The lectures have begun!

We had our first lecture today at 11, and it was fantastic. Michael Dobson, who gave it, is a hoot and a half - I'm genuinely sorry that he won't be lecturing again. (I don't think we have ANY repeats, so I hope they're all as good as he was!)

His specialty is (joy of joys!) theater, and he cracked a couple jokes about how he wasn't sure why they had him giving the history-overview lecture. He was fantastic, of course. He's co-written this book on Elizabeth I and her image/mythology over the past four centuries that I really want to find:


His lecture covered the Tudors from VII to James. Most of it I did already know, but it was great to hear it told with the panache and humor that this guy is capable of!

And here's a brilliant story I'd never heard before. When Wolsey was still working on Henry's divorce from Katherine, he was also getting old and thinking very seriously about establishing his legacy. So (among other things, like pulling down abbeys and using the stone for building projects), he founded what is now Christ Church College at Oxford (and indeed used the stone from a nearby church). Of course, HE called it Cardinal College ("to stand as a symbol of Wolsey's humility," as Michael Dobson put it). Here's the portrait of him with the completed college on the left.



The problem, though, was that Wolsey died before the college was finished. Died, let me remind you, in part because of stress from handling a certain belligerent and horny king with an inflated sense of self-importance. So after Wolsey kicked the bucket, who do you think picked up the tab for the rest of his legacy college?

This guy.



And to add insult to injury, here's the head of the Hall at Christ Church, which was at that time the largest hall in the country. Someone is in pride of place at the center. And someone else - who conceived the whole thing - is shunted off to the side.


OH, THE IRONY!

Henry, of course, renamed it Christ Church College, thereby obliterating Wolsey's legacy, which was the whole point of the entire exercise. I was practically falling apart in the lecture. I can just imagine THAT meeting in the afterlife!

"Hey, Harry."

"Hey, Tom."

"So...thanks for finishing my college."

"No problem. Kind of fun, actually. Anne told me I had to get off my royal copulating arse and do something, anyway."

"Yeah...yeah. Much obliged. Thanks for STEALING MY GLORY ONCE AGAIN, YOU LAZY MANIPULATIVE PRICK!"

"...can't...breathe..."