Epithets! Personalities!

[stoutfellow]

After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back to reading Derek Wilson's A Brief History of the English Reformation. It's an interesting book and I'm learning a good deal, but once again I've stumbled over a careless assertion by Wilson.

He's just described the death of Mary I, and is clearly about to mention the epithet she has borne ever since. But he prefaces it with this comment:

Unlike some of their continental counterparts, the English are not much given to providing their monarchs with nicknames. Aethelred the Unready, Alfred the Great and John Lackland seem to be the only kings whose sobriquets have stuck[.]

Um. The Confessor? The Conqueror? The Lion-hearted? Longshanks? Crookback, even? If "Lackland" is in play, most or all of those should be.

I'm not going to criticize Wilson as a historian. He clearly knows far more about his subject than I ever will; but this sort of carelessness annoys me.