On this day in Tudor history, 28th November 1499, Edward Plantagenet, styled Earl of Warwick, was executed by beheading on Tower Hill.
Warwick was a potential claimant to the throne being the son of George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Kings Edward IV and Richard III, but it was his involvement in a plot by pretender Perkin Warbeck that was his final undoing.
Find out more about his short and sad life, much of it spent in prison, in today's talk:
If you missed November 23rd's video on Perkin Warbeck, here it is:
Also on this day in history:
- 1489 – Birth of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland and consort of James IV, at Westminster Palace. Margaret was the eldest daughter of Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York, and the sister of Henry VIII. She spent her childhood at Sheen and at Eltham Palace, but was sent to Scotland at the age of thirteen to marry James IV.
- 1557 – Death of Sir Robert Rochester, administrator. He was buried at the Charterhouse at Sheen. Rochester served Mary I as Comptroller of the Royal Household, Privy Councillor, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Keeper of the Privy Seal and a member of Parliament.
- 1565 – Francis Yaxley, member of Parliament and political agent, set sail from Antwerp, and drowned when his ship foundered off the coast of Northumberland. Yaxley worked for Mary, Queen of Scots, was Secretary to her husband, Lord Darnley, and acted as Mary's envoy to the Spanish court. He was returning to Scotland from a mission to ask Philip of Spain to intercede with Elizabeth I to secure the release of Darnley's mother and to stop helping Mary's enemies, when he died. Although Philip declined to talk to Elizabeth on Mary's behalf, he did give Yaxley 20,000 crowns to give Mary. This gold, and Yaxley's body, were seized by the English when they washed up on Holy Island.
- 1584 – Sir Christopher Hatton, as government spokesman, spoke to Parliament on the dangers of Spain, in a speech lasting 'above two hours'.
- 1609 – Death of Sir Thomas Smith, Chief Secretary to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, at his home at Parson's Green in Fulham, London. He was buried at Fulham Church.
The only reason Edward Earl of Warwick was killed was because Henry could not marry Prince Arthur to Katherine of Aragon because of the insistence of King Ferdinand of Spain that all the old claimants were out of the way. He was already implicated in two plots, one in 1486/7 when John de la Pole had one boy Lambert Simnel act as Warwick and he intended to free the real Warwick, although some sources say Edward V, plus he had plotted an escape with Warbeck. The end of Warbeck was the opportunity to get rid of young Warwick and Henry probably also saw him as a continuous threat. Well after all, he had pinched the throne himself and wasn’t yet secure upon it.
Yes, a marriage born in blood.