Text this colour links to Pages. Text this colour links to Family Trees. Text this colour are links that disabled for Guests.
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.
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 format.
Pilgrimage of Grace is in June 1536-1540 Marriage to Jane Seymour and Rebellions.
Chronicle of Edward Hall [1496-1548]. Around June 1536.After this book which passed by the King's authority with the consent of the clergy, was published, the which contained certain articles of religion necessary to be taught unto the people, and among other it specially treated of no more than three sacraments, where always the people had bene taught seven sacraments, and beside this book, certain injunctions were that time given whereby a number of their holy days was abrogated and specially such as fell in the harvest time, the keeping of which was much to the hinderance of the gathering in of corn, hay, fruit, and other such like necessary and profitable commodities.
On 20th November 1539 Nicholas Tempest of Holmeside (age 53) was hanged for his part in the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Around 30th May 1537 the Abbots of Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire [Map], Marmaduke Bradley, and Guisborough Priory [Map], Robert Pursglove, were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn [Map] for their role in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Their heads were displayed on London Bridge [Map].
On 2nd June 1537 Abbot Adam Sedbar (age 35) and Prior William Wood were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn [Map] for their role in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Their heads were displayed on London Bridge [Map].
Around October 1536 the North rose against religious policies of Henry VIII (age 45). Thomas Audley 1st Baron Audley Walden (age 48) condemned the traitors. John Neville 3rd Baron Latimer (age 42) was implicated. Thomas Howard 3rd Duke of Norfolk (age 63), Henry Howard Earl of Surrey (age 20) and Edmund Knyvet (age 28) undertook the suppression of the rebels.
On 4th October 1536 the Lincolnshire Rising began. Dr Raynes, the chancellor of the Bishop of Lincoln, who was staying nearby at Bolingbroke, after having held a session of the commissionary's court there, was dragged from his sickbed and taken to Horncastle. Francis Aidan Gasquet writes in his book 'Henry VIII and the English Monasteries': "As the chancellor rode into the field with his captors the passions of the mob were stirred, and there occurred one of the two acts of violence, which alone in this or the subsequent Yorkshire rising, disgraced the movement!" "At his coming into the field," declares Brian Staines, "the rebels, whereof were many parsons and vicars, cried out with a loud voice, 'Kill him, kill him.' And upon that one William Hutchinson, of Horncastle, and William Balderstone, by the procurement of the said parsons and vicars, pulled him violently off his horse, kneeling upon his knees, and with their staves they slew him. And being dead, this deponent saith the priests continually crying, 'Kill him, kill him,' he also struck the said chancellor upon the arm with a staff."
The Lincolnshire Rising was sparked off by a sermon at evensong on the 1st October at St James's Church, Louth, and by a visitation from a registrar on 2nd October. Mary Polito, author of "Governmental Arts in Tudor England" describes how Nicholas Melton, a local shoemaker who came to be known as "Captain Cobbler", seized the registrar, burned his papers and then forced him and the priests to swear an oath of loyalty to the rebel cause. The rebels then marched to the nunnery at Legbourne where they took the royal commissioners hostage. The nunnery had been formally suppressed a few weeks earlier.
On 6th March 1537 Thomas Moigne (age 27) was tried for treason at Lincoln, Lincolnshire [Map]. and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered the following day which sentence was duly carried out. He was attainted, and his estates forfeited. These were recovered by his younger brothers in 1544.
William of Worcester's Chronicle of England
William of Worcester, born around 1415, and died around 1482 was secretary to John Fastolf, the renowned soldier of the Hundred Years War, during which time he collected documents, letters, and wrote a record of events. Following their return to England in 1440 William was witness to major events. Twice in his chronicle he uses the first person: 1. when writing about the murder of Thomas, 7th Baron Scales, in 1460, he writes '… and I saw him lying naked in the cemetery near the porch of the church of St. Mary Overie in Southwark …' and 2. describing King Edward IV's entry into London in 1461 he writes '… proclaimed that all the people themselves were to recognize and acknowledge Edward as king. I was present and heard this, and immediately went down with them into the city'. William’s Chronicle is rich in detail. It is the source of much information about the Wars of the Roses, including the term 'Diabolical Marriage' to describe the marriage of Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s brother John’s marriage to Katherine, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, he aged twenty, she sixty-five or more, and the story about a paper crown being placed in mockery on the severed head of Richard, 3rd Duke of York.
Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback format.
On 7th March 1537 Thomas Moigne (age 27) was hanged, drawn and quartered.
On 12th May 1537 Abbot Adam Sedbar (age 35) was captured. He was imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, Tower of London [Map] where his inscribed name on the wall "ADAM SEDBAR. ABBAS JOREVALL 1537" can still be seen.
Around 30th May 1537 the Abbots of Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire [Map], Marmaduke Bradley, and Guisborough Priory [Map], Robert Pursglove, were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn [Map] for their role in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Their heads were displayed on London Bridge [Map].
On 2nd June 1537 Abbot Adam Sedbar (age 35) and Prior William Wood were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn [Map] for their role in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Their heads were displayed on London Bridge [Map].