The Private Life of James II

 I have posted about Justine Brown's biography of James II, HERE and HERE; I am happy to say that I have at last been able to read it for myself. It really is the best book I have ever read about James. For one thing it does not trash everyone else in his family as some biographies do. And it explores the walking contradiction that was James II, second son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, whose very real virtues were overshadowed by his principal vice, that of lust, leading to several torrid extramarital love affairs and a handful of illegitimate offspring. I have often wondered if the obvious sex addictions which ruled Charles II and James II were a result of the traumas suffered when they were young and witnessed the bloodshed of war, resulting in the judicial murder of one beloved parent with long separations from the other beloved parent. Or maybe it was just that they took after their grandfather Henri IV, le vert galant. Their first cousin Louis XIV resembled le bon roi Henri as well, when it came to women, without the excuse of having witnessed the horrors of war as a child, although he came close enough. While James was handsomer than his brother Charles, he possessed neither his earthy charm nor his uncanny ability for double-dealing. James, a military man, was forthright and blunt, seeing the world in black and white, which some have characterized as bigotry, although his ideas of freedom of conscience as applied to the law were revolutionary for his time. Ironically, James is seen as a tyrant and absolutist, when all he wanted was for Catholics and non-conformist Protestants to enjoy the same religious liberties as Anglicans. He had the makings of a great king but was betrayed by his own flesh and blood, changing the course of history and plunging Ireland and Scotland into another century of persecution.

People have mocked James for throwing the Great Seal of England into the Thames before fleeing his kingdom. However, after reading Justine's book it becomes clear why he did so. He was emotionally devastated by the betrayal of his beloved daughters, as well as by his sons-in-law, one of whom was also his nephew, only child of his beloved sister Mary, the Princess Royal. In all the upheavals of the English Civil Wars, James' immediate family had always remained loyal to his father Charles I and to each other. While they had been sundered by miles, illness, imprisonment and death, they never betrayed each other. For James to have his throne stolen by his own children, with the help of the Churchills, to whom he had given everything, was like a knife in the heart. I think he also knew that the ancient monarchy was over and that kings and queens would no longer rule but merely reign.

Perhaps James' main mistake was, other than underestimating the ruthlessness of his daughters Mary and Anne, was underestimating the hatred of Catholicism that the Whig party was intent upon keeping alive in England. During his exile and army career, James had visited Catholic countries; he was married to an Italian and his sister-in-law was Portuguese. He thought that seeing the open practice of Catholicism would wean the populace from their worn-out prejudices. But the fear of popery that erupted into violence, forcing his Queen and his newborn son to escape to France, showed him that he had miscalculated.

James II emerges from the book as a tragic but fascinating personality. He was one of the last Kings of England to have had personal experience of warfare. As Duke of York he built up the British navy, preparing it to be the mega-force which was to rule the seas in the next century. He was a patron of the lively Restoration theater and of all the arts. He was a patron of Catholic shrines, reopening defunct Catholic places of pilgrimage during his short reign. He possessed basic familiarity with his Celtic realms, having lived for several years in Scotland as Duke of Albany. He is patriarch of a European dynasty, the Fitz-James Stuarts, and also has many descendants in the United Kingdom to this day, including the current Prince of Wales. In his last years, exiled in France, the founder of the Trappists, Abbot Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé was his father-confessor. For anyone interested in English history The Private Life of James II by Justine Brown is a must-read.

The biography may be purchased, HERE. An interview with the author is HERE. My novel about James' mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, is HERE.

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Diversity, Equity, and Confabulation

 From Chronicles:

A miraculous fellow like Arday might never have been admitted as a student at Cambridge, let alone made “professor of the sociology of education,” if not for the spirit of DEI. Yet now he faces accusations of plagiarism because more than 100 passages in his dissertation appear to be lifted from another academic’s work.

He insists he’s a victim of racism and insufficient accommodation: “Arday did not dispute the allegations of plagiarism,” the BBC reports, “but defended himself by arguing that he had not received adequate supervision during his Ph.D. given his autism and learning disabilities …”

Even the left-wing Guardian newspaper found Arday less than reliable when he claimed a campaign to get him fired from Cambridge included a man threatening him with a knife—video showed no man and no knife—and someone sending a severed pig’s head to his parents. (London butchers and police said their recollections and records conflicted with Arday’s story.)

When the paper asked about the discrepancies, Arday replied, “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.”

The trouble is, too many in the media and academy have believed Arday all along. He’s a poster child for the suspension of common-sense DEI demands of its believers on both sides of the Atlantic. When he’s just a professor of the sociology of education, even at a university as prestigious as Cambridge, an Arday is comical. But it’s no joke when DEI spreads from sociology and education departments to every other corner of the academy, including medical and law schools—and from there into hospitals and courtrooms. (Read more.)

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Shattered Realm, Scattered People

 From Peter D. Richards:

The year 1066 is often remembered for a single, pivotal day on a Sussex hillside—the clash of shield walls at Hastings, the fall of King Harold Godwinson, and the triumph of William the Conqueror. Yet, the Battle of Hastings was merely the prologue to a far broader socio-political cataclysm. In the decades that followed, native Anglo-Saxon society was systematically dismantled.

While stone Norman castles rose like iron beacons across the landscape, the people who had called England home for six centuries faced two distinct, painful fates: exile across the known world for the elite, or subjugation on the lands their ancestors had plowed for the masses left behind.

For the surviving Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, life under Norman rule quickly proved untenable. Following a series of crushed rebellions across the Midlands, the North, and the Fens, the native elite recognised that submission meant disinheritance, imprisonment, or death. Thousands chose flight over servitude.

This sparked one of the most remarkable, yet underreported, diasporas of the Middle Ages:

• The Celtic & Scandinavian Fringes: Many nobles sought immediate refuge in Scotland and Ireland. Margaret, sister of the un-crowned Anglo-Saxon claimant Edgar Ætheling, married King Malcolm III of Scotland, weaving English royal lineage directly into the Scottish monarchy. Others fled to Denmark and Norway, appealing to Scandinavian kin for military aid.

• The Exodus to Byzantium: The most extraordinary chapter of the diaspora unfolded far to the east. By the late 1070s, a massive fleet of dispossessed Anglo-Saxon warriors and their families sailed into the Mediterranean, bound for Constantinople.

• The Varangian Guard: The Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Comnenus, eagerly inducted these seasoned housecarls into his elite Varangian Guard. The English became the primary core of the Emperor’s personal bodyguard. In a dramatic twist of history, these exiles faced their Norman foes once more at the Battle of Dyrrhachium in 1081.

(Read more.)

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Taddeo di Bartolo: Sienese Gothic in the Early Renaissance

 

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

If I hadn’t told you the date, would you have guessed the early fifteenth century?

Most people wouldn’t, and would probably peg it as “early Renaissance”. In fact, even readers who’ve been following the Sacred Images Project for a while might hesitate. At first glance, this looks like a classic mid-14th century, “Trecento” Sienese Gothic Madonna. It has all the notes: a glowing gold background functioning as non-natural space, meticulously and elaborately tooled and stamped to show the haloes, the richly patterned cloth created by picking out the paint with the sgraffito technique to expose the gold underlay. 

 Here are the typical Sienese gentle almond eyes, elongated figures, softly rounded and luminous features, and the solemn little Christ Child, royally dressed, blessing the viewer. It all belongs to a visual language that seems to have come straight from the age of Duccio and Simone Martini.

But this isn’t 1340. It was painted around 1405, sixty-five years later. What makes it so intriguing is that the great flowering of the Sienese “golden age,” so characterised by this very distinctive painting style, was supposed to have ended quite abruptly in 1348, with the Black Death that wiped out 50% of Siena’s population in a single year. But we will see below that this is an oversimplification. Since there’s no documentation it’s only speculation, but wouldn’t it be fun to think of him as saying, “We’re Sienese, dammit, whatever those heathen Florentines are doing”? What if Siena wasn’t behind Florence but simply disagreed with Florence? (Read more.)

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What the Midterms Are Actually About

 From Batya Ungar-Sargon:

It’s less than a hundred days until the midterm elections decide who controls the House and the Senate—and whether President Trump and his Cabinet spend the next two years enacting his agenda or fighting impeachment, which will certainly be the Democrats’ first order of business.

But this week gave us a number of stark visuals representing what your choices actually are when you go into the voting booth in November.

One of them came by way of Spain, which was invaded this week by tens of thousands of men from Morocco, who streamed across the border after the border “totally collapsed” as one official told the AP.

The border collapse comes after Spain gave amnesty to more than a million illegal migrants, the largest migrant amnesty in European history. Naturally, when news about the amnesty program spread, thousands more decided to take their chances at achieving European residency.

Because that’s what amnesty for people who cross your border illegally does: It incentivizes people to cross your border illegally, because it is a reward for crossing your border illegally.

But if you think this can only happen in Europe, I urge you to think back to 2022. Remember these scenes? This isn’t Spain. This is Texas. (Read more.)

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The Eclipse That Saved Columbus

 From Science News:

By the time Christopher Columbus sailed westward in 1492, navigators were already using hefty volumes containing astronomical tables to guide them across unknown seas. These books often included detailed instructions for manipulating navigational instruments and for computing geographical positions from celestial observations. Columbus himself probably carried copies of two invaluable books. The “perpetual almanac” prepared by Abraham Zacuto contained more than 300 pages of astronomical tables that had already contributed to such navigational feats as Vasco da Gama’s famous expedition from Portugal around the tip of Africa to India. The second volume, called the Ephemerides, had been produced by the prominent German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Müller, who went by the Latin name Regiomontanus.

The astronomical tables that Columbus consulted during his voyage proved useful for determining latitude and, to some degree, longitude. A prediction contained in the tables probably saved his life at a crucial moment during his fourth voyage to the lands he had discovered.

Nearly 2 years after sailing from Cadiz in 1502, Columbus and his restless, disgruntled crew were stranded on the north coast of Jamaica, confined to worm-eaten, leaking ships. The native inhabitants were no longer awed by the newcomers. Annoyed by their voracious appetites and angry at the depredations of crew members, who had plundered several villages, the population was hostile and would no longer supply food.

Weary and ill, Columbus had withdrawn to his ship. There, he pondered his precarious situation. Returning to the stained pages of the Ephemerides, he noted Regiomontanus’s prediction of a total eclipse of the moon on Feb. 29, 1504.

Such an eclipse occurs only when the moon passes into Earth’s shadow. A lunar eclipse looks the same anywhere on Earth, but it occurs at different times, as measured by local clocks. Regiomontanus’s book contained not only the expected dates of eclipses but also diagrams illustrating how completely the moon would be covered and precise information about each eclipse’s duration and timing down to the hour. (Read more.)

 

There are still copies of Ephemerides around. From Swann Auction Galleries:

This rare early Ephemerides covers the years 1484 through 1506. Ratdolt first printed Regiomontanus's work in 1481. That particular imprint has only appeared at auction once, also from the Gingerich collection, and consisted of only 42 leaves of 364. The only other copy of this 1484 edition in the auction record was also incomplete, lacking 100 leaves. Copies from the 1490s show up with a little more regularity, but also generally suffer from incompleteness. As the printers learned the format, they eased into a better formula that wasted less paper. The 1480s editions were printed with one blank per signature of 14 leaves. By the 1490s, they had figured out how to eliminate the blank, and used all 14 leaves per signature. (Read more.)

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A Romantic Manor House in Normandy

 

 

 

From House and Garden:

'It’s one of the most beautiful places in France,’ says Cordelia de Castellane of the Normandy village of Beaumont-en-Auge, situated a few miles south of the coastal town of Deauville. And just beyond the boundaries of this picture-postcard commune, set against the bucolic backdrop of the region’s farms, orchards and medieval fortresses, the Greek-French designer has recently completed the decoration of a charming country retreat, with parts of the distinctive building dating back to the 17th century.

The striking three-storey manoir has a traditional half-timber colombage façade and belongs to a literary couple who are longtime friends of Cordelia. ‘We share a love of dance and literature, particularly the works of Marcel Proust,’ explains Cordelia, who serves as artistic director of Dior Maison and Baby Dior. The 150-square-foot property unfolds across a trio of structures: alongside the main manor house – the interiors of which Cordelia describes as ‘super French’ – is a four-bedroom guest house with a more contemporary look, and a former rotisserie that now contains a palatial, beamed dining room.

Before making a decision to change a single thing, Cordelia spent some time staying alone in the house. This luxurious period of solitude proved fruitful. Immersing herself in the original spirit of the interiors and observing the movement of light across its rooms guided her approach to the layout and to the decoration, which is by turns calm and characterful. It is typical of Cordelia’s method. ‘I see the people, I feel the house – and it just comes to me,’ she says of how she brought this scheme to life. (Read more.)

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BREAKING: JD Vance Announces Task Force Has Uncovered Billions in Fraud

 From America First:

Vice President JD Vance delivered a striking update on the Trump administration’s fight against government fraud during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, announcing that a task force he leads has identified $230 billion in fraudulent or improper payments perpetrated against the American people, with $56 billion of that amount already halted before it went out the door.

The announcement came during the first-ever live-streamed Cabinet meeting held at Camp David, a format that allowed Americans to watch the administration’s internal deliberations in real time. Vance, who has served as the chair of the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud since President Trump established it by executive order in March 2026, framed the findings as one of the clearest early wins of the administration’s broader push to root out waste and corruption in the federal government.

“Just since the beginning of the Fraud Task Force that I started under the president’s leadership and direction, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American people, and we have halted already $56 billion of that,” Vance told the gathered Cabinet, according to multiple accounts of the meeting. (Read more.)

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An Ancient Civilization of Millions Once Flourished in the Amazon

 From Phys.org:

New research conducted using airborne laser scanning reveals that a multicultural civilization that flourished in southwestern Amazonia between 600 BCE and 850 CE was home to millions of people. Spanning roughly 183,000 square kilometers (71,000 square miles), the Aquiry civilization built large centers for political and ritual purposes. By surveying a representative section of the area, researchers identified the remains of more than 400 well-preserved sites of monumental ceremonial architecture, along with some later settlement sites.

Extrapolating their findings to the civilization's full territory, the researchers arrived at a cautious estimate of more than 20,000 ancient earthwork ceremonial centers. The largest known site covers 50 hectares (124 acres).

Comprehensive surveys and radiocarbon dating showed that the Aquiry territory—which makes up less than 3% of Greater Amazonia—was already home to 1.25–3 million people at the start of the first millennium. This finding challenges earlier, more conservative estimates of the population across the wider Amazon region, which have ranged between 1 million and 10 million. The Amazon's total population may have numbered in the tens of millions.

"Our findings overturn our understanding of the Amazon region's past," says the emeritus professor at the University of Helsinki who led the study published in Nature. (Read more.)

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