Creative History

  May Day, the 1st day of May, was typically  a day of feasting, festivity and celebration in early modern England.  Ordinarily, in London May Day was a day off from work for the laboring masses and a day to gather in the warm Spring sunshine for dancing and sport in the city’s narrow streets.  But, in London on the 1st of May during the fateful year of 1517, a day of celebration and revelry took on a much more sinister tone and became forever known to history as “Evil May Day”. On the night of May 1, 1517 a violent and drunken mob which numbered perhaps in the thousands took control of old London’s densely packed, muddy and narrow late-medieval city streets.  Fired by years of simmering rage over low wages and lack of meaningful employment, the angry mob sought to assault and in some instances even attempt to murder every member of London’s ever growing foreign born immigrant population that they could find. At that time in Tudor England during the reign of...

  Some called him a conman, a scoundrel and even a criminal.  He named himself the “King of the Beggars” and published an international bestseller that detailed his exploits as a wandering vagabond who lived on the margins of accepted society.  He claimed it was a one-hundred percent true autobiography.  His detractors said that his work was nothing more than pure fiction.  But one thing is certain--Bampfylde Moore Carew’s literary talents made him one of the 18th century’s most famous (and infamous!) celebrities. To this very day, nearly three hundred years later, the question still remains--Who really was this self-proclaimed “King of the Beggars” Bampfylde Moore Carew?  And is there anything today that we  know about this man that is even remotely true? History doesn’t tell us exactly when Bampfylde Moore Carew was born, but church records tell us that an infant by that name was  baptized on the 23rd of September in the year 1690 at a churc...

  December 29, 1170 Canterbury Cathedral. Four heavily armed and armored knights dismount their horses outside the large oak and iron reinforced doors that lead into the heart of the church. They burst inside with swords drawn and shout, “Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to King and country?” The man named Thomas Becket who the four knights are so zealously seeking is the Archbishop of Canterbury Cathedral.  He is just over fifty years of age and he is a devout and holy monk whose piety and patriotism, up until that very moment at least, have always been without question.  In the years immediately following his death, Pope Alexander III will canonize Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury Cathedral and make him a Saint and a Martyr.  He will go on to be one of the most widely revered and adored Saints in all of Europe during the High Middle Ages--but all of that remains, for the time being anyway, in the not too distant future. For now, four heavily armed knights are ...