Showing posts with label House of Plantagenet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House of Plantagenet. Show all posts

Sunday 21 January 2024

Roses





The Hatch and 

Brood of Time


There is a history in all men’s lives 

Figuring the nature of times deceas’d; 

The which observ’d, a man may prophesy, 

With a near aim, of the main chance of things 

As yet not come to life, which in their seeds 

And weak beginnings lie intreasured. 

Such things become the hatch and brood of time … 


Henry IV Part Two, 

Act 3, Scene 1


Their fires had been burning days, most fiercely in Kent and Essex. Maidstone was in flames. Canterbury was under attack. 


Thousands of rebels were on the march, and rumours were flying in and around London. 


In every village and town in the south-east people spoke of the outrages committed by royal tax collectors as they went from place to place demanding fourpence or more for the poll tax from every adult man and woman. 


They went armed, and they were a law unto themselves. 


They sought out potential evaders ruthlessly. John Legge was one of the worst. He would line all the inhabitants up in a village and inspect them. If told that a girl was under age, and thus exempt from the charge, he would lift up her skirts and find out in his own rough way whether she was ‘under age’ or not.


Most fathers would rather pay than have such an indignity forced on their daughters. The hostility was bitter, and it ran like a seam of anger from rural Essex and Kent right into the heart of the city. 


The year was 1381


Henry of Lancaster – the future Henry IV – was fourteen, and in London. He may have been at his father’s great house, the Savoy Palace, he may have been at his own house in Coleman Street, or he may have come to London with the king. We do not know for certain. But what we do know is that he was in the capital during those fateful days in the second week of June. 


He was there when the full force of more than ten thousand aggrieved men tore into the city. The memory of those days would remain with him for the rest of his life. The advisers with young Henry – his guardian, Thomas Burton, his military tutor, William Montendre, his clerk Hugh Herle and his young companion Thomas Swynford, and possibly the family surgeon, William Appleton – knew that there was no force strong enough to defend their young lord from the rebels. Five hundred men armed with longbows could defeat ten times as many men-at-arms in battle. 


So what hope did Henry’s guards have against several thousand bowmen, roaming at large? As servants of Henry’s father, the duke of Lancaster, they were in particular danger. The duke was one of the most hated figures in the realm. He was personally blamed for many of the injustices which had sparked the revolt. Had he not imprisoned Sir Peter de la Mare, Speaker of the House of Commons, for daring to oppose him? Did he not command the council which directed the rule of the young king? Did he not parade in and out of the city in a haughty and conceited manner, squandering money in the pretence that he was the king of Castile? The crowd wanted the duke and all the chief officers of state destroyed. They wanted the nobility disempowered. They believed that they were now the greatest force in the realm. They had shown their strength on the battlefields of France in the service of the late king, Edward III. In return, Edward had shown them the virtue of being English, in their language, in their parliament, in resisting the power of the pope, and in their collective fighting power. That was the most frightening thing of all: these men were not just a rabble, they were an organised fighting force. Moreover, they had a firm belief that King Richard II would understand them, and that he was only prevented from helping them by his advisers. So they paraded the fact that they would have no other king but the fourteen-year-old Richard. They were armed, idealistic and frenzied with anger. Anyone who got in their way was killed, regardless of rank. As the countrymen marched towards the city, Henry and his guardians went to the Tower of London, the strongest castle in the region. There too the archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury – who was also the chancellor – sought refuge, and the treasurer, Sir Robert Hales. The duke of Lancaster himself was in Scotland with an army, and so was in relatively little danger. King Richard II and his advisers came downstream from Windsor to the Tower on 11 June, believing they could talk their way out of trouble. But all attempts to persuade the peasant armies to disband failed. The Kentish rebels massed in their march from Canterbury, and although they paused to discuss terms with the bishop of Rochester on Blackheath on the 12th, they were set on demonstrating their destructive power. Likewise the Essex men. The two forces linked up, and coordinated their advance on the capital, as they had been trained to do in campaigns in France. There they had killed and destroyed mercilessly in order to exert political pressure on the government. They might have looked like a rabble of peasants but they were capable of systematic devastation on a scale which London had never seen before. On the morning of Thursday 13 June the armed countrymen reached Southwark, the suburb of London which lay directly to the south of the Thames. At that moment Richard II was sailing to a point between Rotherhithe and Greenwich to talk with their leaders. His advisers, including Archbishop Sudbury, prevented him leaving the royal barge. Richard called to the rebels from the safety of the river, asking why they had gathered. The leaders sent a list of men whose heads they wanted. First named was the duke of Lancaster, next the archbishop of Canterbury and the treasurer. They also wanted the heads of the keeper of the privy seal, the chief baron of the exchequer and ten other individuals. Obviously, Richard could not agree with such a request. The men of Kent watched the royal barge rowed slowly back to the Tower, their king unwilling to help. Then the destruction began. Although the mayor of London had given orders for the gates to the city to be closed and the bridge defended, many of the poorer Londoners had every sympathy with the rebels. The men of Southwark did not want a violent mob to be trapped in the streets outside their houses; so they forced the men on the bridge to give way. The gates were opened. Early in the evening of the 13th, crowds of men broke into the city. They were joined by thousands of poor workers within the walls. Overwhelmed, the mayor gave orders that the wine cellars should be left open to the armed mob, hoping that they would drink themselves into a disorganised and confused rabble. But as they drank, half-demented in the heat of what had been a very hot summer’s day, the rebels sought out their hated targets. They broke down the gates of prisons, letting everyone go free and killing the custodians, or chasing them to sanctuary. One royal sergeant-at-arms, Richard Imworth, was found in Westminster Abbey, clinging to a pillar. They dragged him outside and cut his throat. The men of Essex ransacked the priory of St John at Clerkenwell, because its prior was Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer. The men of Kent destroyed the manor of Lambeth, which belonged to Archbishop Sudbury. Wherever the citizens pointed out the house of a hated public figure, torches were set to it, the contents were destroyed and the inhabitants killed. None of the rebels needed any Londoner to point out the house of the duke of Lancaster. The Savoy Palace stood tall and proud in the Strand, halfway between London’s city walls and the Palace of Westminster. In the words of one contemporary, it was ‘a house unrivalled in the kingdom for its splendour and nobility’.2 It was, in addition to a residence, the duke’s treasury and his wardrobe. Five cartloads of gold and silver were kept there, together with innumerable tapestries, woven cloths, armour, jewels and items of furniture. Now the rebels gathered towards it, like moths attracted to a great beacon of Lancastrian power. In the chambers and hall they cut the rich paintings and tablecloths with their knives and smashed the furniture with their axes. They ripped the tapestries and crushed the gold and silver vessels and threw them into the Thames. They took one of the precious jewel-encrusted padded jackets belonging to the duke and set it up on a lance for the archers to use as target practice. Then the building itself was set ablaze. Those in the wine cellars drinking the duke’s wine were crushed to death as the burning building above them collapsed through the floor, probably helped by the barrels of gunpowder stored within. Two men caught looting were thrown into the blaze. It was a systematic destruction of the emblems and insignia of the duke’s status and authority. Henry watched from the walls of the Tower of London. Had he any understanding of what was going on, he would have seen that it was the result of extreme discontent arising from ruthless law enforcement and overtaxation. He could see his father’s palace burning and would have heard the explosions as the barrels of gunpowder ignited. Much of Fleet Street was alight. So too was the priory at Clerkenwell, the prisons, the houses of John Butterwick and Simon Hosteler and many other men associated with the regime. Here the shop of a chandler was ablaze, there the shop of a blacksmith.3 In the streets, men were murdered wherever they met an enemy. The Londoners began to cull their own. A number of houses around the Temple were set on fire, many more to the south of the river, at Southwark. Roger Legget, a royal tax collector, was found and dragged, kicking and shouting, to Cheapside where his head was cut off. Then his house in Clerkenwell was set alight. Henry would have heard the screams of terror nearby as the citizens took the opportunity to purge themselves of foreigners. Thirty-five Flemish people who had fled to sanctuary in the church of St Martin in Vintry were pulled out of the building, one by one, and dragged across the churchyard to a single block, where they were decapitated, the heads and bodies lying on the ground as the next terrified victim was dragged out of the church. The financier Sir Richard Lyons was sought out and killed.4 Lombards were pulled from their houses and murdered by the dozen. More than one hundred and fifty Flemings lost their lives. A whorehouse run by Flemish prostitutes was set on fire. Thirteen Flemings were pulled out of the church of the Austin friars and beheaded in the street outside by the drunken rabble, as the burning sun began to set on the burning city.5 That night the young king gathered his advisers in the Tower. They had a few hundred men-at-arms with them.6 Some of the nobles tried to persuade Richard to fight his way out, in a full-scale charge. Others suggested that he should talk to the rebels and draw them away from the city. Henry was there; perhaps he was able to listen as his young cousin accepted the advice of those who suggested another meeting. The next day Richard would ride out from the Tower with the men-at-arms, his half-brothers, his mother and the mayor of London, and talk to the rebels at Mile End. On the morning of Friday 14 June Richard and his men departed from the Tower, leaving Henry and a few others there with nothing but the stone walls and a few guards to protect them. Most of the lords went with Richard and the mayor. Henry was left with all the men whose heads were sought by the rabble: Archbishop Sudbury, Hales and various other royal enforcers, such as John Legge. 


They did not know about the jostling of the king’s men by the crowds on the way to Mile End. Only when the king’s mother returned, escorted back by some men-at-arms when the jeering crowds became too much for her, did they learn about the hostile mood out to the east of the city. Henry would have waited, perhaps looking out for signs of messengers hurrying back. None appeared. Hours passed. Then a mass of armed rebels came running, hungry for blood. In his discussions at Mile End, the king had told the peasants to go through the realm and bring all traitors to justice, wherever they were. Those inside the Tower had effectively been condemned to death. What Richard had actually said, of course, was that the rebels should go away, or, specifically, ‘go through the realm and bring all traitors to him safely, and he would deal with them as the law required’.


The rebels’ view was that they did not need to go ‘through the realm’ but only as far as the Tower. They were the law, and judgement was theirs; there was no need for a trial. Armed with longbows and staves, it was not long before the gates to the Tower had been forced and they were going from room to room, looking for their victims. Some went into the king’s chamber and lay down on his bed, laughing. The king’s mother, renowned thirty years earlier as the most beautiful woman in the land, in whose presence the greatest knights at King Edward III’s court had jousted, now found herself roughly kissed and manhandled by the peasants.8 The few guards remaining were powerless to defend their masters as hundreds of commoners pulled their beards or made faces at them. The archbishop and Prior Hales could do nothing but go down on their knees and pray in the chapel. Henry himself could only watch and wait. The archbishop could expect no mercy. He had prevented Richard from disembarking at Greenwich to meet the rebels the previous day. On the list of men to die, his name appeared second, just below that of Henry’s father, the duke. He knelt and prayed in the chapel of St John in the White Tower. Those who were with him had already heard one Mass; now they listened to another. They could hear footsteps running through the keep. The archbishop chanted prayer after prayer, the seven psalms and the litany. As he said the words ‘all saints, pray for us’, the rebels burst in. In scenes which must have been truly terrifying for everyone present, the archbishop was seized and dragged out by his arms and hood along the passages of the castle, across the bailey and out to the yelling masses on Tower Hill, where they set up a makeshift block. It was said that they took eight blows to cut off his head. They took Hales too, dragging him away to a similar bloody execution. The Lancaster family physician, William Appleton, was likewise hacked to death for no other reason than that he had served Henry’s father. Four others were singled out and butchered. Then the mob turned to the Lancastrian heir, Henry. If at that moment John Ferrour, one of the remaining guards, had not boldly come between the mob and Henry, and spoken up for him, and persuaded them to let him go, Henry’s fourteen-year-old head would have been stuck on a spear on London Bridge, alongside those of the archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Robert Hales and William Appleton.9 As it was, Ferrour persuaded the crowd, and Henry lived. Many years later, he would repay the debt and save Ferrour’s life in return. * 


There is no doubt that seeing The Peasants’ Revolt at first hand and coming within an inch of death had the most profound effect on Henry. It affected his thinking about the current reign and conditioned his own policies in later years. 


But it also leads us to ask one very important question. At that moment, when Richard left him in the Tower, practically unguarded, did Henry blame the young king? 


And did he forgive him? 


One chronicle – written by an eyewitness – states that the king told those he left behind to take a boat from the water gate and flee for their lives. But when the archbishop attempted to do this he was spotted by ‘a wicked woman’, and had to rush back into the Tower.10 With so many longbows at the ready on the river banks, there was no escape on the water. So it could be said that Richard deserted those in the Tower. In fact it could be said that he did this twice, for when he returned from Mile End he did not go back to the Tower but went to the great wardrobe (one of the offices of his household), situated near Blackfriars.11 Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt, Richard was guilty of one major error of judgement. By apparently giving in to the rebels, and encouraging them to go off and seek traitors, he placed those in the Tower in very great danger. We may understand what Richard was trying to achieve, but to look at matters from Henry’s point of view, having seen the archbishop of Canterbury dragged out and beheaded, would that have been good enough? 


The reason why this question is so important is that it is impossible to begin to understand Henry’s life without seeing it in relation to that of his cousin, The King. 


In 1399 Henry took action to dethrone Richard. In so doing he risked not only his own life but the status of his children and the lives of many of his followers and the political stability of the entire realm. No one takes such a decision lightly. 


But this was not the first time that Henry and Richard had faced each other in anger. Carefully examining Henry’s life before 1399 we find a number of instances when Henry and Richard were either weighing one another up or in outright hostility to one another. 


If we really want to understand why Henry acted the way he did in 1399, and especially in relation to Richard, we need to look far beyond the evidence of that year and understand how these two men saw each other and co-existed, right from the very start of their lives. Henry and Richard were born rivals. For a start, they were almost exactly the same age. Richard was born at Bordeaux, in Gascony, on 6 January 1367; Henry was born at Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, just three months later.


Although they would not have met until they were five or six, they were regarded as a pair, on account of their both being the king’s grandchildren and the same age. Moreover, they were the only two royal children of this age; the next eldest, Roger Mortimer, was seven years younger. They would therefore have seen each other as having very similar royal identities. Each threatened the uniqueness of the other’s royal status. There was a historical dimension to their rivalry too. They were the heirs of King Edward’s two most favoured sons, Henry the son of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and Richard the son of Edward, the Black Prince, the heir apparent. In addition, they were the heirs of the two most important dynasties in England. 


More than a hundred years earlier, King Henry III had had two sons. The elder had been crowned Edward I. The younger, Edmund, had been endowed with a massive inheritance in the north of England, centred on Lancaster, which gave rise to his title of earl of Lancaster. In time, Edward I’s throne passed to his eldest son, Edward II, and the Lancastrian inheritance passed to Thomas of Lancaster, Edmund’s eldest son. The resultant rivalry between these two royal cousins – Edward II and Thomas of Lancaster – developed in intensity, to the point of war. 


Lancaster’s incessant attempts to intervene in royal affairs meant he was anathema to the king, and Edward II’s bitter hatred for Lancaster following his part in the murder of his best friend, Piers Gaveston, never diminished. That rivalry came to an end at the battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, when Lancaster was captured and beheaded in public, and all his estates were confiscated. 


After such an outrage the dead earl’s younger brother, Henry of Lancaster, had no choice but to join with the arch-rebel Roger, Lord Mortimer of Wigmore, and the queen, who invaded the kingdom in 1326 to put an end to Edward II’s tyranny. Together they removed the king from power and, in January 1327, forced parliament to sanction the king’s deposition. Edward II then abdicated. 


That Richard II was the great-grandson and heir of the disgraced king, and Henry the great-grandson and heir of the Henry of Lancaster who had forced him to abdicate, gave a context of ancestral hostility to their relationship of which neither boy could have been ignorant and which neither of them could have totally ignored. To modern readers coming anew to the story of these two boys, it is easy to forget how characters in the past were so keenly aware of their history. We look back at their lives searching for the seeds of later events, ‘our’ history. 


But of course we find the culmination of much earlier developments too. 


Each boy would have known the above-mentioned stories of rivalry, war, humiliation, execution and deposition. Every chronicle available would have described the deeds of their ancestors. Their intimacy with history was not like that of scholars, aware of the finer points of detail; it was a sense that these chronicles had meaning for them personally. These were not just fanciful tales about knights in days of yore. Edward II had ruled badly and had lost his kingdom. Edward III had ruled well and defeated all his enemies in battle. If you wanted to know how to be a good king, a good knight or a good earl, and if you wanted to know how to avoid failure, you needed to understand the lessons of the past.13 


And then there were the prophecies.


Most people think of prophetic utterances as the stuff of the Old Testament, Nostradamus, or the oracles of the ancient world. In fourteenth-century England prophetic stories were politically relevant, widely circulated and taken very seriously, even by those who did not believe in them


The reason for this is simple : if you happened to be mentioned in one of these prophecies, how you conducted yourself might be interpreted according to your anticipated fate. 


For example, if you were prophesied to be a great warrior, then acting like one would undoubtedly strengthen the confidence and resolve of your forces. 


Conversely, a king prophesied to be politically divisive had to tread very carefully in case those whom he disappointed should start claiming or believing that the prophecy was coming true. 


Therefore it is particularly relevant that the most popular prophecy of the fourteenth century – the Prophecy of the Six Kings – predicted civil war in the next reign. 


The Prophecy of the Six Kings was supposedly Merlin’s response to King Arthur’s question about the ultimate fate of the kingdom. It likened the six kings to follow King John to six beasts. Henry III was portrayed as a lamb, Edward I as a dragon, Edward II as a goat and Edward III as a boar. These emblems and the provenance of the story might seem a very shaky background for any belief system, but it was widely accepted as a framework for God’s plan for the English monarchy. It also has to be said that the most recent part had spectacularly come true. The prophecy had originally been written down at the time of Edward III’s birth, and various versions written before 1330 reveal it in its near-original form.14 Edward III was characterised as a boar : the animal which had represented King Arthur himself. He would be renowned for his ‘holiness, fierceness and nobility’ while at the same time being ‘humble, like the lamb’. This was a strange combination of qualities, and one which probably no one could have reasonably expected the infant Edward of Windsor to fulfil. So it was extraordinary that he did.15 ‘Spain would tremble’, the prophecy said, and at Winchelsea in 1350 Edward defeated the Spanish fleet. This boar would ‘sharpen his teeth on the gates of Paris’: Edward’s forays into France indeed brought him to the suburbs of the French capital. Ultimately he ‘would regain all the lands which his ancestors had held, and more’. For Edward this meant nothing less than reconquering the entire Angevin empire, including more than a third of France. 


Yet this too came to pass : the territory of the empire was ceded to him in 1360, at the Treaty of Brétigny. At the same time he was humble and pious. That such a remarkable and popular prophecy could be fulfilled in its self-contradicting entirety was astonishing. It also made people look at the continuation of the prophecy with some foreboding. The king after Edward III was foretold to be another lamb. The land would be at peace at the start of his reign. Within a year of his accession he would found a great city, of which all the world would speak. But then there would be a civil war, and the lamb would lose the greater part of his kingdom to a ‘hideous wolf’. Eventually he would recover these lands and give them to ‘an eagle of his dominion’, who would govern them well until overcome by pride. At that point the eagle would be murdered by his brother, and the lamb would die, leaving his lands once more at peace. He would be succeeded by the next king, a mole, under whose reign the kingdom would be wrenched apart and plunged into civil war, between three warring factions.16 The next king a lamb? In the 1360s this seemed ridiculous, as no one doubted that the next king would be Edward’s son, Edward, the Black Prince. 


How could he be described as a lamb? 


He had won one of the most extraordinary battles in European history at Poitiers, capturing the king of France in the process. He had fought in the front line at the battle of Crécy in 1346 and carried on fighting when on his knees. No one on earth was less lamb-like than the Black Prince. To Englishmen this suggested that the prince would not inherit. There would be some calamity and he would die before his father. His successor – whoever that might be – would be the lamb. That in turn gave rise to rumours. 


Variations on the prophecy sprang up. In late 1361 the chronicler Froissart was at Berkhamsted, immediately after the prince’s marriage. Seated on a bench in the hall he overheard Sir Bartholomew Burghersh say to some of the queen’s ladies that ‘there was a book called the Brut, which many say contains the prophecies of Merlin. According to its contents, neither the prince of Wales nor the duke of Clarence [Edward III’s second surviving son] will wear the crown of England, but it will fall to the house of Lancaster.


It is quite possible that the seeds of Richard and Henry’s rivalry lie within this ancestral antagonism between their two houses, and that it was exacerbated by the prophecies of political turmoil between them. In later years, Richard certainly took such prophecies very seriously.18 


Obviously this does not mean that their actual hostility to one another was a result of prophetic writing : personal issues such as their shared royal identity were of an even greater importance. 


But even before they were born, prophecies were circulating about the house of Lancaster supplanting the line of primogeniture, and there was an ancestral precedent for just such a revolution. 


All of this adds up to a tension which could have gone one of two ways. Either Henry and Richard would be content to share the royal stage, and support each other, or they would look for separate identities of their own, reflecting their maternal ancestries and personal alliances. 


In short, the ancestral, moral and prophetic rivalry into which they were born was something which only a genuinely close personal friendship could have transcended, and that was something Henry and Richard never shared. *

Monday 31 October 2016

Rufus

King John Plantagenet



Red Hair is associated with True Royalty.

It is associated with the bloodline of the last of the Neanderthal Augments.

Human-Neanderthal Hybrids.

Earth-Gods created via genetic, psychosurgical and vivisectional augmentation by Space Gods.

Men like Arthur, Conan, Richmond or Aurakles.



Rufus 
" The nature of God and the Virgin Birth--these are leaps of Faith. 
But to believe a married couple never got down
That's just plain gullibility! "

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, 
in the Tower of London in 1603, 
attributed to John de Critz. 

A small painting of the Tower of London is shown in the top-right background, above the Latin words: In vinculis invictus (“in chains unconquered”) Februa 8 1600; 601; 602; 603 Apri. 

The arms of Wriothesley (Azure, a cross or between four hawks close argent) are shown on the cover of a book lying on the windowsill before the cat

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Phenomelanin (as opposed to Eumelanin), associated with blonde hair, blue eyes, green eyes, fair skin and Red Hair is "a Mutation" of the Melanin producing human gene.

Redheads are Mutants.

"For me, personally, it's brunettes.

But redheads are the wildcard...."

David Lynch

No, it's an extremely thoughtful and insightful question, and Lynch's answer is extreme important and informative.

You notice, when he asks the "silly" question, there is some patchy laughter from one or two members of the audience (who think its stupid), but not from Lynch, (who knows that it is not). It only SOUNDS stupid.


He acknowledges the premise of the question, and then gives a serious answer, so the question itself is anything but stupid. And this of course is well known.


The fact that he uses women of different hair colour as avatars for various archtypes and aspects of the human psyche and the collective unconscious as expounded by Jung, most notably The Angel and the Dark Lady (often known as Liliith, the heavenly pariah FIRST wife of Adam before God created Eve from Adam's own flesh).


When Ben Horne first arrives at One Eyed Jacks, he greets Blackie by quoting (in full) Shakes-Spear's Sonnet 18, which is the first in the series of Dark Lady sonnets, which form an extended communication with the author's own Dark Heart, an acceptance and indeed love letter to his own potential for mischief, destruction and malice.


So when he asks him "Blondes or Brunettes?", the actual meaning behind the question and what he is answering is "Which do you find more enriching to your life? Virgins or Harlots? Do you seek purity or richness?".


People get into a lot of trouble, both psychically and psychologically, when they seek to deny that they have at least the potential for darkness within themselves and seek to distance themselves from immoral, even evil things that they have done, rather than accepting it as a part of themselves that they must comes to terms with.


This is the basis for all trauma (or Garambozia) - Leland Palmer cannot come to terms with the fact BOB used him to rape and murder his own daughter (and cannot live with himself), whereas Laura Palmer can admit to her shrink that her rough, incestuous sex with BOB was the best she had ever had, even after she realises who he is, and ultimately she is able to forgive him and allow BOB to murder her, which also saves Ronnette's life, allowing MIKE the opportunity to pull her clear from the old train-car. 


Which is why she get to go to Heaven, whilst Cooper is still stuck in the Lodge, unable to accept or get to grips properly with his own Dark Side - who is out there in The World, having hijacked his body, doing who-knows what with it, whilst he remains trapped in denial. When he first sees his Other Self, the corruption in his own soul inside The Lodge, his first response and reaction is first to avoid it, then to run away from it.


Meaning, of course, that it catches up with him (as always it must), overpowers him and consequently assumes complete control over his life and his entire existence. Not realising that when there is nowhere to run to, and no chance to escape or get away, running away is to admit defeat. 

Because he faced the Dweller on the Threshold of Life and Death with imperfect courage.

Only through acceptance can there be hope of victory - or, as Prince said, 

" I got 2 sides, and they're both friends."


Now, here's the thing about his answer, and why it's important and will affect your life as well as mine : almost every significant female character in Twin Peaks, other than Laura and Maddie has red hair - and as anyone who has ever dated one or been close to one will tell you, the old folk wisdom about their possessing a  firey nature is more than just an Old Wives' Tale - something about their personalities and their behaviour strongly suggests that they are somehow connected to something wild, mysterious and exotic.


Now, if you go onto the Smithsonian Website and look through the section on Human Origins, they will now tell you that red hair is recessive gene that is not found in early hominids or pre-humans, but is found in Neanderthal DNA, as a mutation which occurred after the species divergence occurred between pre-modern Cromagnon  proto-humans and Neanderthals - thus, in areas where there was cohabitation occurred, interbreeding and hybridisation occurred between pre-modern humans and Neanderthals, and red hair is the proof that that took place.


For that reason, and sue to the fact that the gene itself is recessive, red hair (amongst white people) has traditionally always been associated with high nobility and royalty right up until the present time - it seems to have been something that began around the time of the Norman Invasion,  several of the Plantagenet kings were noted for their red hair and ferocity, as well as Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell.


Prince Harry to is second in line to the throne after his brother and Prince Charles, and he is a redhead - which is exceptionally interesting due to the fact that none of the Windsors are, and his mother certainly wasn't. 


She was a pure natural blonde. 


He's also known for his temper, or used to be, he seems to have calmed down a great deal in recent years.


Why is this important? 


If you read Graham Hancock's book Magicians of the Gods, he provides an excellent summary and overview of the wealth of geological evidence that exists and is now available for the global cataclysm and devastation which we now know appears to have occurred aound 12,600 years ago at the end of the last great Ice Age, at the end of the Younger Dryas Period. 


What APPEARS to have happened is that during a period when the permafrost of the polar ice cap extended down over much of North America and nearly all of Europe, the Earth was struck by a comet or comet fragment which exploded on impact or superheated the atmosphere, flash-thawing the oversized ice-cap and flooding everything, nearly everywhere, permanently raising the sea level and leaving countless previously inhabited regions of the planet submerged until this day.


One of the last places affected, and when surviors and refugees  of the disaster and were able to settle and regroup was the Pacific Northwest, and North America generally. This is whythis area is so strongly associated with the Moundbuilder Civilisation and it's remains and earthworks, the remains and skeletons of a race of Giants (such as Paul Bunyan, referenced by the Cohens in Fargo), and Native America creation mythology, with their oral tradtion, going back tens of thousands of years, of a far older race of giant men who came from afar, a wise and  noble race that became extinct, but taught them many things.


After getting shot, Agent Cooper is visited by the Lodge Spirit in the form of a Giant, who offers him information and declares his firm altruistic desire to prove him with help and give him the assisstance he requires in order to resolve the mysteries of Laura Palmer and succeed in solving the case.



In the last half of 16thC England there were to be found two ladies of immense wealth. Both had auburn hair they styled in similar ways, both had a long aquiline nose, both had a lower lip a little stronger than her upper, both had a passion for pearls, and both were called Elizabeth. Put all their portraits together and it is hard to tell one from the other.
A collection of portraits of Elizabeth I and Elizabeth of Hardwick
A collection of portraits of Elizabeth I and Elizabeth of Hardwick
One lady needs no introduction – she was the Virgin Queen. The other was Bess of Hardwicke, born around 1527, and raised by a family of minor gentry in Derbyshire. Her early history is undocumented, and what is known of her family’s history before she was born dates solely to evidence provided by her brother in 1569, when he was providing reasons for his right to bear arms.
What is known is that she married four times: the first, undocumented, was to the 13 year old heir to a neighbouring estate. She married him most likely in 1543, but he died the following year. Then on 20 August, 1547, nine months after the death of King Henry VIII, she was married – remarkably well above her station – to the illustrious Sir William Cavendish, Treasurer of the King’s Chamber, who had made a fortune as an official of the Court during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Sir William Cavindish, possibly by John Bettes, 1544
Sir William Cavendish, possibly by John Bettes, 1544
In 1553, with the death of Edward VI, Cavendish’s means of acquiring his wealth came under scrutiny, and having been closely associated with the Seymours, and with Lady Jane Grey (who got her head chopped off for claiming the throne after Edward VI’s death), he lost his position at court, and was accused of embezzlement. He had tried to stay the right side of Edward’s staunchly Catholic successor, Mary I, but given such unfortunate associations, he was no longer in favour. He and Bess had eight children together, though, before he died on October 25th 1557, just one month after the startling birth of Robert Tudor.
On Mary’s death in 1558, the new Queen Elizabeth restored Bess Hardwick to Court, and again – rather remarkably – made her a key Lady of her Bedchamber. Soon after, Bess fell in love with Sir William St Loe, a good friend of the new Queen who had aided her when her life had been in danger, and who she had made Captain of the Guard, and Butler to the Royal Household – key positions ensuring her personal security.
Sir William St Loe
Sir William St Loe
The two were married in 1559, but in 1561, a serious problem emerged. Bess was the friend of Frances Brandon, the mother of Lady Jane Grey who had been executed by Mary for claiming the throne in 1553. According to the will of Henry VIII, on Lady Jane Grey’s death, her sister Catherine had become second in line to the throne, next after Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth wanted her to remain a spinster, thereby reducing any threat to her rule, but in total defiance of the Queen’s wishes Catherine secretly married into the powerful Seymour family. Bess distanced herself from the marriage, but hid the news from the Queen, who, when she found out, flew into a rage, and sent her to the Tower.
Lady Catherine Grey
Lady Catherine Grey
After seven months Elizabeth relented, and let her go home, but Bess and Sir William had no children together, and soon after, in 1565, he died under very suspicious circumstances. Bess thus became one of the wealthiest women in the country, with an annual income equivalent to around £14 million in present day terms. The Queen forgave her at this point, and she returned to court once more, only to find that the tutor to her sons had been spreading slanderous rumours about her. The nature of the slander was suppressed, and the Queen was so upset by what he had been saying that she ordered him to suffer public corporal punishment, a most vindictive punishment for someone of his rank. His slander must have been serious indeed.
In 1567 Bess again married, and again inexplicably far above herself, to the Earl of Shrewsbury, the richest nobleman in England.
Rowland Lockey 'The Earl of Shrewsbury' 1580
Rowland Lockey ‘The Earl of Shrewsbury’ 1580
On the 2 May, 1568, Mary Queen of Scots fled from Scotland and sought refuge in England, to the consternation of the Queen. Mary had a claim not only to Scotland, but to the English throne as well, and could not easily be disposed of, being a Queen in her own right. Elizabeth summoned the Shrewsburies to court, and entrusted them with one of the most important roles she delegated to anyone in her entire reign: that of keeping Mary Queen of Scots prisoner, and preventing her from conspiring against her. This the Shrewsburies loyally did for the next sixteen years, until 1584, moving home to another of their estates each time a plot to rescue Mary was discovered.
Rowland Lockey 'Mary, Queen of Scots' 158
Rowland Lockey ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’ 1585
In 1574/5 a serious situation developed involving Bess’s daughter, Elizabeth. The girl met, fell in love with, got pregnant by, and then married Charles Stuart, the brother of Mary Queen of Scots’ former husband, Lord Darnley. Like Darnley, Charles was the son of the Countess of Lennox, who herself was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland – and daughter of King Henry VII of England. Bess had married her daughter into the Royal families of both England and Scotland without the knowledge or permission of the Queen, and she and the Countess of Lennox were both promptly consigned to the care of the Tower of London.
Lady ARabella STuart, c.1590
Lady Arabella Stuart, c.1590
By January 1575 she was back home, though. Her daughter Elizabeth and Charles Stuart were expecting their first and only child, Arabella, and under the terms of succession, Bess felt Arabella had a good chance to succeed Elizabeth on her death. To that purpose, she began casting about for a suitable husband, and after a while came up with the infant Lord Denbigh, the son of the Earl of Leicester and the widowed Countess of Essex… She could hardly have contrived to upset the Queen more: the Earl of Leicester, after all, was the Queen’s former love, Robert Dudley… and so summoned to London by the Queen, Bess was likely invited to consider a third stay in the Tower. Judiciously, she assured the Queen of her loyalty, and took no further part in trying to arrange a marriage for Arabella, whose future the Queen took under her own wing, and the infant Lord Denbigh promptly died, pruning any future growth to that disconcerting branch of the family tree.
Bess turned instead to the construction of a home worthy of a future Queen of England… Hardwicke Hall… and thus came to be known as Bess of Hardwicke. In the meantime, though, another problem had emerged: Bess became concerned at the amount of time Mary Queen of Scots and her husband were spending together, and tried to resolve the matter by becoming Mary’s constant companion, spending months on end together with her, engaging in talk and much needlepoint.
After a while, though, Bess became aware that her husband was being unfaithful with one of her serving wenches, indeed, catching him in flagrante delecto. Rumours began circulating that the serving maid was not the only object of Shrewsbury’s attention, and that Mary Queen of Scots had not only taken his eye, but that she had already secretly borne two children by him.
The Queen was horrified, and Bess was summoned to Court, and swore on her knees that the news of Mary’s inappropriate children was totally untrue, and signed a declaration to that effect. Elizabeth seemingly accepted this, but the Earl of Shrewsbury blamed Bess, and the two separated, never to be reconciled. Mary, Queen of Scots was removed from Shrewsbury’s protection, and executed after the Babington Plot in February 1587, and Shrewsbury died in 1590, making Bess – most improbably, considering her apparently humble origins – the richest woman in England after the Queen. And still, even by 1590 she remained the double of the Queen, with the same red hair, the same nose, the same lips, and the same love for pearls… as this portrait dated 1583 tells:
The Countess of Shrewsbury
The Countess of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hardwicke, c.1580
But there is far more here than readily meets the eye. If we progressively darken her face and increase the tonal contrast, we find a bombshell written in the faintest of brushstrokes. In just one sentence, the painter explains all the many inexplicabilities of Bess of Hardwicke’s life.
Detail of Bess's face, from the 1580 portrait of her
Detail of Bess’s face, from the 1580 portrait of her
‘Sesso 25’ he says across her forehead, then on her temple ‘nata 26’: …sex in 1525, born in 1526. And from her other temple beneath her eye, the traditional declaration that she was the ‘Figlia de’… The artist is writing in Italian, and about to tell us who her parents were.
Detail of Bass's face, showing her true family origins
Detail of Bess’s face, showing her true family origins: click on the picture to enlarge it.
‘Sesso 25, nata 26, figlia de’, he continues… ‘Henry VIII’ and ‘Anne Boleyn’. 
Bess of Hardwicke was the first daughter of Henry VIII and Anne, back in the early days when she first joined the court as lady in waiting to Catherine of Aragon. 
Bess of Hardwicke, named after Henry’s mother, was the elder sister of Queen Elizabeth I.
That is why she could come from obscurity to the court of Edward VI, and how she came to marry the Treasurer of the King’s Chamber, Sir William Cavendish. That is why she fell from grace under the reign of Mary I in 1553, and why in 1558 Elizabeth chose her as a key Lady in Waiting. Bess could be trusted. This was how it was she could marry the Captain of Elizabeth’s guard, Sir William St Loe, and how it was she could meddle in the dynastic politics of Elizabeth’s court and not only survive but be forgiven and then return to court. It was how she could marry the richest nobleman in the Realm, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and how he could be trusted to keep Mary Queen of Scots safely captive for 16 years. It explains, too, how she could then again meddle  with the line of succession by marrying her daughter into the English and Scottish royal families – and once again survive and be forgiven. It explains too why she was the spitting image of the rather the illustrious Virgin Queen.
But how could a mere artist know all this? Well, he signed that portrait of Bess Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury. 
He signed it on her ruff, using the name Robert Tudor’. 
The artist was Elizabeth’s son, and the Countess of Shrewsbury’s nephew. He would have known, for sure, what his mum and aunty were up to.
But our story is not yet done… This was not the only portrait of Robert’s aunt that art history considers significant: there is another painting we must look at, too, one holding yet another surprise…
(to be continued)