On this day in Tudor history, 3rd September 1588, or possibly the 5th September, actor and clown, Richard Tarlton, died in Shoreditch. He was buried in St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch.
Tarlton was a member of the Queen’s Men acting company, but is famed for his post-play jigs as a clown. He was also known for being able to cheer up Queen Elizabeth I – how wonderful.
Find out more about Tudor clown Richard Tarlton, his life and career, in today’s talk.
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On this day in Tudor history, 2nd September 1534, Gerald Fitzgerald, 9th Earl of Kildare and Lord Deputy of Ireland, died in the Tower of London at around the age of 47. Kildare had been arrested on 29th June 1534, accused of corruption and causing rebellion in Ireland.
Kildare seems to have spent most of his career being accused of crimes, but his son Silken Thomas’s rebellion was his final undoing.
He was already ill when he was arrested and imprisoned, suffering from the after effects of being shot, but at least his wife was able to nurse him.
Find out more about this Earl of Kildare, his life and career, in today’s talk.
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Today, 29th August, is the Feast of the beheading of St John the Baptist. Lovely!
In today’s talk, I share the story behind this Tudor holy day, a story which is often depicted in illuminations in manuscripts and psalters.
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This week’s Claire Chats video talk is inspired by the research that Clare Cherry and I did for our book on George Boleyn and the fact that he was Governor of Bethlehem Hospital, or Bedlam. I don’t know why it sprang to mind but it made me dig a bit more into Bedlam and also how mental illness was viewed and treated in the Tudor period.
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On this day in Tudor history, 14th August 1513, William Parr, Marquess of Northampton and brother of Queen Catherine Parr, was born.
William Parr is a fascinating man. He had a wonderful court career, his first wife eloped and left him, his divorce was granted and then rescinded, he was imprisoned in the Tower but then released, his marital happiness was rather shortlived… but he died a natural death!
Find out more about William Parr in today’s talk.
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On this day in Tudor history, 12th August 1570, Lady Ursula Stafford died. She was the daughter of the late Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, sister of Cardinal Reginald Pole, and wife of Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford. She had Plantagenet blood being the granddaughter of George, Duke of Clarence.
Find out more about the life of this interesting Tudor lady, and the tragic fall of her family, in today’s talk.
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On 2nd August 1595, as part of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604, four galleys containing somewhere between 200 and 400 Spanish soldiers landed at Mount’s Bay on the coast of western Cornwall.
The local militia fled and so the Spaniards went on to cause devastation in the area.
Find out exactly what the Spaniards did in Cornwall in today’s talk.
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On this day in Tudor history, 28th July 1540, the same day that Henry VIII married Catherine Howard, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the king’s former chief advisor, was beheaded on Tower Hill having been found guilty of corruption, heresy and treason.
Find out about Cromwell’s botched execution and his execution speech in today’s talk.
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On this day in Tudor history, 24th July 1553, merchant and conspirator Richard Hesketh was born in Lancashire. Hesketh is known for the Hesketh Plot of 1593, when he urged Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby, to lead a rebellion to claim the throne of England.
But who was Richard Hesketh and why did he plot against Queen Elizabeth I? What happened to him and what happened to Ferdinando Stanley? And why did Stanley take bezoar stone and uncorn horn?
Find out all about Hesketh, his background, his plot, and the aftermath in today’s talk.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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:
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