7 stories from this place.
Perkin Warbeck claimed from 1490 to be Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, the younger of the two Princes in the Tower. He was recognised by Margaret of Burgundy, James IV of Scotland, and Maximilian I of Austria. He landed in Cornwall in 1497 with 8,000 supporters, was captured, and was hanged at Tyburn on 23 November 1499.
Read the story →The Stone Gate at the southern end of Old London Bridge displayed the severed heads of executed traitors on iron-tipped pikes from approximately 1305 to 1660. William Wallace's head went up first. By the 1660 closure the gate had displayed the heads of several hundred traitors, regicides, and political enemies of the Crown.
Read the story →From 1305 to 1660 — three and a half centuries — the southern gatehouse of [Old London Bridge](/articles/old-london-bridge) carried the displayed heads of traitors executed by the English crown. The first head was William Wallace's; the last was probably Oliver Cromwell's. The boiled heads were dipped in tar before mounting and were managed by an officer of the City of London known as the Keeper of the Heads.
Read the story →William Montagu was Edward III's close personal friend and the principal organiser of the October 1330 coup at Nottingham Castle that overthrew the Mortimer-Isabella regency. He led the small armed party through the underground passage. He died of wounds eleven years later jousting at his own son's wedding.
Read the story →When the French king Charles IV died in February 1328 without a male heir, the French throne passed to his cousin Philip of Valois under a specific reading of the medieval Frankish *Salic Law*. The reading excluded the rival English claim of Edward III through his French-princess mother Isabella. Edward eventually decided he disagreed.
Read the story →The Tyburn gallows at the western edge of medieval London were the main public execution site for the English crown from 1196 to 1783. About sixty thousand people died there. The site is now a traffic junction at Marble Arch, with a plaque almost nobody reads.
Read the story →Roger Mortimer escaped the Tower, invaded England, deposed a king, and ran the country for three years. His own teenage king-by-grace overthrew him in a midnight coup.
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