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Restorers at Calverley Old Hall, a medieval manor in Yorkshire, England, recently turned their attention to a “very undistinguished little bedroom,” reports Mark Brown for the Guardian.Peeling away the room’s 19th-century plaster, they were “gobsmacked” by what they spotted hidden below: Tudor wall paintings, likely dated to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558 to 1603), on a scale rarely found in England today.The find is “the discovery of a lifetime,” Anna Keay, director of the Landmark Trust, which is restoring the building, tells the Guardian.“Never in my own 27 years of working in historic buildings have I ever witnessed a...

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” That’s Shakespeare. (And an accurate description of the United Nations today!) Before the Great Bard of Avon was “cancelled” for being a white Englishman, most high school graduates would have known that. Quite a few would have even remembered the line comes from Act I of The Tempest. Now they have scant knowledge of Shakespeare’s works, no idea what a “tempest” is, and most likely think “hell” and “devils” are as “cool” and “misunderstood” as Hollywood portrays them in Lucifer. But, woo-hoo, they know all about “privilege,” “social justice,” “gender pronouns,”...

KING HENRY VNow, herald, are the dead number'd? HeraldHere is the number of the slaughter'd French. KING HENRY VWhat prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle? EXETERCharles Duke of Orleans, nephew to the king;John Duke of Bourbon, and Lord Bouciqualt:Of other lords and barons, knights and squires,Full fifteen hundred, besides common men. KING HENRY VThis note doth tell me of ten thousand FrenchThat in the field lie slain: of princes, in this number,And nobles bearing banners, there lie deadOne hundred twenty six: added to these,Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which,Five hundred were but...

SCENE III. The same. Before the gates.   The Governor and some Citizens on the walls; the English forces below. Enter KING HENRY and his trainKING HENRY VHow yet resolves the governor of the town?This is the latest parle we will admit;Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;Or like to men proud of destructionDefy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,If I begin the battery once again,I will not leave the half-achieved HarfleurTill in her ashes she lie buried.The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,And the flesh'd...

When farmer Ifor Edwards dropped his keys in a field he had no idea the search to find them would result in the discovery of buried treasure. Mr Edwards, 56 and his wife Anna, 40, called in enthusiasts from Wrexham Heritage Society when he lost his keys on land at Oak Farm in Bronington, near Whitchurch. But as well as finding his keys -- which had gone through a lawn mower -- the team armed with metal detectors also found 14 mediaeval coins dated from the 14th and 15th centuries. At an inquest in Ruthin the North East Wales Coroner...

During the Hundred Years' War, England had a centralized, state-controlled organization for manufacturing arrows in bulk. These were then issued as required to the soldiers on campaign. In June 1413, for example, Henry V appointed Nicholas Mynot to be “keeper of the king's arrows,” based in the Tower of London. Mynot was responsible for making arrows, but the royal fletchers alone could not supply the total need, so additional orders were placed with outside suppliers. In August 1413, for example, London-based fletcher Stephen Seler was paid for 12,000 arrows. We have some total figures available. In 1418, Henry V's government...

The future King Henry V was hit by an arrow to the face at the Battle of Shrewsbury -- how did he survive? This was the topic of a paper given by Michael Livingston at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Livingston, an Associate Professor at The Citadel, explains what happened in one of the most remarkable cases of battlefield surgery from the Middle Ages -- the arrow wound suffered by the future Henry V at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. Prince Henry was only 16 years old when he marched with his father's forces to Shrewsbury in...

Christopher Columbus's expeditions were, first and foremost, about circumventing the Islamic sultanates surrounding and terrorizing Europe. Another Columbus Day has come and gone. Although it was "celebrated" with the usual vitriol and outraged "wokeism" concerning the Italian explorer's alleged "genocide" against the natives, one influential voice came to Columbus's defense: on October 11, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a proclamation, an excerpt of which follows: Columbus stands a singular figure in Western Civilization, who exemplified courage, risk-taking, and heroism in the face of enormous odds; as a visionary who saw the possibilities of exploration beyond Europe; and as a...

Wolsey was much inspired by Pietro Torrigiano's gilt tomb for Henry VII at Westminster Abbey, and the Cardinal commissioned Benedetto Da Rovezzano to work on lavish tomb in the Renaissance style, of which the Wolsey Angels were to stand proudly at the four corners. As we know, the tomb was not completed during Wolsey's life time and following his fall from grace and subsequent death King Henry VIII reappropriated the elements of the tomb that Benedetto had thus far completed, discarding the effigy of Wolsey and other items which specifically pertained to the Cardinal.Henry went on to commission Benedetto to...

New book suggests St. Gallen Mafia agreement may have led to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignationAuthor Julia Meloni tells us that Martini's own confessor claimed that Benedict's resignation had been “scripted since his pontificate's beginning – because Martini had shifted his votes to Ratzinger at the 2005 Conclave."(LifeSiteNews) — The American scholar and columnist Julia Meloni has just published her long-awaited, excellent, and deeply researched history of the Sankt Gallen Mafia, a group of progressive bishops regularly meeting in Switzerland and plotting to further revolutionize the Catholic Church. The Sankt Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church tells...

One of the most famous Kings in the world has to be Henry VIII of England. He is most known today for the fact he had 6 wives, and the fact he ordered the execution of 2 of these, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Henry VIII's love life certainly was turbulent, and it caused chaos across the country. After being refused a divorce for his first wife Catherine of Aragon, he split from Rome becoming the Supreme Head of the Church of England. This began the English Reformation, which changed the face of religion forever.We know much about Henry's wives,...

A mass grave uncovered in Sidon, Lebanon, has shed new light on the Crusades and on the cruelty of medieval warfare, a new study in the academic journal PLOS ONE has shown. Archaeologists unearthed a large quantity of human bones in the moat of the Saint Louis Castle in South Lebanon. The area was first conquered by the Crusaders after the First Crusade in 1110. Some 150 years later, the Christian city was attacked and largely destroyed by the Mamluks in 1253 and then destroyed even more by the Mongols in 1260. Pursuing the idea of liberating the holy sites...

Their grisly remains show the ugly brutality of the holy wars.Archaeologists digging near a Middle Eastern castle have unearthed two mass graves containing the grisly remains of Christian soldiers vanquished during the medieval Crusades — and some of them could have even been personally buried by a king. The chipped and charred bones of at least 25 young men and teenage boys were found inside the dry moat of the ruins of St. Louis Castle in Sidon, Lebanon. Radiocarbon dating suggests they were among the many Europeans who, between the 11th and the 13th centuries, were spurred by priests and...

To some lovers of classical sounds, organ music seems irremediably goyish, despite outstanding achievements by such Jewish composers as Aaron Copland and Arnold Schoenberg in writing for the so-called “king of instruments.” For these, “The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture,” recently published in paperback, will be a real ear-opener. Its author, musicologist Tina Frühauf, notes that “until the Middle Ages, the organ was not officially permitted in any Christian liturgy inasmuch as instrumental music was associated… with the Jewish services once held in the temple at Jerusalem.”Even after organs appeared in churches and became taboo for synagogues, there...

An amateur treasure hunter struck gold — literally. Kevin Duckett was hunting for treasure with his metal detector in a field near Market Harborough, Northamptonshire, England, when he unearthed a solid gold figurine that experts believe is part of a long-lost part of the crown of Henry VIII. “At first I wondered if it was a crumpled foil dish from a 1970s Mr. Kipling product, or even a gold milk bottle top,” Duckett told the Sun. “I got a very loud positive signal from my detector and started to dig down before spotting something … It was lodged in the...

Having killed as many as 200 million people in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, the Black Death began to lift in the years 1348–49. Europe had lost between a third and half of its people. In many cases, entire villages stood empty, having lost their entire population.The Black Death changed life forever in Western Europe. With so few inhabitants, the value of labor exploded, and wages shot up. For those who survived, the following half-century was a period of affluence and technological development, with increasing productivity and advances in printing, weaponry, navigation, and manufacturing. The optimism of the late 14th...

The rites and habits associated with ‘midsummer’ clustered around a number of dates in Shakespeare’s time. The June solstice occurs on a day between the 20 and 22 June, but ‘Midsummer Day’ was fixed in the calendar as 24 June (also known as St John’s Day). Midsummer was one of the most popular and keenly-observed festivals throughout the early modern period. Rural communities marked it with Morris dancing, processions, late-night drinking, the blessing of crops and the ritual banishment of devils and other unwelcome sprites – precisely the sort of pagan-originating, Catholic-saint-encompassing mishmash that Protestant reformers despised. But by the...

A piece of textile fabric from a grave, dated to the Viking Age, has been found in southern Norway, dated to 850-950 AD. The grave of a woman was uncovered at Hestnes in southern Trøndelag county, during a spate of excavations in 2020, along with textile tools and a wool comb. The evidence suggests she was a textile worker. The dull brown 1000-year-old wool Viking embroidery fabric was found preserved on top of a turtle brooch. “Those of us who work with textiles are happy if we find a piece of fabric that’s one cm by one cm. In this...

New detailed surveys of Viking age ship settings in Hjarnø, Denmark have been completed by archaeologists examining the origins and makeup of the Kalvestene grave field, a renowned site in Scandinavian folklore.The archaeologists from Flinders University conducted detailed surveys to determine whether a 17th century illustration of the site completed by the famous Enlightenment antiquarian, Ole Worm, was accurate, as part of the first survey since the National Museum of Denmark discovered and restored 10 tombs on a small island off the eastern coast almost a century ago.The burial site is made up of monuments that, according to legend, commemorate...

Criminal gangs targeting historic sites in England have struck at Arundel Castle. The rosary beads worn by Mary Queen of Scots when she was being beheaded, have “vanished” in another brazen robbery at an ancient English castle.(snip) Police suspect “insider knowledge” must have come from Arundel Castle that helped the criminals evade CCTV detection as they made off with the rosary beads once belonging to Mary Queen of Scots.(snip) Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded on February 8, 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle for her alleged role in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I . While the stolen rosary beads...