Search results for ""author stephen porter""

The Tower of London is an icon of England’s history. William the Conqueror built the White Tower after his invasion and conquest in 1066 to dominate London, and it has become infamous as a place of torture, execution and murder. The deaths of royals attracted most attention: the murder of the Princes in the Tower, the beheading of Henry VIII’s wives Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey, Henry’s great-niece, and queen for just nine days. Few prisoners recorded their experiences, but John Gerard, a Catholic priest imprisoned during Elizabeth I’s reign, wrote of being questioned in the torture room, which contained ‘every device and instrument of torture’. After being hung from manacles, his wrists were swollen and he could barely walk. Members of the aristocracy could not be tortured, and those incarcerated for a long time used their time to write. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote his vast History of the World in the Tower. Control of the Tower was vital at times of crisis, during rebellions and civil wars. It has also been the country’s principal arsenal. It housed the Royal Mint, the national archives, the Crown jewels and wealthy Londoners’ riches, and in the royal menagerie it contained one of the earliest zoos. Stephen Porter’s landmark history traces the evolution of the Tower and its changing role, the many personalities who lived or were imprisoned there, and the ‘voices’ of contemporaries during the Tower’s long history, spanning more than 900 years.

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Sir Walter Mauny was described as Edward III’s ‘faithful knight’. That accurately summed up his life and career as a loyal servant of the king, distinguishing himself as a soldier, naval commander and diplomat. From the profits of war and royal favour he amassed a fortune, while gaining the respect of his contemporaries in both England and France for his abilities, courage and chivalric conduct. He used some of his wealth to acquire a burial ground in London for the victims of the Black Death, where he later established a Carthusian priory, for the monastic order favoured by kings and princes. Mauny, an orphaned younger son from a frontier area of the Low Countries, forged a spectacularly successful career in the service of the king of England. With his position, wealth and philanthropy Mauny made an enduring mark on the landscape of what became one of the world’s great cities and his legacy there is still readily identifiable today. Mauny’s abilities as a raconteur when telling the tales of his adventures enlivened the contemporary chronicles, and the popular impression of the Hundred Years War owes much to his narratives. His fascinating life, achievements and legacy stand out, even from the crowded chivalric world of Edward III’s long reign.

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Tudor London was a vibrant capital city, the very hub of English cultural and political life. The thriving metropolis had a strong royal presence, at the long established Tower of London and Westminster, and later at the palaces of Whitehall, Bridewell and St James’s, built by Henry VIII to host his glittering court. Anne Boleyn was assigned a house in the Strand, with gardens running down to the river, while Elizabeth I stayed occasionally at Somerset House. The great and the good gravitated to the city too: Erasmus lodged with Sir Thomas More and his family in Bucklesbury, off Cheapside; Sir Walter Raleigh wrote poetry in his study in Durham House, overlooking the Thames and William Shakespeare lodged in Silver Street. Like today, streets and areas grew up with their own distinct personality: Bankside and Shoreditch were the first theatre and entertainment districts where the Globe Theatre was built to sit alongside the bear-baiting rings. Londoners themselves, and the many immigrants who flocked from the continent, created a lively, raucous society in the streets, markets and the hundreds of inns and ale-houses. Everyday Life in Tudor London vividly recreates this colourful city.

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New paperback edition - Life in the Tudor metropolis for both commoner and king alike. Everyday Life in Tudor London vividly recreates this colourful city.

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Tudor London was a vibrant capital city, the very hub of English cultural and political life. The thriving metropolis had a strong royal presence, at the long established Tower of London and Westminster, and later at the palaces of Whitehall, Bridewell and St James’s, built by Henry VIII to host his glittering court. Anne Boleyn was assigned a house in the Strand, with gardens running down to the river, while Elizabeth I stayed occasionally at Somerset House. The great and the good gravitated to the city too: Erasmus lodged with Sir Thomas More and his family in Bucklesbury, off Cheapside; Sir Walter Raleigh wrote poetry in his study in Durham House, overlooking the Thames and William Shakespeare lodged in Silver Street. Like today, streets and areas grew up with their own distinct personality: Bankside and Shoreditch were the first theatre and entertainment districts where the Globe Theatre was built to sit alongside the bear-baiting rings. Londoners themselves, and the many immigrants who flocked from the continent, created a lively, raucous society in the streets, markets and the hundreds of inns and ale-houses. Everyday Life in Tudor London vividly recreates this colourful city.

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Among the array of diseases which brought death to Tudor England, the sweating sickness stood out, for the speed with which it struck, its dreadful effects on its victims and the death rates which it produced, that together generated a fear verging on panic when it was identified. The sweating sickness attacked the cities, towns and the countryside, not sparing the palaces. It threatened everyone, from the king in his castle to the beggars at his gates, including members of the dynasty and the political structure, the courtiers and those who directed the government, the church and the law. Contemporaries could do little more than make a bolt for it, and that included the king and his closest advisors, who moved furtively in a small group from one house to another away from London. The principal epidemics came between 1485, when it made its first appearance, and 1551, and it was confined to England and Wales, apart from one major eruption across northern Europe in 1529. Known as the English disease, this rapidly acting virus became Henry VIII's overriding fear, aggravating his well-known hypochondria and controlling his movements. The nature of the sweating sickness, its incidence and impact are all examined in this book, in the context not only of Tudor England and the problems of the Henrician succession, but also in the context of epidemic disease in Europe more widely. This book teases out the similarities and differences between 'the sweat' and its better-known, if equally feared, contemporary infectious disease, bubonic plague.

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Evidence of the foulness and cruelty of the greatest catastrophe ever to hit London is still being unearthed under the streets of the capital today. The fresh plague pits containing thousands of skeletons uncovered during the construction of Crossrail are a reminder of the painful, drawn-out death suffered by Londoners as pustules and abscesses broke out all over their bodies. Plague has been a scourge of mankind since its onset in the sixth century. Its distinctive and repulsive symptoms, the excruciatingly painful effects inflicted on its victims, with a very high mortality rate, evoked a fear and repulsion that was caused by no other disease. Attempts to control its spread proved futile. The second plague pandemic in Europe began when the disease reached Sicily in October 1347. From there it spread remorselessly across the entire continent and erupted in London in the autumn of 1348, killing at least one-third, and perhaps one-half, of its inhabitants. As the largest city in England, London suffered a higher death-toll than any other community during the many subsequent outbreaks. Tudor and Stuart London was a city afflicted by plague, yet its population continued to grow inexorably, as it drew people from the rest of the country to replace the losses. Plague’s last visitation came in 1665 and was its most destructive, claiming at least 70,000 victims in the space of just eight months and becoming known as the Great Plague. The legacy of plague has been a dread that has scarcely been overcome even today.

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