Text this colour is a link for Members only. Support us by becoming a Member for only £3 a month by joining our 'Buy Me A Coffee page'; Membership gives you access to all content and removes ads.

Text this colour links to Pages. Text this colour links to Family Trees. Place the mouse over images to see a larger image. Click on paintings to see the painter's Biography Page. Mouse over links for a preview. Move the mouse off the painting or link to close the popup.



All About History Books

The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke. Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson. Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.

Chronicle of Thomas Wikes

Chronicle of Thomas Wikes is in Late Medieval Books.

Death of Eleanor of Castile

On the 4th before the Kalends of December [28th November 1290], Eleanor (age 49), Queen, wife of King Edward, after suffering from a mild fever, wasting away from the heat, and freed from her prison, paid the fatal debt of death. Her body was carried in stages and buried in London in Westminster Abbey, with the Bishop of Lincoln, on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury, conducting the burial rites on the Sunday before the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, that is, on the 16th of December. Indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to attend the funeral rites because, due to a certain dispute between him and the Abbot of the place, he had placed the latter under interdict. Also, another noteworthy event, not to be passed over in silence but rather to be perpetually remembered, occurred this year.

Quarto Kal. Decembris Alianora Regina Domini Regis Edwardi conjux apud Grantham modicæ febris igniculo contabescens, carcere resoluta, fatale mortis debitum solvit; corpus ejus per dietas delatum sepultum est London in Ecclesia Westmonsteriensi, Domino Lincoln vice Domini Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis exequente officium sepulturæ, Dominica proxima ante festum Sancti Thomæ Apostoli, viz. xvi. Kal. Januarii: quippe Dominus Cantuariensis noluit ipsis exequiis interesse, quia in quadam contentione inter ipsum & Abbatem loci supposuerat interdicto. Aliud quoque plerunque notabile non sub silentio prætereundum, sed potius perpetuæ commemorandum memoriæ contigit hoc anno.