Al's
Most Recent
Quote
of the day:
"Puritanism
is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is happy.”
H. L.
Mencken
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 . 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 decides to head south with his best friend, a
pinto pony named Mr. Twain. He ended up on the Alabama coast and
rented a shrimp boat to take him and Mr. Twain to the east coast of
the Yucatan peninsula near Tulum, Mexico. He met up with a 102 year
old woman named Cleopatra Highbourne who is the owner 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 hired 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 us
heathens many times 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 naturally 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
skewer 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 and put on
trial. The local native tribal chiefs were very restless and
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 the gallows. The natives were no longer restless.
Speaking
of new arrivals, here is another one.
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.
William believed that
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 Godwinson (Harold II)
became King and therefore in William’s eyes 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.
In
early September King Harold had just met an invasion of King Harald
of Norway accompanied by William’s brother Tostic along with swarms
of Viking warriors and Harold defeated them almost to the point of
annihilation at the Battle of Stamford Bridge near York .
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. William did not disappoint and
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 closely 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 and he
was killed when a mounted Norman knight broke through and with one swipe of his sword beheaded Harold. 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 invaded from the north and
took York.
The Danes were ruthlessly attacked by William’s army and
were driven back to their boats in the Humber River and they sailed
back to Denmark with their tails dragging. 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…..Among 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.
Thanks
for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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