The gentry of Suffolk and Norfolk rallied to Mary's cause, making it impossible for Northumberland to maintain Lady Jane Grey as a credible puppet queen. Mary would reward many of her East Anglian followers with seats on her Council
Perhaps not surprisingly, those East Anglian families that had supported Mary most enthusiastically generally became die-hard recusants under Elizabeth and thereafter... The Bedingfeld family of @OxburghHallNT keep the candle burning to this day
Ironically, recusants were imprisoned in Framlingham Castle in Elizabeth's reign - including Sigebert Buckley, a monk of Mary's restored Westminster Abbey who, on being released from Framlingham in 1607, re-founded the English Benedictine Congregation...
It's a very dear friend's 40th birthday today, so I celebrated by writing a 40-line Latin encomium for the occasion. Naturally, it features a micro-epyllion involving a council of the gods...
The purists among you will probably be horrified that I didn't use a Classical Latin metre, but I'm a big fan of terrible medieval Latin poetry in vernacular metres
A historical fallacy I sometimes see people falling into is the assumption that medieval and early modern people who died for expressing heterodox beliefs died for the *right* to express heterodox beliefs (thread)
In a handful of cases, people who were put to death for heterodoxy did indeed believe in freedom of expression. However, in most cases they simply believed they were right and their persecutors were wrong
Most English Lollards, for example, thought everyone should be a Lollard. Most evangelicals put to death in Mary I's reign thought everyone should be an evangelical. They died for their absolute belief, not for an abstract belief in toleration
It's the most wonderful time of the year! As we enter the week of St Edmund's Day (Friday 20 November), I'll be your one-stop shop for all things St Edmund's Day related, keeping you up to date on the celebrations 👑🏹🐺
St Edmund's Day is celebrated as a solemnity in @RCEastAnglia. You can watch a livestreamed Mass from St Edmund, King and Martyr, Bury St Edmunds at 10am on Friday stedmundkm.org.uk/events/live-st…
‘But when it comes to fairies, that’s ridiculous, childish, impossible. Until you see one yourself...' A fascinating new podcast by Jo Hickey-Hall about modern fairy sightings, which puts me in mind of this piece I wrote last year: drfrancisyoung.com/2019/09/19/why…
I'm still unsure what to make of an experience I had in a large surviving portion of medieval woodland in Warwickshire, in the summer of 2003. I didn't see anything, but I certainly felt I was not alone, and became strangely confused ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/catalo…
The idea of becoming wealthy through uncovering treasure is probably as old as money itself, but it has been closely linked until recent times with magic - aimed both at detecting the treasure and appeasing or exorcizing its spirit guardians
Many grimoires contain instructions for detecting treasure, with magical methods of treasure-hunting remaining popular in England into the 1950s, when metal detectors finally took over
The discovery of treasure was troubling to many, because it disrupted the social structure if a poor person became unexpectedly wealthy. Treasure also belonged to the Crown because it was buried in the land that the Crown claimed by right of conquest- hence laws of treasure trove
You’ve heard of the Norman Conquest in 1066; but have you heard about the Lithuanian invasion of England in 1069? Buckle up… (thread)
If you read the standard Oxford edition of Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History, edited by Marjorie Chibnall, you’ll find that Chibnall identifies the soldiers employed by King Sweyn II of Denmark for an attempted invasion of England in 1069 as Lithuanians
The ‘Lithuanians’ were recruited by Sweyn and tried to land at Dover, then Sandwich, but were repulsed; they then landed successfully at Ipswich and sacked it, later moving to Norwich, where they were defeated by Ralph de Guader and forced to retreat