Episode Six: End of Dynasty – Exit the Cerdicingas, Enter the Angevins: Scene Sixty-four; October 1173 – The Battle of Fornham, Bury St Edmunds and the Revolt of 1173-74: By the early 1170s, the king had already decided that, after his death, his dominions should be partitioned between his three eldest sons. Young Henry wasContinue reading “The Bloodied Sword, the Precious Pearl and the Black Cross; Chronicles of the Royal House of Wessex – VI”
Tag Archives: Henry II
The Bloodied Sword, the Precious Pearl and the Black Cross; Chronicles of the Royal House of Wessex – IV.
Episode Four: Scotland & England, 1093-1153 Scene Thirty-Nine – Dunfermline and Edinburgh, 1093; The Deaths of Malcolm and Margaret: In 1092, the peace agreement between Rufus and Malcolm signed five years earlier, broke down due to the building of another new castle by the Normans at Carlisle, even though the Scots claimed and controlled mostContinue reading “The Bloodied Sword, the Precious Pearl and the Black Cross; Chronicles of the Royal House of Wessex – IV.”
The Bloodied Sword, the Precious Pearl and the Black Cross; Chronicles of the Royal House of Wessex – III.
Episode Three – Rebels and Outlaws Scene Thirty; 1070-71 – The Legendary Outlaws of the Fens: Many of the stories of Hereward the Outlaw that follow these events were written down several generations after his own day, by which time they had already followed a legendary turn of phrase. But the twelfth-century Gesta Herewardi containsContinue reading “The Bloodied Sword, the Precious Pearl and the Black Cross; Chronicles of the Royal House of Wessex – III.”
The Bloodied Sword, the Precious Pearl and the Black Cross; Chronicles of the Royal House of Wessex – I.
Episode One Above: Hungarians at Kyív – a painting by Pál Vágó (1853-1928). It is extremely difficult to maintain, based on archaeological relics that have been unearthed in territories now forming part of Ukraine, that these objects are unmistakably the relics of the ancient Hungarians, or Magyars. It is probable, though, that as a resultContinue reading “The Bloodied Sword, the Precious Pearl and the Black Cross; Chronicles of the Royal House of Wessex – I.”
Welsh Bards & Hungarian Balladeers: Imagining the Past – Poetry & History.
Wars of Independence: In 1857, the legendary martyrdom of the courtly poets of Wales by Edward I was used by the nineteenth-century Hungarian poet János Arany to serve as a parable of resistance to another Empire after the ‘heroic’ uprising and war of independence of 1848-49 in his native country. Arany’s poem, Walesi bardok (The Bards ofContinue reading “Welsh Bards & Hungarian Balladeers: Imagining the Past – Poetry & History.”
Andrew James 