Drinking the Blood-Red Wine. Professor Richard Oram. Along with the consumption of food in the great ceremonial feasts staged for King James and Queen Joan, imported wine was drunk in prodigious quantities by the ‘top-table’ guests, while the less distinguished diners received ale that was brewed daily in the brewhouses that always formed part of…
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James I in France: 1420-1422. Professor Richard Oram. Amongst the many unusual experiences that James I had during his eighteen-year captivity in England was his deployment as a ‘secret weapon’ in King Henry V’s war in France. Between May 1420 and February 1421 and again from June 1421 to August 1422, James participated in two…
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A QUEEN’S REVENGE Bloody retribution delivered at Stirling as Robert Graham and his Co-conspirators receive justice for their crimes. Graham unrepentant. Boasts from scaffold: I have slain and delivered you of so cruel a tyrant. Queen looks on as over thirty accomplices pay awful penalty for their crimes. Brutal tortures stir crowd to pity. Thomas…
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Disease Control – Halting the Spread of Plague in Fifteenth-Century Scotland. Professor Richard Oram. Plague – or the pestilence as it was referred to at the time – had by the fifteenth century become an almost accepted aspect of life around which people negotiated and arranged their daily routines. After seventy-five years of bitter lessons…
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JUSTICE! CONDEMNED EARL RECEIVES THE CROWN – BUT NOT THE ONE HE CRAVED. DIES SCREAMING FOR MERCY. HEAD DISPLAYED AT THE TOLBOOTH IN EDINBURGH. DATE SET FOR GRAHAM’S EXECUTION IN STIRLING. Professor Richard Oram. Yesterday, in front of the grimly silent crowds of loyal subjects who had gathered in Edinburgh to witness the spectacle,…
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‘Men and bestys were gretely infectyd with pockys’ Plagues, Smallpox and Dangerous Confinement. Professor Richard Oram. James’s eighteen years of English captivity did not insulate him from the threats epidemics and environmental challenges that beset his kingdom, for England was afflicted perhaps even more terribly by the waves of plague and other diseases which…
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