Read She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth Online
Authors: Helen Castor
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (77 page)
Windsor: court (1126),
1
;
meeting of barons,
1
;
castle surrendered by John,
1
;
birth of Edward III,
1
;
Isabella at,
1
;
Margaret’s imprisonment,
1
Worcester,
1
Wroth, Sir Thomas,
1
Yolande of Anjou,
1
York, Edward Plantagenet, duke of, see Edward IV
York, Richard Plantagenet, duke of: ancestry,
1
,
2
,
3
;
career,
1
;
claim to lead government of Henry VI,
1
;
heir presumptive,
1
;
control of royal council,
1
;
protector of the realm,
1
;
government,
1
;
king’s recovery,
1
;
exclusion from government,
1
;
Henry VI receives crown from his hands,
1
;
ascendancy,
1
;
resignation as protector,
1
;
at Sandal,
1
;
Coventry council,
1
;
oath of loyalty,
1
;
refusal to attend second Coventry council,
1
;
defence of Scottish border,
1
;
failure to attend Coventry council (1459),
1
;
Blore Heath,
1
;
flight to Ireland,
1
;
declared guilty of treason,
1
;
invasion preparations,
1
;
arrival in London,
1
;
claims throne,
1
;
Westminster settlement (1460),
1
;
Wakefield battle,
1
;
Zengi, Imad ad–Din,
1
Helen Castor is a historian of medieval England, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Her last book,
Blood & Roses
, a biography of the fifteenth-century Paston family, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2005 and won the English Association’s Beatrice White Prize in 2006. She lives in London with her husband and son.
BLOOD & ROSES
First published in 2010
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DAThis ebook edition first published in 2010
All rights reserved
© Helen Castor, 2010The right of Helen Castor to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–27172–6
A thirteenth-century illustration of the first four Norman kings: William the Conqueror (top left), his sons William Rufus (top right) and Henry I (bottom left), and Henry’s nephew Stephen (bottom right). Stephen holds a sword to show that he was forced to fight for his throne against the claim of Henry’s daughter Matilda.
Eleven-year-old Matilda (second from right behind the table) sits beside her first husband, the German Emperor Heinrich V, at their wedding feast in 1114. It was eleven years before she returned to England as the widowed ‘Empress Matilda’ to be named her father’s heir.
The effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine lies beside that of her second husband, Matilda’s son Henry II of England, in the calm of Fontevraud Abbey – a striking contrast to the turbulence of their marriage.
Images of power: the two sides of royal seals show the king with sceptre and sword as judge and warrior – key functions of kingship that a woman could not easily fulfil. On the left is Philippe II of France, son of Eleanor’s first husband Louis VII; on the right, John, youngest son of Eleanor and Henry.
Edward II’s queen, Isabella of France, in armour at the head of her troops at Hereford in 1326 – a fourteenth-century image that echoes contemporary depictions of the Amazonian queens of classical myth. In the background her husband’s favourite, Hugh Despenser the younger, meets a grisly end on the scaffold.
The effigy of Edward II, carved in English alabaster, on his tomb in Gloucester Cathedral.