The History of England Magazine

The UK Parliament is made up of the Monarch, House of Lords and the House of Commons. Known as ‘The Mother of Parliaments’ this parliamentary system has been copied by many countries around the world. Its foundation began way back with the Anglo-Saxon Witan…

Aged 61, Lady Blanche Arundell, her children, a handful of servants and a garrison of just 25 men, held Wardour Castle for six days against a large Parliamentarian force during the English Civil War.

England held its breath as the mighty Spanish Armada sailed up the English Channel. Invasion appeared imminent. Then Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have made a rousing speech to her troops as they gathered at Tilbury: “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too…”

“Eat, drink and be merry!” With roots in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, the Lord of Misrule was a festive, roll-reversal figure, a ‘mock king’ appointed to preside over revelry and disorder, most famously during Christmas or Twelfth Night festivities in medieval and Tudor England.

Wander the crowded, busy streets of London and surprisingly, you’re never far away from a horse, whether it’s Boudica in her chariot on the Embankment or the Household Cavalry at the State Opening of Parliament…

The mastermind behind the infamous Gunpowder Plot was not Guy Fawkes, but Robert Catesby. Guy Fawkes was just the fall guy (pun intended)…

Previously known as New Amsterdam and formerly in the hands of the Dutch, in 1664 the settlement, now known as New York, found itself under British rule. How this came about can be traced back to a tiny island called Run, in modern-day Malaysia…

The last British officer to be held in the Tower of London, the monocled Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Daniel Wintle MC was a decorated war veteran, and one of the most flamboyant and unconventional figures of the 20th century.