Category: London

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Twin, Twins – Festival of Castor and Pollux July 15th

The Ashwini kumaras twins, sons of the sun god Surya. Vedic gods representing the brightness of sunrise and sunset Wikipedia

The Divine Twins, aka the Dioscuri, were horsemen. Patrons of calvary, athletes and sailors, one of many Indo-European twin gods.   They had many adventures including sailing with Jason and the Argonauts.

And are they well connected?! Pollux is the son of Zeus  His twin brother has a different and mortal father, the King of Sparta.  But the boys share the same mother, Leda.  She was raped by Zeus in the guise of a swan.

This makes them examples of heteropaternal superfecundation as Mary Poppins didn’t sing.  But their different paternity had consequences. The most important is that one was (is?) therefore immortal and the other wasn’t. 

According to some version of the story, Castor (the mortal one) was mortally wounded. Zeus gave Pollux the option of letting his brother die while Pollux could spend eternity on Mount Olympus. The alternative was to share his immortality with his brother. Pollux did the good thing. So the twins spend half their year as the Constellation of Gemini and the rest, immortal, on Mount Olympus.  Thus, they are the epitome of brotherly love.

Divine Twins or Sisters from Hell?

The Dioscuri’s sisters were no less than Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. Never mind the Brothers, what Sisters! Helen of Troy you know. And Clytemnestra! They were also twins, Helen the divine daughter of Zeus, husband of Menelaus, lover of Paris. Sister, Clytemnestra, mortal daughter of the King of Sparta, husband of Agamemnon (brother of Menelaus).

It happened like this.  The Swan was being pursued by an eagle, so Leda protected the Swan and took it to bed.  On the same night she slept with her husband Tyndareus of Sparta. Two eggs were fertilised, each split in two to give two sets of twins.

Leda and the Swan, 16th-century copy after the lost painting by Michelangelo

Clytemnestra

She was the wife of Agamemnon, the arrogant leader of the Greeks.  On the way to retrieve Helen from Troy, the Greek Fleet was becalmed. So, following his seers’ advice, Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigenia, on the island of Aulis.  The Gods then set the winds fair to Troy. (Read Iphigenia at Aulis by Aeschylus, a great play which I studied in Classical Studies at University).

Meanwhile, Queen Clytemnestra, abandoned at home, broods on her husband’s heartless fillicide. She takes a lover. After 10 years of war, Agamemnon comes back, in triumph, from the destruction of Troy. He brings with him his prize, the Trojan Princess, Cassandra, sister of Hector.

Cassandra has been gifted with the ability of accurate prophecy. But, as often in the case of prophecy stories, the gift came with a sting in its tale. She was also cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe her!  She prophesies disaster and that she too will be a victim.

Strutting with arrogance, Agamemnon demands Clytemnestra prepare him a bath. And, so she runs it for him, and she gives him the hottest bath possible. With the help of her lover, she hacks Agamemnon to pieces with an axe. Cassandra is butchered.

painting of Clytemnestra after she has slaughtered her husband Agamemnon _by_John_Collier,_1882 (Wikipedia Guildhall Museum)
Clytemnestra by John Collier,_1882 (Wikipedia Guildhall Museum)

Attitudes

I visit John Collier’s painting of Clytemnestra at the Guildhall, in London, regularly. I am fascinated by her grim, yet satisfied, expression.

In the 18th/19th Century, rich people were into ‘attitudes’.  For example, Emma Hart, later Lady Hamilton, would be invited to present an attitude in front of a dinner party of mostly male aristocrats.  She would dress up in a flowing, revealing unstructured classical gown.  Then she would stand on a table or pedestal, and present herself as Helen or Andromache or any other classical beauty guests might fancy an eyeful of.  She would assume an appropriate facial expression and posture for everyone’s pleasure. 

Detail of Emma Hart modelling as Iphigenia by George Romney in ‘Cimon and Iphigenia’

Being Clytemnestra is, surely, the most difficult? I imagine Collier’s model being prompted to look both sad at the loss of the daughter. Outraged at the arrogance of the husband. Horrified at the gore of the murder. But, overall, she has to portray a grim satisfaction that the bastard got exactly what he deserved.

Dorothy Dene

Lord Leighton had a famous model who was exceptionally skilled at adopting poses for his paintings. He determined to help her with an acting career. As part of the plan he helped improve her cockney accent. It is said this inspired Bernard Shaw’s story Pygmalion, which, in turn, inspired My Fair Lady and Eliza Doolittle. 

Leighton’s model was Dorothy Dene.  She became a famous actress, outstripping the fame of Ellen Terry and Lily Langtry. For more on Leighton and Dene look at my post here.

John Collier

Before we finish, do have a look at John Collier’s Wikipedia because he is the most ridiculously well-connected painter you can imagine! Related to half the Cabinet and married to TWO daughters of Darwin’s Bulldog, T.H. Huxley (grandfather of Aldous Huxley).

For more on Flaming June see my blog post of 12 July 2024

European Twin Gods

It is suggested that twin male gods are a feature of Indo-European religions. The divine Twins are associated with horses/chariots and are responsible for moving the Sun and the Moon. Their use of a horse above the water means that they can rescue people lost at sea.  

St Elmo’s fire was said to be the way they manifested their divinity to sailors.   Diodorus Siculus records that the Twins were Argonauts with Heracles, Telamon, and Orpheus. Further, he tells us, in the fourth book of Bibliotheca historica, that the Celts who dwelt along the ocean worshipped the Dioscuroi “more than the other gods”.

First written in 2023 updated in July 24 and 25

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June & July – Street Parties in London on the Vigils of Feast Days

Image from the Agas Map of London Civitas Londinum is a bird’s-eye view of London first printed from woodblocks in about 1561
Civitas Londinum is a bird’s-eye view of London first printed from woodblocks in about 1561

John Stow tells us that there were bonfires and street parties in London throughout June and July. These were held on the Vigils of Saints’ Feast Days. The Vigil is the evening before a festival. A custom that might owe a little to the Celtic choice of dusk as the beginning of the new day.

Front cover of the Survey of London by John Stow
Front cover of the Survey of London by John Stow

Stow was the author of the ‘Survey of London‘ first published in 1598. Unfortunately, he does not give a list of the vigils thus celebrated. He only mentions those of St John the Baptist and of St Paul and St Peter. For these he gives a very vivid description, which I included in my post on June 24th here.

The other festivals would be for prominent Saints, particularly those with London Churches or Chapels named after them. These might include: St Botolph, St Alban, St James, St Thomas, St Margaret, St Wilgerfortis, St. Mary Magdalen, St Bridget, St James, as well as Saints John, Peter, and Paul. I’m guessing that City wide street parties would be reserved for the most important Saints. But with local celebrations for the Saint on the local Church. I am assuming these celebrations were ended or much reduced after the Reformation.

This is what Stow says of the Vigil celebrations.

‘In the months of June and July, on the vigils of festival days, and on the same festival days in the evenings after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires in the streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them; the wealthier sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfires, would set out tables on the vigils, furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for his benefits bestowed on them. These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst neighbours that being before at controversy, were there, by the labour of others, reconciled, and made of bitter enemies loving friends; and also for the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air. ‘

John Stow is one of the most important sources for Tudor and Medieval London. He was a Londoner, buried in St Andrews Undershaft (see map above), who wrote up all he could glean about London. I use him all the time – for example, on my Wolf Hall Tudor London Walk. Stow’s Survey of London can be accessed online, in full, here: or via the wonderful online Agas Map, from which the map above came from.

First Published 2022 and republished 2025

John Stow, London’s Historian 22nd April
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World’s First ATM Honoured. Digital Heritage June 27th 1967

World’s First ATM. Screenshot from Londonist Web Page

On the 10th April 2023, Heritage England announced on its webpage, that they had listed a Bank which contained the world’s first ATM Machine. On 27th June 1967 Barclays Bank open the first ATM at its Enfield Branch in London. Above, you will see local celebrity, Reg Varney (in hat), a star of a very popular and ‘corny’ sitcom called ‘On the Buses‘ opening the new machine. It miraculously delivered a £10 note without any human intervention, and offered access to money after banking hours.

1967 Ten pound note

Barclay’s had previously launched the UK’s first credit card, and selected Enfield to be the place where they launched an automatic machine to dispense money. They are nicknamed ‘money machines’ in the UK. The customer was issued a ‘punched card’ and had to enter a PIN for the magic to be initiated. Barclays were developing the idea of a magnetic strip on a card at the same time.

Google Street View image of the Enfield Barclays Bank (screenprinted 15/07/23)
Google Street View image of the Enfield Barclays Bank (screenprinted 15/07/23)

The building, which now has a plaque and a gold-painted modern ATM, is Grade II listed and so should be protected from development in future. The building itself is an interesting, almost typical, late Victorian red brick commercial building, with fine details in the Flemish Renaissance style by William Gilbee Scott. Scott lived in Enfield.

I look forward to visiting it on my next visit to Enfield Lock on my narrow boat Mrs Towser.

For more on Digital Heritage see my post and for more on Mrs Towser see my post here

First published in June 2023 and republished in 2024, 2025

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Festival of St John the Baptist June 24th

Two of the biggest feast days in London were held in late June. The Feast Days of St John the Baptist (June 24th) and of St Peter and Paul (29th June) were remarkable in the scale and the expense of the celebrations.

Here is what John Stow tells us about the processions on the night before the feast of St John (24th June) and St Peter and Paul (29th June):

On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on St. Peter and Paul the Apostles, every man’s door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John’s wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like, garnished upon with garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning in them all the night; some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought, containing hundreds of lamps alight at once, which made a goodly show, namely in New Fish street, Thames street, etc.

Then had ye besides the standing watches all in bright harness, in every ward and street of this city and suburbs, a marching watch, that passed through the principal streets thereof, to wit, from the little conduit by Paule’s gate to West Cheape, by the stocks through Cornhill, by Leaden hall to Aldgate, then back down Fenchurch street, by Grasse church, about Grasse church conduit, and up Grasse church street into Cornhill, and through it into West Cheape again.

(Grasse Church Street is Gracechurch Street.)

The whole way for this marching watch extendeth to three thousand two hundred tailor’s yards of assize; for the furniture whereof with lights, there were appointed seven hundred cressets, five hundred of them being found by the companies, the other two hundred by the chamber of London.

(Note a cresset is: a ‘metal container of oil, grease, wood, or coal set alight for illumination and typically mounted on a pole’ (Wikipedia).)

Besides the which lights every constable in London, in number more than two hundred and forty, had his cresset: the charge of every cresset was in light two shillings and four pence, and every cresset had two men, one to bear or hold it, another to bear a bag with light, and to serve it, so that the poor men pertaining to the cressets, taking wages, besides that every one had a straw hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the mornings amounted in number to almost two thousand.

The marching watch contained in number about two thousand men, part of them being old soldiers of skill, to be captains, lieutenants, serjeants, corporals, etc., wiflers, drummers, and fifes, standard and ensign bearers, sword players, trumpeters on horseback, demilances on great horses, gunners with hand guns, or half hakes, archers in coats of white fustian, signed on the breast and back with the arms of the city, their bows bent in their hands, with sheaves of arrows by their sides, pike-men in bright corslets, burganets, etc., halberds, the like bill-men in almaine rivets, and apernes of mail in great number;

There were also divers pageants, morris dancers, constables, the one-half, which was one hundred and twenty, on St. John’s eve, the other half on St. Peter’s eve, in bright harness, some overgilt, and every one a jornet of scarlet thereupon, and a chain of gold, his henchman following him, his minstrels before him, and his cresset light passing by him, the waits of the city, the mayor’s officers for his guard before him, all in a livery of worsted, or say jackets party-coloured, the mayor himself well mounted on horseback, the swordbearer before him in fair armour well mounted also, the mayor’s footmen, and the like torch bearers about him, henchmen twain upon great stirring horses, following him.

The sheriffs’ watches came one after the other in like order, but not so large in number as the mayor’s; for where the mayor had besides his giant three pageants, each of the sheriffs had besides their giants but two pageants, each their morris dance, and one henchman, their officers in jackets of worsted or say, party-coloured, differing from the mayor’s, and each from other, but having harnessed men a great many, etc

John Stow, author of the ‘Survey of London‘ first published in 1598. Available at the wonderful Project Gutenberg: ‘https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42959/42959-h/42959-h.htm’

Pagan Rituals

There are also pagan rituals associated with the Feast of St John. Here is an example of French pagan solstice fires:

“They were lit at the crossroads in the fields to prevent witches and sorceresses from passing through during the night; herbs gathered on Saint John’s Day were sometimes burned to ward off lightning, thunder and storms, and it was thought that these fumigations would ward off demons and tumults.”

For more information, have a look at ‘French Moments’ here:

Summer Solstice?

The Feast of St John is often described as being on the Summer Solstice, it isn’t by modern reckoning, but nor is December 25th the Winter Solstice. But they were celebrated as such by Christians, and the Solstice can be thought of as spread over 3 or 4 days (or more if taking into account Solstice Old style). The major events of the sun and the moon were linked into Christian theology and symbolism. Jesus, son of God, would clearly have arrived at the auspicious time of the Winter Solstice. His cousin, John the Baptist, came to tell the world about the coming of Jesus and so his birthday was exactly 6 months before the Winter Solstice.

St John is also special as most Saint’s Days are linked to the day of their death, but June 24th is the birthday of St John. His beheading by Herod is commemorated on 29th August.

St John Walbrook

St John the Baptist upon Walbrook in the City of London is first mentioned in the 12th Century, burnt down and not rebuilt after the Great Fire of London. The parish was, later, united with St Antholin, Budge Row, The Graveyard survived until 1884 when the District Line destroyed most of the Graveyard and the bones were reinterred below a monument, which can still be seen in Cloak Lane.

A Day Off for Anglo Saxon Freemen

In the Laws of King Alfred the Great, this day was a day off for freemen.  I will be writing about Days off in the Anglo Saxon Calender on August 15th.

First published June 2023 republished in 2024, and reorganised in 2025

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Brexit Day & Sins of a Tour Guide June 23rd

Brexit Day, image from Wikipedia

Today, is Brexit Day, the 9th Anniversary of that terrible day when the Brexit Referendum was lost. Brexit was a terrible term but sadly stronger than the very weak, ‘remain’.  Ok you might say to your partner ‘Let’s give it another go.’  ‘Are you committed to the relationship?’ they ask.   You say.  ‘Yes, I am prepared to remain’. ‘All you can say is you want to remain!? Huh! Where’s the passion?’. But then the devil always had the best tunes.

Here is a survey of opinions about Brexit.  To sum it up, we regret it, although we think now is not the time to reopen the wounds. But it is the time to rebuild relationships with Europe.  In 10 years or so people believe we should rejoin.

We agree it was a disaster, and we blame the Conservatives and Boris Johnson most strongly, but also Teresa May. Rishi Sunak and Nigel Farage.

I posted on the other anniversary Brexit Anniversary in January here. Please be aware it features swear words, Boris Johnson and Farage.

Sins of a Tour Guide

St Pauls from the Whispering Gallery, Photo by K Flude.

I was in St Pauls yesterday (I wrote this on 23rd June 2022) on an exploration of London’s History. My group had headsets so they can hear me talking into my mic without disturbing others. We went in, sat down in the nave to find an orchestra set up in the crossing. They were rehearsing with a grey haired man, informally dressed, at the podium. I hate talking through music, so wondered whether I would continue.

I began my introduction to St Pauls with a piece about Londinium and Christianity. A tremendous universe – shattering cord erupted from the Orchestra , deafening me. Then a pause, so I continued. I ascertained that my group could hear me, and I continued. I paused during crescendos and to some extent improvised what I was saying to the amazing drama of the atonal music. It was quite an experience and the music was amazing.

This morning I had a chance to check it out and it turns out that I spoke through rehearsals of Olivier Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU7gVYM5bVE)

And the grey-haired man was none other than Sir Simon Rattle conducting the LSO.

I think I have the right piece of music.

I’m slightly shamefaced about it but on the other hand the group really enjoyed both the music and the explanation.

First written in 2022 and revised in 2025

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Death of Luca Pacioli the Father of Double Entry Bookkeeping June 19th 1517

Luca Pacioli, father of double entry book keeping.

Luca Pacioli was a mathematician, whose mathematical text book had a section on Venetian book-keeping.  It was published in 1494 although double entry booking keeping was probably being used earlier.  The accountancy is a 27-page section called “Particularis de computis et scriptus.  It is part of the compendious ‘Summa de Arithmetica, Geometrica, Portiona et Proportionali’.

It is the source of modern double entry accounting, which spread from Venice as it was the printing capital of Southern Europe.

The key discovery, reported by Luca Pacioli, was that every transaction had to have an entry in both a debit and credit account.  So if I lend you £10,000 then my account is debited by 10k and yours is credited by the same amount.  Fra Luca (he was a Franciscan Friar) would have it that the accountant could not go to bed until the ledgers balanced. That is, that all the credits and balances in all the ledgers balance.

Double entry bookkeeping has prevented numberless frauds, kept many businesses on the straight and narrow. But it is of course not proof against sophisticated fraud.

Assyrian Double Entry booking keeping?

The gypsum stone reliefs shown below on display in the British Museum show clerks recording booty plundered in the Assyrians’ wars.  The soldiers are bringing goods in to be counted.  In the first picture, the goods are severed skulls.  In the second are a wide range of booty.

In every scene like this, there are two scribes writing notes on clay tablets with styli.  They stand side by side.  I presume their role is to make sure the other man doesn’t cheat, rather than to facilitate double entry book keeping as such.  Assyrians paid their soldiers for each enemy soldier they killed, and the head was the proof. You will see a little pile of severed heads between the soldier and the scribes.

Assyrian scribes recording severed heads.. British Museum. Photo Kevin Flude

Assyrian scribes recording war booty. British Museum.  Photo Kevin Flude

Italians, Accountancy and London.

The earliest work on double entry in England was by Oldcastle in 1543.  There were a lot of Italian businessmen in Tudor London. Thomas Cromwell was friends, and indeed neighbours, with some. As a young man he was helped out by the head of one of the great Florentine Finance houses, Frescobaldi.  They had branches in Bruges and London, and were major financiers to the Kings of England. Thomas More lived among the colony of Merchants from Lucca. The business centre of London before the building of the Royal Exchange was in Lombard St, where the Lombardian bankers hung out. 

More on the British Museum in my post here

First Published on June 19th 2025

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Smithfield & the Peasants’ Revolt June 15th 1381

Smithfield & the Peasants’ Revolt. illustration from ‘Chroniques de France et d’Angleterre’, by Jean Froissart, c.1460-80. Walworth is showing killing Wat Tyler, King Richard is shown twice, first watching the death of Tyler, and secondly taking control of the Rebels

On the 15th June, King Richard went to pray at Westminster Abbey before the climax of Smithfield & the Peasants’ Revolt.  He prayed at the shrine of St Edward the Confessor. A King who knew all about the sins Kings are forced to commit to rule an unruly Kingdom and could intercede on the King’s behalf in Heaven

The Peasants’ met at Smithfield, or maybe they had camped out there overnight.  It was a big field where the livestock market was held.  And where people were executed.  Most famously Scottish patriot, William Wallace, who was hanged, drawn and quartered here on 23 August 1305.  It was also used for jousting, and one of the streets off Smithfield is called GiltSpur Street.

The King, Smithfield and the Peasants’ Revolt

The King had agreed to meet the Peasants again.  We don’t know how that was organised.  The King turned up supported by a group of men who included members of the City of London Corporation including the Lord Mayor, Fishmonger, William Walworth.  They seem to have worn armour under their clothes.  The King’s Party lined up in front of St Bartholomew’s the Great Priory.

The rebels were on the other side of the field, presumably armed with the weapons and armour they had plundered from the Tower of  London.  It is not clear exactly what happened, and the sources are prejudiced against the rebels.

The Rebels demands were: the abolition of all Lords except the King; all bishops except the Archbishop; all monasteries except the Friaries and the  replacement of the false House  of Commons, with the True House of Commons.

Wat Tyler rode towards the King’s party. Got off his pony, spat out the wine he had been drinking, and ‘Hailed, Brother’ slapping the King on the shoulder.  This was not normal court etiquette.

One of the King’s party shouted at Tyler that he was a thief and a murderer.  Tyler drew his sword, and William Walworth struck him down, mortally wounding him. 

Commentators speculate that this might have been part of a plan.  To arrive seemingly without armour, to provoke a crisis, and disrupt the rebels.

The City’s part in the events in Smithfield is fascinating.  City Merchants were not generally fighting men, but they seem to be the active group the King could rely on.  Interestingly, there is no evidence that the Rebels attacked the Guildhall and destroyed the legal records. They attacked most important legal institutions in London, in the days before Smithfield. So why no attack  on the Guildhall?

This surely must be because the Guildhall was protected by a competent military force. And it seems these are the same people who took on and defeated Wat Tyler.

In Smithfield, the Rebels didn’t know what to do.  Is  it possible the King’s party shielded the murder of Tyler behind a screen of people?  So they didn’t know what happened and therefore didn’t know what to do?

For surely this was a  moment of true danger.  The Rebels would have had hundreds if not thousands in Smithfield, some at least well armed. Some must have been archers who would have been deadly.  This is not that long after the Battles of Crecy and Poitiers, where the flower of the French Nobility was killed by the English Archers.  Archers were normally rank and file soldiers, exactly the class of people supporting the Rebellion. Tyler was taken to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he died of his wounds.

In the moment of crisis, the King is said to have ridden forward on his horse and told the Rebels:

‘I will be your leader.’

And then he led them, like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, to their destruction.

He led them out of Smithfield into the field surrounding and told them they had their Charters so it was time to go home.  And mostly they did.

To be continued.

To read my post mile-end-the-peasants-revolt-june-14th-1381/

Also on this day June 15th Magna Carta was signed in 1215

First Published on 15th June 2025

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Mile End & the Peasants’ Revolt, June 14th 1381

The Execution of Treasurer Robert Hales and Chancellor Archbishop Sudbury on the Day the King met the Peasants at Mile End

To recap.  On June 14th the 1381 Rebels have control of London.  They are destroying any repository of legal records they can find. People are walking the streets dispensing street justice.  Foreigners who speak Flemish are being beheaded.  Enemies of the people are being dragged out of sanctuary and beheaded.  Properties of the leaders of the government are being ransacked and burnt.

The King is in the Tower with his advisors, fearful that the Rebels will breach the defences.  I would love to be a fly on the wall of that conversation. You would think it would go something like.

‘Sire.  Your safety is paramount.  We will leave the castle and draw off the rebels so you can go to a place of greater safety.’

What happened is astonishing.  The Royal plan was to send the 14-year-old King Richard out to draw off the rebels so that the hated Chancellor of England, Archbishop Sudbury and the Treasurer of England, Robert Hales could slip away unseen! Putting the young boy king in the direct line of fire!

There are two explanations. Hales and Sudbury were arrant cowards. Or the King was very confident of his safety and despite his youth made his advisors accept his command.  This was an age where young princes took adult responsibilities early.

The King left the Tower on horse back, accompanied by two half-brothers and his mother (and others). Their reception was hostile. We have eyewitness accounts of angry rebels pulling at the King’s bridle and that of one of his attendants from the City government. The King sent his mum and brothers back to the Tower as it was too dangerous. We can only assume the King sent them back sure that the peasants did not blame him for the mess the country was in.

He went to Mile End.  His clerks set up tables and began writing charters freeing the peasants from feudal duties and turning their tenure into monetary rents.

As each village received its charter, many of the villagers went home.  Back at home they sometimes attacked the people who had been manipulating the legal system, believing the King had given them permission to punish the guilty.

Whether the king believed in the justness of their claim or was just placating them to gain time, we do not know. But some historians believe that the young King was sympathetic to some of their claims, until older counsel made him change his mind.

Not all the rebels followed the King to Mile End, nor went home when their charters were sealed.  It is thought Wat Tyler and thousands of rebels stayed at the Tower.

They saw the Archbishop of Canterbury trying to escape.  They forced their way into the Tower.  Here they jumped up and down on the Queen Mother’s bed, stole armour and weapons.  Then dragged Hales, Sudbury, a Franciscan Friar (William Appleton, John of Gaunt’s physician), and John Legge, a royal sergeant to the scaffold at Tower Hill and beheaded them.  Their heads were put on poles and paraded around town.

When the King left Mile End he couldn’t go to the Tower so he went to Baynards Castle, near Blackfriars. We also know that, the King’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke was in the Tower.  He was the son of the hated John of Gaunt.  Years later, when he was King, he acknowledged the fact that a Londoner had been instrumental in saving his life in the Tower on the 14th of June, 1381. The man was fighting charges of stealing gold from the ransacking of Gaunt’s Savoy Palace.  He was given a pardon.

That night rebels remained in London, and the king’s cause had been considerably weakened.

To be continued. See also my post peasants-revolt-june-13th-1381/

First published in 2025.

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Whitsun

Pentecost by Giotto and Workshop, probably about 1310-18, National Gallery

Today, June 8th, is Whitsun or Pentecost.  50 days after the Crucifixion. Celebrated on the 7th Sunday after Easter. The Day the Holy Ghost descends on the disciples.  According to one of my teachers, it gave the disciples the power of expression and turned them from bereft disciples to self-confident Apostles.   They could now begin to spread the Christian message.

Giotto’s painting shows the Apostles with their halos in the chamber. There are 12 of them, St Matthias having replaced the dead, Judas. The Holy Spirit is represented by the little dove in the centre of the Ceiling. The narrative is carried by the two men in the foreground leaning towards each other. We imagine them saying something like ‘What’s all this about! Galilean nonentities, lost their guru and yet, confident, speaking authoritatively to all and sundry and they can all understand them?‘

Giotto was a forerunner of the Renaissance. According to the great Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) who wrote about the advances in painting achieved by Italian artists:

‘that very obligation which the craftsmen of painting owe to nature, who serves continually
as model to those who are ever wresting the good from her best and most beautiful features and striving to counterfeit and to imitate her, should be owed, in my belief, to Giotto, painter of Florence, for the reason that, after the methods of good paintings and their outlines had lain buried for so many years under the ruins of the wars, he alone, although born among inept craftsmen, by the gift of God revived that art, which had come to a grievous pass, and brought it to such a form as could be called good.‘

The miracle was that this boy, a poor shepherd with no training in art was able to show nature its true face.

‘One day [the artist] Cimabue, going on business from Florence to Vespignano, found Giotto, while his sheep were feeding, drawing a sheep from nature upon a smooth and solid rock with a pointed stone, having never learnt from anyone but nature.’

One of the points Vasari is making is that the Byzantine Art had lost the use of perspective, something the Romans knew. Paintings had become cartoon like spaces had no solidarity, groups of people stood on shoulders. If you look at the painting above you will the room the Apostles are in has the beginnings of a realistic space, the rafters slope down to a vanishing point. The Apostles are ranged convincingly around the space. Their faces are rounded and realistic. They are separated from the outside world by a dividing wall. And two dudes at the front are convincingly on the ground, rather than hovering in mid air (though I might have cropped the photo too closely!)

It would be over one hundred years before photo realistic portraits and realistic perspective paintings were rediscovered but Giotto showed the way.

For more on Giotto see my post here:

And on Italian art and perspective my post here

First published on June 8th 2025

Posted on

Beheading of Anne Boleyn May 19th 1536

Old Print showing the beheading of Anne Boleyn

The beheading of Anne Boleyn began at 8am with her speech.

‘Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it.

I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the King and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord.

And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.’

She was blindfolded. She knelt down, putting her neck on the block and repeated:

‘To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul.’

Recorded by Edward Hall (spelling modernized)

https://www.hevercastle.co.uk/news/19th-may-anniversary-of-anne-boleyns-execution

Here is a slightly annoyingly American youtube feature recreating what Anne Boleyn might have looked like.

To hear about Queen Elizabeth I’s nicknames for her chief advisers, read my post here.

Published in 2024, and revised in 2025.