Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke
Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson.
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Sunday Morning Star is in Newspapers.
Divorced Duke (age 49) and Duchess (age 53) Entertain Together
It is getting to be so that a thing like a divorce seems to amount to nothing here in England. For example, the other night, the Duke of Westminster and his first wife, who is now the spouse of Captain James Fitzpatrick Lewis, acted as joint host and hostess at & ball given in honour of their daughter, Lady Mary Grosvenor (age 18), on the occasion of her debut1.
The ball was a very grand affair in the ancient town house of the Duke of Westminster, which the lady (once his duchess) had not entered since some time before she divorced him several years ago.
London has rarely seen a more brilliant and fashionable assemblage and the most interesting part of it was that couple standing at the top of the great stairway to receive their guests. Their charming daugher, Lady Mary Grosvenor, seemed quite at ease in spite of this astonishing detail of her coming out ball, and it is noteworthy that all the very brilliant and blue blooded‘ members of the smartest set in the world who were guests, took it as if they thought it quite a matter of course for a divorced couple, one of them remarried, to be standing side by side bowing and smiling at their friends. The Duke and Duchess were divorced in in 1910. They have met in public many times since then and always have seemed to be the very best of friends in spite of their agreement to disagree. The Duke is one of the richest men in the world, being surely worth $100,000,000. He spends much of his time on a vast estate in France which is stocked for the hunting of wild boar, or on his wonderful yacht, on which he cruises much in the Mediterrancan. This divorce was not his first experience of the kind. Before he married the lady who received with him the other night, he had made one unsatisfactory matrimonial venture.
Note 1. Lady Mary's 18th Birthday was on the 27th June.
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