For us in the twenty first century it is hard to imagine the feelings of a young woman, newly widowed, having her children removed to a “place of safety”. In modern parlance those words reek of intervention by state welfare services. Continue reading The Girl in the Tower
Margaret founded the Hospital of St. John at Aconbury in Herefordshire in her mother’s memory. Continue reading The Herefordshire Contingent – #2 de Braose
Whilst Hugh was supervising building work there in July 1186 he was decapitated by an Irish man posing as a labourer but who had a battle axe concealed in his clothing. Continue reading The Herefordshire Contingent – #1 de Lacy
Henry was promoting the Church’s insistence on monogamous marriage. What makes him a right royal hypocrite is the fact that he was at the time estranged from his wife and conducting an affair with the Herefordshire heiress Rosamund Clifford. Continue reading Henry II – a Right Royal Hypocrite
In total, no fewer than 17 of Nest’s male descendants participated in the Norman invasion of Ireland between 1167 and 1169 Continue reading The Welsh Connection: a Feisty Princess
Henry remained in Ireland until Easter 1172. There is no record of how many of the 4500 men that accompanied him remained behind. Certainly he established garrisons in a number of places and he granted the citizens of Bristol the right to inhabit Dublin. Continue reading Henry II’s Irish Expedition
His legitimate daughter, Isabel, through her marriage to William Marshall, is the common ancestor of several subsequent Queens of England. Her husband governed England as regent to the young Henry III. In this role he masterminded the defeat of the French who had occupied a large part of southern England during the final years of King John’s reign. Continue reading Strongbow – the Invader
Men who had been unable to effectively control Wales and the Welsh border country were now given the equally difficult task of pacifying the Irish. Continue reading The Norman Invasion: an Irish Perspective.
Today I’m posting, more or less simultaneously, a dozen or so blog posts which will also be available as podcasts via Anchor. Continue reading Posts into Podcasts
Did Francis Cosby, perhaps, bring his young bride and child, believed to have been born in 1547, to reside in a house within the Grangegorman Demesne? Was it his uncle’s leases on Irish monastic lands that facilitated his acquisition of the Franciscan Friary at Stradbally? Continue reading Francis Cosby’s Uncle: “a sour and honest puritan”
