Thursday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“If winning is not everything, why do they keep score?

                                 Vince Lombardi

I am reading a book of fiction written by Jimmy Buffett. It is not a murder mystery, a horror nor a spy novel. It is an entertaining piece of fluff that has no significance. Briefly it is about a 30 year old man named Tully Mars living in Heartache, Wyoming. He gets into trouble with the local uppity-ups and he decides to head south with his best friend, a pinto pony named Mr. Twain. They end up on the Alabama coast and rent a shrimp boat to take him and Mr Twain to the east coast of the Mexican Yucatan peninsula near Tulum. He meets up with a 102 year old woman named Cleopatra Highbourne who is the captain of a sailing vessel named Lucretia. This boat is 90 feet at the water line and has a crew of 12 to handle the sails. Cleopatra has a thing for lighthouses and hires Tully to find a rare lighthouse lens for one that is broken. The book is Tully's adventures looking for this lens all over the Caribbean and even into the South Pacific. Like I said, I normally read history, paleontology or archaeology. This is a welcome break from the heavy stuff. Jimmy Buffett was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, raised in Mobile, Alabama and has joined many of us heathens at the immortal Flora-Bama Lounge that straddles the Florida/Alabama state line on the beach. In the book a lot of this area is mentioned. By the way, Jimmy Buffett has authored five best sellers.

I am also reading a book titled “Mayflower” by Nathan Philbrick. I have read it before but it deserved a second reading. It is about those that arrived on the Mayflower and disembarked at a place they named Plimouth, Massachusetts. The book is mostly about what happened afterward. The leader of this group was William Bradford who was named Governor. We were very fortunate to have had this man in control because he realized that amiable relationships with the local native Americans was essential to their survival...there were many that thought otherwise. An example is the George Peach affair. George was a “pilgrim” settler. During the early days the English pound notes were useless and trying to use them for trade with the Natives was not working...so they went with the native money which was wampum belts. George Peach chose to stab a native with his rapier (a slender fencing sword) for his wampum belt. That's right, y'all, this was the first written account of a mugging in America. George was arrested by Bradford's boys and put on trial. The local native tribal chiefs were very interested into what would happen to George Peach. What could have been a major uprising would occur if the trial went south. Many “pilgrims” felt that the execution of George was not warranted for “just killing an Indian”. Bradford felt otherwise and George Peach went to meet his maker wearing a hemp neck tie. The natives were no longer restless.

Here is a few more interesting facts about this expedition. The first slaves from Africa stepped foot on North America in Plimouth (their spelling). Just a few years after the settlement was in existence and was shown on most marine maps, a Dutch slave ship stopped at Plimouth looking for food. They had miscalculated their food supply while gathering slaves in the Leeward Islands and they needed more food and water for their crew and the slaves before the three or four week crossing of the Atlantic back to the Netherlands. They traded with the residents and surrendered a number slaves for food and fresh water. This was confirmed later when Governor William Bradford was on his deathbed he declared that all “freemen” should vote for a replacement Governor after his death. Also while on his deathbed Bradford said that what he regretted the most was the pilgrims had eventually put personal wealth above the value of their souls and the souls of others. Nothing has changed from that day to this...has it?

In 1646 a Civil War broke out in England with Parliament on one side and King Charles I on the other. King Charles I was renown as a cruel and repressive monarch and many pilgrims left Plimouth and joined with Oliver Cromwell in his fight against King Charles I. Cromwell and his army won.

Here is a bio on one of the most important movers and shakers in          history. This man changed the course of history for England, Germany and France. This means that he had a hell of an influence on many of our ancestors. He was hell on wheels, y'all.

                             William the Conqueror

William was born about 1028 the illegitimate son of Robert I Duke of Normandy and Arlette the daughter of a tanner in Falaise, France. He was known to his friends as “William the Bastard.” They didn’t say that to his face, however, because his quick and sometime violent temper was well known. His father died in 1035 and little William was recognized by the family as the heir to the Duchy in spite of his illegitimacy. Under normal circumstances illegitimacy precluded succession but this was the exception. His great uncle looked after the Duchy during William’s adolescence. When he was 15 he was knighted by his overlord, King Henry I of France. At the age of 19 William took the reins of the Duchy of Normandy and dealt severely and successfully with attempted rebellions within the Duchy and attempted invasions from without, including one by his former ally, King Henry I, the King of France. The forces of France were defeated by William’s army in 1054 and 1057 securing a reputation for William and being a ruthless and very capable military commander and administrator. It was William’s reputation that secured the marriage to Mathilda, the daughter of Count Baldwin V of Flanders. William believed the he had a claim to the English throne because in 1051 Edward the Confessor (a distant cousin), the King of England had promised it to him. However, when Edward died in 1064, Harold II became King and therefore in William’s mind, Harold was a usurper and William also had the support of the Vatican. William felt that he had no choice but to take the throne by force and spent several months preparing. He had to wait for several months because of unfavorable winds in the English Channel. Finally on September 28, 1066 the winds on the channel abated and William and 600 ships carrying 7,000 infantry and 2,500 cavalry, horses and armor included, landed at Pevensey, England. Poor Harold had met an invasion of the King Harald of Norway accompanied by William’s brother Tostic along with swarms of Viking warriors and defeated them almost to the point of annihilation at the Battle of Stamford Bridge near York in early September. Soon after this battle, a courier delivered Harold a message about the landing of William and company at Pevensey. Harold ordered a forced march and covered the 250 miles to Pevensey in nine days gathering reinforcements as he went. On October 14 the Battle of Seniac near Hastings was joined. Harold arrayed his nearly exhausted troops on the highest ground available and awaited William’s attack. The armies were nearly the same in number with England having the best infantry in Europe carrying their terrible two-handed double-bladed axes and they had the high ground. Eventually William launched a cavalry attack with support of archers. This uphill attack failed and upon retreating a rumor began spreading the William had been killed. William rode among his troops holding his helmet aloft for all to see that he was indeed alive. The Normans launched several attacks in this close fought battle with William coordinating the cavalry and archers. One chronicler described it this way. “One side attacking with great mobility like a dancer, the other side withstanding as if rooted into the ground.” William had three horses killed under him. Finally William’s skillful coordination of his cavalry and archers prevailed and the battle ended when Harold was probably wounded by an arrow to the eye but he definitely was chopped to pieces by mounted Norman knights and Norman infantry. After the death of Harold the English army dissolved and William and company rested. On Christmas Day of 1066 William of Normandy was crowned William I, King of England in Westminster Abbey (been there). Three months later William felt confident enough to return to Normandy and left his half-brother Odo, the Bishop of Bayeaux behind to administer the kingdom. It was Odo that commissioned the immortal Bayeaux Tapestry which depicted the Battle of Hastings. As an honor to the courage of Harold, in 1070 William built an abbey on the site of the battle with the high altar being the very spot where Harold fell. The ruins of Battle Abbey and the town of Battle that grew up around it are still with us to this day. It took six years for William to consolidate his conquest and even then he had to face the constant bickering and fighting on both sides of the channel. In 1068 Harold’s sons invaded the southwest coast of England and were easily defeated by the local constabulary. In 1069 a Danish army, in alliance with Prince Edgar the Aetheling (Ethelred’s great-grandson), invaded from the north and took York. Ethelred was one of four sons of the King of Wessex. The Danes were ruthlessly attacked by William’s army and were driven back to their boats in the Humber River and they sailed their young asses back to Denmark. William consolidated his kingdom by going into a castle building campaign which formed “shires” or counties with the castle as the center of authority. Throughout most of his life William was spent combating attacks from within and without his kingdom and Duchy. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle William was described as “He was a very stern and violent man, so no one dared do anything contrary to his will…..Amongst other things the good security he made in this country is not to be forgotten.” William died in 1087 and is buried in the foundation of the Abbey of St. Stephen in Caen, France. The first French speaking Norman king of England is marked by a simple stone slab. It was William’s lands in Normandy (France) that was the cause of much bickering between the successive Kings of England and the Kings of France for many, many years to come. The home of the present ruling family of England, that being Windsor castle, was built by William the Conqueror. This brief essay by no means describes all the contributions made by this great leader. By the way, in 1087 William was putting down a rebellion in France, fell off his horse onto his head and died as a result.

Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow