Earl Rivers (brother of Elizabeth Woodville), Sir Richard Grey (son from Elizabeth Woodville’s first marriage) and Sir Thomas Vaughan (chamberlain of Prince Edward) were arrested after the failed meeting in Northampton.
Tags: Elizabeth Woodville, Woodville Family
Date for agreed rendezvous of Edward V’s (eldest son of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville) entourage coming from Wales to meet at Northampton with Richard, Duke of Gloucester, coming from Yorkshire. By the time Richard arrives, Edward’s party has moved on to Stony Stratford, 14 miles closer to London.
Tags: Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Princes, Richard III
Birth of Edward of York in Rouen, Normandy (later Edward IV). Second son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. He was the eldest of the four sons who survived to adulthood.
Tags: Edward IV, Family
Comments Off on 28 APRIL 1442
Baptism of William Shakespeare at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on Avon. He was the third child of John Shakespeare and his wife Mary Arden. His exact birthday is not known, probably either 21, 22 or 23 April. In the 18th century the story became wide-spread that he was born on 23 April, but there is no contemporary evidence supporting this assumption.
William became later the famous playwright, who to a certain extent is responsible for the bad reputation Richard III “enjoys” to this day. We must never forget that he wrote a play for the theatre that had to be riveting enough to get ‘bums on seats’, his intention was not to write a historian’s essay. By all accounts, Richard III is not the only one who suffered this fate – Macbeth was apparently also a perfectly good man.
More information: Peter Holland, ‘Shakespeare, William (1564–1616)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011.
Tags: Shakespeare
Comments Off on 26 APRIL 1564
Battle of Hedgeley Moor, Northumberland. The Yorkist forces were led by John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu (brother of Richard Neville ‘The Kingmaker’), the Lancastrians by the Duke of Somerset, supported by Sir Ralph Percy, Lords Roos and Hungerford, and Sir Ralph Grey. The Lancastrian force soon gave way and fled, except for Sir Ralph Percy, who died in the battle.
Tags: Battles, Northumberland
Comments Off on 25 APRIL 1464
Wedding of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou
Tags: Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou
Comments Off on 23 APRIL 1445
Birth of Queen Isabella I of Castile, the mother of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife.
Isabella married on 19 October 1469 Ferdinand of Aragon. During Isabella’s reign the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, Granada, fell on 2 January 1492, ending centuries of peaceful religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians and Jews. In the same year, on 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America.
Isabella died on 26 November 1504.
Tags: Spain
Comments Off on 22 APRIL 1451
Birth of Elizabeth of York, sixth child and third daughter of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and Cecily Neville, in Rouen, Normandy. Married before February 1458 to John de la Pole, eldest son of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Alice Chaucer. Her eldest son John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, was considered heir to the throne of Richard III after the death of Edward of Middleham.
Tags: Family
Comments Off on 22 APRIL 1444
Death of Henry VII (Tudor) at Richmond Palace. Buried in Westminster Abbey.
Tags: Henry Tudor
Comments Off on 21 APRIL 1509
Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II.
Tags: Books
Comments Off on 17 APRIL 1397