Royal Progress day 6

Day 6 Sudeley and Baddesley Clinton Sudeley Home of Katherine Parr after Henry VIII died and she married Thomas Seymour. It was here that she died a few days after childbirth. Sudeley is a delightful place partly in ruins after Oliver Cromwell troops destroyed it during our civil war and the family home of the Ashcroft family. This year is a special year, the 500th anniversary of Katherine’s birth so there are many special items on display like her prayer book and a copy of the book she wrote and one of her teeth and a lock of her hair taken from her grave in the late 1700’s (a very odd story). Katherine now lies peacefully in the church within the grounds of the Castle in a splendid tomb befitting a queen of England and only Queen of England to be buried on private land. Onto Baddesley Clinton, one of the very few fully moated manor houses left in England. It dates from the late 1400’s and was home to the Ferrers family, a Catholic family though not one involved is plots like the Throckmortons. The place does have three priest holes for hiding in and who knows there may be more to be found in the future. The family has had some characters in the past and we were entertained by stories of the “Quartet” two men and two women who lived in the house in what we can only describe as an unconventional relationship! We finished the day with a minor pub crawl around Old Kenilworth in Warwickshire where we are staying for the next two nights in a hotel built around an Oak tree in 1538 and there are some great old pubs.

Royal Progress day 5

Day 5 Coughton Court Today was a single visit to Coughton court (pronounced coat-en) the home of the Throckmorton family for over 600 years and they still live there. The family is one of the principal Catholic families in the land and have been implicated in plots against the king or Queen, indeed the Throckmorton plot was one of the plots to assassinate Elizabeth I. The family was also involved in the Gunpowder plot in 1605, still commemorated to this day in the 5th November fireworks and Bonfire night. The family has had some formidable and notable women down the centuries perhaps the most famous being Bess Throckmorton, one time favourite lady in waiting to Elizabeth I until she secretly married Sir Walter Raleigh and was banished from court. Walter was locked up in the Tower of London for a long time until King James got tired of his writing and had him executed. Now a strange tale takes place in that Bess was said to have carried Walter’s embalmed head in a silk sack around with her for the rest of her life another 21 years! Sir Walters Head can be found in the room of consequence, I kid you not! one person jumped and on seeing a head in a sack.( it's not real) Coughton has many features that are worth a mention, it is a great Tudor manor house and all the rooms have been given names like the room of hope and the room of requirements… but to my mind the best room in the house is the one where the chemise that Mary Queen of Scots wore at her execution and a bishops mantle sewn by Catherine of Aragon and her court ladies. It is a magnificent piece of work all velvet and gold with Catherine’s personal symbol of a pomegranate sewn on, it gave me palpitations the first time I saw it and it’s still exciting to see it. We finished the day with a pub crawl around Stow on the Wold the highest town on the Cotswolds, we had dinner in the Queens head and great pub that you will find on trip advisor.

Royal Progress day 4

Day 4 Oxford Colleges Walking around the city of dreaming spires on a Saturday is quite and experience. There is a great deal of street theatre and to be encouraged by people dressed as tigers, alligators, dragons and zebras to give money for Meningitis research was a bit surreal. But we cam to see the Oxford Colleges and first up was Magdalen. It was here that a young master Wolsey went to school and the president here was the chap who was sent to escort Catherine of Aragon from Spain to marry Prince Arthur. They have a tapestry of that event but it’s behind where the public are allowed to go and they won’t let me see it. The college chapel has the largest sepia stained glass window I know of and it tells the story of life everlasting. Christchurch College perhaps the most famous of them all, originally an Abbey and endowed by Cardinal Wolsey as a college but he never got to finish it. Henry VIII carried it on and called it Kings college but it then changed to what we know now ad Christ Church. It has many famous people associated with it. In The Cathedral, there is a stained glass window, part of the shrine to Thomas a Beckett. Henry VIII ordered all such shrines to be destroyed in 1538. The face of Thomas was just removed and the rest remains. Elizabeth I stayed here. Other famous people are King Charles I he lodged here when Oxford was his capital during our civil war in the 1640’s. Lewis Carrol author of Alice in wonderland was her and there is a stained glass window of all the characters in the books. Walking along further In the middle of Cornmarket street there is a monument to Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, burnt at the stake by bloody Mary for refusing to covert back to the true faith. Oxford also has the oldest museum and library in the world and there are many other things to see but tucked away in a church which today was surrounded by scaffolding and undergoing major restoration work, on the alter steps is a simple slab showing the last resting place of Amy Robsart, first wife of Robert Dudley, did she fall or was she pushed? the enduring mystery of her death lasts to this day and we shall here more of her later in the week.

Royal Progress day 3

Hatfield Old Palace, Houses of Parliament and Banquet. Hatifield Old Palace, the home of Elizabeth I and where she held her first Privy council meeting after being informed that she was now finally queen. The great Hall is magnificent, It is all that remains of the old palace and is still in great demand today for weddings and banquets, it is silent today as we were the only people in there and our footsteps echoed on the bare oak floor. We were very lucky to be allowed to go into the knot garden and see intricate designs layout of the garden. Just outside the gates of the old place is St Ethereda’s church, quite an odd church that holds one of the most strangest tombs I have seen. It’s Robert Cecil Elizabeth’s chief minister otherwise known as the elf because he was so small. It’s a white marble tomb with four angels holding a canopy over a bare skeleton, really very odd indeed. After we got back to London we had an hour in the national portrait gallery, and just lost ourselves in the Tudor room, nothing but Tudor portraits and I love going there as the exhibition changes often so you never know what you are going to see which I think id great. Today we saw Anne Boleyn, Robert Dudley several of Elizabeth and of course Henry VIII. We had a special guided tour of the Houses of Parliament, courtesy of our local MP and it’s a great sensation to stand in places where history took place. The House of Lords is all red coloured and the House of Commons is all Green and where the sovereign is allowed to go, has blue carpet. The chambers themselves are much smaller than they look on TV or the movies and to go ‘backstage’ was a real, privilege. The day was rounded off by a medieval banquet held in crypt near top the tower of London, it was great entertainment, with jugglers dancers, singers, acrobats and of course some very good sword fighting, well almost a brawl really. Henry VIII himself presided over the festivities, a larger than life character in more ways than one.

Royal Progress Day 2

Day 2 Westminster Abbey & the Tower of London Westminster, the nation’s parish church, has stood on this spot for over a thousand years and all the kings and queens of England have been crowned here except 1 since 1066. Intertwined with the nation’s history there are over 450 tombs here and all started by Edward the Confessor, his shrine built by Henry III stands in pride of place just behind the high alter and it was a rare privilege to be allowed to go up to the shrine and sit for a while and listen to a short service. Elizabeth I and Mary are buried here in the lady chapel and opposite lies Mary Queen of Scots, in a much grander tomb, she must be having the last chuckle on history I think. Many of our Sovereigns are here, Henry VII and his grandson Edward VI lie in the lady chapel. Anne of Cleves is very hard to find just some simple gold lettering on a wall at the side of the high alter. We travelled down to the Tower of London by river as Royalty would have done and saw traitors gate from water level as Elizabeth I her mother Anne Boleyn and countless others would have done. The Tower is in fact many towers around two concentric walls but the largest and most is the White tower that holds some great exhibitions of Henry VIII armour and weapons. Unfortunately we couldn’t go into the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincular as they were tuning the organ. Inside are the graves of Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane grey all three queens of England and all three executed on tower green. The day was finished off with fish and chips in The George, and old coaching Inn known and the oldest galleried pub in London to be frequented by Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

Royal Progress day 1

On a warm autumn afternoon we started the tour with a slow stroll around London just north of the Thames into Holborn and Lincoln Inn fields. Lincoln Inn is where Sir Thomas more practiced law and there is a quiet calm around the one of the Inns of Court. We visited the Old Curiosity Shop, made famous by Charles Dickens and Sir John Soanes museum. A place so individual it almost defies a description, he was an architect of some talent and grandeur and his collection of artefacts and paintings is unrivalled. A single room holds original Canneletto, Turner and Hogarth paintings. We completed a pub crawl of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese a pub frequented by Samuel Johnson he who wrote the first English dictionary. The Citie of Yorke London’s oldest pub dating from 1540, the Mitre dating from 1546 just off Hatton Garden, the Punch Tavern on Fleet street the haunt of journalists, finally the Black Friar a pub just by Blackfriars bridge , it is the site of Baynard’s castle where Catherine of Aragon had her marriage annulment trial. A good start to a long Royal Progress tour

Battle of Boswotrh 1485

Battle of Bosworth This day 1485 Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth thus ended the Plantagenet dynasty of 400 years and the Tudor age began which was to last over 100 years. Henry Tudor had an army almost half the size of Richards and there were also the Stanley Brothers just waiting on the sidelines just to see how things went and they were ready to jump in on the winning side at the right moment. Henry won the day and was given the crown which tradition says was found in a thorn bush There was the battle re-enactment last weekend on the battlefield which was great fun to watch. The whole weekend was given over to re-enactors of all types, blacksmiths, armourers, archers, mounted knights, cannons, musicians and falconers. All in all there were over 400 on the battlefield including Richard himself on a horse. There were enough archers to show what it would have been like at the time with lots of arrows being shot into the air towards the enemy side. The cannon fire was marvellous lots of noise and smoke there were thought to be 100 pieces of ordnance on the day. There mounted skills with knights showing their skills with weapons and even a joust! to keep the crowd entertained We went on a guided walk around the batted field and English Heritage have done a really good job with interpretation boards all around with commentary. Our guide was very good knowledgeable entertaining and funny, He used simple props of banners an arrow, a sword, a pike and a shield which he gave to people to act as the protagonists and even two young lads to act as the Princes in the Tower. Who History has recorded as being done to death by RichardIII The whole day was great fun and the weather was perfect too.