Text this colour is a link for Members only. Support us by becoming a Member for only £3 a month by joining our 'Buy Me A Coffee page'; Membership gives you access to all content and removes ads.

Text this colour links to Pages. Text this colour links to Family Trees. Place the mouse over images to see a larger image. Click on paintings to see the painter's Biography Page. Mouse over links for a preview. Move the mouse off the painting or link to close the popup.



All About History Books

The 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. Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.

Biography of Henriette Jacotte Cappelaere

In 1850. Henriette Jacotte Cappelaere. Portrait of Harriet Howard.

Harriet Howard: Adeline Horsey Recollections. Paris was then a city of delight, revelling in the palmy days of the Second Empire, and I greatly enjoyed my visit there. One night I went to the Opera with Cardigan and we saw Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Trelawney in a box. Mrs. Trelawney was the famous Miss Howard, once the English mistress of Louis Napoleon, who paid her £250,000 when he renounced her to marry Eugenie de Montijo. Mrs. Trelawney annoyed the Emperor and Empress as much as she dared by sitting opposite the Royal box at the Opera, and driving almost immediately behind the Empress's carriage in the Bois de Boulogne. She was a very fat woman, and her embonpoint increased to such an extent that the doors of her carriage had to be enlarged to allow her to get in and out with comfort. In 1854 Captain Clarence Trelawny and she were married.