In today’s “on this day in Tudor history”, I take us back to the reign of Queen Mary I.
On 12 February 1554, Lady Jane Grey, formerly Queen Jane, and her husband Guildford Dudley were executed. Guildford was beheaded on Tower Hill and Jane was beheaded at the Tower of London. I explain what led to their executions and relates what happened at them.
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10th December:
1541 – Thomas Culpeper, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and Francis Dereham, a member of Queen Catherine Howard’s household, were executed at Tyburn. Culpeper and Dereham were tried on 1st December 1541 at the Guildhall, and convicted of treason. Both were executed on 10th December 1541, but Culpeper was beheaded while Dereham had to face the brutal traitor’s death of being hanged, drawn and quartered. Culpeper was buried at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate (Holborn).
1591 – Executions of Edmund Gennings, Roman Catholic priest, and Swithin Wells, Roman Catholic, on a scaffold set up outside Wells’ house at Holborn. They were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason due to their Catholic faith and for celebrating the mass.
Frances (née Brandon) was the eldest daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and his third wife, Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII and widow of Louis XII of France. It is worth examining Frances’s parents and their significance within Tudor society before moving onto her life. Her father was an extraordinary character: magnate, courtier, and soldier, he exemplified the ideal qualities associated with being a male sixteenth-century courtier. Having been a close confidant to Henry VIII throughout his childhood, Suffolk found military fame in 1512 as a result of his involvement with the Anglo-French war. This war led to a successful siege of the French town of Tournai, with the inhabitants essentially forced to surrender to the invasion of the English king. As a result, Henry passed the keys of the city to Suffolk as a result of his honour and bravery.
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18th June:
1529 – Opening of the Legatine Court at Blackfriars to hear the case for the proposed annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
1546 – Anne Askew was arraigned at London’s Guildhall for heresy, along with Nicholas Shaxton, Nicholas White and John Hadlam (Adlams or Adams). She was sentenced to be burned at the stake.
1558 – Proving of the will of Robert Recorde, Welsh mathematician and physician. His date of death is not known, but is thought to have been mid June 1558. He is known for introducing the “equal to” sign, i.e. “=”. He published several mathematical works.
1588 – Death of Robert Crowley, Protestant printer, author, poet and Church of England clergyman. He was buried in the chancel of St Giles Cripplegate under the same stone as his great friend martyrologist, John Foxe.
1592 – Death of Francis Wyndham, Judge, at the Committee House, St Peter Mancroft, Norwich. His trials included the treason trials of John Somerville and William Parry in the 1580s, and his legal knowledge led to him being approached for advice on Mary, Queen of Scots.
1616 – Death of Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, at Westminster. He was buried at Westminster Abbey.
28th May:
1509 – Death of Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon. He was buried at Tiverton.
1533 – Archbishop Thomas Cranmer proclaimed the validity of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.
1535 – Birth of Sir Thomas North, translator, in London.
1582 – Executions of Roman Catholic priests Thomas Forde, John Shert and Robert Johnson at Tyburn. They were hanged, drawn and quartered.
1611 – Funeral of Thomas Sutton, founder of the London Charterhouse.
12th February:
1554 – Executions of Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley for treason. They were buried in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London.
1567 – Death of Sir Thomas White, founder of St John’s College, Oxford, and former Lord Mayor of London, at his property in Size Lane, London. He was buried in St John’s College Chapel.
1584 – Executions of five Catholic priests, including James Fenn. They were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. Fenn was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.
1590 – Death of Blanche Parry, chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, at the age of eighty-two. She was buried in St Margaret’s, Westminster, with funeral rites which were usually reserved for a baroness. She has a monument in St Margaret’s and also one in Bacton Church, her home village in Herefordshire, which bears an inscription of twenty-eight lines of verse recording Blanche’s service to her beloved Queen.
1611 – Probable date of death of Sir Henry Lee, Queen’s Champion from c.1580 to November 1590. He was buried at Quarrendon in Buckinghamshire.
Here is the full version of our 86-page January edition of Tudor Life Magazine. This month we have many articles about this fascinating king – all the way through to his final days.
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11th December:
1577 – Burial of Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of the Navy and son of William Gonson, Vice-Admiral of Norfolk and Suffolk from 1536 until 1543. Gonson was buried at St Dunstan’s Church.
1589 – Death of Patrick Lindsay, 6th Lord Lindsay of the Byres, at Struthers Castle in Fife, Scotland. Lindsay was a supporter of the Protestant Reformation, and one of the lords of the congregation. He was one of Mary, Queen of Scots’ guardians when she was imprisoned at Lochleven and was a Privy Councillor after she was deposed as queen.
1607 – Death of Roger Manners, member of Parliament and Constable of Nottingham Castle. He was buried at Uffington Church in Rutland.
1608 – Burial of Douglas Sheffield (née Howard), Lady Sheffield, at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Douglas was the eldest daughter of William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham, and the wife of John Sheffield, 2nd Baron Sheffield. Before her marriage, she served as a Maid of Honour to Elizabeth I. After her husband’s death, she had an affair with Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, which resulted in the birth of a son, Sir Robert Dudley, the explorer and cartographer, born in 1574. Douglas claimed that she and Dudley had married in secret when she was pregnant in late 1573, but she could not provide any evidence to support this when her son sought to claim his father’s and uncle’s titles after Elizabeth I’s death. Douglas went on to marry Sir Edward Stafford in 1579.
On this day in history…
12th June:
1492 – Burial of Elizabeth Woodville, former consort of Edward IV, next to her husband in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
1511 – Burial of William Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, at Blackfriars.
1530 – Catherine of Aragon told Henry VIII to abandon his “wicked” life.
1535 – Richard Rich interviewed Sir Thomas More in the Tower of London. He later reported, at More’s trial, that More had denied the royal supremacy during this interview.
1540 – The newly imprisoned Thomas Cromwell wrote to King Henry VIII from the Tower of London, asking for mercy and pleading his innocence.
1553 – Edward VI’s council commanded the judges of the King’s Bench to turn Edward’s “Devise for the succession” into a legal will.
1567 – Death of Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich and Lord Chancellor, at Rochford. He was buried at Felstead. Richard Rich was Lord Chancellor in Edward VI’s reign and went on to serve in Mary I’s Privy Council.
1573 – Birth of Robert Radcliffe, 5th Earl of Sussex, courtier and soldier. He was the son of Henry Radcliffe, 4th Earl of Sussex, and his wife, Honor. Radcliffe served Elizabeth I as an ambassador and as Earl Marshal and Colonel General of her army. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Essex by James I in 1603.
On this day in history…
29th May:
1500 – Death of Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, at Cawood Castle, Yorkshire. He was buried in York Minster.
1533 – Anne Boleyn’s coronation pageantry began with a river procession.
1542 – Death of Sir Thomas Neville, lawyer and Speaker of the House of Commons, county commissioner in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Middlesex, and Knight of St John. He was the fifth son of George Neville, 2nd Baron Bergavenny. Neville was buried in Mereworth church in Kent.
1546 – Murder of David Beaton, Cardinal and Archbishop of St Andrews, at the castle in St Andrews. He was killed by a small group of Fife lairds. One motive was their outrage at the recent trial and execution of Protestant preacher George Wishart at St Andrews.
1555 – Birth of George Carew, Earl of Totnes, soldier, administrator and Lord President of Munster. He was a member of James I’s Privy Council and his council of war. He was also a friend of Sir Walter Ralegh, and pleaded unsuccessfully for his life.
1593 – Hanging of religious controversialist John Penry at St Thomas-a-Watering in Surrey. Penry had been found guilty of “publishing scandalous writings against the church” after having been linked to the “Marprelate religious tracts.”
1623 – Burial of Francis Anthony, alchemist and physician, in the church of St Bartholomew-the-Great.
Katherine of Aragon was born into the royal Spanish household on 16th December 1485, at the Archbishop’s Palace of Alcalá de Henares. She was the daughter of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his illustrious wife, Isabella I of Castile. Katherine’s parents were the Catholic powerhouses of Western Europe during the late fifteenth century, therefore during her youth, the young Spanish princess would have envisioned the grand future that awaited her, with an ambitious marriage into an equally powerful European royal household.
At aged just three, her parents were in negotiations with the English king, Henry VII, for a suitable marriage to his son, Arthur. The Tudors had recently taken the throne after defeating the Yorkist Richard III at Bosworth in 1485, although their Lancastrian claimant to the throne was still vulnerable to usurpation. England required international support to ensure the legitimacy and security of their house. An Anglo-Spanish alliance would be vitally important for the country’s prosperity and position in European politics.
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Thank you to Heather R. Darsie, our regular contributor, for writing this article on Margaret of York (1446-1503).
On 3 May 1446, Margaret of York, younger sister of the future Edward IV, was born. The fifth of seven children and the youngest daughter of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, and his wife, Cecily Neville, Margaret of York began her life at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire. Her youngest sibling and the youngest of the seven children, the future Richard III of England, was born at the same castle in 1452. Margaret lived an uneventful life until she was about nineteen years old, when the opportunity to become Duchess of Burgundy presented itself.
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Thank you to regular contributor Heather R. Darsie for writing this introduction to the women of the House of Trastámara.
When thinking about the important players of the Renaissance, particularly during the reign of Henry VIII of England, one recalls the powerful families of the English Tudors, French Valois, and Burgundian Habsburgs. The family that is even more influential, even if quietly, is the overlooked Trastámaras of Spain. This family married into the Tudor, Valois, and Habsburg families, among others, and its reach was far. Who were they?
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The full edition of our 68-page April edition of Tudor Life Magazine. The theme this month is two of Henry VIII’s fascinating wives, Catherine Howard & Katherine Parr
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On this day in history, the 24th March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died at Richmond Palace aged 69, bringing the rule of the Tudor dynasty to an end. Elizabeth I had reigned for 44 years and 127 days and her reign was known as “The Golden Age”. She was the longest reigning Tudor monarch.
It is said that the execution of her former favourite, Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, on the 25th February 1601 had a huge impact on Elizabeth. She had already lost her great love Robert Dudley in 1588, her good friend Blanche Parry in 1590, and her friend and adviser William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in 1598. It seemed that all those she loved and depended on were dying and leaving her. Her grief, combined with a belief that she was losing her grip on her court and country, led to her becoming severely depressed.
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The fifth article in Sarah Bryson’s series on prominent Tudor courtiers…
Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset is one of the most well-known of Henry VIII’s courtiers. Although the duke was most influential under the reign of his nephew, King Edward VI, it was during the reign of Henry VIII that Seymour started his ascent at the Tudor court.
The exact date of Edward’s birth has not been recorded, but it is believed that he was born around 1500 at the family’s home of Wolf Hall, Wiltshire, to Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth. John and Margery had ten children: six sons (John, Edward, Henry, Thomas, John and Anthony) and four daughters (Jane, Elizabeth, Margery and Dorothy). Edward Seymour was descended from the ancient family lines of the Percys and Cliffords, and his father served both King Henry VII and King Henry VIII as Sheriff of Wiltshire and Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, cementing the family’s loyalty to the Tudors.
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Thank you to regular contributor Heather R. Darsie for this article on Juana of Castile who has gone down in history as “Juana la loca”.
Juana of Castile, known as Juana la Loca or Joanna the Mad, was the elder sister of Catherine of Aragon and sister-in-law to Henry VIII of England. Juana married Philip the Handsome in 1496, when she was 16. She went on to have six children with her husband, including Charles, who later became the Holy Roman Emperor. Juana was an intelligent young woman and, like her sisters, received a considerable education for the time-period. It was reported that Juana could speak the three main languages of the Iberian Peninsula, along with Latin and French.
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Today we have a guest post from Roland Hui as part of his book tour for his debut book “The Turbulent Crown: The Story of the Tudor Queens”.
MadeGlobal Publishing is giving away a copy of Roland’s book at each stop and all you need to do at this stop is to leave a comment below saying which queen or queen consort you feel had the most turbulent life. Leave your comment before midnight on 8th March 2017. One comment will be picked at random and the person contacted for their details.
Over to Roland…
When Henry VIII married Katharine Parr in 1543, the general opinion was that the King had chosen most wisely. Unlike his previous wife, Katheryn Howard, this Katharine was no young lady with a sordid past, but a mature, sensible widow. The new Queen was also known for her piety.
[Read More...]On this day in history, 6th February…
1557 – The remains of reformers Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius were exhumed and publicly burned, after being posthumously found guilty of heresy. They were burned, along with their books, on Market Hill in Cambridge.
1561 – Baptism of Tailboys Dymoke (pseudonym Thomas Cutwode) at Kyme in Lincolnshire. He was the son of Sir Robert Dymoke, and his wife, Bridget (née Clinton). Dymoke is known for his allegorical poem, Caltha poetarum, or, “The Bumble Bee”, which he published under the name of Thomas Cutwode.
1585 – Death of Edmund Plowden, lawyer, legal scholar and law reporter, in London. He was laid to rest in the Middle Temple Church. Cambridge University libraries and the British Library contain manuscripts of his commentaries and opinions, and he is known for his 1571 “ Les comentaries ou les reportes de Edmunde Plowden” volume of law reports covering cases during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.
hank you to regular contributor Heather R. Darsie for this article on the famine of 1527 and how the common people may have seen it.
In the Tudor period, life was very much governed by the church, and people in England generally, at least outwardly, were religious and God-fearing. Witchcraft was thought to exist, and God could express his pleasure or displeasure, or otherwise send signs through any number of mediums. Did God try to warn Henry VIII, or even Anne Boleyn, that their courtship was ultimately doomed? By 1527, it was no secret that Henry VIII harboured an affection for Anne Boleyn. In May of that year, Henry was explaining to Cardinal Wolsey why he felt he was living in sin by having married his deceased brother’s wife. Cardinal Wolsey had been made legatus a legere, putting him in the position of the most powerful religious figure in England. Henry relied on a passage from the Christian bible, namely Leviticus 20:21, which states, “And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.” Henry, of course, had his daughter Mary with Catherine, but no male heir and several stillbirths or infants who only lived for a few weeks. But this was not enough to ensure the Tudor dynasty.
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12 December:
1546 – Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey was led through the streets of London from Ely Place, where he had been held since the 2nd December, to the Tower of London. There, he was joined by his father, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, who was taken to the Tower by barge along the Thames.
1574 – Birth of Anne of Denmark, Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland as consort of James I, at Skanderborg Castle, Jutland, Denmark. Anne was the second daughter of Frederick II, King of Denmark and Norway, and his wife, Sophia. She married James I, when he was James VI of Scotland, by proxy on 20th August 1589, and in a proper church ceremony on 23rd November 1589. The couple’s children included the future Charles I and Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia. Anne died on 2nd March 1619 of consumption and dropsy, and was buried in Henry VII’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.
1595 – Death of Sir Roger Williams, Protestant Welsh soldier and author, from a fever with his patron, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, at his side. He was buried at St Paul’s Cathedral. William served as a soldier in the Low Countries and France, and was second in command to Essex of the cavalry gathered at Tilbury in 1588. He wrote the 1590 “A Briefe Discourse of Warre”.
Here is a reminder of our expert live-chats programme for today's Tudor Society Open Day. Just head on over to the https://www.tudorsociety.com/opendaychatroom/ at the following times to get asking your questions and discussing these Tudor people and topics. We hope you enjoy it and a big thank you to all of these historians and authors.
Anna von Kleve, from the line of von der Marck (Germanic) or LaMarck (Francophone), fourth wife of Henry VIII and most commonly known as Anne of Cleves, is known to have shared the lineage of King Edward I of England with Henry’s other five wives. While an interesting anecdote, Edward I, or Edward Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots, died in 1307. In 1539, when Anna came to England to be Henry’s queen, she had many well-known powerful relations, distant though they were. Below, we will go through the genealogy of some of Anna’s royal connections.
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On 20th February 1547, Shrove Sunday, King Edward VI was crowned king at Westminster Abbey.
Chronicler Charles Wriothesley recorded:
“The twentith daie of Februarie, being the Soundaie Quinquagesima, the Kinges Majestie Edward the Sixth, of the age of nyne yeares and three monthes, was crowned King of this realme of Englande, France, and Irelande, within the church of Westminster, with great honor and solemnitie, and a great feast keept that daie in Westminster Hall…..”
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As you may have read in this month’s Tudor Life magazine, 25th October marked the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, and following the victory of England over France on 25 October 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt, the day became a celebration of that event too. Celebrations included bonfires, revelry and the crowning of a King Crispin.
Today, Heather Darsie shares an article with us on the Battle of Agincourt back in 1415.
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