- This topic has 90 replies, 19 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 7 months ago by
.
- Posts
John Of Gaunt also delivers the most wonderful speech in Shakespeare’s Richard II:
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!“Thanks for the book recommendation and the speech – whose ending is eerily appropriate in this day and age. I am waiting for Admin to reply to my message about moving some of this into a separate Old Race Names thread in the hope that I can ask Forumites to chip in and we can all expand our knowledge/wallow in nostalgia.
We could all talk about the Archers !
I certainly enjoyed the Shakespeare!
More oldees
A fabulous speech indeed. A splendid rendition of it was given by Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame in a fairly recent BBC adaption of the play
My favourite period of history too, so thanks for drawing my attention to ‘The Red Prince’. I’ll probably buy it as I’ve read a biography of Kathryn Swynford (John of Gaunt’s third wife) by Alison Weir and that was good
It was JoG’s younger brother, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York who adopted the White Rose of York as his heraldic emblem and hence the infamous ‘Wars of the Roses’ engaged in between their descendants
There’s a Duke of York Stakes at York, which really should be renamed the Edmund of Langley Stakes in deference to the aforementioned John of Gaunt Stakes at Haydock, particularly now that the current Duke of York is persona non grata. Off with his head!
Why there’s a White Rose Stakes at Ascot, I don’t know
“We could all talk about the Archers!”
Especially as June Spencer has just announced she is going to retire from playing Peggy Woolley.
At the age of 103!!
John of Gaunt married his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, in Reading Abbey.
This was one of the greatest buildings in Europe but fell into disrepair after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is now just a sparse collection of ruins. I expect a lot of residents of Reading and visitors to the town are unaware of it – I certainly did not know when I attended a series of training courses in Reading about 20 years ago.
Henry I was buried in the Abbey but his tomb was lost in the Dissolution. I had heard that the team who discovered the resting place of Richard III were interested in searching for Henry’s remains but I do not know if this progressed any further.
It would be good if it did. As Charles Spencer wrote at the conclusion to his excellent book about Henry, “The White Ship”:
“To think that…one of the great monarchs of British history most likely rests for eternity under a school building in Reading, rather than in the monumental pomp that he planned, is as sad as it is wrong.”
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.