“Little gentlemen in black velvet” aiding Belgian archaeologists

Archeonews recently reported on an unusual source of assistance in an investigation of the area around Damme in West Flanders. In the medieval centuries the area had supported a number of substantial fortified houses which have completely disappeared above ground. Modern technology can indicate potential sites but this information can only go so far without excavating, which poses its own difficulties.

This where the “little gentlemen” come into the research. As they tunnel away they, of course, create mole hills.  Much beloved by gardeners wanting soil of a fine tilth, such field supplies can also, on sites such as this in Belgium, yield archaeological material which when analysed can indicate building materials and evidence of human occupation.

 

Mole doing his spring cleaning from

The Wind in the Willows

 

Image: cassus-vas.blogspot.com

 The article can be seen at 800-Year-Old Medieval Structure Discovered in Belgium with Help from Moles

For the uninitiated the version usually known today refers to a mole, the subject of the Jacobite toast to “the little gentleman in black velvet”, but other sources give “the little gentleman in the back velvet waistcoat” whose molehill caused the horse of King William III to stumble, the King to fall, break his collar bone, develop pneumonia, and die, in 1702.

 

Gives you paws, or claws, for thought.

He died with his boots on

I came upon an online post from X which linked to an article from Archaeo - Histories. The subject matter is about a skeleton discovered during the excavation of the Thames Tideway Tunnel. It probably dates from the late fifteenth century and is that of a man, probably in his early thirties, who met with what appears to have been an accidental death on the Thames foreshore. 

The remarkable thing is that significant portions of the long leather boots the man was wearing have survived in the mud. 

Modern anatomical archaeology reveals much about the man, his health, and his life. Further research in his remains should reveal where he grew up and other aspects of his life. It is not clear if he was a mariner or a landlubber, but his seemingly hard life is still revealed to a surprising extent, and that enriches our knowledge of life at the time. 

The post can be seen at Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories)

 

The Thames below the Tower of London in the sixteenth century.

This was the probable area in which the man spent much of his life. A nineteenth century engraving based on Antony van de Wyngaerde’s drawing of London in the 1540s

Image: Wikisource

The changing coastline at Cromer

A regular reader of this blog recently, and very kindly, sent me the link to an article in the Daily Mail about a significant underwater archaeological survey at Cromer on the north Norfolk coast. 

Cromer from the present beach

Image: The Guardian

Cromer today sits on low cliffs above the beach with Georgian houses clustered around its fine late medieval parish church, together with Edwardian features such as an elegant pier from its time as a genteel resort.

However, as  the article explains, the coastline has retreated significantly in historic time, and the underwater survey has revealed remains of what was once the northern extension of the town. This was Shipden which was clearly flourishing in the time of the Domesday Survey but which gradually declined in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A major storm in January 1362 may have hastened its disappearance, although in 1390 there seem to have been moves to stabilise the coast.

The eastern coast of England from Flamborough Head to the Solent has witnessed significant coastal erosion over the centuries, and it is a continuous process. News reports quite frequently cover this, notably these days at the north-eastern tip of Norfolk. 

Soft clays and winter tidal surges have eroded the coastline, but also created new features such as Sunk Island on the north shore of the Humber, Orford Ness and Dungeness. Islands which appear to have still existed off the Lincolnshire coast in the early thirteenth century were subsequently washed away, but the Isle of Thanet has become physically attached to Kent. 

  

Numerous Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk villages have been lost to the sea, most notably Dunwich, and half of Aldeburgh, in Suffolk.

I think that at Dunwich similar surveys have picked up street patterns and church sites.

The article about the investigation can be read at Diver explores lost British town under sea that vanished 700 years ago

The work is also reported upon I find by Heritage Daily   at Divers investigate submerged medieval town lost beneath the North Sea

The St Etheldreda panels

The other day I attended online a lunchtime lecture at the Society of Antiquaries about the recent work to stabilise the St Etheldreda panels which are amongst the Society’s treasures.    

 

    

The St Etheldreda Panels 

Image: Instagram

Painted about 1455 for the shrine of St Etheldreda in Ely Cathedral the two panels are a virtually unique survival of such works from before the waves of iconoclasm of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

These panels survived because someone in Ely used them as cupboard doors until an antiquarian discovered them in the late eighteenth century. He acquired them and eventually bequeathed them to the Society of Antiquaries in the early nineteenth century. 

Since then they have had several restorations. This latest project was designed to make them secure to travel to display in Norwich in an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre. The work did not involve a full cleaning and restoration, but as the speakers explain in the presentation, the panels are now in a fit state for that if it is decided upon at a future date.

The set of talks about the paintings and the project can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/live/4e0draY5JDk?si=ZNpF3CImknPsMVFm

King Henry V 640

The current consensus amongst historians of the period is that the future King Henry V was born at 11.22 on the morning of September 16th 1386 at Monmouth Castle. This, therefore, is the 640th anniversary of a birth that was to be far more momentous than his parents could have realised at the time. 

King Henry V

Image:Wikimedia

His father, Henry Earl of Derby, was nineteen and the son and heir of John, Duke of Lancaster, the eldest surviving son of King Edward III. The baby’s mother, Mary, was sixteen or seventeen, and the co-heiress of the last de Bohun Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton.

The newborn was thus part of the extended family of King Edward III, and potentially in the line of succession if King Richard II and Queen Anne were to be childless - as indeed they were to be. King Richard occasionally hinted or indicated who his successor in such an eventuality might be but never formally. Amongst the most likely candidates was Duke John, were he to return from Iberia, and then his son Henry, now with an heir, but nothing was formalised. Nevertheless his prospective wealth as Duke of Lancaster together with the de Bohun inheritance and his Plantagenet blood meant that the new baby was destined, if he survived infancy and childhood, for a place in the elite, at the very centre of national life.

Henry and Mary were a well educated, devout couple who enjoyed music and books. Henry was also becoming an established jouster and on the verge of becoming an active political figure safeguarding his family interests in the increasingly fraught circumstances of his cousin King Richard II’s rule whilst his father Duke John was embarking on an attempt to win the throne of Castile and Leon for himself and Henry’s stepmother.

 

Tradition claims that the baby Henry was born in a room over the gatehouse of the castle at Monmouth. I am a little skeptical about this, as it seems an unlikely place for a confinement - which took a long time in the medieval age for a woman of noble status - and that surviving rooms in ruins with historic associations to births and deaths are often later attributions.

The baby was probably baptised in the nearby parish church on the day of his birth or very soon after.

Monmouth as shown by John Speed in 1611

The castle and parish church are centre right, the famous bridge gate over the Monnow at the left

Image: etsy.com

Henry and Mary were an uxorious couple and young Henry was to be followed by three more sons and two daughters before Mary died in childbirth in 1394 aged twenty four. Her widower, despite fathering one illegitimate son, did not remarry until 1403.

Henry of Derby was an absent father for a number of years, attending the Saint-Ingelvert jousts on the border south of Calais and then being on crusade with the Teutonic Knights in 1390, and again in 1392 before crossing central Europe to Venice and going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and returning in 1393. When he arrived at Peterborough Derby had a variety of souvenirs from his travels to show his family, including an ostrich and a hunting cheetah given to him by the King of Cyprus. His own father Duke John was also absent in 1394-5 in Gascony.

The baby probably spent his earliest years with his mother at the home at which she and Derby based themselves at Peterborough. Early in life he was assigned a nurse, Joan Waring, to whom he gave an annuity of £20 for life in 1415. 

 

As he grew he spent time with his formidable maternal grandmother, who lived on to 1419, at her residence of Castle Bytham, of which only substantial earthworks remain, in south-west Lincolnshire. Here he may have had a governess called Mary Hervy.

 

Castle Bytham

Image: picturesofengland.com

There is an account of the castle and its water defences, which misnames the Countess, at Bytham Castle | History & Visiting Information

He also stayed with his paternal grandfather, following his return from Spain in 1389, at Lancastrian castles such as Leicester and Kenilworth. The latter was to become a favourite residence of the future King, where recuperated after his injury at Shrewsbury, and where he was to create a private retreat at the further end of the lake.

A reconstruction of Kenilworth Castle circa 1420

The private retreat built by Kung Henry V can be seen at the top of the image 

Image: English Heritage 

The precise time of the birth was doubtless recorded so that horoscopes could be cast, but if they were one wonders if they predicted the future as it turned out with young Henry becoming Prince of Wales and heir to the throne in 1399, facing the rising of Owain Glyndŵr which, significantly started on Henry’s birthday in 1400, miraculously surviving the battle of Shrewsbury, succeeding his father as monarch, leading and winning the Agincourt campaign, invading France again two years later, conquering Normandy, negotiating the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 and being recognised as Regent and Heir of France, or that he would die just short of his thirty sixth birthday.

King Henry V

Image: Wikipedia 

Investigating Archbishop Hubert Walter’s vestments

Research into medieval silk items from English sources has includes an examination of the remaining material from the dalmatic which formed a part of the vestments in which the body of Archbishop Hubert Walter was apparelled for his burial at Canterbury Cathedral in 1205. The items were discovered when his tomb was opened in 1890.

The investigation is reported upon in a recent account on the medievalists.net website. It can be accessed at Gold Found in Medieval Archbishop’s Silk Garment at Canterbury Cathedral

In 2019 the fabric used in the dalmatic was copied to make the fabric for twelve new copes for use in the cathedral.

There is more about the other vestments from the grave from the Textile Research Centre at Leiden at Vestments of Hubert Walter (1205)

The mitre and episcopal slippers found in the tomb of Archbishop Hubert Walter. The silk uppers of the slippers are decorated with garnets and have amber silk soles.

Image: text-leiden.nl

 

One of the Archbishop’s buskins

Image: Church Times

The mitre from the tomb

Image:praytellblog.com

In addition his crosier and chalice and paten were also in the tomb, and an be seen on display in the cathedral.

The paten from the Archbishop’s tomb

Image: Wikipedia 

Wikipedia has a biography which appears to be cognisant of the latest scholarly opinion of this highly accomplished and influential administrator at Hubert Walter

I was surprised when reading it to discover that Hubert Walter, whom I had always envisioned as an elder statesman, was apparently only about forty five when he died.

 

The tomb of Archbishop Hubert Walter in Canterbury Cathedral

Image:x.com

Medieval external paintings on a German church

Medievalists.net has an interesting report on a conservation project at the Friedenskirke, formerly St Nicholas, in Frankfurt on Oder, which is now on the border with Poland.

The work looked at a series of external paintings on what was the eastern gable of the nave and dating to the early fourteenth century, but which were covered up by the taller choir constructed about 1370. Protected by the newer roof they have survived when other similar works elsewhere have been lost. Where there are similar survivals it is hoped that the information gleaned at Frankfurt on Oder can inform similar conservation efforts.

The Friedenkirke-St Nicholas

The higher roof of the choir is clearly visible

Image:HörMat Frankfurt!

  

The illustrated article can be accessed at Lost Medieval Paintings Recreated After 650 Years - Medievalists.net

The church has had a very eventful history and today is externally very much a reconstruction from the Wilhelmine era.

 

There are short, illustrated, accounts at Stadtmarketing Frankfurt (Oder), at Friedenskirche Frankfurt (Frankfurt (Oder)), at Friedenskirche Frankfurt (Frankfurt (Oder))  and at Friedenskirche, Frankfurt (Oder) - Europäische Route der Backsteingotik

Wikipedia has an account, in German, at Friedenskirche (Church of Peace), formerly St. Nicolas Church/Reformed Church Friedenskirche (Frankfurt (Oder))

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. In the Catholic tradition this absorbed the other feast, that of the Invention of the Holy Cross - Invention meaning discovery - which was celebrated on May 3rd infer Pope John XXIII. In the East these two observances are supplemented by a number of other feasts and customs, as is well set out in the Wikipedia article Feast of the Cross

There is a shorter introduction at What Is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross?

 

I wrote in 2015 about the feast and linked to some late medieval English depictions in stained glass of the story of the True Cross. Photographed by the late Gordon Plumb these windows at Tattershall and Ashton-under-Lyne are wonderful survivals from the last years of the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. That article can be seen at The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

In 2019 the New Liturgical Movement had a good account of the late fourteenth century frescoes dated to 1385-7 by Agnolo Gaddi on the legend of the True Cross on the side walls of the sanctuary of the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence. This can be accessed at The Legend of the True Cross, by Agnolo Gaddi

 

The sanctuary of Santa Croce 

The Gaddi frescoes are on the flanking north and south walls*

Image: Wikipedia 

*pity about the forward altar

As the author points out these were in part a source and inspiration for the more famous, if sadly damaged, series from 1447-66 by Piero della Francesca for the Franciscan church in Arezzo. These are technically superior to those by Gaddi. I posted about the Arezzo frescoes in The Legend of the True Cross

Santa Croce is one of the great churches of late medieval and Renaissance Florence and Wikipedia has a good account at Santa Croce, Florence

On a more parochial and domestic level Fr William Rock recently had an article on the FSSP website about the traditional forms of blessings for crucifixes in the home and those set up in churchyards or precincts. This can be read at Blessings of Crosses and Crucifixes 

Hail Holy Cross, our help and our hope!

Binnenhof renovation reveals sixteenth century roof pre-fabrication

An insight into construction techniques from the later medieval era has been gained from restoration work at the Binnenhof in The Hague.

The ongoing restoration of the historic complex which houses the Dutch parliament and government offices included the spire over the Torentje - or Little Tower - which was rebuilt by the Emperor Charles V in 1547 with the addition of the spire. The tower now houses the office of the Prime Minister.

When the timbers of the roof were examined Roman numerals were found cut into the timber, indicating the structure had been built elsewhere, the parts numbered, then dismantled and taken to the new tower and reassembled.

The Torentje

Image:tripadvisor.co.uk

The website of Dutch News has an account of the discovery with further details at Roof of PM’s office is original 16th-century flat-plack

The fact that this timber roof was created in this ways leads one to wonder how frequently this method was employed for timber framed church spires or for church and hall roofs in the medieval period.

Re-creating Norman design at Norwich Castle

I have posted previously about the imaginative scheme to re-create early twelfth century interiors in the keep of Norwich Castle. 

 

The Keep of Norwich Castle

Image:tripadvisor.co.uk

This has been accomplished as a part of a major renovation of the twelfth century structure as restored from being the county gaol as a museum which opened in 1894. The collection of artefacts from Norwich and Norfolk is one of the best for medieval items in the country, as well as having material from more recent centuries.

The royal bedchamber at Norwich Castle

Image: norwichcastle.norfolk.gov.uk

In the quest to recreate interiors fit for King Henry I and his court the team conducting the renovation had to rediscover skills and craftsmen that are now uncommon or well-nigh lost.

The making and colouring of the doors is covered in a video here

Making the door furniture in iron and tinning it can be seen here

 

The painting of the walls and architectural features is shown here

Creating reconstructions of the furniture is shown here

With the current exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry in London the work done at Norwich gives an added insight into the cultural context of such a textile - and, as can be seen in the photograph above, an embroidery of similar scale and design has been re-created for the royal bedchamber at Norwich.

Investigating and restoring the tomb of the Emperor Otto the Great

The Medieval Histories website has had two recent articles about the archaeological investigation and conservation of the tomb of the Emperor Otto I - the Great - in Magdeburg Cathedral. 

The seal of the Emperor Otto I

Image: Wikipedia 

The work has meant that the bones of the Emperor, who died in 973, could be studied and preserved for the future and his tomb chest, which is apparently from the time immediately after his death, has been stabilised and rebuilt.

The Emperor, whose first wife was a member of the House of Wessex as the daughter of King Edward the Elder, revived in 962 the dormant position of Holy Roman Emperor after its time of abeyance under the later Carolingians. Not only did he link the Imperial title to the kingship of Germany, which survived until 1806, but he is in many ways the creator of the medieval Empire, based on the precedent of Charlemagne. His descendants, referred to as the Ottonians, held the Imperial title until 1024.

Wikipedia has a biography of him at Otto the Great

The articles about the tomb and the skeleton can be seen at The Restoration of the Tomb and Reburial of Otto the Great and at Did Otto the Great Die from a Stroke?

The present thirteenth to early sixteenth century cathedral is described in considerable detail by Wikipedia at Magdeburg Cathedral

  

There is more about the history and building of the cathedral, and also information about the examination in recent years of the bones of Otto’s beloved first Queen, Eadgyth of England, which are also buried in the cathedral, at Magdeburg Cathedral

The Emperor’s death at Whitsuntide coincided, quite coincidentally, with the coronation that same Whit Sunday at Bath of King Edgar, who was Eadgyth’s nephew, and was followed fourteen years later by the elevation of the Capetians to the French throne - momentous years in the development of medieval national monarchies.

The Funeral of King Harald V

 

Yesterday witnessed the funeral in Oslo of King Harald V of Norway. I was able to watch the NRK coverage of the day through the BBC.

The full video from The Royal Family Channel can be seen at 🔎 king harald funeral or from the BBC at Funeral held for Norway's King Harald V in Oslo 

The cortège passes in front of the King and Royal Family

Image: The Royal Watcher

It was an extremely dignified and impressive occasion, with thousands lining the streets along which the procession passed from the Royal Palace to the Cathedral and then to the Akershus fortress for the commital ceremony.

The number of members of other royal houses who attended as well as other elected heads of state and leaders of governments was a tribute to the respect and affection in which the late King was held by many nations, as well as by the inter-related royal houses of Europe, and others from further afield.

Two things struck me from a British standpoint. The first is the strange convention at British monarchs do not attend the funerals of their fellow sovereigns. Before the mid nineteenth century this would have been rarely feasible for any ruler, but the advent of steam power made travel quicker and easier. I am given to understand that the ‘convention’ that British monarchs do not attend was invented by Lord Palmerston, who also disliked Queen Victoria travelling to France on a state visit in case the ‘Citizen King’ gained access to her diplomatic correspondence. Queen Victoria was less likely to attend funerals, but her funeral and that of her son and successor brought four and eight reigning kings to London and Windsor to join the new British monarch in burying their predecessor. The interwar and post war period offered less occasion for change, but when the late Queen did attend the funeral of King Baudouin of The Belgians in 1993 I thought this, in my view, rather outmoded tradition had gone by the way. However yesterday the King was represented by the Prince of Wales, and the ‘convention’ was one more invoked.

The second thought was that the calm and precise Norwegian ceremonial, which does perhaps in part derive from British precedent given the fact that the first ruler of an independent Norway in 1905, King Haakon VII, was married to the youngest daughter of King Edward VII, was reminiscent of the funeral of the late Queen in 2022. This gives the lie to the oft-repeated complacent comment by so-called ‘royal experts’ and ‘royal commentators’ that “no-one does ceremonial for such occasions as we do in Britain”.

Norway yesterday showed their tradition at its best. Other monarchies also have state ceremonies to rival those of the UK. Swedish, Spanish, and Dutch ceremonial is just as impressive when deployed on the appropriate occasions. Those who describe the Dutch monarch as “bicycling” should look at film of the opening of the States General or, even more remarkable, the funerals of their former Queens.

Looking at film of the Norwegian royal funerals of 1954, 1957, and 1991 it was clear that the form and ceremony was identical. There is clearly a well established culture of maintaining the correct ceremonial tradition in the Norwegian royal household and in the military.

The website Scandinavian Royalty has a video of the

Norwegian royal family greeting their guests from other royal houses at the Royal Palace following the funeral. This is rather unusual to see members of these families behind the scenes, as well as being entertaining and illuminating in its ‘body language’ and can be viewed at Scandinavian Royalty

At the time of the King’s death I linked to a very interesting post from The Antiquary about the burials of Kings of Norway in the medieval era and also about the creation after 1938 of the funeral chapel at Akershus. It can be accessed at The Antiquary

The Nativity of the Virgin Mary

Today is the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady.

The Nativity of Our Lady

Giotto

Image:Wikipedia 

OnePeter5 has an article about the history of the feast and various customs traditionally associated with it. Most of these relate to the agricultural calendar of farming communities, and the fact that this day in early September was a convenient marker within the annual round.

The article can be read at Forgotten Customs of Our Lady’s Nativity

The Nativity of the Virgin

Andrea di Bartolo 

A Sienese artist active from 1389 until his death in 1428. This work, part of a larger composition, is dated to 1400-1405

National Gallery of Art, Washington 

Image: nga.gov

Both of these paintings, like others of the same subject, include vignettes of late medieval domestic life from the society which commissioned and created them - in this case central Italy.

 May Our Lady,

together with St Anne and St Joachim,

pray for us

Oriel visits the Vatican

Yesterday, the Pope received in audience in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican a delegation of members of Oriel College, led by the Provost, Lord Mendoza.

The Pope and the Provost

Image: oriel.ox.ac.uk 

The occasion was to mark two significant events. The first is that this year Oriel - the House of  Blessed Mary to Virgin in Oxford, to give its full name - is celebrating its seven hundredth anniversary of foundation by King Edward II in 1326. In July it welcomed that monarch’s 21x great grandson in the person of King Charles III who is the Visitor of the College, and there have been a variety of celebrations throughout the year.

The second event is closely bound up with the history of Oriel, and the man who is its most famous Fellow, St John Henry Newman, the Pope proclaimed a Doctor of the Church and co-patron of Education last year.

St John Henry Newman as a Fellow of Oriel 

1822-1845

Image: Venerable English College

In his address to his visitors the Pope urged Oriel to rediscover the Catholic roots of the foundation, and to follow St John Henry in pursuing truth courageously and to see education as the formation of the whole person.

The Oriel College website reports on the visit with quotations from the Provost’s address at Provost leads delegation to meet Pope at Vatican

Vatican News has more of the Pope’s address 

at Pope to Oxford’s Oriel College: Seek truth, promote integral anthropology

His Holiness’ points are good and apposite, and will in my opinion, hopefully fall on fertile ground. My experience of Oriel was that those three factors were there and perhaps more so than in some, maybe many, other colleges in Oxford. Let us hope Papal encouragement will lead to positive growth in these matters.

May Our Lady continue to pray for Her House in Oxford and all Orielenses

Floreat Oriel!

The Battle of Worcester 1651

Today is the 375th anniversary of the battle of Worcester in 1651, and the city and reenactment groups are holding a series of events to commemorate the anniversary.

Worcester Cathedral from the site of Fort Royal with the modern memorial to the battle in the foreground 

Image: tripadvisor.co.uk

Wikipedia has an account of the battle at Battle of Worcester. Although it gives a good narrative of the events the references indicate that its sources are in many cases about a century old and it is perhaps in need of some revision.

The Fugitive King has a similar narrative, but presented with a more modern slant and far more illustrations. It can be accessed at The Battle of Worcester

Wikipedia has a biography of the most prominent Royalist fatality from the battle, the second Duke of Hamilton, which includes the text of his farewell letter to his wife written from the Commandery in the city, a building which still survives. The article can be seen at 

 William Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Hamilton. His grave is marked by a plaque in the choir of the cathedral.

  

Following the battle King Charles II fled, very much as his great nephew Prince Charles Edward did after Culloden almost a century later. Ensuring the survival of the claimant was of paramount concern to safeguard their cause.

King Charles II in armour

Probably painted shortly after his flight to France in October 1651

Image: app.fta.art

Following a circuitous route, and many close shaves, the King finally sailed to France from Shoreham in Sussex on October 15th.

Wikipedia has a good, illustrated, account at Escape of Charles II and also a biography of the King’s most famous helper in his escape at Jane Lane, Lady Fisher

The museum at Shaftesbury in Dorset has an account of the King’s journey which can be accessed at Escape or Die 1651 - Charles II the Most Wanted Man - Gold Hill Museum

King Charles II

Miniature by David des Granges from the time of the King’s accession 

Image: wikiart 

The King and Queen visit the Bayeux Tapestry

This evening the King and Queen, accompanied by the French President and by Mr Burnham, and their wives, visited the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum, which opens to pre-booked visitors next week. 

The BBC News website has a report, including part of His Majesty’s speech, at King Charles, Macron and Burnham arrive to view Bayeux Tapestry at British Museum

King William I 

From the Bayeux Tapestry

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In his speech the King referred to his French ancestry as a descendant of King William the Conqueror. King William I is the 28x great-grandfather of King Charles III, and that bloodline was multiplied by Queen Eleanor of Castile, Queen Elizabeth of York, Lord Darnley, Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, and Prince Philip (twice over in his case)

King Harold II 

From the Bayeux Tapestry 

Image: History Extra

Furthermore the King is also descended from King Harold II, who is his 30x great-grandfather through his daughter Gytha, Princess of Kviv and the royal lines of Hungary, Aragon, and France through to Queen Philippa of Hainault, the consort of King Edward III. 

From the Valois branch of the French Capetians that bloodline also entered the English, and then the Scottish, royal house through Queen Catherine of Valois, the grandmother of King Henry VII. In that case King Harold is again the present King’s 30x great-grandfather.

In addition all the Kings of Scots since 1437 have also been descended through Queen Joan Beaufort, a great-granddaughter of King Edward III and Queen Philippa, from both King William I and King Harold II.

Those bloodlines are again also repeated through Lord Darnley, Queenr Alexandra, Queen Mary and, again twice over, Prince Philip.

So for the King very much a family occasion.

Feast of St Giles

Today is the feast of St Giles, who has a wide number of patronages, as well as being one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as pilgrims visited his shrine in Provence he became very popular as a patron of churches, chapels and hospitals across much of Europe, and by no means least in England.

I was baptised at the church of St Giles in my home town of Pontefract and for many years the church was a very important part of my life. I have retained a devotion to St Giles, and he is a gentle, kindly, and wise saint to turn to.

The Mass of St Giles

National Gallery, London

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Looking online I found an article about him and his depiction in the now sadly incomplete and scattered altarpiece by the late medieval painter now known to us as The Master of St Giles, and which celebrated his life on the website of The New Liturgical Movement and first published in 2023.

The article can be found at The Life of St Giles

May St Giles pray for us