Daily Medieval

Yesterday's post mentioned that the Franks fell into civil war and became less of a threat to Lombardy . The Frankish Kingdom had a lon...

There was a period in the history of the Kingdom of Lombardy when they had no king. Two kings in a row had been murdered—the first by his wi...

The past few days have been filled with discussion about the Lombards, aka the Langobards, and their origin according to medieval texts. Th...

The History of the Lombards by Paul the Deacon drew heavily on other works, especially about prior times. One of these was a 7th-century w...

Paul the Deacon assembled information from some of the greatest scholars and historians and his own observations to create his Historia Lan...

Paul the Deacon (c.720s – 13 April c.796-799) has many writings attributed to him (some probably erroneously, like a life of Gregory the Gr...

Winfrid was born about 720 in the Duchy of Friuli, the northern part of the Italian Peninsula that was the kingdom of the Lombards. His pare...

There was a rebellion against Charlemagne in 792 by a handful of Frankish nobles headed by Charlemagne's eldest son, Pepin the Hunchback...

Charlemagne's first son was named Pepin. Shortly after his birth he developed a spinal deformity that has caused historians to refer to...

In William Shakespeare's Richard III , someone refers to Richard as “that foule hunch-backt toade.” It's the first recorded instance...

Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, was one of the chief conspirators of the Southampton Plot to eliminate Henry V and replace h...

I mentioned yesterday the links between the three men who hatched the Southampton Plot to assassinate Henry V and put Edmund Mortimer on ...

People in England during the reign of Henry V were still trying to use Edmund Mortimer as a focal point for a rebellion. Edmund's sist...

Although he was a thorn in the side of King Henry IV —because he had a greater claim to the throne and was used as a focal point for rebelli...

Young Edmund Mortimer , who was the heir-presumptive of Richard II with the strongest claim to the throne of England, was being raised by th...

Although Edmund Mortimer was only seven years old when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne from Richard II, he was a potential political ...

When Henry Bolingbroke decided in 1399 to return from exile in France and force his cousin, King Richard II, to return to him the propertie...

After the Trial by Combat affair in 1398 between Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray (which was supposed to be to the death), King Richar...

Henry Bolingbroke and his cousin, Richard, were childhood friends, but when they were older Henry became one of the Lords Appellant  in 138...

I mentioned yesterday that Henry Bolingbroke , son of John of Gaunt, married Mary de Bohun, through whom he inherited the title Earl of Here...

I wrote not too long ago about Bolingbroke and his adversarial relationship with his cousin, Richard II. It might be useful to see him as a...

The Lords Appellant must have felt they had done good service to the kingdom of England after the Merciless Parliament  of 1388 eliminated ...

After the Merciless Parliament  in 1388 had eliminated the five specific advisors to Richard II that they considered the most corrupt, the L...

A few years back I offered a brief look at the Lords Appellant , the group put in charge of England because of the excesses in the administr...

We know little of Thomas Usk's early life except that he was born in London. The name Usk appears in several records, but we cannot link...

After the populist mayor of London John Northampton was defeated in the election of 1383 by Nicholas Brembre , Brembre worked to overturn a...

Proving that "what goes around comes around"—although we should probably just allude to the medieval concept of the  Wheel of Fort...

Despite his past as a troublemaker being involved in public brawls, even being imprisoned in the Tower for a time because of one in 1371, Jo...

1376 was a time of unrest in England under King Edward III. The court was considered corrupt, the wealth gap was increasing, the common peop...