Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 445
The War of the Roses
Hello Everyone
The other day, Auntie Alice looked out of her kitchen window to see a strange sight.
Bill and Bob had picked two long-stemmed roses and were bashing each other with them. There were petals flying off everywhere!
Auntie Alice asked them what they were doing and they replied that they were re-enacting the War of the Roses.
Of course, the real war of the roses had nothing to do with plants and was fought with more fearsome weapons than pretty flowers!
The roses referred to the symbols of the two families who waged the war.
The War of the Roses was the lengthy quarrel between two branches of the royal house of Plantagenet.
The Lancastrian part of the family provided kings from 1399 to 1461 and the Yorkist part from 1461 to 1485. (With a short break 1470 to 1471.)
The war broke out in 1455 because the Yorkists were annoyed.
They thought that the Lancastrian king, Henry Vl was ruling with a weak and inefficient administration – that means it wasn’t very good!
The wars lasted on and off for about thirty years. There were ten major battles and many other fights too.
Each side had their supporters in the nobility but the war could not be classed as a civil war because neither the merchant classes nor the agricultural workers were involved.
About eighty noblemen and their sons lost their lives in the wars.
A lot of the soldiers were troops from the private armies of the noblemen; some were foreign mercenaries that had been shipped in especially to help.
A mercenary is a soldier who fights for whoever will pay him for fighting in a war. There are still mercenaries today.
By the time this war broke out, battles were taking place on battlefields with the earliest of hand guns and cannon. They were powered by gunpowder which had been introduced into Europe at the end of the 1200s.
The War of the Roses started with the Battle of St Albans in 1455 and ended with probably the most famous battle which was the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
The Lancastrian Henry took the throne from the King Richard lll of York after his victory at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry became King Henry Vll.
ln 1486, Henry married a Yorkist called Elizabeth. She was the beautiful daughter of King Edward lV who was monarch 1461-1470 and 1471-1483. He died in 1483.
This united the two warring sides.
The king and queen had a very happy marriage. They had eight children.
Henry combined the red rose of the Lancastrians and the white rose of the Yorkists to make the red and white Tudor Rose.
Henry Vll was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
Henry was determined to secure his position and bring about a final peace to the country.
He broke the power of the barons by taking away their right to own private armies.
ln 1485, he formed the Yeoman of the Guard. There are still Yeomen of the Guard in the Tower of London today.
ln 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America, and five years later in 1497, Henry sponsored the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot to North America.
Henry had spent much of his early life in exile and had to live a poor existence so he knew the value of money at a young age.
He was generous to the church, the sick and the poor and patronised (supported with money) William Caxton the printer and also a revival of learning in England. But otherwise he kept a careful eye on the country’s finances.
Henry worked tirelessly to increase the wealth of the crown and the country. Henry Vll died at Richmond Palace in 1509.
By the time his son Henry Vlll came to the throne England was a much more secure kingdom than the one he had claimed twenty-four years earlier.
Oh yes, and by the way, Auntie Alice told Bill and Bob off for wrecking her rose bushes!
lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.
Thank you!
And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: What did the big rose say to the little rose?
Bob: l don’t know, what did the big rose say to the little rose?
Bill: Hi bud!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Henry Vll
Elizabeth of York
Yeoman
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, Miss Pringle was having a gossip with Mandy Livers the post mistress in the Rocky Bay post office.
Miss Pringle was telling Mandy about how she thought that when her class went back to school she might organize a fund-raising event with her children.
She wanted to raise funds for school equipment for places in the world that didn’t have the advantages that her class had.
She wanted the children in her class to realize how lucky they were to have such a well-equipped school and not all children in the world were that lucky.
After all, there is no better way of fighting poverty than to empower people to take responsibility themselves and find their own way out of it.
To help educate them is a basic way to do that; but all educational establishments need resources.
Miss Pringle said that she was thinking about organizing a sponsored walk or even a sponsored silence.
The mayor, who was standing nearby, couldn’t help overhearing.
He joined in the conversation and suggested that a better idea would be to do a sponsored ‘do something useful’.
He said that he would sponsor anyone who would like to go down to the beach and pick up litter and anything like bits of plastic that had washed up onto the strandline.
Miss Pringle laughed. She said that they could call it a sponsored DoSU for short.
The vicar the Rev Green was standing behind the mayor in the queue and said that he would like to help too.
He said that they could combine the whole project with the harvest festival at the church and if people had any books that they didn’t want anymore, they could bring them with their usual fruit and vegetables and he could add them to a school equipment collection.
After all harvest festival was about showing gratitude for what you had and it didn’t have to just be about food.
Word soon spread around town and Miss Pringle realized she had started something really big!
She went home to organize her plans.
She would ask her pupils what they thought when they came back to class.
She knew she would need the help of a lot of adults as well to get the scheme up and running.
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Quick Quiz
What do these words and phrases mean?
- to be red-faced
- a red rag to a bull
- to raise a red flag
- to catch someone red-handed
- to roll out the red carpet
- out of the red
- red tape
- a white lie
- a white knight
- to show the white flag
- white knuckle
- white sheep
- white magic
- pearly whites
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A POCKET DRESS FOR A 12” DOLL
You can decorate this dress with ordinary buttons.
This dress has flower-shaped buttons on it.
DRESS (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and pale green dk yarn cast on 18 stitches
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Knit 30 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 8 rows of garter stitch
Change to pink dk yarn
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
POCKETS (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and pale green dk yarn cast on 8 stitches
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Knit 8 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Sew a button onto each pocket using sewing thread
Sew the pockets onto the dress using yarn
Using over-sew stitching and with right sides together sew shoulder and side seams
Turn the dress the right way out
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- to be red-faced – to be embarrassed
- a red rag to a bull – something that provokes anger
- to raise a red flag – to set an alarm/earmark a problem
- to catch someone red-handed – to catch someone doing something wrong like a thief stealing something
- to roll out the red carpet – give someone a warm welcome
- out of the red – to get out of debt
- red tape – bureaucracy/rules you have to follow
- a white lie – a lie said to avoid hurting someone’s feelings
- a white knight – someone who helps and supports
- to show the white flag – to capitulate/admit defeat
- white knuckle – scary
- white sheep – someone who is dutiful and well-behaved
- white magic – good magic
- pearly whites – teeth
I think this is the best blog for children I have ever seen. There is so much stuff it is like reading a whole book!
lt is true that there certainly is a lot to read on this blog now.
Thank you for your kind comment Vivienne!
I never liked school but learning from this blog is fun and interesting – very easy to read!
l am glad you like my blog Theo. Thanks!
My reading is not very good but this is so easy to read. I love the funny style too.
Other people have said this to me.
So glad to help you with your education. lt is absolutely never to late to learn, whatever age you are!