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The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman – Review.
Some time back I was lucky enough to be offered an ARC (advanced review copy) copy of the above book by the publishers in order to do a review. It’s a bit out of my time period, but nevertheless, it looked interesting, so I said yes. The following review is
Punishment of the Pillory
The Medieval Pillory It is very easy to mix up pillories and stocks. Both involved public humiliation by being immobilised in a wooden contraption and being subjected to insults and anything else that could be thrown. If a person was condemned to some time in the stocks, this meant that
Corrections and Comments Re the Article ‘The Castle, the King, the Gay Lover, and the Fury of a Scorned Queen’
It was recently brought to my attention that an article titled ‘The Castle, the King, the Gay Lover, and the Fury of a Scorned Queen’ by Andrew-Paul Shakespeare had quite a few errors in it concerning Hugh Despenser the Younger. And, as you can see from the title, it was
Edward II’s Works at the Palace of Westminster in 1307
The disastrous fire at Westminster Palace in 1298 had devastated many of the buildings and rendered it practically useless as a place of government. Edward I had already been rather profligate in pursuing his wars against the Welsh and the Scots and his coffers were too bare to effect any
Strange Searches
While I prepare a couple of posts on the characters of Edward II and Hugh Despenser and their relationship I thought I’d throw in a short one. When I first started this blog it was easy to see what search terms were being used by visitors to find it. They
Hugh Despenser (the even elder) – Rebellious Knight and England’s Last Justiciar
Early Years The grandfather of Hugh Despenser the younger was born around 1223 to another Hugh Despenser who was the steward of the earl of Chester. As is quite often the case we know nothing about his childhood or where he learned his skills at arms. What we do know
