A book to inform travellers who follow attractive byways and intriguing signs, whose reward is in the unexpected in buildings, people and scenery.
Do you wonder why monarchs once quartered the landscape like travelling salesmen?
Primarily for alliances via marriages, war and land. Not forgetting taxes and supplies, especially food in times of low crop yields, primitive transport and simple preservation. Rebels too found constant mobility an occupational necessity.
You’ll find evidence of their lives wherever you go in towns and manors, churches and hunting lodges et al, of which ‘Bad’ King John, like others, had quite a few. Visit their battlefields and palaces, fortified homes and love nests… oh yes, monarchs are human.
Our three score rebellions were, in general, led by barons and bishops, even Parliament and the City of London! They took up arms against unreasonable monarchs in matters of religion, ambition and money. Some succeeded, others failed as when William the Conqueror laid waste Northern England in the brutal ‘Harrying of the North’ to suppress Saxon resistance fighters. Discover the haunts of rebels such as the legendary Robin Hood, Scots William Wallace and a bevy of independent Welsh princes.
During a long civil war King Charles I took time to give away in marriage a lady of the court.. a C17th war bride! The Puritan rebel government actually banned Christmas!
Visit the harbour where William of Orange, a Dutch prince with an English wife, came by popular invitation, with 40,000 troops to oust Catholic King James II. Find lonely beaches where would be kings landed to win or lose… or fled by sea into exile.
Imagine Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, another foreign spouse, arriving for a stolen night at a country inn, without any luggage… in Calvinistic Scotland! Or stately Queen Mary, after whom great ships are named, taking tea with a Lancashire mill lass in a tiny ‘two up two down’ terrace cottage. What did the neighbours think?
Our laws and freedoms are founded on a feisty Christian past and a vigilant present when a nation judges its elected rulers. Discover not only the places and buildings known to Royalty and Rebels but our living traditions and strange customs where Guardsmen wear leeks (a vegetable) in their caps, swans are counted and exultant choirs sing from roof tops.
