On this day in Tudor history, 8th February, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed in a rather botched beheading, and Elizabeth I's favourite, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, launched a rebellion, which did not go well...
- 1545 – Death of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne at the home of his nephew, Richard Roscarrock of Roscarrock, in St Endellion in Devon. He was buried at St Columb Major. Arundell had fought against the Cornish rebels in 1497 and served Henry VII and Henry VIII as receiver of the duchy of Cornwall from 1508 until 1533.
- 1587 - Mary, Queen of Scots was executed in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle.See video below.
- 1601 – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, his supporters and two hundred soldiers gathered at Essex House. Essex then marched into the city crying “For the Queen! For the Queen! The crown of England is sold to the Spaniard! A plot is laid for my life!”. However, the people ignored him and stayed indoors. Essex was forced to give up after his supporters deserted him, and he surrendered after Lord Admiral Nottingham threatened to blow up his house if he did not give himself up. See video below.
- 1608 – Death of Nicholas Bond, clergyman and President of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1590. He was buried in the college chapel.
- 1614 – Burial of John Bracegirdle, poet, at St Mary's Church, Rye, in Sussex. He is known for his 1602 “‘Psychopharmacon, the mindes medicine, or, The phisicke of philosophie”, a translation of the work of Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius into English blank verse.
