Dan Jones > Quotes

“He wasn't an especially charismatic or commanding individual, but what he lacked in personality he emphatically made up for in diligence.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“(During his trial he claimed that his pet cat had become possessed by the devil and incited him to his crimes. The cat was also hanged.)”
― Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

“If the cycle of violence that had engulfed the English Crown for nearly five decades seemed finally to be coming to an end, it was only because there were so few candidates left to kill.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Rebels depend on willful gullibility.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“He was more than comfortable with the language of imperious persuasion.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Here was a king who saw his subjects as peers and allies around whom he had growing up rather than semi-alien entities to be suspected and persecuted.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Then a far more grotesque and insulting marriage was arranged between the twenty-year-old John Woodville and Katherine Neville, Warwick’s aunt and the dowager duchess of Norfolk. Katherine was not only a four-time widow but also about sixty-five years old.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Extravagance was a political necessity.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“[T]hose who are afraid can stay at home.”
― Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

“In the case of Exeter, York’s superior blood status was explicitly recognized in the first duke of Exeter’s articles of ennoblement. The first duke died in 1447, but his heir, the young Henry Holland, was even more closely tied to York’s family: he was married to York’s daughter Anne, and had been in York’s custody when he was a minor. As recently as 1448 York and the duke of Somerset had been granted lands in joint trusteeship—a sign that there was no division (yet) perceived between those two men.7 Humphrey,”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Early in 1203 John sent instructions to the royal servant Hubert de Burgh, who was serving as Arthur’s jailer, demanding that he should blind and castrate his prisoner. Fortunately for Arthur, de Burgh felt a pang of conscience and could not carry out the grisly sentence on the sixteen-year-old, who pleaded for pity.”
― Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

“While Edward was accustomed to fighting on foot, Warwick was said by one chronicler to prefer to run with his men into battle before mounting on horseback, “and if he found victory inclined to his side, he charged boldly among them; if otherwise he took care of himself in time and provided for his escape.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Believing that Edward’s men were at a safe distance in Worcester, Simon’s men were unprepared for attack. They did not realize that Edward and Gloucester had spies among them, including a female transvestite called Margoth”
― Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

“Perhaps most surprising of all, the deposed and imprisoned King Henry was not murdered. This had been the fate of the two Plantagenet kings who had lost their crowns before him: Edward II died while in custody at Berkeley Castle in 1327, while Richard II was killed at Pontefract in 1400, the year following his deposition. Ironically, Henry’s survival was perhaps a mark of his uniquely pitiful and ineffectual approach to kingship—for it was much harder to justify killing a man who had done nothing evil or tyrannical, but had earned his fate thanks to his dewy-eyed simplicity. Permitting Henry to remain alive was a bold decision that Edward IV would come to regret. But in 1465 it must have struck the king as a brave and magnanimous act.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“The Holland family traced their own royal ancestry through Henry IV’s sister Elizabeth. In January 1444 the most senior Holland, John, earl of Huntingdon, was promoted to duke of Exeter, with precedence over all other dukes except for York—another elevation specifically credited to his closeness in blood to the king. John Holland died in August 1447, and his son Henry Holland eventually succeeded to his duchy.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Pope Pius II, watching England from afar, would later describe Henry in this phase of his life as “a man more timorous than a woman, utterly devoid of wit or spirit, who left everything in his wife’s hands.”2”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“When a bad man has the advantage, cruelty and outrage are the consequences. —William Marshal”
― Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

“The Tudor rose was invented to symbolize the unity that had supposedly been brought about when Henry VII married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth of York in 1486, entwining the two warring branches, the houses of Lancaster and York, together.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“the”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Much of the outward business of kingship came naturally.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“hours. The next day, Joan sent another message to the enemy to warn them that this was only the beginning. “You men of England, who have no right in this kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and commands you through me, Joan the Pucelle, to abandon your strongholds and go back to your own country,” announced a note fired into the English camp by an archer on May 5. “If not, I will make a war cry that will be remembered forever.”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“On December 29 four heavily armed men smashed through a side door to Canterbury Cathedral with an ax. The archbishop of Canterbury was waiting for them inside. They were angry. He was unarmed. They tried to arrest him. He resisted. They hacked the top of his head off and mashed his brains with their boots.”
― Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

“The king's "only interest in government was a pious but simpleminded desire for reproachment”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“He was the only figure able to hold the peace between his uncle”
― Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors

“Pilgrimage was a centrally important part of Christian life in the early twelfth century, and had been for nearly one thousand years. People traveled incredible distances to visit saints' shrines and the sites of famous Christian deeds. did it for the good of their souls: sometimes to seek divine relief from illness, sometimes as penance to atone for their sins. Some thought that praying at a certain shrine would ensure the protection of that saint in their passage through the afterlife. All believed that God looked kindly on pilgrims and that a man or woman who ventured humbly and faithfully to the center of the world would improve his or her standing in the eyes of God.”
― Dan Jones, The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors

“armed, and fight for God’s cause with your money and your lives’ Ibn Wasil, quoting Qur’an”
― Dan Jones, The Templars: The Rise and Fall of God's Holy Warriors

“Even given the advantage of a surprise attack, it was vain to believe that a few hundred men fighting against thousands would lead to anything but annihilation.”
― Dan Jones, The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors

“Life within a Templar house was designed where possible to resemble that of a Cistercian monastery. Meals were communal and to be eaten in near silence, while a reading was given from the Bible. The rule accepted that the elaborate sign language monks used to ask for necessities while eating might not be known to Templar recruits, in which case "quietly and privately you should ask for what you need at table, with all humility and submission." Equal rations of food and wine were to be given to each brother and leftovers would be distributed to the poor. The numerous fast days of the Church calendar were to be observed, but allowances would be made for the needs of fighting men: meat was to be served three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Should the schedule of annual fast days interrupt this rhythm, rations would be increased to make up for lost sustenance as soon as the fasting period was over.
It was recognized that the Templars were killers. "This armed company of knights may kill the enemies of the cross without stated the rule, neatly summing up the conclusion of centuries of experimental Christian philosophy, which had concluded that slaying humans who happened to be "unbelieving pagans" and "the enemies of the son of the Virgin Mary" was an act worthy of divine praise and not damnation. Otherwise, the Templars were expected to live in pious self-denial.
Three horses were permitted to each knight, along with one squire whom "the brother shall not beat." Hunting with hawks—a favorite pastime of warriors throughout Christendom—was forbidden, as was hunting with dogs. only beasts Templars were permitted to kill were the mountain lions of the Holy Land. They were forbidden even to be in the company of hunting men, for the reason that "it is fitting for every religious man to go simply and humbly without laughing or talking too much." Banned, too, was the company of women, which the rule scorned as "a dangerous thing, for by it the old devil has led man from the straight path to paradise the flower of chastity is always [to be] maintained among you.... For this reason none Of you may presume to kiss a woman' be it widow, young girl, mother, sister, aunt or any other.... The Knighthood of Christ should avoid at all costs the embraces of women, by which men have perished many times." Although married men were permitted to join the order, they were not allowed to wear the white cloak and wives were not supposed to join their husbands in Templar houses.”
― Dan Jones, The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors

“Had Henry III been richer, less beset by other problems and a more competent military strategist, securing Sicily for his second son might have resembled the masterful pan-European geopoliticking in which his grandfather Henry II might have specialised. Unfortunately, he was none of those things. He was a naive fantasist with a penchant for schemes.”
― Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England