The Tudor Society
  • 16 August – The Norrises lose another two sons in the Queen’s service

    On this day in Tudor history, 16th August 1599, soldier and Lord President of Munster in Ireland, Sir Thomas Norris, died at his home, Mallow Castle, in Cork, as a result of an injury he’d sustained in a skirmish with Irish troops on 30th May 1599. His brother, Henry, died just five days later. Thomas’s brothers, John, William and Maximilian, who were also soldiers, died in 1597, 1579 and 1593 respectively.

    Queen Elizabeth I recognised the sacrifice of this family and wrote a letter of condolence to her friends, Henry Norris, 1st Baron Norris, and his wife, Margery Williams. Find out what she wrote to the grieving couple in today’s talk.

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  • Elizabeth I and Ivan IV

    In this week’s Claire Chats video talk, Claire looks at the relationship between England and Russia in Elizabeth I’s reign, and specifically at some correspondence between Elizabeth I and Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible).

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  • Elizabeth I’s Tide Letter

    The Tide Letter was written by Lady Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth I) to Mary I when she was arrested after Wyatt’s Rebellion on 17th March 1554. Elizabeth wrote it when she was just about to be taken to the Tower of London for incarceration and it is called the Tide Letter because as Elizabeth wrote the letter the tide of the Tames turned and she could no longer be taken to the Tower by boat that day. She was taken to the Tower on 18th March, Palm Sunday.

    The letter was written in haste but Elizabeth still managed to write an eloquent and well-argued letter, which unfortunately went ignored by Mary. It did, however, delay her imprisonment by one day.

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  • Elizabeth I’s Tide Letter

    On 17th March 1554, two of Mary I’s councillors, Winchester and Sussex, were sent to escort Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, to her prison at the Tower of London by water for her alleged involvement in Wyatt’s Rebellion. This was when Elizabeth wrote what David Starkey calls “the letter of her life”, the famous Tide Letter, so-called because as Elizabeth wrote this letter to her sister the tide turned, making it impossible to take Elizabeth to the Tower that day.

    The letter was written in haste but Elizabeth still managed to write an eloquent and well-argued letter, which unfortunately went ignored by Mary. It did, however, delay her imprisonment by one day.

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  • 26 January 1554 – Mary I warns Elizabeth of the danger of Wyatt’s Rebellion

    ary I became queen in 1553 and although the English people had been happy for her to become queen, some noblemen became worried about her plans to marry Philip II of Spain and the religious changes her reign was bringing. A group of men including Thomas Wyatt the Younger, Henry Grey (Duke of Suffolk and father of Lady Jane Grey), Sir Peter Carew, Sir Edward Rogers, Sir Edward Warner, Sir William Pickering, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Sir James Croft, Sir George Harper, Nicholas Arnold, William Thomas and William Winter decided that a military coup might be the only way to prevent Mary’s marriage and planned a series of uprisings with the aim of deposing Mary I and replacing her with her half-sister Elizabeth, who would marry Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon.

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  • Elizabeth I’s 1545 letter to her father

    In today’s Claire Chats video, I share with you a letter that the twelve year-old Elizabeth, future Elizabeth I, wrote to her father Henry VIII in December 1545 to preface her trilingual (Latin, French and Italian) translation of Queen Catherine Parr’s “Prayers and meditations”.

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