Following on from last week’s Claire Chats video on falconry or hawking in the medieval and Tudor periods, I thought that I’d take a look at a pastime enjoyed by the upper classes, that of hunting.
What did the Tudors hunt? How did they hunt? I explain more about it in this talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 13th July 1553, while John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was preparing to leave London to apprehend the late Henry VIII’s daughter, Mary, members of the new Queen Jane’s council were meeting with the imperial ambassadors.
What was the meeting about? What was the news from East Anglia? And why were councillors beginning to feel uneasy?
Find out what was going on in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 10th July 1584, Catholic conspirator, Francis Throckmorton, was executed at Tyburn for high treason after the Throckmorton Plot had been discovered.
The Throckmorton Plot was a plot to depose Elizabeth I and to replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, but why did Francis Throckmorton plot against his queen? Who did he plot with and how was the plot discovered?
Find out more about Francis Throckmorton and his plot in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 3rd July 1495, the pretender Perkin Warbeck landed at Deal in Kent with men and ships. In the ensuing battle, the Battle of Deal, with Kentish men who supported King Henry VII, around 150 of Warbeck’s men were killed and over 160 captured. Warbeck managed to escape, fleeing to Ireland.
Who was Warbeck claiming to be? Whose support did her have? And what happened next?
Find out more about claimant Perkin Warbeck in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 2nd July 1536, Thomas Cromwell, the king’s right-hand man, was formally appointed Lord Privy Seal. The previous holder of the office had been Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, who’d been stripped of the office following the falls of his children, Queen Anne Boleyn and George Boleyn, Lord Rochford.
But what is a privy seal and what does the Lord of the Privy Seal do?
Find out more in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 30th June 1559, keen sportsman, King Henry II of France, suffered a mortal head wound while jousting. He died on 10th July and was succeeded by his son, Francis II.
Jousting was a dangerous sport and Henry was fatally injured when splinters from his opponent’s lance entered his right eye. Awful!
Find out more about Henry II’s accident and death, and also his reign, in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 29th June 1537, just over a year after the execution of his former sweetheart, Anne Boleyn, Henry Algernon Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, died at around the age of thirty-five.
He’d been ill for some time and had actually collapsed after he sat in judgement on Anne Boleyn and her brother, George, in May 1536. But who was Henry Percy and what happened between him and Anne?
Find out more about him in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 28th June 1557, Philip Howard, 13th Earl of Arundel, was born at Arundel House, the Strand, London.
Philip ended up being condemned to death for treason and dying of alleged poisoning in 1589, when he was just 32, so let me tell you a bit more about him and what led him to that very sticky end.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 27th June 1497, in the reign of King Henry VII, lawyer and member of Parliament Thomas Flamank and blacksmith Michael Joseph (known as Michael an Gof), two of the chief commanders of the Cornish rebels, were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in London.
What had led them to this awful end? What was the Cornish Rebellion about and why do they have “fame permanent and immortal”? Find out more about them and their ends in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 26th June 1596, soldier Sir John Wingfield was buried in the cathedral at Cadiz in southern Spain. Wingfield had been shot in the head in the attack on Cadiz on 21st June.
John Stow recorded that at his funeral “the generalls threw their handkerchiefs wet from their eyes into the grave” and poet John Donne wrote “Farther than Wingfield, no man dares to go”, but who was this courageous soldier?
Find out more about him and how he died in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 13th June 1548, Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, and his wife, Catherine Parr, the dowager queen, set off from Catherine’s manor of Hanworth in London to travel to Seymour’s seat of Sudeley Castle. They were accompanied by Lady Jane Grey and around 100 others.
Seymour wanted his wife to enjoy the final months of her pregnancy safe in the Cotswolds away from the Plague in London and for his first-born child to be born at Sudeley.
In today’s talk, I share details on who accompanied the couple, what Sudeley was like and what happened next.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 5th June 1516, Spaniard Maria de Salinas married William, 10th Lord Willoughby of Eresby.
Maria and William were the parents of Catherine Willoughby, who went on to marry Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Maria was also a good friend of Catherine of Aragon and managed to be with the queen in her final hours, even though she wasn’t supposed to be there.
Find out more about Maria de Salinas in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 2nd June 1536, Jane Seymour made her first public appearance at Greenwich Palace.
She’d married King Henry VIII on 30th May 1536, and this public appearance was just two weeks after Anne Boleyn’s execution, so it must have caused quite a stir.
Find out more about this public appearance, and also about Jane Seymour herself, in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, on the night of 30th/31st May 1533, as part of the celebrations for Queen Anne Boleyn’s coronation, which was scheduled for 1st June, eighteen men were created Knights of the Bath.
What did this mean? What happened in this night-long ceremony?
Find out in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 28th May 1588, the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon in Portugal bound for the Spanish Netherlands.
With the Pope’s blessing, King Philip II was going to invade England and depose the heretic, Queen Elizabeth I. The stop at the Netherlands was simply to pick up the Spanish forces there.
What happened next and why did the Spanish Armada fail?
Find out all about the Spanish Armada and how England was victorious in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
Gertrude Courtenay was the daughter of William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Say. Little is known about the early life of Gertrude, but we do know that she married Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon, in 1519.
As Henry Courtenay was the first cousin of Henry VIII, Gertrude had married well and as such had a high place in court, attending the queen at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. In 1525, her husband was created the Marquess of Exeter, making Gertrude a marchioness. Gertrude gave birth to a son named Edward in 1526, but her other son, Henry, died in infancy. When Henry VIII decided to divorce Katherine of Aragon, Gertrude’s husband signed the petition to the Pope asking him to grant an annulment. However, although supportive of the divorce, Exeter and Gertrude felt sympathy for Katherine and opposed the new evangelical ideas of Cromwell and Cranmer. As such, Gertrude became embroiled with Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent. Barton predicted the death of the king should he marry Anne, and such ideas were treasonous. Gertrude involved herself with Elizabeth Barton and travelled in secret to meet her and brought her to the Courtenay house in Surrey. When Barton was arrested for treason, Gertrude was cited in the investigation and wrote to Henry VIII to assure him of her loyalty, feigning ignorance of Barton’s treason.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 25th May 1551, at around noon, Croydon and several Surrey villages, in the south of England, experienced a “great shaking of the ground”, in other words, an earthquake.
In today’s talk, I share descriptions of this earthquake, as well as other Tudor earthquakes, such as the famous 1580 Dover Straits Earthquake, which caused fatalities and damage.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 24th May 1546, letters were sent from the Privy Council to the future Protestant martyr Anne Askew and her estranged husband Thomas Kyme.
The couple were ordered to appear in front of the council within fourteen days. But why? What was going on? And what happened next.
In today’s talk, I give an overview of the life of Anne Askew, who was famously racked illegally at the Tower of London prior to being burnt as a heretic.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 21st May 1524, in the reign of King Henry VIII, courtier, magnate and soldier, Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, died at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk. He was about 81 years of age when he died.
Norfolk was the grandfather of Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, but there was far more to him than that. In today’s talk,I introduce a man who was still leading troops into battle in his seventies.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 17th May 1601, Anthony Bacon was buried in St Olave’s, London.
You might have heard of Francis Bacon, but his brother, Anthony Bacon, was rather interesting too!
Who was Anthony Bacon?
Well, he was a spy, providing intelligence for the likes of William Cecil, Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. Find out more in today’s talk
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 12th May 1538, a Franciscan friar obstinately refused to make a public recantation of his allegiance to Rome.
Friar John Forest had been condemned for heresy and was meant to abjure his faith at St Paul’s Cross, but he decided not to. Find out more about what happened:
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 8th May 1508, herald and chronicler Charles Wriothesley was born in London.
Wriothesley’s chronicle is one of the major primary sources for King Henry VIII’s reign, so let me tell you more about its writer, Charles Wriothesley, Windsor Herald, and what heralds actually are.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 6th May 1502, in the reign of King Henry VII, Sir James Tyrell, former royal councillor, was executed for treason due to his links to a known traitor.
But it’s not for his time as a trusted councillor, or for his links to a claimant to the throne that he is known, but for his alleged involvement in the murders of the Princes in the Tower.
Find out more in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 4th May 1535, in the reign of King Henry VIII, three Carthusian monks, a Bridgettine monk and a parish priest were executed at Tyburn.
They were executed for refusing to accept the King as the Supreme Head of the Church and “for writing and giving counsel against the King”, and had to suffer a full traitor’s death, one after the other.
Find out more about them and also London Charterhouse, home to the Carthusian order, in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 30th April 1544, in the reign of King Henry VIII, Thomas Audley, Baron Audley of Walden and Lord Chancellor, died at his home in London.
Audley was Thomas Cromwell’s right-hand man in 1536, during the fall of Anne Boleyn, and became even more important after Cromwell’s fall.
Find out more about Thomas Audley, an important Tudor statesman, and how he served King Henry VIII, in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in history, actually in the Stuart period, 27th April 1609, Sir Edward Michelborne, member of Parliament, soldier and adventurer, died.
He’d survived an unsuccessful naval campaign against the Spanish, being implicated in a rebellion, and an attack by pirates, to die a natural death at his home in Hackney.
Find out more about Sir Edward Michelborne in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 25th April 1544, an English translation of John Fisher’s Latin work, “Psalms or Prayers”, was published. It had been translated by none other than Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife.
It was published anonymously, but there’s rather a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing towards Queen Catherine as the translator. Find out more in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 20th April 1578, Lady Mary Keys (née Grey), sister of Lady Jane Grey and wife of Thomas Keys, died at her home in the parish of St Botolph without Aldgate, London.
Like her sisters, Mary had a sad life. Her secret marriage led to Elizabeth I imprisoning her and her husband, and they never saw each other again.
Find out more about the tiny Mary who was described as “crook-backed”, her marriage to a man who was said to be 6’8, and what happened to Mary and Thomas, in today’s talk.
[Read More...]
It’s Friday and I think we’re due some fun, aren’t we? Let’s have it at Tim’s expense, he doesn’t mind.
Here’s our latest Tudor History Challenge! Do play a long. Give yourself a point for each correct answer and there’s a bonus point if you get both parts of question 7 correct. The answers are at the bottom of this post so don’t scroll down and cheat!
[Read More...]
On this day in Tudor history, 14th April 1565, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, astrologer, astronomer, mathematician and magician, Edward Gresham, was born in Stainsford, Yorkshire.
Gresham is known for his treatise “Astrostereon” and his almanacs, but what’s really interesting is his connection to a countess’s annulment and a poisoning.
Find out more about Edward Gresham in today’s talk.
[Read More...]