LETTER: Park should be renamed Royal Brungerley

In June, 1465, the last Lancastrian King, Henry VI, was taken prisoner at Brungerley. His father, Henry V, who married Katherine, daughter of the French King Charles VI, is best remembered with the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. When he died in 1422, Henry VI became English King at the age of nine months and also a much disputed King of France when Charles VI died in the same year.

Henry VI’s life was dominated by the turmoil of the War of the Roses and the Hundred Years War between England and France. His lasting mark in English history is probably the founding of Eton College and Kings College, Cambridge.

His young widowed mother Katherine married for a second time into the Welsh Tudor family and thus provided the main link with the Tudor dynasty from 1485 to 1603. William Shakespeare, with his historical plays, keeps this memorable period of history alive in the 21st century.

Finally, because the ownership of the castle and grounds belongs forever to the people of Clitheroe, who purchased them as a permanent war memorial in 1920, it would perhaps be confusing to introduce the word “Royal” into its name.

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