
On this day in Tudor history, Protestant exile and businesswoman Rose Lok was born in London (1526), Henry VIII made some changes to his will (1546), and the Feast of St Stephen was celebrated…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, Protestant exile and businesswoman Rose Lok was born in London (1526), Henry VIII made some changes to his will (1546), and the Feast of St Stephen was celebrated…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 24th December, King Henry VIII made his final speech to Parliament (1545); Sir Thomas Cornwallis, comptroller of the household of Mary I and member of Parliament, died (1604); and Christmas Eve was celebrated…
[Read More...]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)…
[Read More...]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)…
[Read More...]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)…
[Read More...]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)…
[Read More...]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)…
[Read More...]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)…
[Read More...]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)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 22nd November, Henry VIII’s trusted physician and confidant Sir William Butts died at Fulham Manor (1545); and naval commander, privateer and explorer Sir Martin Frobisher died of gangrene (1594) after suffering an injury in hand-to-hand combat…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 15th November, Katherine of York, Countess of Devon, died at Tiverton Castle (1527); and Pope Clement VII threatened Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn with excommunication because Henry VIII had defied the pope’s instructions (1532)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 14th November, Catherine of Aragon married Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales (1501); Henry VIII may have married Anne Boleyn (1532); and an inventory was taken of Thomas Culpeper’s “goods and chattels, lands and fees” (1541)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 8th November, Henry VIII made a rather strange speech explaining his troubled conscience about his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1528); and scholar, literary patron and chamberlain to Catherine of Aragon, William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, died at Sutton on the Hill (1534)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 6th November, Catherine of Aragon met Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, for the first time (1501); and Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, was abandoned by her husband the king at Hampton Court Palace. She would never see him again (1541)…
[Read More...]On this day in history, 5th November, Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, was crowned Queen of France at Saint-Denis (1514); and Gunpowder Plot conspirator, Guy Fawkes, was discovered with 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar beneath Westminster (1605)…
[Read More...]On this day in history, 29th October, Henry VIII bid farewell to his “loving brother”, his French counterpart, Francis I (1532); and courtier, explorer, author and soldier Sir Walter Ralegh was executed (1618)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 28th October, celebrations included wrestling and bear baiting on the last day of Henry VIII’s meeting with Francis I (1532); and Ivan IV of Russia, known commonly as Ivan the Terrible, wrote a rather rude letter to Queen Elizabeth I…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 27th October, Anne Boleyn, Marquess of Pembroke, made a dramatic entrance to the great banquet held by Henry VIII in Calais in honour of Francis I of France; and the extremely talented Mary Herbert (née Sidney), Countess of Pembroke, writer and literary patron, was born at Tickenhall, near Bewdley in Worcestershire…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 26th October, Sir Thomas More was sworn in as Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, replacing the fallen Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1529); and the Pilgrimage of Grace rebels, who outnumbered the Crown’s forces, chose to negotiate rather than fight (1536)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 25th October, Henry VIII returned to Calais following his visit to the French court at Boulogne, taking Francis I with him; and today is the the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, martyrs of the Early Church and the patron saints of cobblers…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 24th October, Queen Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, died at Hampton Court Palace; and John White, governor of the Roanoke Colony, returned to England after failing to find the lost colonists…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 22nd October, an interrogation was carried out regarding an accusation of treasonous words spoken against Henry VIII (1537); and Henry Parker, 11th Baron Morley and Roman Catholic exile, died in Paris (1577)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 21st October, Henry VIII left Anne Boleyn behind in Calais to spend a few days in Boulogne with Francis I (1532); and during the Pilgrimage of Grace, Lancaster Herald encountered a group of armed peasants near Pontefract Castle…
[Read More...]On this day in history, two people who’d soon become the famous Catholic monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, got married in Valladolid; and Henry VIII gave brutal instructions on how the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace and their supporters should be handled…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 16th October, a meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I was planned (1532); and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, and Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, two of the Oxford Martyrs, were burnt at the stake in Oxford (1555)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 12th October, Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was born (1537); and MP and administrator Lewis Owen was murdered on a Welsh mountain pass as a result of his campaign against outlaws (1555)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 11th October, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn set sail from Dover for Calais for a meeting with Francis I (1532); and there was a solemn procession with prayers for Queen Jane Seymour, who was in labour (1537)…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 9th October, Henry VIII’s sister, Mary Tudor, married Louis XII of France at Abbeville; and Miguel de Cervante, author of Don Quixote, was baptised in Alcalá de Henares…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, Henry VIII’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas, was born; and Henry VIII forced his daughter, Mary, to write to the pope and to Mary of Hungary, the emperor’s sister…
[Read More...]On this day in Tudor history, 7th October, Pope Clement VII wrote to Henry VIII telling him that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon would not be annulled; and George Gascoigne, a gifted poet who was involved in Robert Dudley’s last ditch attempt to woo Elizabeth I, died…
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