Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 3 January 2012

Queen Catherine of Valois


Today is the 575th anniversary of the death of Queen Catherine of Valois, the widow of King Henry V, mother of King Henry VI and, through her eldest son by her second husband, Owen Tudor, the grandmother of King Henry VII.

http://image2.findagrave.com/photos250/photos/2005/188/8344315_112085115495.jpg

Queen Catherine's funeral effigy at
Westminster abbey as it is today

Image: findagrave.com

The article on her life by Michael Jones in the Oxford DNB can be read here.

She was Queen consort and then Queen mother or dowager in the lifetime of Bishop Richard Fleming, who attended her coronation at Westminster on February 23 1421, and who took part in King Henry V's funeral in the autumn of 1422.

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