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Lady Katherine Gordon- Wife of a Pretender
Highborn, beautiful and rich, Lady Katherine Gordon was an ideal wife for any young man. The daughter of George Gordon, 2nd Earl of Huntly. There is some dispute if her mother was Princess Annabella, daughter of King James and Joan Beaufort, or the Earl’s third wife Elizabeth Hay. Either way, she was related to the Scottish royal family. The king called her his “tender cousin”. She was a catch. Whose hand did this luscious plum fall into? The answer is surprising. The end of the 1400s were not an easy time in Great Britain. Henry Tudor defeated Richard III to become Henry VII. Depending on who you asked, his crown…
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Pilgrimage of Grace
Merry old England wasn’t very merry under Henry VIII, especially if you didn’t agree with the king on religion. The problem was Henry’s mind changed based on what his desires were and who was standing next to him at the time. By 1536, the average Englishman didn’t know what to believe nor who to ask because the wrong question to the wrong person and you got burned at the stake. Because of the King’s Great Matter, England had broken with the Roman Catholic Church so Henry could divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Reformers began dismantling the abbeys and taking the spoils for their own. However, the rank…
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Bess of Hardwick
In a time rife with powerful women, Elizabeth Talbot or Bess of Hardwick as she was known is often overlooked. She rose through advantageous marriages and careful planning from gentile poverty to a woman whose wealth rivaled Elizabeth I. Her home, Hardwick Hall, became a byword for wealth. Robert Cecil notably quipped, “Hardwick Hall? More window than wall.” That probably pleased Bess to no end. However, Hardwick was not always the sumptuous palace she created. When Elizabeth Hardwick was born in 1527 to John Hardwick and his wife, the family was quite poor. Not much is known about the early years, except that her father died young leaving her a…
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Hauntings, Part 2: Anne Boleyn
In Part 1 (http://www.historynaked.com/hauntings-part-1/ ) I state that most hauntings are the result of boredom on behalf of a young ghost, but there are other types of hauntings as well. One of the most common is a residual haunting. I have theories about why this happens and, since I am not the kind of guy to throw around words like “psychic” or phrases like “extra-sensory perception” I have to bring it back to a quasi-scientific standpoint. If you want to skip the bad science to the conclusion, count down to the third paragraph and go from there. 😀 Our bodies are made up of infinitesimal pieces that bond together to make…
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Francis Bacon
Born in January 1561, Bacon was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon and his second wife Anne. During his time at Cambridge, Bacon began to question the accepted methods of scientific research, believing them to be flawed. His ideas led to the modern approach to scientific research. It is suggested that it was his experimentation of the effects of freezing on decomposition and preservation that led to him catching a chill and developing pneumonia, leading to his death. Bacon embarked on a career in Law and Politics, following his father’s sudden death which left him in financial difficulties. Despite the difficulties Bacon was served as a Member of Parliament from…
