Henry III

Moderator: MOD_nyhetsgrupper

Svar
paul bulkley

Henry III

Legg inn av paul bulkley » 17 okt 2006 18:20:03

I suspect most of us how a fairly standard picture of
Henry III - a devout king, weakly yielding to his
foreign relatives and the Pope, and more interested in
lavish building than in politics and statecraft.

Professor G.Barraclough provides an entirely fresh
impression extracting information from the Liberate
Rolls. Henry III describes the provisions he has made
for his fourteen year old bride:

" of the rose of Provence painted on the walls of the
queen's chamber and the stars stencilled on a
background of vert and azure; of the cherry trees
planted in her garden and the trellised way to her
herbarium; of the "house of fir" he had built for her,
"running on six wheels ----- roofed with lead"; of the
figure of Winter, "made the more like winter by its
sad countenance and other miserable attitudes of the
body", that Edward the son of Odo, keeper of the works
at Westminster, was directed to have painted over her
fireplace.

And Henry continues describing the clasps and nails of
silver for the royal book of romances; of the money
paid to the clerks of the Chapel Royal for singing
"Christus vincat"; of the fifteen lasts of "the best
and most esquisite herrings" that the sheriff of
Norfolk had to buy from Yarmouth and the lampreys
which his brother officer of Gloucester had to place
in bread and jelly and send to Westminster; of the
dates and figs, pressed grapes and ginger salmon
pasties, and mulberry and raspberry flavoured wine,
that figure so strangely in the records of State.

Barraclough has the courtesy of advising the reader
that he obtained the information from Arthur Bryant
"The Story of England Vol I" p337.

He reminds us that such information helps us to have a
more accurate understanding of an individual, and
prevents us from being beguiled by theories and
reconstructions of our own making.

How very true.

Paul Bulkley




__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Svar

Gå tilbake til «soc.genealogy.medieval»