England

K.R. Dockray introduces a West Riding family of Percy retainers, whose land-holdings suffered from the Wars of the Roses and from legal disputes.

Margaret M. Byard describes the Bedford Memorials and the course of a eventful family history, from 1585 to 1607.

Disastrous battle raged on the Somme from July until November, 1916; John Terraine describes how it marked the ‘ruddy grave’ of the German field army.

Lansing Collins describes how, in honour of a previous gift sent in the other direction, Elizabeth I presented Sultan Mohammed III with an elaborate clock, surmounted by singing birds that shook their wings.

After the Romans left and the Anglo-Saxons arrived, the south-west of England became the predominant kingdom. William Seymour traces the growth of the Kingdom of Wessex from the early sixth century.

The failure of the Plot, writes Cyril Hamshere, forms a complex story of espionage and counter-espionage; its events caused Elizabeth I to give up all ideas of restoring Mary Queen of Scots to the Scottish throne.

James I was a firm believer in Christian unity; Dorothy Boyd Rush describes his distrust of extremists, Catholic or Protestant.

Francis Austen served throughout the Napoleonic Wars and, writes David Hopkinson, lived until the age of ninety-one; an Admiral of the Fleet.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writes Marjorie Sykes, the arrival of migrant labourers, who often visited the same district year after year, was a distinctive feature of English country-life.

Through the marriage of a baronet and a scrivener’s heiress, writes Francis Sheppard, the Grosvenors eventually became the wealthiest family in Europe.