chainsaw. Terrorist group Abu Sayyaf is known to practice beheading in The Philippines. Chechen rebels were known to practice beheading against the captured Russian Army soldiers during the First Chechen War. Four Western telecommunication workers (three Britons and a New Zealander) who were taken hostages for ransom in Chechnya in 1998 were eventually beheaded and their heads found by the side of the road [http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9812/08/chechnya.01/].

Some famous persons who have been beheaded

Biblical

- Goliath
- John the Baptist in the Gospels
- Holofernes in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith
- Apostle James, traditionally
- Apostle Paul, traditionally

Celtic Saints

- Saint Winefred of Flintshire in Wales.

- Saint Urith of Chittlehampton, Devon, England.

- Saint Columba of Spain.

- Saint Columba of France.
- Saint Columba (the Virgin) of Cornwall, England.

Islamic

- 680 Imam Husayn bin Ali - which marked the division between Shia and Sunni

Hindu

- Nil

Nazi Germany

- Helmuth Hübener, 27 October, 1942 (beheaded for treason after distributing anti-Hitler leaflets; at 17, the youngest person executed by the Nazis for treason)
- Marinus van der Lubbe, January 10, 1934 (executed after he was accused of setting fire to the German Reichstag building)
- Benita von Falkenhayn and Renate von Natzmer, February 18, 1935 in Berlin.
- Sophie Scholl, February 22, 1943 (of the White Rose executed by Nazis for treason)

Modern era

- Yukio Mishima, November 25, 1970 (seppuku)
- Prince Faisal bin Musad, June, 1975 (lawful execution)
- Vic Morrow, July 23, 1982 (Actor killed in filming accident)
- Hans Christian Ostrø, August 13, 1995, (murdered)
- Robert Lees, June 13, 2004 (murdered) It is often stated that actress Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in the automobile accident that took her life in 1967, but this is untrue.

Iraq Terrorist Decapitation Victims

- 1 Bulgarian
- 1 Pakistani
- 1 Turkman
- 1 Nepali (one of twelve was beheaded [http://www.shianews.com/hi/middle_east/news_id/0001150.php], the rest shot)
- 3 Iraqi Kurds
- 2 of unknown nationality
- Nicholas Berg, April/May, 2004
- Paul Johnson, June 18, 2004
- Kim Sun-il, June 22, 2004
- Mohammed Mutawalli, August 8, 2004
- Khaled Abdul Messih, August 25, 2004
- Durmus Kumdereli, August 17/September 13 2004
- Eugene Armstrong September 20, 2004
- Jack Hensley September 21, 2004
- Barea Nafea Dawoud Ibrahim October 2, 2004
- Kenneth Bigley, October 8, 2004
- Luqman Mohammed Kurdi Hussein, reported October 11, 2004
- Maher Kemal, reported October 11, 2004
- Ala al-Maliki, October 12, 2004
- Fadhel Ibrahim, October 13, 2004
- Firas Imeil, October 13, 2004
- Ramazan Elbu, October 14, 2004
- Seif Adnan Kanaan, October 22, 2004
- 1 Iraqi, October 28, 2004 (one of eleven was beheaded, the rest shot)
- Shosei Koda, October 31, 2004
- Major Hussein Shunun, November 3, 2004

Other meanings of the word

- The term 'decapitation' is also used in politics, and other organisational structures as meaning to remove the leaders, i.e. the 'head', of the organisation in the hope or expectation that it would flounder without direction from the top. This is a figurative usage, rather than the literal meanings above.
- 'Decapitation' is similarly used as a military term to refer to the targeting of the leader of a country or army, such as the United States' "decapitation attempt" against Saddam Hussein. [http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/20/sprj.irq.target.saddam/&e=912]
- The term decapitation strike used in the theory of nuclear warfare also derives from this meaning, when aimed at a command/control center, or capital city. The term was also used in the media with regards to the above attempt on Hussein in 2003. Category:Death penalty

External links

- [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_262.html Does the head remain briefly conscious after decapitation? (The Straight Dope)]
- [http://www.islamonline.net/askaboutislam/display.asp?hquestionID=8343 Is decapitation of civilians allowed by Islamic law?] (Islamonline.net) (dead link)
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/2974083.stm Guillotine death was suicide] (BBC News)
- [http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.html The story of Mike the Headless Chicken] A chicken who lived for 18 months after his head was cut off.

Thomas of Woodstock

Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester (January 7, 1355 – September 8 (or 9), 1397) was the thirteenth and youngest child of King Edward III of England and Queen Philippa. He was the fifth of the five sons of Edward III who survived to adulthood, and like his brothers, he and his descendants were active participants in the struggle for the English Crown known as the Wars of the Roses. Thomas was murdered in Calais in 1397 on behalf of his nephew, King Richard II of England.

Early life

Thomas was born after two short-lived sons, one of whom had also been baptised Thomas. He was born at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire. He married Eleanor de Bohun in 1376, and inherited the title Earl of Essex from his father-in-law, Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford. Woodstock's wife's younger sister, Mary de Bohun, was subsequently married to Henry "Bolingbroke," who eventually became Henry IV of England. At the age of 22, in 1377, Woodstock was created Earl of Buckingham. In 1385 he received the title Duke of Aumale, and at about the same time was created Duke of Gloucester.

Offspring and heirs

Thomas and his wife had one son and four daughters. Following his murder (probably on the orders of his nephew, King Richard II of England), at Calais in 1397, his title was forfeit and did not pass to his son, Humphrey. His eldest daughter, Anne of Gloucester, married into the powerful Stafford family, who were Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham, and four generations after Thomas, the disposition of the de Bohun estates may have been a motivating factor in the involvement of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham in plots against the crown during the period of Richard III.

References

- Columbia Encyclopedia - [http://www.bartleby.com/65/gl/GloucsT.html Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of] Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of

Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford

Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, 6th Earl of Essex and 2nd Earl of Northampton (1342 – 1373) was an important English noble during the reign of King Edward III of England. He was the son of William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton, and grandson of Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford. The 7th Earl was the last of this de Bohun line. On his death, his great estates were divided between his two daughters: Mary de Bohun, who married the future Henry IV and Eleanor, who married Thomas of Woodstock. Henry IV was created Duke of Hereford before he usurped the throne. Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of

Mary de Bohun

Mary de Bohun (c. 1369 – June 4, 1394) was the first wife of King Henry IV of England and the mother of King Henry V, but was never queen. The daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, she was a great heiress, and her elder sister, Eleanor, became the wife of Thomas of Woodstock. Mary married Henry, then known as Bolingbroke and nowhere in the line of succession to the throne, in 1380 or 1381. It was at Monmouth, one of her father's possessions, that she gave birth to her first two sons, Edward (who died in infancy) and Henry. Three more sons and two daughters were born in the years up to 1394. Mary died giving birth to the last child, Philippa, later the wife of Eric of Pomerania. Bohun, Mary de Bohun, Mary de Bohun, Mary de

Henry IV of England

Henry IV (April 3, 1367 – March 20, 1413) was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence the other name by which he was known, "Henry of Bolingbroke". His father, John of Gaunt was the third and oldest surviving son of King Edward III of England, and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of Richard II. Henry, however, had a rather more equivocal relationship with Richard: they were first cousins and childhood playmates, and were admitted together to the Order of the Garter in 1377, but Henry participated in the Lords Appellant’s rebellion against the King in 1387. After regaining power, Richard did not punish Henry (many of the other rebellious barons were executed or exiled), and in fact elevated him from earl of Derby to duke of Hereford. The relationship between Henry and the King reached a second crisis in 1398, when Richard banished Henry from the kingdom for ten years -- with John of Gaunt's approval -- to avoid a blood feud between Henry of Bolingbroke and Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk (who was exiled for life). The following year, however, John of Gaunt died, and without explanation, Richard cancelled the legal documents that would have allowed Henry to inherit Gaunt's land automatically -- instead, Henry would be required to ask for the lands from Richard. After some hesitation, Henry met with the exiled Thomas Arundel, former (and future) Archbishop of Canterbury, who had lost his position because of his involvement with the Lords Appellant, and Henry and Arundel returned to England while Richard was on a military campaign in Ireland. With Arundel as his advisor, Henry Bolingbroke began a military campaign, confiscating land from those who opposed him and ordering his soldiers to destroy much of Cheshire. Quickly, Henry gained enough power and support to have himself declared King Henry IV, imprisoning King Richard (who died in prison under mysterious circumstances) and by-passing Richard’s heir-presumptive Roger Mortimer. Henry's coronation, on October 13, 1399, is notable as the first time following the Norman Conquest that the monarch made an address in English. Henry consulted with parliament frequently, but was sometimes at odds with them, especially over ecclesiastical matters. On Arundel's advice, Henry was the first English king to allow the burning of heretics, mainly to suppress the Lollard movement. In 1380 Henry had married Mary de Bohun; they had two daughters and four sons, one of which was the future Henry V of England. In 1406, one of their daughters, Philippa, married Eric of Pomerania, king of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Mary died in 1394, and in 1403 Henry married Joanna of Navarre, the daughter of Charles d'Evreux, King of Navarre. She was the widow of John V of Brittany, with whom she had four daughters and four sons, but she and Henry had no children. The fact that in 1399 Henry had four sons from his first marriage was undoubtedly a clinching factor in his acceptance onto the throne. By contrast, Richard II had no children, and Richard's heir-apparent Mortimer was only seven years old. Henry spent much of his reign defending himself against plots, rebellions and assassination attempts. His first problem was what to do with the deposed Richard, and after an early assassination plot was foiled, he probably ordered his death by starvation in early 1400, although there is no evidence for this. Richard's body was put on public display in the old St Paul's Cathedral to show his supporters that he was dead. Rebellions continued throughout the first ten years of Henry’s reign, including the revolt of Owen Glendower who declared himself Prince of Wales in 1400, and the rebellion of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland. The king's success in putting down these rebellions was due partly to the military ability of his eldest son, Henry, who would later become King Henry V of England, though the younger Henry himself (who had maintained a close relationship with Richard II) managed to seize much effective power from his father in 1410. 1410.]] In 1406, English soldiers captured the future James I of Scotland as he was going to France. James remained a prisoner of Henry for the rest of Henry's reign. The later years of Henry's reign were marked by serious health problems. He had some sort of disfiguring skin disease, and more seriously suffered acute attacks of some grave illness in June 1405, April 1406, June 1408, during the winter of 1408–9, December 1412, and then finally a fatal bout in March 1413. Medical historians have long debated the nature of this affliction or afflictions. The skin disease might have been leprosy (which in any case didn't mean precisely the same thing as it does to modern medicine), perhaps psoriasis, a symptom of syphilis, or some other disease. The acute attacks have been given a wide range of explanations, from epilepsy to some form of cardiovascular disease. In 1413, he died in the Jerusalem Chamber in the house of the Abbot of Westminster. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. His body was well embalmed, as an exhumation some centuries later established.

References

- Peter McNiven, "The Problem of Henry IV's Health, 1405–1413", English Historical Review, 100 (1985), pp747–772

External links

- [http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon34.html Britannia: Henry IV ] Category:1367 births Category:1413 deaths Category:Natives of Lincolnshire Category:House of Lancaster Category:English monarchs Category:Lord High Stewards Category:Knights of the Garter Category:Hundred Years' War Category:History of Wales Category:Dukes in the Peerage of England ja:ヘンリー4世 (イングランド王)

House of Lancaster

The House of Lancaster is a dynasty of English kings. It was one of the opposing factions involved in the Wars of the Roses, an intermittent civil war which affected England and Wales during the 15th century. The House is named Lancaster, because its members were all descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; their symbol was a red rose. The opponents of the House of Lancaster were the House of York. The rivalry between Lancaster and York, in the form of the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire, has continued into the present day, on a more "friendly" basis. The House of Tudor descends from the Lancasters by way of Margaret Beaufort, great granddaughter of John of Gaunt, who married Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, and was the mother of Henry VII of England. Kings of the House of Lancaster:
- Henry IV of England, r.1399-1413
- Henry V of England, r.1413-1422
- Henry VI of England, r.1422-1461 and 1470-1471 1471 Lancaster Lancaster, House of House of Lancaster ja:ランカスター朝

House of York

The House of York was a dynasty of English kings. The House was involved in the Wars of the Roses, an intermittent civil war which affected England and Wales during the 15th century. Its name derives of the fact that its claimants to the throne were all descended from Richard, Duke of York, and its symbol was a white rose. The opponents of the House of York were the House of Lancaster. The rivalry between York and Lancaster, in the form of the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, has continued into the present day on a more friendly basis. At the end of the Wars of the Roses, following the defeat and death of Richard III in battle at Bosworth Field in 1485, Elizabeth of York married the victor, Henry VII, and their descendants were the rulers of the House of Tudor. Kings of the House of York:
- Edward IV of England, r.1461-1470 and 1471-1483
- Edward V of England, r.1483 (one of the Princes in the Tower)
- Richard III of England, r.1483-1485 York, House of York House of York

Ashmolean

The Ashmolean Museum (in full the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology) in Oxford, England is the world's first university museum. Its first building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built in 1678–1683 to house the collection of curiosities Elias Ashmole gave Oxford University in 1677 — the ones he had collected himself as well as those he had inherited from the travellers John Tradescant, father and son. The collection included antique coins, books, engravings, geological specimens, and zoological specimens — one of which was the stuffed body of the last Dodo ever seen in Europe, but by 1755 it was so moth-eaten it was destroyed, except for its head and one claw. The museum opened on 6 June 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper. After the various specimens had been moved into new museums, the "Old Ashmolean" building on Broad Street was used as office space for the Oxford English Dictionary staff. Since 1935, the building has been established as the Museum of the History of Science, with exhibitions including the scientific instruments given to Oxford University by Lewis Evans (1853–1930), amongst them the world's largest collection of astrolabes. The present building dates from 1845. It was designed by Charles Cockerell in a classical style and stands in Beaumont Street. One wing of the building is occupied by the Taylor Institution, the modern languages faculty of the university. The main museum contains the original collections of Elias Ashmole and John Tradescant (father and son), as well as huge collections of archaeology specimens and fine art. It has one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, majolica pottery and English silver. The archaeology department includes the bequest of Arthur Evans and so has an excellent collection of Greek and Minoan pottery. The interior of the Ashmolean has been extensively modernised in recent years and now includes a restaurant and large gift shop. The Sackler Library, incorporating the older library collections of the Ashmolean, opened in 2001 and has allowed an expansion of the book collection, which concentrates on classical civilization, archaeology and art history. Highlights of the collection include:
- The Alfred Jewel
- Drawings by Michaelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci
- Watercolours by Turner
- Paintings by Piero di Cosimo, John Constable, Claude Lorraine, Pablo Picasso
- Arab ceremonial dress owned by Lawrence of Arabia
- A death mask of Oliver Cromwell
- The collection of Posie Rings that supposedly inspired The One Ring in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
- The Parian Marble, the earliest extant example of a Greek chronological table
- The ceremonial cloak of Chief Powhatan On 31 December 1999 (New Year's Eve), thieves used scaffolding on an adjoining building to climb onto the roof of the Ashmolean and broke through a skylight, stealing a painting by Cézanne. As the thieves ignored other works in the same room and it has not been offered for sale it is speculated that this was a case of an artwork stolen to order. Among the more noted of the Ashmolean's Keepers is the late Roger Moorey.

External links

- [http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/ Ashmolean Museum website]
- [http://www.saclib.ox.ac.uk/ Sackler Library]
- [http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/ Museum of the History of Science] Category:British archaeology Category:University of Oxford Category:Visitor attractions in Oxfordshire Category:Oxford Category:Archaeological organisations Category:Art museums and galleries in the United Kingdom Category:Archaeological organisations Category:Archaeology museums Category:University museums

Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham

John of Gaunt

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (June 24, 1340–February 3, 1399) was the third surviving son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault. He gained his name "John of Gaunt" because he was born at Ghent in 1340. The fabulously wealthy Gaunt exercised tremendous influence over the throne during the minority reign of his nephew, Richard II, and during the ensuing periods of political strife, but took care not to be openly associated with opponents of the King. John of Gaunt's legitimate male heirs, the Lancasters, included Kings Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI. John of Gaunt's illegitimate heirs, the Beauforts, later married into the House of Tudor, which ascended to the throne in the person of Henry VII. In addition, Gaunt's legitimate descendants included his daughters Philippa of Lancaster, Queen consort of John I of Portugal and mother of King Edward of Portugal, Elizabeth, Duchess of Exeter, the mother of John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter, and Katherine of Lancaster, Queen consort of Henry III of Castile, a grand-daughter of Peter I of Castile and the mother of John II of Castile. When John of Gaunt died in 1399, his estates were declared forfeit to the crown, as Richard II had exiled John's less diplomatic heir, Henry Bolingbroke, in 1398. Bolingbroke returned and deposed the unpopular Richard, to reign as King Henry IV of England (1399–1413), the first of the descendants of John of Gaunt to hold the throne of England.

Duke of Lancaster

John was created Duke of Lancaster in 1362, following the death of his father-in-law Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster. He received half of Henry's lands, the title Earl of Lancaster, and the distinction as the greatest landowner in the north of England, because of his first marriage to his cousin, Blanche of Lancaster (1359), heiress to the Palatinate of Lancaster. John received the rest of the inheritance only when Blanche's sister, Maud (married to William of Hainault, Count of Holland and Zealand), died in 1361. Gaunt received the title "Duke of Lancaster" from Edward III on 13 November 1382. John was by then well-established as a fabulously wealthy prince, owning at least thirty castles and vast estates across England and France. His household was comparable in scale and organisation to that of a monarch. After the death of his elder brother, Edward, the Black Prince, John of Gaunt became increasingly powerful. He contrived to protect the religious reformer John Wyclif, with whose aims he sympathised. However, Gaunt's ascendancy to political power coincided with widespread resentment at his influence. At a time when English forces encountered setbacks in the Hundred Years' War against France, and Edward III's rule had started to become domestically unpopular, due to high taxation and to the king's affair with Alice Perrers, political opinion closely associated the Duke of Lancaster with the failing government of the 1370s. Furthermore, while the king and the Prince of Wales had the status of 'popular heroes' due to their success on the battlefield, John of Gaunt had never known any such military success, which might have bolstered his reputation. When King Edward III died in 1377 and John's ten-year-old nephew succeeded to the throne as Richard II of England, Gaunt's influence strengthened further. However, mistrust remained, and some suspected him of wanting to seize the throne for himself. John took pains to ensure that he never became associated with the opposition to Richard's kingship; but as the virtual ruler of England during Richard's minority, he made some unwise decisions on taxation that led to the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, during which the rebels destroyed his Savoy Palace. In 1386, Richard, who had by now assumed more power for himself, dispatched Gaunt to Spain as an ambassador. However, crisis ensued almost immediately, and in 1387, Richard's misrule brought England to the brink of civil war. Only John of Gaunt, upon his return to England, was able to bring about a compromise between the Lords Appellant and King Richard, ushering in a period of relative stability and harmony. During the 1390s, John of Gaunt's reputation of devotion to the well-being of the kingdom became much restored. Gaunt died of natural causes on February 3, 1399 at Leicester Castle, with his beloved third wife Katherine by his side.

Marriages and descendants

Blanche died in 1369. It is believed the poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote and dedicated his "Book of the Duchess" to her, as the poem not only mentions the Black Knight, but the "Lady White"; whom we can take to be Blanche, in allegory. In 1371, John married Constanza of Castile, daughter of King Peter I of Castile, thus giving him a claim upon the kingdom of Castile, which he would pursue unsuccessfully. In the meantime, John of Gaunt had fathered four children by a mistress, Katherine Swynford (whose sister married Geoffrey Chaucer). Constanza died in 1394. He married Katherine in 1396 or 1397, and their children, the Beauforts, were 'legitimised' but barred from inheriting the throne. From the eldest son, John, came a granddaughter, Margaret Beaufort, whose son, later King Henry VII of England, would nevertheless claim the throne. John of Gaunt's legitimate son from his first marriage, Henry Bolingbroke, proved less of a diplomat than his father; and Richard II banished Henry from the kingdom in 1398. When John of Gaunt died in 1399, his estates were declared forfeit to the crown. This caused Bolingbroke to return; he deposed the unpopular Richard, to reign as King Henry IV of England (1399–1413).

Children of John of Gaunt

- By Blanche of Lancaster:
- Philippa Plantagenet (1360–1426), married King John I of Portugal (1357–1433)
- John Plantagenet (1362–1365)
- Elizabeth Plantagenet (1364–1426), married (1) John Hastings, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (1372–1389); (2) John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter (1350-1400); (3) Sir John Cornwall, 1st Baron Fanhope and Lord Milbrook (d. 1443)
- Edward Plantagenet (1365–1368)
- John Plantagenet (1366–136x)
- Henry IV of England (1367–1413), married (1) Mary de Bohun (1369–1394); (2) Joanna of Navarre (1368–1437)
- Isabel Plantagenet (1368–136x)
- By Constanza of Castile:
- Catalina (Catherine) Plantagenet (1372–1418), married King Henry III of Castile (1379–1406)
- John Plantagenet (1372–1375)
- By Katherine Swynford:
- John Beaufort (1373–1410), Earl of Somerset, married Margaret Holland (1385-1429)
- Henry Cardinal Beaufort (1375–1447)
- Thomas Beaufort (1377–1426), Duke of Exeter, married Margaret Neville
- Joan Beaufort (1379–1440), married (1) Robert Ferrers, 3rd Baron Ferrers of Wemme (d. 1396); (2) Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmoreland (1364–1425)

Popular culture

The Lancaster city centre has a pub called The John O'Gaunt, noted for its live jazz music and its large collection of whiskies. An administrative ward on the city council also bears the name. In William Shakespeare's play Richard II, the famous England speech is attributed to John of Gaunt as he lay on his deathbed. :This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, :This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, :This other Eden, demi-paradise, :This fortress built by Nature for herself :Against infection and the hand of war, :This happy breed of men, this little world, :This precious stone set in the silver sea, :Which serves it in the office of a wall, :Or as a moat defensive to a house, :Against the envy of less happier lands, :This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, :This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, :Fear'd by their breed and famous by their earth ::—Act II, scene i, 42–54 [http://wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_King_Richard_the_Second#SCENE_I._London._An_Apartment_in_Ely_House. The Tragedy of King Richard II] at Wikisource

Links

[http://www.johnofgaunt.de Information about John of Gaunt] Category:1340 births Category:1399 deaths Category:House of Lancaster Category:Lord High Stewards Category:Knights of the Garter Category:Dukes in the Peerage of England ja:ジョン・オブ・ゴーント

Joan Beaufort

Joan Beaufort was the name of several noted women in history.
- Joan Beaufort (1379-1440), was the Countess of Westmoreland and a direct ancestor of all the sovereigns of England since Edward IV except for Henry VII, who was her brother's great-grandson and married to her great-granddaughter
- Joan Beaufort, d. 1445, was Queen Consort of Scotland and niece of the above.

Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset

Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset (1406 – May 22, 1455) was an English nobleman and an important figure in the Wars of the Roses and in the Hundred Years War. He was the third son of John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset. As a young man he became a commander in the English army in France. After his re-capture of Harfleur he was named a Knight of the Garter in 1436. After subsequent success he was created Earl of Dorset (1442) and the next year Marquess of Dorset. The year after that (1444) he succeeded his brother John as 4th Earl of Somerset in 1444. During the five year truce from 1444 to 1449, Somerset was Lieutenant of France. In 1448 he was created Duke of Somerset. (He is usually called 2nd duke since his brother John had also been duke, though strictly speaking of a separate creation.) Somerset found military success elusive after hostilities begain again in 1449. By the summer of 1450 the bulk of the English possessions in northern France were in French hands. This loss lead to the fall of the king's chief minister, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Somerset returned to England, where he took Suffolk's place as the king's counselor. He was a favorite of the Queen, Margaret of Anjou. In fact some claimed that Edward of Westminster, the young Prince of Wales was his son, and not the king's. The focus of the war with the French now turned to Gascony, in the south of France. Here the English were no more successful, losing all by 1453. Soon afterwards the king went insane, Somerset's rival Richard, Duke of York was named Lord Protector, and Somerset was imprisoned in the Tower of London. His life was probably saved only by the king's recovery. Henry VI had Somerset released and returned to his position at court. The Duke of York was determined to depose Somerset by one means or another, and thus in 1455 he confronted Somerset and the king with an armed force. Somerset was killed in the resulting engagement, known as the First Battle of St Albans. It was the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, which would go on to claim many of Somerset's sons and relatives. He was succeeded as duke by his son Henry. Somerset married Eleanor Beauchamp, daughter of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and his first wife Elizabeth Berkeley sometime between 1431 and 1435 in a unlicensed marriage. Eleanor was an older half-sister of Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick and Anne Neville, Countess of Warwick. She was also the widow of Thomas de Ros, 9th Baron de Ros. Their unlicensed marriage was later pardoned on 7 March 1438, and they had the following children:
- Eleanor, who married first James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormonde and second Sir Robert Spencer.
- Elizabeth (? – c. 1492)
- Mary (1431/55 – ?)
- Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset (1436–1463)
- Margaret (bef. 1439–1474) (not to be confused with her cousin Margaret Beaufort), who first married Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford, son of Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, by whom she was the mother of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and then married Sir Richard Darell.
- Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset(c. 1439–1471); Killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury
- Anne Beaufort (c. 1453 – c. 1496)
- John Beaufort, Earl of Dorset (c. 1455–1471); Killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury
- Joan Beaufort (c. 1455–1518)
- Thomas Beaufort (c. 1455 – c. 1463) Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of

Japanse parasolden

De Japanse parasolden (Sciadopitys verticillata) of koyamaki is een unieke conifeer endemisch in Japan. Het is het enige lid van de familie Sciadopityaceae, een levend fossiel zonder naaste verwanten. Het is een zeer populaire en opvallende tuinboom, ondanks zijn langzaam groeipercentage en hoge kosten.

Externe links

- [http://www.pinetum.org/sp/SCverticillata.htm Foto's gebladerte, onrijpe kegels]
- [http://www.pinetum.org/cones/SCcones.htm Foto rijpe kegel] Categorie:Conifeer Categorie: Gymnospermae

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