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.


Thursday, 26 May 2016

King Edmund I


Today is the 1070th anniversary of the violent death in a scuffle of King Edmund I at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire in 946. Born in 920/21 he proved an energetic ruler after his succession to his half-brother Athelstan in 939. At the time of his death in 946 he was only about 25, and his sons too young to succeed him. His brother Eadwig became King and was then succeeded in turn by King Edmund I's sons, King Eadwig and King Edgar. He is thus an ancestor of the British royal house. Like his son King Edgar he was buried at Glastonbury Abbey.

There is an online account of the King's life at Edmund I  and the up to date life of him in the Oxford DNB by Ann Williams can be read at Edmund I.

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