Free Republic

A breakthrough in one of the most intriguing, historic who-dunnit cases by Professor Tim Thornton, discovered buried deep in a Register of Wills held at The National Archives.It's Summer 1483, and one of the most infamous and shocking crimes in English history is about to take place. Two young princes are brought to the Tower of London under the protection of their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. A few weeks later they vanish without a trace. The mystery of what happened to the Princes in the Tower has obsessed us for centuries. Why did these boys, aged just nine and...

Danish scheming archbishop Didrik Slagheck was burned in Copenhagen on this date in 1522 — sacrificed to his sovereign’s convenience. Slagheck rolled into Stockholm in 1517 in the train of the papal legate who had been vainly dispatched to calm tempers during the run-up to what became the Swedish War of Liberation. That’s liberation from Denmark, the effective overlord via the Kalmar Union joining those two countries and Norway besides. In 1520, with ecclesiastical mediation a bust and Sweden restive, the Danish king Christian II invaded. Slagheck made his villainous historical reputation by opportunistically hitching on with the vengeful king,...

Pope Francis on Thursday recalled the 500th anniversary of the election of Pope Adrian VI, who sought reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Martin Luther during his short pontificate. “In his brief pontificate, which lasted only a little more than a year, he sought above all reconciliation in the Church and the world, putting into practice the words of St. Paul, according to which God entrusted precisely to the Apostles the ministry of reconciliation,” Pope Francis said on April 7. For this reason, Adrian VI sent the nuncio to the Imperial Diets of Nuremberg “to reconcile Luther and his followers...