The Good, the Bad and the Unready (8 page)

It appears that her nickname is largely due to the virulently anti-Catholic writings of contemporary historian John Foxe. In his massive work
Acts and Monuments
Foxe gives colourful descriptions of the lives and deaths of the ‘English Martyrs’ –
those who were executed for their Protestant beliefs. The book, which never specifically uses the name ‘Bloody Mary’ but refers instead to the queen’s ‘bloody persecution’ and to her successor,
GOOD QUEEN BESS
, as ‘sparing the blood’ of religious opponents, was published on the continent during Mary’s lifetime and in England a few years after her death. It rapidly became a best-seller in an England that had quickly reverted to Protestantism, and a copy was to be found in nearly every church in the country.

Harald
Bluetooth

Harald, king of the Danes, c.910–c.985

The name ‘Bluetooth’ or ‘Blåtand’ has nothing to do with King Harald’s dental discoloration, but refers to his dark complexion and hair – something of a rarity among Vikings. Similarly, this son of Gorm the
OLD
did not fit the traditional Viking image of a raping and pillaging pagan warrior either. Instead, he was a Christian who after his baptism in 960 strove to convert the Danes to his new faith.

Inscriptions on the famous runic stone at Jelling, carved around 980, claim that he ‘won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian’. This may have an element of truth in it, since for the next fifty years Danish kings were so powerful that they turned their attention away from any domestic strife and towards their English counterparts.

Bluff King Hal

Henry VIII, king of England, 1491–1547

For a short period of time Henry enjoyed the title of ‘Fidei Defensor’ or ‘Defender of the Faith’. It was an accolade conferred upon him by Pope Leo X but later revoked by Pope Paul III when the king divorced the first of his six wives, denounced papal supremacy and became the greatest ‘lapsed Catholic’ of them all. In 1544 Parliament conferred the title upon Edward VI, and it is a designation still enjoyed by the British monarchy today.

Somewhat more colloquially, and presumably not to his face, Henry was known as ‘Old Copper Nose’. This had nothing to do with his ruddy and robust complexion but was rather the result of his command that the mint should produce coins with twice as much copper as silver. With use, the silver would wear away on the most raised part of the coin, namely the nose of the king, which gave rise to the nickname. The more famous moniker ‘Bluff King Hal’, alluding to the monarch’s hearty, barrel-chested charm and no-nonsense personality, was bestowed upon him by later generations.

Philip the
Bold

Philip II, duke of Burgundy, 1342–1404

As in the case of ‘Justinian the Great’ and his partner Theodora (
see
GREAT… BUT NOT THAT GREAT
), Philip’s fame as one of the most remarkable men of his century would be considerably more modest were it not for his wife. His creation of a powerful, independent Burgundian state simply would not have been so successful had he not married Margaret of Male, daughter of the count of Flanders.

At first glance, Margaret might not have seemed a real catch for the handsome, tall, broad-shouldered Philip. Some may have gone so far as to suggest that the plain, shabbily dressed noblewoman who was fond of whistling and sitting on the grass was simply too vulgar for the bold soldier and brilliant statesman. But Margaret possessed a quality that made many a suitor blind to any imperfections: as daughter of the count of Flanders, she was by far the richest heiress in all of Europe, and in 1384 the couple owned not only Flanders, the most highly industrialized part of Europe, but also Artois, Nevers, Rethel and several other regions of the Holy Roman Empire.

Philip the
Bold
see
GALLIC PRACTICE

Philip II, king of France, 1245–85

 
Henry
Bolingbroke

Henry IV, king of England, 1366–1413

Three miles west of Spilsby in eastern Lincolnshire nestle the remains of a Norman castle dismantled after capture by parliamentary troops in 1643. This is Bolingbroke Castle, birthplace of Henry and origin of his rather unimaginative epithet. The castle was the chief seat of the duchy of Lancaster, and it was said to be haunted by a ghost that looked a bit like a hare or a rabbit, which would race between the legs of whomever it came across, sometimes knocking them over as it made its escape.

Bomba

Ferdinand II, king of the Two Sicilies, 1810–59

Ferdinand’s oppressive reign sparked off numerous political disturbances, culminating in a popular uprising in Sicily in 1848. His response – a massive bombardment of several cities, especially Messina – earned him the nickname ‘Bomba’, while his son Louis was given the diminutive title ‘Bombalino’ for a similar attack on Palermo in i860.

Ivar the
Boneless

Ivar, king of Dublin and York, c.794–872

Identifying the historical Ivar is problematic since he lived in an era in the no man’s land between possible fact and probable legend. According to the late tenth-century
Chronicle of Aethel-ward
and other sources, Ivar was the leader of the Danish ‘Great Army’ which invaded England in 865, and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
names him as the brother of Halfdan the
BLACK
(see
COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
). Theories on the origin of his nickname abound:

His deeds are similarly confusing. Was he really responsible, as some sources attest, for the murder of St Edmund, who was tied to a tree, filled with arrows and then decapitated? And did he and his men really slaughter babies as they went on their conquests, and practise cannibalism? The problems of separating truth from fiction remain.

Boney
see
Napoleon the
LITTLE CORPORAL