High Treason and a Medieval Royal Insult in a Cambridgeshire Church

High Treason and a Medieval Royal Insult in a Cambridgeshire Village Church: the story told by the Heraldry of Orwell Church Chancel Roof
Speaker: David Oats

This lecture will take place at the The Warburg Insitute.
Doors open at the Warburg at 17.30. There will be drinks and snacks.

Please reserve your place via EventBrite

This lecture will also be simultaneously broadcast on Zoom.

If you are attending in London please register for the London ticket.
If you are attending the Zoom meeting please register for the Zoom ticket.
The zoom link will be sent to online attendees by email 2 hours prior to the lecture 16.00 (london time)
The Zoom meeting will start at 17.45, the lecture will commence at 18.00

The 39 coats of arms on the Orwell chancel roof have not been well known. Recent research shows them to be a remarkable and unique survival from the fourteenth century, commemorating the rise, fall and restoration of Sir Simon Burley, an important figure during the troubled reign of the young King Richard II. Burley, a chosen “magister” to instruct the King, became his Vice-Chamberlain and close friend. Thomas of Woodstock, the jealous Duke of Gloucester, brought about his execution for High Treason. Woodstock was later to suffer his own fate. A careful seventeenth-century description and recent work identify the arms as including many of the local gentry but also national and royal figures, some appearing in Shakespeare’s Richard II. Surprisingly, among these arms of Burley’s supporters are included those of Woodstock – but in his case they were very subtly drawn upside down as a personal insult and sign of dishonour.

David Oats
David has been interested in heraldry since his schooldays and has given talks to the Heraldry Society, the Cambridge University Heraldry and Genealogy Society, the Devonshire Association, the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and others.