1285
Elfric imagines how the Virgin Mary went to her eternal home.
When Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham near Oxford during the reign of Ethelred the Unready (r. 978-1916), came to preach on August 15th, the Feast of the Repose of Mary, he was unusually tightlipped. Some of what was passed around he regarded as legend, but he was sure of one thing: that Mary did not go home to heaven all on her own.
Posted August 15 2016
1286
The Scots paid a heavy price for honouring their ‘Auld Alliance’ with France.
In September 1513, King James IV of Scotland found himself torn between ties of family and obligations of state. He chose the latter, and on a cold and lonely field in Northumberland, James and thousands of his loyal subjects paid dearly.
Posted August 12 2016
1287
Out of a restless alliance between two 6th century kingdoms came a civilisation that defined Englishness.
Northumbria was a kingdom in northeast England, from the seventh century to the ninth. More than any other of the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, Northumbria shaped the political, social and religious identity of a united Kingdom of the English in the 10th century.
Posted August 11 2016
1288
Scandinavian warrior Leif Ericson was sent to bring Christianity to Greenland, but accidentally discovered North America instead.
A Viking settlement dated to around AD 1000 was uncovered in 1960 on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, with more sites in the region tentatively identified in 2012. Suddenly, a tale from the Norse sagas, routinely dismissed as myth, looked very different.
Posted August 8 2016
1289
The legendary British warrior makes ready for his final journey, leaving Sir Bedivere with one last duty to perform.
‘The Passing of Arthur’ is the last of twelve poems forming ‘The Idylls of the King’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Mortally wounded in his victory over Mordred, Arthur now prepares to depart for the Isle of Avilion (Avalon), and has some last words of counsel for Sir Bedivere, the only surviving Knight of the Round Table.
Posted July 31 2016
1290
James calls Fr Huddleston to his brother’s deathbed, ready for a most delicate task.
As King, Charles II was officially the Head of the Church of England, an ever-so-modern, Protestant church. But like his father before him, and his brother James, his sympathies lay with the older Roman ways, and in 1685, lying in his bed at Whitehall Palace and facing his last hours on earth, he had an agonising decision to make.
Posted July 28 2016