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manhefnawi

Charles II's Great Escape | History Today - 1 views

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Charles II's Escape

shared by manhefnawi on 09 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • the heir to the throne fighting alongside his father during the early years of a brutal civil war that tore the nation apart
  • Charles’ chief protector Lord Wilmot
  • the Penderel family, who risked their lives when the penalty for concealing the king was death
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • the king could not have evaded the parliamentarians without the help of numerous ordinary men and women
  • fervour of regicides
  • It was often in the priest holes of their country houses that Charles sought sanctuary as he moved around England
  • No study of the life of Charles would be complete without an account of his time concealed within the branches of the Boscobel oak tree with Major William Careless
  • an episode in British history that deserves to be better known
manhefnawi

Bothwell: The Last Exile | History Today - 0 views

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Britain Europe Political Elizabeth I Mary Scotland Bothwell

shared by manhefnawi on 22 May 18 - No Cached
  • James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell and third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, fades out of history after their confrontation with the Scottish rebels at Carberry Hill.
  • So long as she was alive, whether at liberty or in close custody, she was a political force of great danger to Elizabeth
  • The Catholics supported Mary; the Protestants were mostly against her.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • In 1564 the Spanish Ambassador in London, de Silva, reported to Philip II that ‘the leading men in Scotland’ had been bought by Elizabeth for eight thousand crowns
  • Two years later, when the English raided the Border town of Langton, the authorities in Edinburgh begged the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, to appoint a nobleman ‘to have the cure and charge’ of the city, asking as their first preference for Bothwell.
  • The rebels sent a punitive expedition, led by Moray, in search of him, and Bothwell, in hiding nearby, had to watch while they sacked his castle at Crichton. The enmity lasted for the rest of his life, and ended by destroying both him and Mary
  • Bothwell now set out to see Mary in France, and took Anna with him as far as Flanders
  • In 1563 Anna, too, went to Scotland, using a passport from Mary which allowed her to live there and to enter and leave the country at will
  • Without trial, Bothwell was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle; but, knowing that he was likely to be murdered, he twisted back the bars of his cell window, climbed down the precipitous Castle Rock in darkness, made his way to the coast and set sail for France
  • He was, in fact, given six hundred crowns and the salary of a gentleman of the King’s chamber
  • Bothwell was recalled by the Queen’s pardon and urgent summons, for her marriage the month before to the treacherous Darnley threatened to spark off civil war with the Protestants, led by Moray and once again financed by the English
  • There followed a series of intrigues by Darnley, which he was too indiscreet to conceal, against a number of the rebels, including Moray
  • Bothwell dealt with both difficulties with his customary decision. In April, two months after Darnley’s murder, he assembled a force of 800 men a few miles west of Edinburgh and abducted Mary as she returned from a visit to her ten-month-old son at Stirling. Mary offered no resistance, and it was widely believed that Bothwell compelled her acquiescence in the marriage by rape; but Mary herself, in a letter to the Bishop of Dunblane, said that it was the best course she could take
  • There can be little doubt that they were determined to arrest Bothwell and execute him. Mary rejected their demand with indignation, and the two armies, which together numbered perhaps 8,000 men, faced each other for the rest of the day, each uncertain how to proceed
  • Bothwell sent a man aboard the Bjorn to explain that they were Scottish gentlemen who wished to serve the Danish king, Frederick II, in his prolonged war against Sweden, and that the only authority in Scotland who could provide papers was in prison.
  • It was now essential for Bothwell to conceal the fact that he was a fugitive and an outlaw. Asked for his passport, he blustered, and asked contemptuously who could give him one, since he was himself the highest authority in Scotland and the husband of the Queen; and he was inconsistent about the purpose of his voyage: sometimes he wanted to go to Denmark, sometimes to Holland, sometimes to France.
  • It happened that Rosenkrands was a kinsman of Anna Throndsen, and that she was living not far away, being known as ‘the Scottish lady’ on account of her stay in Scotland
  • Bothwell was unable to extricate himself in face of such evidence, and could do no more than offer her a pension of £100 a year from Scotland and the smaller of his two ships. Anna accepted, not knowing that his property in Scotland had been confiscated when he was declared an outlaw and that the ship was not his to give
  • By now Bothwell’s detention was known in Scotland, having been reported by the merchants in Bergen; and Moray, who had established himself as Regent for James VI sought his extradition on a charge of regicide - the beginning of his protracted efforts to put Bothwell out of the way for ever
  • he was able to reply to Frederick with truth that he had been acquitted of the charge by a Scottish court, that the acquittal had been confirmed by the Scottish Parliament, that Mary was a prisoner, and that his accusers were guilty of treason
  • Frederick now came under pressure from another quarter. In December 1567 the Scottish Parliament formally condemned Bothwell to forfeiture of ‘nobility, honours, life and possessions’, and Moray sought the help of Elizabeth and of Charles IX in Paris in obtaining his extradition
  • When Frederick declined this gambit, Moray sent a further request, this time in the name of the infant King James, that Clerk should be allowed to execute Bothwell in Denmark and take his head back to Scotland for public exhibition ‘in the place where his crime was committed’; for there was, he said, ‘a great clamour’ in Scotland against Bothwell
  • Most declined to offer advice, pointing out with irony that Frederick and his Council were well equipped to take their own decisions; a few suggested, as Frederick himself had done the year before, that Bothwell should be tried in Denmark; and others counselled him to temporize without offending either England or Scotland
  • On condition that his surrender of Bothwell would never be held against him, that Elizabeth and Lennox would reciprocate if the need should ever arise, and that Bothwell would receive a fair trial, Frederick half-agreed to the extradition; but Charles IX, alerted by Dangay, his Ambassador in Copenhagen, and by his Minister in London, ordered Dangay to take decisive action to prevent it
  • For Bothwell it would have been better had Charles not intervened, for Frederick’s attitude towards him soon changed abruptly. It has been suggested that the Massacre of St Bartholomew diminished sympathy for the Catholic Mary and hence Frederick’s sympathy for her consort.
  • More probably it had become clear that since Mary was now in the hands of the English and her faction in Scotland had been largely destroyed by Morton, who succeeded to the Regency on the murder of Lennox, Bothwell had ceased to have any value for Frederick in his complex political manoeuvres
  • The Danes treated him with greater consideration in death, and gave him a modest burial in a nearby village
manhefnawi

A Monarch and his Mignons: Henry III's Court | History Today - 0 views

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Henry Mignons Poland Death Court

shared by manhefnawi on 16 May 18 - No Cached
  • France was then sharply divided by religion. Thousands of Protestants, or Huguenots, had been massacred in Paris and other cities in 1572, but they remained strong in the south and west, while Paris was fiercely Catholic. Though a Catholic himself, Henry III lacked the means to take on the Huguenots in an all-out war.
  • accused the mignons of destroying Henry III’s virility
  • Monarchs were used to distributing special favours to certain members of their entourage in return for their loyalty and services. The first French king to do so was Philip III, ‘the Bold’ (1270-85). A long line of favourites can be traced through the succeeding reigns until that of Louis XIV, who had none. Henry III seems to have had more than any other French king. They can be divided into two groups: the first, formed in the 1570s, comprised some 20 young men, roughly of the same age as Henry. They belonged to families of the provincial nobility (or noblesse seconde), which had served the crown for generations. The second group was formed in the 1580s. It consisted of only two men, Anne de Joyeuse, baron d’Arques and Jean-Louis de La Valette. They became far more powerful than their predecessors and were known as the archimignons
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • It was during the reign of Charles IX (1559-74), while Henry was still duc d’Anjou
  • Anjou’s election to the Polish throne, which gave him a credible excuse for lifting the siege, also provided his companions with another opportunity of gaining his friendship
  • This called for considerable courage, for Poland was a distant country full of unknown dangers. Duly grateful to his companions, Henry rewarded them following his accession to the French throne in 1574
  • The mignons were rewarded with posts of secondary importance, close to the king’s person but not crucial to the realm’s administration
  • Unlike his predecessors, he was a private man, who disliked crowds and believed that his authority would be enhanced by distancing himself from the general mass of courtiers
  • The nature of Henry’s relations with his mignons has aroused much speculation
  • nothing could appease the Parisians, who soon rebelled. As they erected barricades, he fled from the capital, never to return. He sealed his fate by ordering the assassination of the duc de Guise, who had become their hero
  • In the summer of 1587 the religious wars entered a new phase as German troops invaded western France. The king decided to deploy three armies. He sent Joyeuse at the head of his best troops to fight Henry of Navarre in Guyenne, the duc de Guise with inadequate troops to harass the Germans
  • He hoped to destroy both Guise and Navarre, but fate dictated otherwise
  • If I could have made him my son I would have done so, but I am making him my brother … I love him so much that I cannot love myself more
  • Hatred of the king was fuelled by an avalanche of pamphlets: 237 were printed in Paris in the first six months of 1589
  • Henry, meanwhile, allied with the Huguenot leader, Henry of Navarre. Jointly, they laid siege to Paris.
  • On August 1st, 1589 a Jacobin friar, Jacques Clément, who had claimed to be the bearer of an important message for the king, was admitted to his presence, even though Henry was sitting on his close-stool
  • The king ordered his attendants to withdraw as the friar drew closer to whisper in his ear. As he did so, he drew a knife from his sleeve and plunged it into the king’s abdomen. Henry died a few days later
  • Ten years later, he was sitting next to Henry IV in his carriage when he, too, was assassinated. Two regicides in one lifetime must be a record, even for an archimignon
manhefnawi

The Ottoman Empire: Succession, Deposition and Fratricide | History Today - 0 views

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Ottoman Empire

shared by manhefnawi on 28 May 18 - No Cached
  • As with any ruling dynasty, the requirement that the reigning sultan produce an heir was central to succession
  • judicial royal fratricide became an accepted method of securing the Ottoman throne until its abolition in the 17th century by Ahmed I
  • The eventual abolition of fratricide came about following widespread public disapproval over the accession of Mehmed III to the throne
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Ahmed I did go on to produce sons, but, at his death in 1617, his eldest was only 13 years old. This prompted the imperial council to allow Mustafa, then aged 25, to ascend the throne as Mustafa I, although he would be deposed and re-enthroned several times throughout his life
  • a key turning point in the power structures of the Ottoman Empire
  • The introduction of the ‘cage’ and the survival of a number of other viable candidates for the throne meant the sultan faced a greater danger of depositions and coups by interested individuals or parties seeking to wield power.
  • That Osman II announced his intention to undertake the pilgrimage immediately after returning to Istanbul from Edirne provoked fears that he might become an absentee monarch, who might be seeking to return the capital to its original site – Edirne
  • It is a truth universally acknowledged that royal depositions must, sooner or later, be in want of a regicide. The first in the history of the Ottoman Empire occurred on Friday 20 May 1622, with the death of Osman II, son of Ahmed I. Known as Osman the Young, he had ascended the throne in 1618 at the age of 14, following the coup that deposed Mustafa I, his uncle, for the first time. In 1622, aged 17, he had still not succeeded in legitimising himself as a conqueror of territory and so sought to cultivate the role of a pious sultan instead
  • The dynasty continued with variable succession methods until the end of the sultanate, with Mehmed VI, who ruled from 1918 until 1922. Following the official declaration and recognition of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Mehmed VI went into exile
  • the title of Head of the House of Osman is still passed down and used today
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