On this day in Tudor history, 22nd December, an imprisoned Bishop Fisher wrote to Thomas Cromwell begging him for a shirt and sheet (1534), and Protestant martyrs John Rough and Margaret Mearing, were burnt at Smithfield for heresy (1557)…
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On this day in Tudor history, Henry VII’s uncle and mentor, Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford and Earl of Pembroke, died (1495), and the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle (or Didymus or Doubting Thomas) was celebrated…
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On this day in Tudor history, 20th December, Catherine Howard’s step-grandmother begged Henry VIII for forgiveness (1541), and Edward Arden was hanged, drawn and quartered for allegedly plotting with his son-in-law to kill the queen (1583)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 19th December, Katherine Palmer, former Abbess of Syon, died in exile a month after confronting an angry mob (1576), and conspirator John Somerville was found dead in his cell at Newgate Prison (1583)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 18th December, two former archdeacons died: Protestant martyr John Philpott was burnt at the stake at Smithfield (1555), and historian and Catholic apologist Nicholas Harpsfield died in London (1575)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 17th December, Pope Paul III announced the excommunication of King Henry VIII (1538), and Anne Boleyn’s former chaplain, Matthew Parker, was consecrated as Elizabeth I’s Archbishop of Canterbury (1559)…
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On this day in Tudor history, Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first queen consort, was born at Alcalá de Henares (1485), and soldier and courtier George Grey, 2nd Earl of Kent, died (1503)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 15th December, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Mary I’s Archbishop of Canterbury and her chief advisor, was buried at Canterbury Cathedral (1558), and Thomas Parry, Elizabeth I’s comptroller of the household and loyal servant, died of “sheer grief” (1560)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 14th December, the six-day-old daughter of James V of Scotland became Mary, Queen of Scots, on her father’s death (1542), and Queen Mary I was buried at Westminster Abbey (1558)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 13th December, civil lawyer and dean of Chester William Clyffe died (1558), and pirate, sea captain, and explorer Sir Francis Drake finally left Plymouth on his circumnavigation of the Globe (1577)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 12th December, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was led through the streets of London to the Tower (1546), and Protestant Welsh soldier and author, Sir Roger Williams, died from a fever with his patron, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, at his side (1595)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 11th December, Henry VIII’s bride-to-be, Anne of Cleves, was received in a lavish ceremony at Gravelines (1539), and Lady Douglas Sheffield, one-time lover (and perhaps wife!) of Robert Dudley, and the mother of his illegitimate son, was buried (1608)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 10th December 1541, Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were executed for treason for their involvement in Queen Catherine Howard’s fall (1541), and Catholic priest Edmund Gennings and Catholic Swithin Wells were executed for treason (1591)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 9th December, Sir Edward Neville was executed for treason for allegedly conspiring against King Henry VIII (1538), and Queen Catherine Howard’s step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, was questioned (1541)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 8th December, Sir William Coffin, Master of the Horse to Queens Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, died (1538), and Mary, Queen of Scots, was born at Linlithgow Palace (1542)…
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On This day in Tudor history, 7th December, Mary, Queen of Scots’ second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was born (1545), and rebel leader Robert Kett was hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle (1549)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 6th December, soldier and administrator Sir Hugh Paulet, a man who served four monarchs, died (1573), and the Feast of St Nicholas was celebrated with the election of a Boy Bishop…
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On this day in Tudor history, 5th December, Anne de Vere (née Cecil), wife of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and daughter of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, was born (1556), and King Francis II of France, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, died of an ear infection (1560)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 4th December, merchant tailor and prominent Lollard Richard Hunne was found hanging in his prison cell in suspicious circumstances (1514) and the pope deprived Thomas Cranmer of his archbishopric and permission was granted for his fate to be decided by the secular authorities (1555)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 3rd December, a proclamation was made to the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace offering them a pardon (1536), and sixty-nine-year-old peer and politician Roger North, 2nd Baron North, died at his London home (1600)…
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On this in Tudor history, 2nd December, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was arrested after being accused of improper heraldry (1546), and Elizabeth I finally agreed to a public proclamation of sentence against Mary, Queen of Scots: death (1586)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 1st December, Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death (1541), and Catholic priests Alexander Briant, Ralph Sherwin and Edmund Campion were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn (1581)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 30th November, Henry VIII was reproached by the two women in his life: his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and the woman he wanted to marry, Anne Boleyn (1529), and Elizabeth I delivered her famous Golden Speech to the House of Commons (1601)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 29th November, Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu, a courtier who served in four monarchs’ reigns, was born (1528), and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey cheated the executioner by dying on his journey to London to answer charges of treason (1530)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 28th November, claimant Edward Plantagenet, son of the late Duke of Clarence, was executed for treason on Tower Hill (1499), and MP and political agent Francis Yaxley drowned while bringing gold to Mary, Queen of Scots (1565)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 27th November, a former Benedictine monk was burnt at Smithfield for heresy for importing Lutheran books (1531); and 18-year-old William Shakespeare got married to 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant at the time (1582)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 26th November, Henry VIII’s 14-year-old illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, married Lady Mary Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk (1533); and the first men to be executed under the new treason laws against Jesuits in Elizabeth I’s reign were hanged at York (1585)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 25th November, Elizabeth of York, Henry VII’s queen consort, was crowned queen at Westminster Abbey (1487), and lawyer, MP, diplomat and ecclesiastical administrator Sir Thomas Legh died (1545)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 24th November, Elizabeth of York’s coronation procession took place in London (1487), and Scottish Reformer, clergyman and founder of Presbyterianism, John Knox, died at his home in Edinburgh (1572)…
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On this day in Tudor history, 23rd November, Pretender Perkin Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn (1499), and scrivener and sailor Edward Squire was hanged, drawn and quartered for plotting to poison Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex (1598)…
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