As the days grow shorter and the nights become longer, our School Trip Fridays sometimes have to be done in the comfort of our home in front of a roaring log fire.  Even though we can’t get out and head for the hills, the computer is still switched off and our own unique style of learning about our country’s great heritage continues.

As an amateur historian, I am a firm advocate of our English heritage.  However, to understand our rich past, I feel that we have to have ‘pegs’ on which we can hang our historical information. For example, if you are looking at a grand half-timbered English building, how can you say ‘this is a beautiful Tudor building’ when you don’t know roughly what period ‘Tudor’ is!  Is Tudor before or after Georgian?  Is Regency 100 years ago or 500 years ago? Where do Victorians’ ‘Morals and Values’ come into all of this?…  Without realising it, we unconsciously use language about our rich past in our daily live. So what better ‘pegs’ are there then the long timeline of English/British monarchs!

However, because of my child’s complex educational needs, it is pointless me ‘teaching’ kings and queens in a traditional (or should I say, old-fashioned!) way.  I can’t quote facts and figures to him, and expect them to be regurgitated back to me parrot style.  For one, his poor memory means he won’t be able to do that with any level of success and for another, what’s the point in him learning meaningless information that has no relevance to him!  Our learning has to be hands-on, interactive and participative for both him and me.

And for a small child who loves collecting Top Trump cards, football cards and what-ever cards the local newsagent currently has in stock, what can be more interactive and hands-on then looking at the beautifully drawn and illustrated postcards and cigarette cards of a hundred years ago.  Our great-grandparents’ equivalent of pre-computer multi-media and Top Trumps game-cards!

So last week’s School Trip Friday was spent looking at images of the kings of England between 1066 and 1485 from the exquisitely illustrated set of postcards made by Tuck in 1902 and the handsome 1935 cigarette cards from Players.  What can be more beguiling and magnetic to a small child who can barely read and write then such fine pictures! (Sadly, our only medieval Empress/Queen Matilda was not acknowledged in either set.)

Raphael Tuck’s Kings and Queens of England postcards (1902) – Normans to Plantagenets

Player’s Kings and Queens of England cigarette cards (1935) – Normans to Plantagenets

History is all about the telling of stories from our past, and the picture below shows all the characters from one of the more murkier tales from English history.  By using these 5 cards, I was able to retell to my child the story of intrigue, treachery, treason and murder – and the last English king to die in battle.  And then bring that narrative right up to date with this summer’s remarkable discovery in a car park in Leicester.   But who was the villain of this story – the first of the Tudors, or the last of the Plantagenets?  Henry or Richard?  I know what we decided… How about you?

I asked my child who was his favourite king from all of the cards of Norman and Plantagenet kings.  My academically challenged child replied ‘whoever invented the longbow’.  Whilst he didn’t invent the longbow, this naturally brought us on to Henry V and Agincourt and watching the battle scenes from the BBC’s recent wonderful production of Shakespeare’s Henry V.  Very naughtily, I also told my child about the legend of the longbow archers and how it came about that the English always stick two-fingers up to their enemies.  History doesn’t have to be dry and dusty, our children can be taught the naughtier bits too – even if it might not be entirely true and more myth then fact!

Is my child academically challenged or a child whose school-teachers totally failed to engage him with traditional teaching methods?

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings.”

The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford

History is full of what-ifs. What if Hitler had been killed in the First World War? What if the weather had been in Spain’s favour when their armada sailed towards England? What-if, what if?

For Tudor England, one of the biggest what-ifs, is… What if Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York, had not died at Ludlow Castle in 1502? Arthur, so named after that most legendary of English kings, and named to herald in a new golden age of anointed Tudor kings. Arthur, that poor half-forgotten boy-husband of early 16th century politics. His marriage and untimely death in 1502 indirectly leading to his younger brother’s break with Catholic Rome and aiding the fuel in the fire of the English Reformation.

On 14 November 1501, Arthur, Prince of Wales and heir to the English throne, married Catherine of Aragon at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Less than five months later, Arthur was dead having (allegedly) never consummated his marriage to Catherine. In 1509, the newly crowned King Henry VIII, married his brother’s widow and thus cast the seeds of England’s quarrel with the Pope. In the eyes of God, could a man marry his brother’s widow? This was the essence of Henry VIII’s Great Matter – which only troubled his conscience years after his marriage, after he had cast his eyes on the comely Anne Boleyn.

What if Arthur had survived and, with Catherine of Aragon, fathered his own Tudor dynasty?

Arthur, Prince of Wales in c1501; and the young widow, Catharine of Aragon c1502 (by Michael Sittow).

The images below are from the Book of Hours (i.e. prayer book) of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII and grandmother of Arthur and his brother, Henry VIII. Each page has additional text inserted relating to Prince Arthur.

Calendar page for April with Prince Arthur’s obit (prayers for the dead) added after his death, from Book of Hours (The ‘Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours’) (South East England, after 1401, before 1415) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f29v, © British Library Board.

Calendar page for September with additions of the dates of Prince Arthur’s birth and Catherine’s of Aragon 1501 journey to England, from Book of Hours (The ‘Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours’) (South East England, after 1401, before 1415) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f32, © British Library Board.
Calendar page for November with the addition of the date of the marriage of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, from Book of Hours (The ‘Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours’) (South East England, after 1401, before 1415) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f33, © British Library Board.

On the 2nd June 1953, our Queen, Elizabeth II, was crowned with great solemnity and ceremony in Westminster Abbey whilst seated in the ancient Coronation Chair (King Edward’s Chair). Today’s post celebrates and marks her reign by publishing images connected to the coronations of Elizabeth II’s Tudor predecessors.

Coronation Chair, with and without the Stone of Scone (The Stone of Destiny)

Henry VII (born 28 January 1457, died 21 April 1509)

Postcard of the Burial chapel of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Westminster Abbey. Henry was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 30 October 1485.

Henry VIII (born 28 June 1491, died 28 January 1547)

Coronation Oath of Henry VIII with his own annotations (crowned 24 June 1509), shelfmark Cotton Ms. Tiberius D viii, f.89, © British Library Board. (For more information on his changes, see the British Library’s explanation.  Was Henry anticipating his break with Rome?)

Edward VI (born 12 October 1537, died 6 July 1553)

Coronation procession of Edward VI along Cheapside, London. Edward’s coronation was on 20 February 1547.

Mary I (born 18 February 1516, died 17 November 1558)

Crowned 1 October 1553.

Elizabeth I (born 7 September 1533, died 24 March 1603)

 Coronation procession of Elizabeth. Her coronation took place on 15 January 1559.

Finally…
Not a coronation image but an image of the Queen at Epsom Races in 1974.  This weekend’s Jubilee Celebrations begin in Epsom as she watches the Derby.

Picture  © British Library Board.  This image is personal to me as I was born in Epsom and spent my first 12 years living in the town. The Queen visiting the races was very much a part of my childhood. Not least, because in those days the Derby was run mid-week, so we were always sent home from school early. I have many childhood memories of waiting by the Spread Eagle Pub in Epsom town centre and waving as the royal cars swept through the town.