Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England, episode 172, a Royal Marriage.

Before I pile ahead some notices for you, remember to check out the Agora Podcast Network

and the Associated website, intriguingly named agorapodcastnetwork.com, and now do

check out this month's featured agorapodcast, which is the wonderful Tom Daley, American

Biography. I think you'll like the podcast because it's about the history of a country

through its people, about the lives of the people who shaped it, and not necessarily

the ones you'd always expect. So give it a go. You can find it on iTunes, American

Biography, or the website, American Biograph is all one word, dotwebs.com, and there's a link

on my website to boot.

Last time I did my normal trick, though you may not have realised it, and failed to

get as far as I'd intended to get. Verbal Diarrhea was the ineligent phrase they used

to get banded about in our family when I was a lad, in connection with my inability to

use one word where 50 would do. There seems no prospect of that changing, sadly.

So we were in 1462, a Margaret and King Louis mum have twisted Louis' arm into helping

the Lancaster in cause, enticed by the prize of Calais.

Louis pretty quickly realised that he'd boobbed, actually. I believe I have mentioned that

at this stage Calais is surrounded by the lands belonging not to the French King, but

to Philip the good Duke of Burgundy. Now Louis and Philip were old pals. When Louis

was heir to the French throne rather than King, he'd fled to Burgundy during a spat with

Louis's father. When Louis eagerly went to his old mentor, the aging Duke to ask for

permission to pass through with an army, the good Duke sent his emissaries away with a

flee in their collective ear. Warwick was his pal, Burgundy favoured the Yorkists, so

...