English History

The Duke hits Ninety

The Queen’s consort of six decades is 90. He has had what he calls ‘a good innings’. He is very popular with many in European countries, and the United States. He is also a bit of a favourite in Britain, with the exception of the stuffier classes, who still think of him as ‘an outsider’ and a ‘penniless adventurer’. This is especially true with the press, never forgiving when a very famous man is hard, unresponsive and enigmatic: “One gets a rather false image of me, from the press,” he once said in a rare interview, “I do not, for example, hate journalists, though I have hated some of the things they wrote.” An admiral once wrote of him, “Philip is always master of his own dryness.” A former First Lord of the Admiralty (Lewin) said that if Philip had not become what he became he was such a fine seaman that he would have been First Lord instead of him.
He is Philip Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and the Baron Greenwich (born 1921). (more…)

Henry II

“Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”

Henry II, King of England (1133 – 89) succeeded King Stephen in 1154. Henry was not Stephen’s son, but took the throne because Stephen had recognised Henry as his heir in the Treaty of Winchester (1153). The new King was the lawful son of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. On Geoffrey’s death young Henry inherited Normandy, Maine (not the State in New England please), Touraine, Brittany and Anjou, in France. This last section of France made Henry the first Angevin King of England.
Henry married the richest woman in Europe, Eleanor de Aquitaine in 1152 when he was 19. Eleanor had been abandoned by a French King, Louis VI, for reasons that are too complicated to go into. The marriage brought Henry even greater estates than he had before, and his kingdom now stretched from the north of England south to the Pyrenees. (more…)