Often, little brother, there is no smoke without fire.
They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints.
Perhaps the Queen's prayers, and those of Bernard, had been efficacious, or perhaps Louise had been more attentive in bed, for during 1145--the exact date is not recorded--she bore a daughter, who was...
The formal education of women was rarely considered important. Girls of good birth were taught domestic skills at home or in a convent, and rarely learned to read and write, for it was feared that if...
Maundy Thursday
Between Scylla and Charybdis,
Giladi states that Jews from
I must bear it well as I may. As my sainted mother used to say, we never come to the kingdom of Heaven but by troubles.
Clytemnestra,
Although, by todays standards, he set a vast amount of work, he believed as he told Mrs Ashley, that 'If you pour much drink into a goblet, the most part will dash out and run over'. In Ascham's view,...
Allayed,
This obsession with death and suffering revealed itself in literature, poetry, art, and particularly in sculpture, with the appearance of cadaver tombs with an effigy of the deceased in life above, an...
Tudor historians were adept at rewriting history.
Masques
Henry VIII owned more than eight hundred carpets,
This led to a lessening of confidence in the judicial system. Justice, it seemed, was available only to those who could pay enough to secure a ‘right verdict
The King ruled in consultation with his chief nobles, who fromed the nucleus of what was in effect a military aristocracy, whose power was centered on the castles they used to subdue and dominate the...
When these with violence were burned to death,We wished for our Elizabeth.
An objective viewpoint was beyond her; she was single-minded to a fault.
Again, she may have made the equation that sexual involvement was inextricably linked with death.
