From today's featured article
William of Wrotham (died
c. 1217) was a medieval English royal administrator and clergyman.
Hubert Walter, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
king's chief minister, gave William responsibility for the royal tin mines in 1197, and the following year he was placed in charge of tin production, an office later known as the
Lord Warden of the Stannaries. William also held ecclesiastical office, eventually becoming
Archdeacon of Taunton, and served King
John of England as an administrator of ecclesiastical lands and a collector of taxes. He was in charge of the royal fleet in the south of England from 1206 until 1215, and was one of those responsible for the development of
Portsmouth as a naval dockyard. He is usually given the title of "keeper of ports" or "keeper of galleys", probably a forerunner of the office of
First Lord of the Admiralty. By 1215 William had joined the
First Barons' War against John, but returned to the royalist cause after John's death in 1216. The medieval chronicler
Roger of Wendover called him one of John's "evil advisers", but modern historians say Roger's account was exaggerated. (
Full article...)
Did you know...
|
In the news
On this day...January 7: Christmas (Julian calendar); Victory Day over Genocide in Cambodia
Johann Heinrich Zedler (b. 1706) · Joseph Dennie (d. 1812) · Helena Válková (b. 1951) |
The cover of a c. 1855 vocal score for La traviata, an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to a libretto in Italian by Francesco Maria Piave. Based on La Dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, it follows the ill-fated romance of Violetta, a courtesan, and Alfredo, a young bourgeois man. It premiered in 1853 at La Fenice in Venice, and has become one of the world's most frequently performed operas. Illustration: Leopoldo Ratt; restoration: Adam Cuerden
Recently featured:
|
Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other projects:
Commons Free media repository |
MediaWiki Wiki software development |
Meta-Wiki Wikimedia project coordination |
|||
Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals |
Wikidata Free knowledge base |
Wikinews Free-content news |
|||
Wikiquote Collection of quotations |
Wikisource Free-content library |
Wikispecies Directory of species |
|||
Wikiversity Free learning materials and activities |
Wikivoyage Free travel guide |
Wiktionary Dictionary and thesaurus |