The Sealed Knot at Claydon House

I write all kinds of stuff on this blog. The stuff of my life. My books, short stories, my failures, my victories.

Well, this weekend about 2000 Sealed Knot re-enactors will be at the home of the Verney Family for the Sealed Knot's 50th Anniversary.

It's going to be a fabulous event, over 200 living history tents, the backdrop of the house - a real Sword Divided family. Father Ralph the Royalist Standard Bearer and son Ralph a member of Parliament. In between them, the women of the family, daughters, wives, aunts, grandmas.

The famous story of Sir Ralph the Standard Bearer, holding so tight to the King's standard that the only way to get it from him, even after death, was to cut his hand off. The ring on that hand was returned to the family, but Sir Ralph's body was never found. His ghost is said to haunt Edgehill battlefield looking for his lost hand.

Then there was the son, trying to keep the estate together as a Parliamentarian, while his father fought and died for the King.

The mysterious burnt arm portrait in the upper gallery. Look what they have done to us...

Daughter Mal's desperate pleas for help when she found herself with child in London. "Mend me or end me." She wrote to her brother.

I have researched the 17th Century for so many years now that if I were to meet any of these people in the flesh I would know them as friends. I know more about that time than the century I live in now.

I will be on the living history demonstrating the cures of a Goodwyfe, taking musket balls out of the wounded, and binding them with bandages. I will show how pox marks will be covered by ladies, soap of the day, antiseptics etc.

Here are some photos to get you in the mood for the weekend:

Quiet, peaceful, but the war is coming and no-one will escape.