ᵂᵃᵗ ˢᶜʰᵃᶫ ᵗᵒ ᵐᵉ ᵇᵉᶠᵃᶫᶫ ﹖﹖

Æthelwulf 839-856

Egbert’s descendants were generally accepted as Kings of the English. He was succeeded by his son Æthelwulf, who had previously been sub-king in Kent. Kent was then assigned in turn to Æthelwulf’s eldest son, Æthelstan. Æthelwulf’s name means ‘noble wolf’, and he is described by chroniclers as being a heavily built man, who was inclined to be sluggish and indolent. Of a gentle and pious nature, he had expressed a desire to be a priest when he was young, his warlike father was said to have found his pacific eldest son a disappointment. He was aided in government by St. Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, at the time a senior statesman but now chiefly remembered as the patron saint of rainy weather. The new King was crowned at Kingston-upon-Thames in 839. He consolidated the power of Wessex and re-asserted the supremacy over The Kingdom of Mercia. An alliance was formed by marrying his daughter to the Mercian King, which was to prove of lasting value to the House of Wessex. Much of Æthelwulf’s reign was spent combating the invading Vikings, whom he struggled to contain. They sailed repeatedly up the Thames and pillaged London and the towns of Rochester and Canterbury. Æthelwulf, along with his son, Æthelbald , met and defeated them in battle in 851 at Achleah, possibly Oakley in Surrey, where according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he inflicted 'the greatest slaughter of a heathen army that was ever heard of to this present day’, thereby  Æthelwulf obtained temporary security for his kingdom. The highly religious Æthelwulf undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, accompanied by his youngest and best loved son, Alfred. On the way back he formed an alliance with Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, taking in marriage his daughter Judith, who was descended from Charlemagne. The pair were married at Verberie sur Oise on 1 October, 856 and the new Queen of Wessex was solemnly crowned by the Bishop of Rheims. In Æthelwulf’s absence, his eldest surviving son Æthelbald , who strongly suspected that his father wished to make his favourite son, Alfred, heir to Wessex, had taken advantage of the discontent of his subjects and usurped the throne. The practice of recognising the successor as co-king was an established practice among Germanic tribes. Although he retained some support, to avoid bloodshed and civil dissension, Æthelwulf nobly accepted the status quo and reverted to his former position as sub-king of Kent. During the remaining two years of his life, he did much to alleviate the sufferings of the poor in Kent. His care continued after his death, for he left provisions in his will for his successors to provide food, drink and lodging for one poor man per tenth hide of cultivated land in the kingdom. King Æthelwulf died in 858, much mourned by his people, few monarchs have had such an epitaph. He was buried at Steyning, but his body was later moved to Winchester Cathedral.

Image 1: Vikings S03E02 “The Wanderer”

Image 2: King Æthelwulf, Lichfield Cathedral, England

Image 3: Detail from a genealogical roll, showing Æthelwulf (centre), his father Ecgberht, King of the West Saxons (above), King Beorhtric (right), and below, 4 roundels containing his sons, Æthelbald, Æthelberht, Æthelred and Alfred, England, 4th quarter of the 13th century, Royal MS 14 B V, Membrane 1.

Text: source

of course i had to draw fanart for @bad-hetalia-art, the only reason i breathe

@unxtedstxtes

May 23rd 1701: Captain Kidd executed

On this day in 1701, the Scottish pirate William Kidd was executed in England. Kidd, born in Dundee around 1654, enjoyed a successful career as a seaman before his turn to piracy. In May 1696, Kidd set sail charged with the job of hunting pirates and attacking enemy French ships as a privateer. However, while on this voyage around the Indian Ocean, Kidd and his crew began plundering treasure ships. During his time, Kidd killed a mutinous gunner on his ship, contributing to his fearsome piratical reputation. Their main prize was the Quedagh Merchant which carried a wealth of gold, silk and spices - the haul from this came to around £15,000, a huge amount of money for this period. As news broke in England of Kidd’s activities, his wealthy and powerful patrons at home scrambled to condemn him. He was eventually arrested in New York, where he had gone with hopes of support from his powerful contacts there, insisting he was innocent and had acted only as a privateer. Whilst he gave up some of his buried treasure on Gardiners Island, he claimed he had more buried somewhere else; would-be treasure hunters have been searching for his haul ever since. Kidd was put on trial for piracy in England, in what became a public spectacle due to his prominent connections, where he was found guilty and sentenced to death. On May 23rd, Kidd was hanged on the River Thames in London and his body encased in an iron cage and left to rot as a warning to other pirates.

Mary I’s coronation on October 1st 1553 was a well-received event after the trials and tribulations of the attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne. At the very start of her reign, Mary was a popular figure recognised by the people as the legitimate heir to Edward as she was the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. The failure of Dudley’s attempt to place his daughter-in-law on the throne was very much to do with the fact that he completely misjudged the desire of the people to have a ‘proper’ Tudor on the throne. Therefore Mary’s coronation was viewed by many as a happy event, which was well celebrated by the people whom she now served.

Two people had a very prominent place at the coronation procession held on September 30th – Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves. How much Elizabeth was there simply because she was family is difficult to know. She was briefly incorrectly associated with disloyalty and was known to be a Protestant. One’s mother had been divorced to make way for the mother of the other. It is difficult to believe that there was a great deal of affection between Mary and Elizabeth, though in this era, the public display of such affection was rare even I it did exist as it was not the ‘done thing’ amongst royalty. Anne was there, so it is believed, as she was someone who had suffered the same public humiliation as Mary’s mother – divorce. Now Mary had the opportunity to make amends and to give a very public display of unity between the new queen and her former half-mother.

In her coronation procession, Mary was driven through London in a carriage drawn by six horses. She wore a purple gown with ermine edges. A small “circlet of gold” was worn on her head and observers claim that it had so many valuable jewels in it that its value was inestimable and that she had to hold up her head with her hands, as the weight of the circlet was so great.

Mary’s carriage was accompanied by knights, bishops, lords and immediately in front of her carriage was the Privy Council. Various senior nobles were in front of her carriage – The Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Oxford and Knights of the Bath.

Immediately behind Mary’s carriage was another with Princess Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves in it. Behind this carriage rode a number of “gentlewomen”.

All along the route of the coronation procession, pageants were performed, including ones by performers from Genoa and Florence. A writer described a conduit at Cornhill as “running with wine”. In the City the carriage containing Mary stopped and the Recorder of London read out a speech to her professing the loyalty of the people of London and he gave to Mary a gold thread purse that contained 1,000 gold coins. Near to St. Paul’s an oration was read out to her in English and Latin.

From here Mary’s procession continued to Whitehall. On October 1st, Mary went by the Thames to the old Whitehall Palace. From here she went on foot to St. Peter’s Church where she was crowned and anointed by Stephen Gardner, the Bishop of Winchester. The whole coronation ceremony lasted until late afternoon.

WOMEN’S HISTORY †✞ ANNE BOLEYN (c. 1501 – 19 May 1536)

                                             OH w h o is SHE ??

February 12th 1554: Lady Jane Grey executed

On this day in 1554, the ‘nine day queen’ - Lady Jane Grey - was beheaded at the Tower of London. Grey was born to noble lineage, as her great-grandfather was King Henry VII, and by aged ten secured a place at the court of Henry VIII’s wife Katherine Parr. In 1553, she married the son of the Duke of Northumberland, who was serving as regent for the young and ailing King Edward VI. The Protestant Northumberland feared the throne falling to Edward’s Catholic heir, Mary Tudor, and arranged marriages that allowed the crown to pass to the pious Protestant Jane upon Edward’s death. However, Mary did not take this slight lightly. Mary gathered her legions of followers, and support for Jane quickly fell in the face of the fearsome Mary - often referred to as 'Bloody Mary’. Either way, this was the first time England was faced with the prospect of a queen as sole ruler of the nation. Jane was never crowned and only reigned as Queen for nine days before she agreed to relinquish the throne and was imprisoned in the Tower of London by the then-Queen Mary. She pleaded guilty to the charges of high treason bought against her, and after her father supported a rebellion against Mary led by Thomas Wyatt, Grey and her family were executed. Her husband was executed first, and Grey watched from her window as he was beheaded, before heading to the scaffold herself; her father was executed eleven days after her. Grey, despite being only sixteen or seventeen years old, faced her imminent death with courage and dignity, refusing to convert to Mary’s Catholicism even if it meant her life. Queen Mary ruled with an iron fist, persecuting Protestant dissenters, until her death in 1558, when she was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth I.

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