Utopia, you are standing in it!

From the Emperor’s Desk: I will not do a complete biography of Queen Mary on the anniversary of her birth, instead I will focus on how she came to marry King Felipe II of Spain.

Mary was born on February 18, 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Infanta Catherine of Aragon, to survive infancy. Her mother had suffered many miscarriages and stillbirths. Before Mary’s birth, four previous pregnancies had resulted in a stillborn daughter and three short-lived or stillborn sons, including Henry, Duke of Cornwall.

Throughout Mary’s childhood, Henry negotiated potential future marriages for her. When she was only two years old, Mary was promised to François, Dauphin of France, the infant son of King François I, but the contract was repudiated after three years.

In 1522, at the age of six, she…

Freighter passing a sandbank on the Rhine river [image credit: worldcargonews.com]
Mixed messages from climate research here. In between evidence-free waffle about ‘potential’ human influence, they report that severe drought spells are nothing new in Europe, implying climate cycles of some sort. This means attribution of such drought to human causes is debatable, as the article admits.
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The 2015–2018 summer droughts have been exceptional in large parts of Western and Central Europe over the last 400 years, in terms of the magnitude of drought conditions.

This indicates an influence of man-made global warming, claims Phys.org.

However, multi-year droughts have occurred frequently in the 17th and 18th century, although not as severe.

This is the result of a new study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Of all the decisions made by President Biden during his first two years in office the most frequently criticized by both Democrats and Republicans was his decision to withdraw  American troops from Afghanistan.  Biden has wanted to end the American role in Afghanistan since his time as Vice-President thus the decision was not surprising.  After two decades of war Biden had enough of the corruption, duplicity, and the lack of will to fight on the part of various Afghan governments to defeat the Taliban.  It was not so much Biden’s decision to withdraw, but how it came about and how it was implemented resulting in negative repercussions for American foreign policy that has drawn so much criticism.

One of the first books to emerge since the end of American participation in Afghanistan is Elliot Ackerman’s THE FIFTH ACT: AMERICA’S END…

On the 19th February 1388, one of the most dramatic events of medieval parliamentary history took place. Simon Payling from our Commons 1461-1504 project reflects on the capture and execution of Sir Robert Tresilian and the unusual circumstances surrounding it…

The appropriately and contemporaneously named ‘Merciless’ Parliament of 1388 was among the most dramatic of medieval Parliaments, and the capture and execution of Sir Robert Tresilian, chief justice of the King’s bench, on 19 February was, arguably, its most dramatic event. He, like others, was a victim of the orgy of political violence unleashed by the breakdown of relations between the young King and a powerful group of leading nobles, headed by his uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, and Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel.That violence claimed more distinguished and worthy victims than Tresilian, but his execution claims a special interest not only as the first in the series…

In the previous entries we followed Charles II from his father’s execution to his entry into London on May 29, 1660 as His Majesty King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland.

So the question I asked at the start of the series is, when did Charles assume the title of “King?”

Let us examine the evidence.

The execution of Charles I was stayed until January 30, so that the House of Commons could pass an emergency act, the “Act prohibiting the proclaiming any person to be King of England or Ireland, or the Dominions thereof”.

The purpose of the Act was to prevent the automatic succession of Charles’s son as King, or the proclamation of another person as King.

The Commons voted to abolish the House of Lords on February 6 and to abolish the monarchy on February 7; an act abolishing the kingship was formally passed by the…

Imprisonment and death

Prior to her marriage to the King, Catherine was pursued by Francis Dereham, a secretary of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, her father, Lord Edmund Howard’s stepmother, Agnes Howard (née Tilney). Catherine Howard had been placed in the Dowager Duchess’s care after her mother’s death.

Catherine Howard and Francis Dereham allegedly became lovers, addressing each other as “husband” and “wife”. Dereham also entrusted Catherine with various wifely duties, such as keeping his money when he was away on business. Many of Catherine’s roommates among the Dowager Duchess’s maids of honour and attendants knew of the relationship, which apparently ended in 1539, when the Dowager Duchess found out.

Despite this, Catherine and Dereham may have parted with intentions to marry upon his return from Ireland, agreeing to a precontract of marriage. If indeed they exchanged vows before having sexual intercourse, they would have been considered married in the…

From the Emperor’s Desk: This is an expanded article I wrote previously here on my blog.

Queen Consort is not a title. The title of a female monarch is simply “Queen”. The term Consort distinguishes what type of Queen a person is.

There are two types of Queens. A Queen Regnant or a Queen Consort. (There are actually more but for this issue I’ll just talk about two).

Queen Elizabeth II was a Queen Regnant. A Queen Regnant is a Sovereign Queen in whom all the powers of the Crown are invested in, and who inherited the throne through hereditary succession.

Other than Queen Elizabeth II other Queen Regnants are Queen Victoria (1837 – 1901), Queen Anne (1702 – 1714), Queen Elizabeth I (1558 – 1603) to name just a few.

So absolutely nobody is claiming Camilla is a Queen Regnant!! It really goes without saying she is a…

Downfall

Catherine may have been involved during her marriage to the King with Henry’s favourite male courtier, Thomas Culpeper, a young man who “had succeeded [him] in the Queen’s affections”, according to Dereham’s later testimony. She had considered marrying Culpeper during her time as a maid-of-honour to Anne of Cleves.

Culpeper called Catherine “my little, sweet fool” in a love letter. It has been alleged that in Spring 1541 the pair were meeting secretly. Their meetings were allegedly arranged by one of Catherine’s older ladies-in-waiting, Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (Lady Rochford), the widow of Catherine’s executed cousin, George Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s brother.

People who claimed to have witnessed her earlier sexual behaviour while she lived at Lambeth reportedly contacted her for favours in return for their silence, and some of these blackmailers may have been appointed to her royal household.

John Lassels, a supporter of Cromwell, approached the Archbishop of…

… you’ve got to give that up. There’s just no doubt about it that its real and its happening. I believed that from my previous life in business. I believe that in the world I see now through political life”

That’s National Party leader, Chris Luxon, speaking on Radio New Zealand this morning. He also endorsed Parliament being closed for the week so that Government Ministers can really focus on doing their jobs

The one saving grace is that he talked almost entirely of adapting to Climate Change, mitigating its impacts – which actually is the smartest thing that we can do in the face of this:

In other words Luxon is at least vaguely aware of the damage that could be caused to this country by going all the way down the “Climate Change Crisis” rabbit hole. Unfortunately when pinned on that by the interviewer, Luxon doubled back…

Catherine Howard (c. 1524 – February 13, 1542) was Queen of England from 1540 until 1542 as the fifth wife of Henry VIII.

Catherine had an aristocratic ancestry as a granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (1443 – 1524), but her father, Lord Edmund Howard, was not wealthy, being the third son of his father – under the rules of primogeniture, the eldest son inherited all of the father’s estate.

Catherine Howard

Catherine’s mother, Joyce Culpeper, already had five children from her first husband, Ralph Leigh (c. 1476 – 1509) when she married Lord Edmund Howard, and they had another six together, Catherine being about her mother’s tenth child. With little to sustain the family, her father often had to beg for the help of his more affluent relatives.

Her father’s sister, Elizabeth Howard, was the mother of Anne Boleyn. Therefore, Catherine Howard was the first cousin of Anne Boleyn…

Introduction

On the 7 December 2022, the judgment of the UK Supreme Court in theReference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland – Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Northern Ireland) Bill(‘SAZ’) affirmed the legality of a measure aimed at strengthening the exercise of the right to abortion in Northern Ireland (NI). The case concerned a challenge to the legislative competency of the Northern Ireland Assembly (‘the Assembly’) to introduce a Bill curbing the right to protest outside of abortion clinics, which the Attorney General for Northern Ireland (‘AG’) contented to be incompatible with guarantees under the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’ or ‘the Convention’). The Bill intended to protect those accessing abortion clinics from harassment by creating“safe access zones” around the clinics, within which it would be an offence to influence a protected person, whether directly or indirectly[Clause 5(2)(a)]. This measure was considered necessary to…