On this day in Tudor history, 10th November 1556, English explorer and navigator, Richard Chancellor, was killed. Chancellor is known as being the first foreigner to enter the White Sea and to establish relations with Russia and Tsar Ivan IV, or Ivan the Terrible.
Chancellor was sadly drowned after saving the Russian ambassador, Osip Napeya, when their ship, The Edward Bonaventure, was wrecked just off the Aberdeenshire coast of Scotland.
Find out about Richard Chancellor's life, career and sad end in this talk...
Also on this day in Tudor history, 10th November 1536 (some sources say 1537), Sir Henry Wyatt of Allington Castle, politician, courtier, Privy Councillor and father of poet Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, died.
Sir Henry Wyatt was an important man, but rather than tell you about his career, in this video I share two interesting stories concerning this Tudor man and cats, pigeons and a lion.
Great story! I saw the tip of your cat’s tail glide by behind you. Maybe the companionship of the cat also saved Henry Wyatt’s life. Maybe the cat also brought Henry a fat squirrel or two. We have a cat and a dog.
I recently saw an orange-striped cat, probably a neighbor’s, sneak up to, then pounce on a grey squirrel as it fled into some high grass near a fence. It was just like a lion, stalking its prey, then sprinting and pouncing on it. The last I saw as I drove by (was leaving for work) was the orange tabby’s tail sticking up from the tall grass, twitching. I don’t know if it caught the squirrel or not, but I hoped it did.
To many of us in the Midwest US, squirrels are like rats in the trees. They gnaw holes in our screen doors and other places, eat the bird feed in the winter, dig holes in our gardens and yards to store their nuts, and actually eat songbird eggs and young in the spring. They also can make a loud cacophonous racket.
Cats eat songbirds, too, if we let them, but unlike squirrels, we can easily control cats’ fecundity by spaying and neutering them, and we can keep them indoors. They are valuable pets in more rural areas, because the mice tend to move into houses, barns, and garages, especially in the colder months, and indoor cats get ’em. 😺