I hope he had a really good time in his three days.
As a by-product of my reading I tend to collect oddities of history. Apparently I am much older than I thought - and probably dead. The story was also mentioned obliquely by my brother some time ago. However what he failed to note was my imperial precedence.
The Rudd Baronetcy, of Aberglassney in the County of Carmarthen in Wales, was a title in the Baronetage of England. It was created on 8 December 1628 for Richard Rudd (!) It even has a famous house and garden now fully restored and operated by the National Trust. Baron Rudd was the son of Anthony Rudd, Bishop of St David’s. The title became extinct on the death of the fourth Baronet in 1739. Now Mike and the international touchstone of Antiques’ Roadshow have both mentioned Bishop Rudd who suffered the family affliction of the inappropriate comment, although I suspect that he is the only family member to be rude to a monarchs’ face. In his case twice.
Anyway, in another pointless delving into the past and legends of the Rudd, I was reading about Richard the Lionheart who was imprisoned on his return from the Crusades. You may remember the story of the minstrel Blondel who wandered northern Europe singing under prison walls until his song was answered by the King’s voice. The ransom that was eventually paid for his release nearly bankrupted England but led to a brief moment of prosperity in Europe before it descended in to the usual anarchy, destruction and misery. The family legend was that a Sir John Rudd had died defending King Richard somewhere on his journey into temporary bondage in Austria. Legitimate history seems to make no mention of any heroic activity by a Rudd but does come up with some other interesting footnotes.
Somewhat coyly it does also conclude that Richard I (in contemporary parlance) swung both ways. I presume this was the result of unusually spacious armour.
Anyway I bring you the curious death of a rat and William Longspee, Earl of Salisbury in 1226, and Richard the Lionheart’s last surviving brother. To be correct his illegitimate brother from Henry II’s shelter-shed relationship with Ida de Tosny. .
William died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 57 after a successful military campaign in Gascony the only part of Richard I’s inheritance that remained. Normally the luckiest of men he returned home after surviving a tremendous storm in the English Channel that lasted for days, notable for a visitation of the Virgin Mary on the mast top.
Like his older brother Richard he was soon to discover how dangerous it was to spend too much time abroad. (Richard spent only six months of his ten year reign in England giving a lot of time for his brother, the infamous King John, to plot against him.)
Like Odysseus’ wife Penelope, William’s wife Ela, had been surrounded by the most forceful and persuasive suitors. Ela held them at bay, but the Kings justiciar*, the ambitious Hubert de Burgh, was particularly forceful in pressing the suit of his cousin. (The phrase to “press one’s suit’ brings back the old WWII radio sketch called ‘The Proposal’ by the diminutive Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch. In this Askey wishes to learn how to propose to Miss Nausea Bagwash.
“Nausea, I kneel before you. I am intoxicated by your beauty. The perfume of your presence, those beautiful eyes, those beautiful lips, those pearly white teeth. Nausea, darling, I come to press my suit.”
“Mary, put iron on.”)
Enraged by this behaviours’ (if not Arthur Askey) , Longspee eventually decide to complain to the teenage king Henry III. Henry forced the two Barons to eat dinner together, but it was Longspee’s last meal. He became ill on the journey home and by the time he reached Salisbury he knew he was dying. He summoned the bishop, who gave him the final sacraments, and he died on March 7th. Those who turned out for his funeral – Hubert de Burgh was conspicuously absent - debated whether or not he was poisoned.
There is some evidence that he was. In 1791 a group of antiquarians opened his tomb and found Longspee dressed in furs and robes that had bleached white with age. Curled up in his skull was a dead rat. The rat was finally given a post-mortem in the 20th Century and was found to have died of arsenic poisoning, possible a second unexpected victim of Hubert de Burgh.
The dead rat can still be seen in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.
Nancy Mitford who apart from being an interesting historian also had a rich store of anecdotes many of which are in her collection ’A Talent to Annoy’ . This from a book review of her favourite historical personage Marie Antoinette.
‘…. Dr Gooch….. sees the Duchesse de Bourgogne s a sort of female Lord Fauntleroy, the darling of the great kings heart; no mention of her ugliness, her orgies of eating and drinking, her lovers, the fact, like Marie-Antoinette, she constantly sent state secrets to her own relations when they were fighting the French, and her disconcerting habit of having an enema in front of the drawing room fire before dinner.’
How do you find out stuff like that?
Or …….
‘I said to a nice woman in the train that surely the English put up with too much. “You ought to revolt, “ I said, “against such horrors as the National Butter – if nobody bought it the Government would be obliged to supply something else.” I told her how the French Government has tried to foist frozen meat on the public because it was easier t distribute – fresh meat disappeared from the shops and awful stuff called Frigo took its place. The housewives revolted , nobody bought meat for a fortnight, and that was the end of Frigo. She pondered over this and then said with pride, “We revolted once you know, over tinned beetroot.”’
You can’t make up stuff like that.

*In medieval England and Scotland the Chief Justiciar (later known simply as the Justiciar) was roughly equivalent to a modern Prime Minister.