As my blog has been up and running for just over 6 months now, I thought I would return to the topic of my Masters dissertation: Fifteenth-century English royal witches. My first post here was about Eleanor Cobham, the aunt-by-marriage of Henry VI who in 1441 was scandalously tried for using witchcraft, with her accomplices being convicted of treason against the King via sorcery. In my post, I mentioned how Eleanor’s trial was orchestrated for political reasons, to dislodge her husband Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester’s position at the ear of the young Henry VI. However, in a century when ideas about witchcraft were developing in England, this was not the first case in England of a royal woman being accused of witchcraft for political reasons. Thus, I come to Joan of Navarre.
Joan, imagined and illustrated by Agnes Strickland in her ‘Lives of the Queens of England’ (1852), the first…
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