On 21st November…

On 22nd November…

1428 - Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, was born. He earned the nickname the Kingmaker for the roles he played in helping men to become king of England. First, he helped Edward IV become king, and then later he worked against Edward to get the deposed King Henry VI back onto the throne during the Wars of the Roses.

1819 - George Eliot was born in Warwickshire, England. George was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans; she altered her writing name in the hope that her writing would be taken seriously because female authors were associated with writing romantic novels. Some of her famous novels include Silas Marner and Middlemarch, her books were very successful and popular in the Victorian era.

1963 - C.S. Lewis died. He was the author of The Chronicles of Narnia which includes the tale of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. During his lifetime he wrote over 30 books and was a professor at both Oxford and Cambridge universities.

1963 - John F. Kennedy, President of the U.S.A, was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald whilst being driven through Dallas in an open topped car. He was the youngest man to ever be elected President of the United States of America.

On 23rd November…

1499 - Perkin Warbeck was hanged for trying to escape from the Tower of London. Perkin was originally from Belgium but when he was in Ireland, locals there thought he was of royal birth because of his silk clothing. He decided to go along with it, pretending to be the lost son of King Edward IV whose two sons had disappeared from the Tower of London under the reign of their uncle Richard III. Perkin Warbeck gathered support from nobility across Europe and England and attempted to invade several times. On his last attempt, he fled into hiding on hearing that King Henry’s army was close by. Warbeck was soon captured and taken to the Tower of London where he was treated quite well considering his crime. It was only when he tried to escape from the Tower that he was sentenced to death by hanging. To be honest it was inevitable that he would eventually be executed because of the threat he posed to the reign of Henry VII, so far, no king in history had allowed anyone to threaten their throne without execution why would Henry VII be any different.

1990 - Roald Dahl, the British author of books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and Danny the Champion of the World died. Did you know that as well as being a writer of many books and screenplays, he was also a spy, an ace fighter pilot in the RAF, a chocolate historian and helped to invent a medical device?

On 24th November…

1542 - The Battle of Solway Moss took place between the English and Scots. This time the disagreement between the two countries began with the English King Henry VIII being a little annoyed that his nephew, the Scottish King James V, had ignored his request to meet and discuss the Scots breaking from the Roman Church just as the English had. King Henry, trying to get some attention and to show his displeasure, sent an army into Scotland to sack and burn a few towns just across the border. King James, in retaliation, did the same just south of the border. The two sides eventually met on the 24th of November near the River Esk and despite the English being outnumbered 15,000 to 3,000 they won the battle because the Scottish troops broke and fled when they assumed that the smaller English army was just a front and that much larger forces were the other side of the hill. Herein lies the old saying to never assume because it makes an ass out of u and me. Had they stayed and seen that the English army was just those few thousand men, maybe they’d have won the battle.

1940 - The city of Bristol was bombed by 148 German planes during the Bristol Blitz of World War II. The first bomb dropped on the city at 6pm and the raid continued for a further six hours. Over 200 people were killed, 187 were injured and over 1,400 people were made homeless overnight.

On 25th November…

1034 - King Malcolm II of Scotland died. His grandson Duncan inherited the throne to become King Duncan I.

1626 - Edward Alleyn, one of the greatest actors of the Elizabethan stage died. He was also the founder of Dulwich College originally called the College of God’s Gift.

On 26th November...

1645 - The third Siege of Newark began during the English Civil War. During this last siege of the castle and town, Scottish forces who had joined with the Parliamentarians were in position to take control of the town. Huge earthworks were dug around the town, and the nearby River Devon was dammed to stop the corn mills from being able to work. By the following March the Newark still hadn’t surrendered to the Scottish forces and the town’s governor only admitted defeat when King Charles surrendered himself to the Scots in an attempt to split the alliance between the Scots and the Parliamentarians.

On 27th November…