In the absence of any big family history news today, I thought I'd offer a couple of links to some light reading regarding the occasion of Valentine's Day.
The first comes via the Irish Genealogy News blog - a sweet tale of, er, abduction in the name of, well, love, I suppose.
The second piece looks at the sixth marriage of Henry VIII and asks whether there was any love between the seemingly ill-matched couple.
Saint Valentine himself is a shadowy figure. There are at least 14 so-named martyred saints of the name, though there is only one who seems to have a connection with 14th February - namely, a chap who was known to have been buried on this date at the Via Flaminia north of Rome around 270AD. Little is known of him, other than he appears to have been a Roman priest who was persecuted for marrying and generally aiding Christian couples. He was beaten, stoned, then beheaded after, as a prisoner, he had tried to befriend and convert Emperor Claudius II to Christianity.
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