Finding James I & Joan Beaufort

James I was 42 when he was killed by a gang of noblemen on February 21, 1437 while lodging at Blackfriars monastery in Perth, as part of a conspiracy to seize the throne of Scotland.

Now a major heritage project has been launched 580 years on from the king’s murder to locate and then recreate his final resting place.

James was buried at the Charterhouse in Perth, a religious institution he intended to become a royal tomb for the Stewart dynasty. But the priory was destroyed in the reformation a century after his death and now no-one is exactly sure where his grave is.

James’ queen, Joan Beaufort, survived the attack and wreaked a terrifying retribution upon the traitors in one of the most brutal reprisals Scotland had seen.

The couple were both buried at the Charterhouse, and a century later, the sister of Henry VIII of England, Margaret Tudor, consort of James IV, was also buried there.

A stone monument at the corner of Perth's King Street and Hospital Street marks the fact he is buried somewhere in the area.

Discovering the murdered King's exact location would be a major historical find - and a coup for the city of Perth.

Read More Here:

@ The Scotsman

@ International Business Times

@ The Scotsman

@ Phys Org

@ BBC News

Noblewomen in the Wars of the Roses by Lauren Johnson

I chanced upon this rather informative blog post by Lauren Johnson (October 2013) regarding the status of noblewomen who lived through those turbulent times known as The Wars of the Roses. It formed part of her masters thesis The impact of the Wars of the Roses on Noblewomen, 1450-1509 (October 2007).

Here is a little teaser:

However, for every man directly involved in the Wars of the Roses there were numerous female relatives who were not only themselves affected by the conflict, but played an active part in it. 

On the contrary, efforts to claw lands back to one’s family by battling through the law courts or pleading with prominent powerholders were deemed essential to those involved, and at a time when many men found themselves on the wrong side of the law or battlefield, and thus lost their authority (or their life), it fell to their wives and mothers to try to save their estates.

Read more of this and other interesting posts @ Lauren's Blog

Is this Eleanor, the Secret Queen?

Facial reconstruction aims to help determine identity of remains found in Norwich - News - Eastern Daily Press

She is regarded by some as the secret queen who helped put Richard III on the throne and – inadvertently, at least – sealed the fate of the princes in the tower.

Now, new research aims to help determine whether remains discovered in Norwich are of Lady Eleanor Talbot.

Lady Eleanor played a pivotal role in the Wars of the Roses during the fifteenth century, when her alleged marriage to Edward IV led to his children – the princes in the tower – being declared illegitimate after his death, in 1483.
That saw the crown pass 
to Edward’s brother, Richard III, during whose reign the boys disappeared.

Tomorrow, historian John Ashdown-Hill will unveil a facial reconstruction based on remains excavated at Whitefriars in 1958.  He is hoping that it will help to better establish whether they belonged to Lady Eleanor.

The Inventive Translations of Mary Sidney Herbert

From Slate dot com:

It's hard to imagine a modern family as prominent in as many ways as Philip Sidney and his sister, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke were. In addition to the social and political prominence of the Kennedys and the wealth of the Kochs, beyond their personal glamour and estates and Philip Sidney's heroism in war, the brother and sister were at the center of scholarship and art—two realms that were less separated in their time than in the present.

Mary Sidney, proficient in Latin and ancient Greek as well as modern European languages, was a brilliant translator as well as a writer in prose and verse. Active as a patron of the arts and a host to artists, she was the center of a circle that included, in addition to her brother, poets Michael Drayton, Edward Dyer, Fulke Greville, and Edmund Spenser.

Her translations of the Psalms (continuing a project of her brother's, after his death) are said to have influenced, in a following generation, her cousin once removed George Herbert and John Donne.

Mary Toft - Bunnies In The Oven

From the Wellcome Library:

In November 1726, a woman named Mary Toft was at the center of a public debate that included some eminent physicians of the day. Mary Toft became known as the Surrey Rabbit Breeder, based on the account that after a series of miscarriages, she began to give birth to rabbits. This continued in the presence of a Swiss anatomist connected with the court of George I, Nathanael St. Andre. St. Andre published A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets, and other pamphlets and broadsides followed. Toft came to London, where, after the 17th rabbit 'birth', many became convinced the matter was a hoax. Toft then confessed and St. Andre apologized.

See also the 18th century manuscripts from the Wellcome Library

And from The Curious Case of Mary Toft:

In September 1726, news reached the court of King George I of the alleged birth of several rabbits to Mary Toft (1703-1763) of Godalming, near Guildford, in Surrey.

Toft was a twenty-five year old illiterate servant, married to Joshua Toft, a journeyman clothier. According to reports, despite having had a miscarriage just a month earlier in August 1726, Mary had still appeared to be pregnant. On September 27th, she went into labour and was attended initially by her neighbour Mary Gill, and then her mother in law Ann Toft. She gave birth to something resembling a liverless cat.

The family decided to call on the help of Guildford obstetrician John Howard. He visited Mary the next day where he was presented with more animal parts which Ann Toft said she had taken from Mary during the night. The following day, Howard returned and helped deliver yet more animal parts. Over the next month Howard recorded that she began producing a rabbit's head, the legs of a cat, and, in a single day, nine dead baby rabbits.

Howard sent letters to some of England's greatest doctors and scientists and the King's secretary, informing them of the miraculous births.

Manchester Female Reformers At Peterloo Massacre

From the Guardian:
The Peterloo massacre  on Monday 16 August 1819 - 193 years ago tomorrow - took place when a peaceful crowd, assembled to demand the reform of Parliament, was attacked by armed soldiers and yeomanry, leading to many deaths and injuries. The events of the day have been the subject of many books, novels, prints and poems, but the role of women has often been overlooked.

As the reform movement gathered momentum in the spring of 1819, women stepped onto the public stage, setting up Female Reform Societies  in a number of towns. Blackburn women led the way. On 5 July the Female Reformers, described as "very neatly dressed for the occasion", and each wearing a green favour in her bonnet or cap, attended an outdoor public meeting, at which they presented a Cap of Liberty made of scarlet silk to the chair, John Knight.

At least 18 people were killed on the field or died later of their injuries, of whom four were women. These were Margaret Downes – sabred; Mary Heys - trampled by cavalry; Sarah Jones – truncheoned on the head by special constables; and Martha Partington, – crushed to death in a cellar. Of the 654 people listed as being injured, 168 were women.

Obit: First IVF Mum Passes Away

From the Mail Online:

The mother of the world’s first test-tube baby has died at the age of 64.

Lesley Brown made medical history nearly 34 years ago  when she gave birth to Louise.

Mrs Brown and her husband John had been trying for a baby for nine years when they signed up to what was then an experimental procedure, in vitro fertilisation.

She became pregnant at the first attempt, and 5lb 12oz Louise Joy Brown was born by caesarean section at Oldham General Hospital at 11.47pm on July 25, 1978.

The event, which gave hope to countless infertile couples, captured the imagination of the world after it was reported exclusively by the Daily Mail under the headline The Lovely Louise.

Four years later Mrs Brown, who couldn’t become pregnant naturally because her fallopian tubes were blocked, conceived a second daughter, Natalie, by IVF.

The "Real" Iron Ladies

From the Chesterfield Post:

A group of women who were the 'Real Iron Ladies' during the Miner's strike have taken part in a protest outside Chesterfield Cineworld this lunchtime - rallying against what they say is the misrepresentation of former PM Margaret Thatcher by scriptwriters in the newly released film 'The Iron Lady'

However Margaret Thatcher's time in power is not remembered so fondly locally and around 30 'Women’s Action group' ex-activists led the protest this morning, and received support from politicians and council leaders who were also in attendance.

"Hollywood is not the place to sentimentalise what is a difficult period in Britain's history. The women here today are the real Iron Ladies, who stood by and supported their men during the strike."

Lady Elizabeth Dacre's Erotic Poem

From Huffington Post:

A crude love poem written almost 450 years ago by a Roman Catholic woman and sent to a Protestant scholar who served Edward VI has been discovered in the back of a book by a British academic.

When Professor Treharne took her class of undergraduates on a tour of medieval literature in the library of West Virginia University, she thought she was introducing another year of eager literature students to the familiar wonders of Chaucer.

Instead, tucked into a 1561 edition of the poet’s work, she was about to discover what she now believes to be the only known Latin love poem written by an Englishwoman until the 18th century.

After translating the poem Treharne discovered that the poem was penned by Lady Elizabeth Dacre, a married Catholic woman, and addressed to Sir Anthony Cooke, a Protestant and tutor to King Edward VI. During this time it was common for lustful Tudor men to pen verses to woo the objects of their affection but extremely unusual for a lady to do the same.

By the Winter Sea

From Skegness Standard:

CAMERA crews are set to pop up all over the local area in the coming days after work got underway on a new short film about the life of an Anderby Creek land girl.

Wartime Lincolnshire and the experiences of ‘Ada’, who worked a Lincolnshire coastal farm during World War Two.

“The 10 minute film entitled ‘By the Winter Sea’, is being made on behalf of the Lincolnshire Coastal Country Park project by Red Dog Film,” said a spokesperson for Lincolnshire County Council.

“It shows how London city girl Ada found the rural life and hard physical work a shock initially, but she gradually overcame her inexperience and grew to love her life as a land girl.

“The film is based on actual events – director Phil Stevens discovered the story in a book called ‘Lincolnshire Women at War’.

“The book is a compilation of letters from women who came from all over the country to work in Lincolnshire during WWII,” they added.

Call The Midwife

From the Guardian:

Bedpans, surgical gloves and cries of pain may not sound likely ingredients for the BBC's Sunday evening costume drama slot, but Call the Midwife is a series that aims to take the audience into new territory – childbirth 1950s-style.

Leading female talent drawn from several generations of British stars – including Vanessa Redgrave, Pam Ferris, Jenny Agutter and Miranda Hart – will come together in the new year to tell of the joys and hardships of a group of midwives working in London's East End in the 50s. The drama will be the first to put childbirth, and its place in social history, at the heart of a television serial.

On screen and off, it is a very female production. Screenwriter Heidi Thomas, who adapted the hit serial Cranford – a Sunday night triumph that the makers of Call the Midwife hope to emulate – says there are some in the television industry who have asked her whether she thinks men will watch the new drama. Her response is forthright. "They may well watch, but people don't ask whether enough women will watch Top Gear."

Other female members of the team on Call the Midwife include Eve Stewart, who earned an Oscar nomination for production design on The King's Speech and has now recreated East End street scenes for the new serial.

Historian Marjorie Reeves

From the Wiltshire Times:

The nephew of a renowned historian and educator, who grew up in Bratton and went to Trowbridge Girls’ School, is bringing her memoirs to the reading public.

Medieval history specialist Marjorie Reeves, the daughter of Robert Reeves, the owner of R&J Reeves and Son ironworks, achieved great renown in the academic community for her work on heretics and mystics.

Although based in Oxford as a fellow at the Society of Oxford Home Students from 1938 to 1972, she never lost touch with her Bratton roots.

Anthony Sheppard, 62, of Claygate in Surrey, found his aunt’s memoirs after she died in 2003, at the age of 98.

Northern Women's History Online

From the Yorkshire Post:

A new website providing information about Yorkshire’s women in history goes online this week. Chris Bond reports.

HISTORY, it has often been said, is written by the victors.

That may well be the case but it has also usually been written by men, at least until recently, which has meant the sterling work carried out by women over the centuries has often been pushed to the sidelines or forgotten altogether.

There are some women, of course, whose names and exploits have lingered long in the memory, such as Charlotte Brontë, aviator Amy Johnson and Barbara Hepworth. Now their lives, along with those of scores of unsung women from the past, are being brought to the public’s attention thanks to a new website which goes live tomorrow.

The History to Herstory project, run by Huddersfield University and developed alongside West Yorkshire Archives Service, is free to use and means people around the world will be just a click away from more than 80,000 historical documents that shed light on the lives of Yorkshire women, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Online visitors will be able to explore a vast archive of diaries, letters, journals and photographs that tell the fascinating story of women’s lives at home and in the workplace.

The History to Herstory website goes live this Friday.

Visit http://www.historytoherstory.org.uk

The Pendle Witch Child

From BBC News:

In recent years children as young as three have given evidence in court cases, but in the past children under 14 were seen as unreliable witnesses. A notorious 17th Century witch trial changed that.

Nine-year-old Jennet Device was an illegitimate beggar and would have been lost to history but for her role in one of the most disturbing trials on record.

Jennet's evidence in the 1612 Pendle witch trial in Lancashire led to the execution of 10 people, including all of her own family.

In England at that time paranoia was endemic. James l was on the throne, living in fear of a Catholic rebellion in the aftermath of Guy Fawkes' gun powder plot. The king had a reputation as an avid witch-hunter and wrote a book called Demonology.

For more on the Pendle Witches, see my post "Lancashire Witches" and visit Mary Sharratt's website.

Real Downton Abbey

From the Mail Online:

To the young men who lay in their hospital beds, badly wounded, burned and traumatised by the horror of the trenches, she appeared almost like an angel.

Dressed in nurse’s whites, petite and strikingly beautiful, Almina tenderly cared for the Army officers and pilots, solicitously smoothing their bed covers, cleaning and dressing their wounds, and giving orders to the nurses under her command.

But this was no ordinary military hospital — and she was no ordinary matron. In fact, she had no medical training at all.

But Almina, the Countess of Carnarvon and chatelaine of Highclere Castle in Hampshire, was not one to be deflected by such details...

But even Oscar-winning scriptwriter Julian Fellowes would be hard-pressed to surpass the familial intrigues and suppressed scandals of the Carnarvons, the castle’s actual inhabitants, at the time that the new series is set.

At the heart of these events was the beautiful, charismatic — but mercurial — Almina, whose immense wealth subsidised the castle’s upkeep. It had been her idea to turn Highclere into a wartime hospital, but sadly Almina’s extravagance was ultimately to be her undoing.

Online: 17th Century Witch Chronicle

From Yahoo News:

A 350-year-old notebook which documents the trials of women convicted of witchcraft in England during the 17th century has been published online.

The notebook written by Nehemiah Wallington, an English Puritan, recounts the fate of women accused of having relationships with the devil at a time when England was embroiled in a bitter civil war.

The document reveals the details of a witchcraft trial held in Chelmsford in July 1645, when more than a hundred suspected witches were serving time in Essex and Suffolk according to his account.

"Divers (many) of them voluntarily and without any forcing or compulsion freely declare that they have made a covenant with the Devill," he wrote.

"Som Christians have been killed by their meanes," he added.

Of the 30 women on trial in Chelmsford, 14 were hanged.

Wallington also recounts the experiences of Rebecca West, a suspected witch who confessed to sleeping with the devil when she was tortured because "she found her selfe in such extremity of torture and amazement that she would not enure (endure) it againe for the world." Her confession spared her.

Carol Burrows, who managed the notebook's digitization, on Thursday told Reuters that Wallington's journal was important because of its connections to the civil war.

View the Notebook here: http:/chiccmanchester.wordpress.com/

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret

From the Winnipeg Free Press:

TO hide her identity from the men around her, she docked her hair, bound her breasts so tightly she could hardly breathe and gritted her teeth against starvation and seasickness for 18 months at sea.

For all these trials, the passage of nearly 250 years has relegated Jeanne Baret's story to a curious historical footnote: in the mid-18th century, on an expedition ship led by famous French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Baret hid her gender and became the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe.

Until recently, that was where Baret's place in history began and ended. But in her second book, British academic Glynis Ridley scoured fragments of historical evidence to uncover a deeper tale: one of a poor but brilliant French herb-woman who, working alongside the prominent man she loved, left a lasting mark on modern botany.

The book: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret - A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe by Glynis Ridley

Margaret Thatcher & the Indian Mystic

From the Telegraph:

The Iron Lady, who was renowned for her no-nonsense direct approach, conversed with self-proclaimed faith healer and preacher Sri Chandraswamy in 1975 in her Commons office.

And the future Prime Minister was so impressed with his apparent powers that she agreed to his request to wear a special red dress and a battered talisman around her wrist to a second meeting.

There, it is claimed the bearded guru correctly predicted that she would come to power within four years and remain there for more than a decade.

Details of the extraordinary meetings were revealed by former Indian Foreign Minister Shri Natwar Singh, who was present when they took place.

In 1975 he was India’s Deputy High Commissioner to the UK when Mr Chandraswamy arrived in London and apparently demanded a meeting with Mrs Thatcher.

Met Police marks 40th anniversary of first female Asian officer

From The Guardian:

NEXT month marks the 40th anniversary of the first Asian woman joining the Metropolitan Police.

Karpal Kaur Sandhu served in Walthamstow and Leyton after joining the force on February 1 1971.

She paved the way for many Asian and women in the force, proving invaluable as an interpreter and was drafted in to deal with CID cases all over London where a female officer was needed.

She was born to a Sikh family in Zanzibar, east Africa, in 1943 and came to the UK in 1962, when she got a job as a nurse.

After joining the police, she served at Hornsey before moving to the Leyton division of the Met.

Mary Bryant

Born in Cornwall England, Mary was the daughter of a family well-known for sheep-stealing. Mary was a wilful and adventurous young lass which led to her being sentanced to transportation to Australia (1786) for stealing. Mary arrived in Australia with the First Fleet (1788).

It was whilst serving her sentance that Mary rebelled against the harshness of the existence in the colony and the feeling of virtual banishment - she planned her escape. Mary organised provisions and muskets (guns); from a Dutch Captain, Mary obtained nautical equipment. With her husband and two children and companions, Mary made off with the Governor's cutter (ship).

The group travelled 5000 kilometers through the then unknown Barrier Reef and reached Timor. At first they were accepted as shipwreck survivors, however, the Dutch on Timor proved them to be otherwise. Mary and her family were transferred to Batavia - Mary's husband and son died here. Mary was sent back to England for trial, but on the voyage her daughter died.

Through the influence of the newspapers in England, the mandatory death sentance for escaped convicts was quashed. The writer James Boswell sponsored Mary anonymously. Mary returned to her native Cornwall and remarried, fading into obscurity.