John Aubrey

English antiquarian John Aubrey was born on March 12, 1626.  Aubrey was the discoveror of the Avebury henge.  Some of Aubrey’s correspondence ties in to the work of Sir Walter Scott.  From John Britton’s “Life of John Aubrey…”:

‘In the same year Aubrey was collecting information concerning the mysterious noises which disturbed the Parliamentary commissioners at Woodstock (1) and we find that in 1651 he witnessed the execution of Christopher Love, on Tower Hill, on a charge of high treason.  “I did see Mr. Christopher Love beheaded on Tower Hill in a delicate clear day; about half an hour after his head was struck off the clouds gathered blacker and blacker, and such terrible claps of thunder came, that I never heard greater,” Miscellanies  Chapter on Omens.  The superstition here countenanced by Aubrey was implicitly believed by the inhabitants of Kingston St. Michael seventy years ago; when a thunder storm, occurring immediately after the execution of a murderer near the parish, was a special indication of divine anger. 

(1)  See a letter addressed to Aubrey on March 11, 1649, and printed by Aubrey in his Miscellanies.  The same topic has afforded Sir Walter Scott the groundwork for his interesting romance of Woodstock.’

Almack's: A Novel

[Abbotsford,] March 12...I have been trying to read a new novel which I have heard praised. It is called Almacks, and the author has so well succeeded in describing the cold selfish fopperies of the time, that the copy is almost as dull as the original. I think I will take up my bundle of Sheriff-Court processes instead of Almacks, as the more entertaining avocation of the two.

Per Scott's journal, today we catch Sir Walter Scott at home reading - March 12th 1827, that is.  Evidently, he was not impressed with Marianne Spencer Stanhope Hudson's work.  The "cold pleasant fopperies" Scott refers to occurred at Almack's Assembly Rooms.  Almack's was one of the earliest co-ed clubs.  Almack's contains the following recommendation from the Edinburgh Review:

" To expose the vices of fashionable life, in their original and proudest sphere, is not only to purify the stream at its source, but to counteract their pernicious influence where it is the most formidable and extensive"



Edinburgh Review.

Cesare Borgia

"Off, off, ye lendings!" he continued, in the same vein. "Via, the curtain that shadowed Borgia!"  - From Walter Scott's "The Fortunes of Nigel". The Edinburgh Edition of Nigel includes a note that "RW Van Fossen speculates that 'the curtain' may refer to the disguise of the stable-boy, which in 1495 Borgia used to escape from Charles VIII of France."  He did not escape the siege of Viana, dying there on March 12, 1507.

Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, was the son of Pope Alexander VI (when he was a Cardinal), and his mistress, Vanozza dei Cattanei.  Borgia was groomed for a career in the church, becoming Bishop of Pamplona at age 15.  He became a Cardinal three years later.  He prefered a military career,  and found the opportunity to pursue one when his brother Giovanni was assassinated.  Cesare proved a capable militarist, but quickly lost power when his father the Pope died.