This month in Tudor Life Magazine, we have another of our dynasty features – this time we focus on the Cecils. Of course, no December magazine would be any good without a Christmas section packed with Tudor fun, games and even recipes. It’s a fun one, so do enjoy!
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26th November:
1533 – Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond and Somerset, married Lady Mary Howard at Hampton Court Palace. Fitzroy was the illegitimate son of Henry VIII by his mistress Elizabeth (Bessie Blount) and Mary was the daughter of Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and the cousin of Anne Boleyn.
1542 (26th or 27th November) – Death of Robert Radcliffe, 1st Earl of Sussex, courtier, soldier and Lord Great Chamberlain of England. He was buried at St Laurence Pountney Church in London, but then moved to Boreham in Essex. Radcliffe was made Lord Great Chamberlain of England for life on 3rd May 1540 for his loyal service to Henry VIII.
1546 – Baptism of Sir Giles Fletcher the Elder, diplomat, member of Parliament and author, in Watford, Hertfordshire. Fletcher was the son of Richard Fletcher, Church of England clergyman, and his wife, Joan. Fletcher is known for his poetical work, “Licia” (1593), but his other works included the Latin pastorals Poemata varii argumenti, the poem De literis antiquae Britanniae and the account of his travels as diplomat, “Of the Russe Common Wealth. Or, Maner of gouernement of the Russe emperour, (commonly called the Emperour of Moskouia) with the manners, and fashions of the people of that countrey”. He was the father of the poet Sir Giles Fletcher the Younger.
1585 – Executions of Hugh Taylor, Catholic priest, and his friend Marmaduke Bowes at York. They were both hanged, and were the first men executed under the 1585 statute which made it treason to be a Jesuit or seminary priest in England, or to harbour such a priest. Both men were beatified in 1987.
1612 – Death of Sir Thomas Walmsley, Judge and Justice of the Common Pleas, at his home at Dunkenhalgh in Lancashire. He was buried at Blackburn.
29th October:
1532 – Henry VIII accompanied Francis I to the border between English Calais and France to bid farewell to him.
1586 – Four days after a commission had found Mary, Queen of Scots guilty of conspiring to assassinate Elizabeth I, Parliament met to discuss Mary’s fate. They decided that they should petition the Queen for Mary’s execution.
1605 – Death of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, courtier and naval commander, at the duchy house, near the Savoy in London. He was buried in the family vault in Holy Trinity Church, Skipton, near Skipton Castle. Clifford was Elizabeth I’s second champion. He commanded a ship in the Anglo-Spanish War, and is known for capturing Fort San Felipe del Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1598. Elizabeth I nicknamed him her “rogue”.
1618 – Sir Walter Ralegh (Raleigh), courtier, explorer, author and soldier, was executed at Westminster. Ralegh had originally been found guilty of treason and sentenced to death in 1603, after being implicated in the Main Plot against James I, but the King spared his life. In 1618, the death sentence was reinstated after he incurred the wrath of Spain for storming San Thomé and killing the Spanish governor.
On 10th October 1562, twenty-nine-year-old Queen Elizabeth I was taken ill at Hampton Court Palace. It was thought that the queen had caught a bad cold but when she developed a violent fever it became clear that it was something more serious; Elizabeth had smallpox.
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Lady Anne Russell was born the eldest of three daughters of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, and his first wife, Margaret St John. Anne’s father was an English nobleman and soldier who had a successful career at both the Henrician and Elizabethan courts. However, he came to significant attention during the reign of Elizabeth I; a monarch renowned for her taste in dashing, exciting and reliable men. Through this relationship with the queen, Francis was able to rise in status to the office of privy councillor. He also carried out diplomatic missions on the continent. Very little is known of Anne’s childhood, as much of the Russell family papers, for the sixteenth-century, are lost. When compared to other families, such as the Cecils, there is substantially more information on the education of William Cecil’s daughters than the Russell children. Any information regarding the Russell daughters’ education, including Anne’s sister Margaret, is practically unknown.
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After another delicious breakfast at the Arden Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon – French toast and I shared it with Francis I and Elizabeth I, as you can see! – we said our goodbyes to Stratford and set off for London. We arrived in London for lunch and then headed to London Charterhouse.
London Charterhouse has such a fascinating history. The land was used as a burial site for victims of the Black Death in 1348 and then in 1371, the Carthusian monastery was built. You might remember me telling you about that Carthusian Martyrs of Henry VIII’s reign, monks from this very monastery who refused to sign the oath recognising Henry VIII as supreme head of the Church in England and who were brutally executed or starved to death. The monastery was dissolved in the 1530s and it then passed through the hands of Sir Edward North; John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; North again; Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk; Philip Howard, 13th Earl of Arundel; Elizabeth I; Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Thomas Sutton. Elizabeth I visited it on several occasions.
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I grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon so today was a special day for me, seeing my home area through the eyes of others and also seeing places that had been on my doorstep for years but that I’d taken for granted and never visited, or that hadn’t been open when I lived here.
As a huge Shakespeare fan, I had ben waiting for this day of the tour with bated breath and as good luck would have it, it came round quickly. The weather forecast predicted that the day might not be for the faint-hearted, with rain and drizzle forecast, but all’s well that ends well and the day really was such stuff as dreams are made on. Sorry, that’s too much of a good thing and I think I’ll stop the Shakespeare phrases and get on with the diary entry!
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After a breakfast spent gazing out of the hotel window at Windsor Castle opposite, our group had a guided tour of Windsor Castle. Our guide, Amanda, gave us a Tudor-focused tour, giving us an overview of the castle’s history and then pointing out the parts built by our very favourite dynasty. She also pointed out parts that we all saw on TV back in May when Prince Harry married Meghan – we walked where George Clooney walked – ha!
We couldn’t have asked for a better day as it was lovely and sunny. I think my favourite part was visiting the chapel and saying hello to Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, as well as Charles Brandon, Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, Henry VI and a few others, and also seeing the stall plates of some of my favourite Tudor Knights of the Garter. It really is a jaw-droppingly beautiful place.
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Thank you to Rioghnach for asking this question. The full question was “What was the legal and social status of male homosexual relationships in Tudor and Elizabethan England? In general; within the clergy and religious houses; and within the Royal Courts?” Historian Owen Emmerson has kindly answered it.
The legal status of gay relations over the 118 years in which the six monarchs of the Tudor dynasty ruled is a tale of two spheres which shifted enormously. For 52 of those years – during the reigns of Henry VII, Mary I and for the majority of Henry VIII’s reign – homosexuality was deemed a sin and, as such, was subject to the scrutiny of the Catholic church’s courts.
After 1533, most of the Tudor monarchs persecuted gay men not through the church but in the criminal law courts. The great schism that led to the Henrician Reformation was the arena in which the crime of homosexuality shifted from Church to State. The counter-reformation provided a five-year respite from state persecution, before the Elizabethan period in which the Act against homosexual relations was restored. The social status of gay relations during this period was far less a point of change than continuity by comparison.
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30 July:
1540 – Executions of Catholic martyrs Thomas Abell, Edward Powell and Richard Fetherston for refusing to acknowledge the royal supremacy. They were hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield. Click here for more information.
1540 – Burnings of religious reformers Robert Barnes, William Jerome and Thomas Garrard at Smithfield for heresy.
1550 – Death of Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, at Lincoln House in Holborn. He was buried in St Andrew’s Church, Holborn, but then moved later to Titchfield. Wriothesley served Henry VIII as Lord Privy Seal and Lord Chancellor. Click here to read more about him.
1553 – Princess Elizabeth left her new home, Somerset House, to ride to Wanstead and greet her half-sister, Mary, England’s new queen. Click here to read more.
1563 – Birth of Robert Parry, writer and diarist, at Tywysog in Denbighshire, North Wales. His works included “Moderatus: the most Delectable and Famous Historie of the Black Knight”.
1570 – Burial of Sir William Godolphin, soldier, at Breage.
1588 – The wind changed and the remaining ships of the Spanish Armada were forced northwards and scattered. The wind became known as the “Protestant wind” because people believed that God had sent this wind to protect England from the Catholic Spanish Armada. Later, when it was obvious that the Spanish Armada had been defeated, medals were struck to celebrate and these medals were inscribed with “Flavit Jehovah et Dissipati Sunt“, meaning “Jehovah blew with His wind and they were scattered”. The wind certainly helped the English fleet.
In this month’s Tudor Life magazine we are focussing on the wide-ranging impact of the Tudors on religion. It was a time of great upheaval throughout the country and we look into some of the major changes that took place during the Tudor period.
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On this day in history, 6th June 1522, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and the nephew of King Henry VIII’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, made a grand entry into the city of London. He was accompanied by King Henry VIII.
Three years ago, I did a Claire Chats video talk on Charles V’s 1522 visit to England, and here it is:
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Just to let you know that this month’s live chats will be taking place on 9th and 23rd June. Both chats will last one hour and will take place in the Tudor Society chatroom at www.tudorsociety.com/chatroom/.
Our informal chat will take place on Saturday 9th June and this month’s topic is the Seymour family. This is your chance to share your views on the Seymours (Jane, Edward, Thomas, the Seymours in Elizabeth I’s reign, their background, anything Seymour related!), to pose questions about them, to ask the views of other members, to share book recommendations, and to just talk Tudor.
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Sometimes my research leads me off on a tangent and that really is the joy of historical research, suddenly finding a little nugget of information that piques your interest and leads you off on a journey of discovery.
While I was looking at this week’s “on this day in history” events from my book On This Day in Tudor History, I noticed that an entry for the 31st May was the death of Katherine Brettergh (née Bruen) in 1601:
“Death of Katherine Brettergh (née Bruen), ‘exemplar of godly life’. Her biographer, Steve Hindle, writes of her deathbed crisis of faith “during which she raged against God’s unmercifulness and threw her Bible repeatedly to the floor”, and how “Her agonies formed the centrepiece of a polemical account of her embattled life appended to the two sermons preached by William Harrison and William Leigh at her funeral”, and which were published. Her crisis, they said, was a struggle between God and Satan for her soul.”
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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.
Douglas Sheffield, née Howard, was the oldest daughter of William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham, Surrey, and his wife, Margaret Gamage. Her date of birth has been a source of debate among historians. However, Simon Adams has argued that the dates of 1542 and 1543 are the most likely due to her being seventeen upon her marriage in 1560. Her older brother was Charles Howard, 2nd Baron of Effingham and 1st Earl of Nottingham. Charles was a successful English statesman and Lord High Admiral under Elizabeth I and James I. Commander of the English forces, he was hugely influential during the Armada period and was renowned for having been a significant figure in the naval defence against Spanish invasion during the 1590s. Douglas was part of a distinguished and notorious noble family that had been instrumental in court politics since the early sixteenth century. While her father held the title of baron, his half-brother was the Duke of Norfolk, William enjoyed a successful career under all four of the Tudor monarchs, and this favour ensured his daughter made a good marriage; Douglas married John Sheffield, 2nd Baron Sheffield. The couple had two surviving children: Edmund Sheffield, later 1st Earl of Mulgrave, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde. The newly married couple were received well by the queen, who provided a wedding gift on 27th October 1560.
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14 May:
1511 – Death of Walter Fitzsimmons, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Deputy of Ireland, at Finglas, Dublin. He was buried in the nave of St Patrick’s Cathedral.
1523 – Death of Nicholas Vaux, 1st Baron Vaux, courtier and soldier, at the Hospital of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell.
1571 – Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox and regent to James VI, held the “Creeping Parliament”.
1595 – Death of Anne Fiennes (née Sackville), Lady Dacre, at Chelsea. She was buried in the More Chapel, Chelsea, next to her husband, Gregory Fiennes, 10th Baron Dacre.
1629 – Death of Jean Gordon, Countess of Bothwell and Sutherland. She is known for having been married, albeit briefly, to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who went on to marry Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1573 she married Alexander Gordon, 12th Earl of Sutherland, and after his death she married Alexander Ogilvy of Boyne, the man she had been in love with before she married Bothwell.
1635 – Burial of Helena Gorges (née Snakenborg), Lady Gorges, in Salisbury Cathedral. Helena was married twice, firstly to William Parr, Marquis of Northampton (brother of Catherine Parr), and secondly to Sir Thomas Gorges, courtier.
Jane Dormer became one of Queen Mary I’s foremost confidants during the 1550s. Born in 1538 at Eythrope, Buckinghamshire, she was the daughter of Sir William Dormer and Mary Sidney. Upon her mother’s death in 1542 she was brought up by her maternal grandparents. According to Jane’s biography, The Life of Jane Dormer, written by her secretary Henry Clifford) her upbringing shaped her academic career, as she ‘before seven years began to read the Primer or the office of our Blessed Lady, in Latin’. Evidently intelligent, the quote emphasises her traditional Catholic education with reference to the ‘blessed lady’. Her Catholicism, as shall be examined in this article, would later become symbolic of her identity. Similarly, her academic achievements in mastering languages were the result of her grandfather’s fluency, especially in Spanish; he served at the court of Charles V for a period.
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The Red Rose Chain theatre company have just let me know about their latest Tudor-themed play, Put Out the Lights, which is being performed at the Avenue Theatre in Ipswich, UK, from 8-27 May 2018. I thoroughly enjoyed Joanna Carrick’s play “Fallen in Love” and this one is also written by her, and sounds wonderful. Here are all the details:
1538. Ipswich is a dangerous place of dark secrets and new whisperings. A preacher is dragged from his pulpit, arrested for protestant heresy, while Cromwell sends agents to dismantle the Town’s beloved Catholic Shrine and burn the statue of Our Lady. Trying to make sense of it all are Alice Driver, an ordinary Suffolk woman with an unshakable belief and her two best friends – the well-meaning Edward and loose cannon Alexander. A tragic love story, where beliefs, convictions and divided loyalties threaten to tear their world apart.
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Thank you to Tudor Society member Lynne for asking this question: “When Anne Boleyn was a teenager in the court of Francis I, did she have a bit of a romance going on with the king?”
I (Claire Ridgway) will answer this one as I have done in-depth research into Anne Boleyn’s life, including her time in France.
Anne Boleyn left England in the spring or summer of 1512 to serve at the court of Margaret of Austria in Mechelen. In August 1514, Anne’s father, Thomas Boleyn, wrote to Margaret to inform her that Anne had been appointed to serve Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. Mary was travelling to France to marry King Louis XII of France and Anne had been chosen as one of her maids of honour. It is not known when Anne arrived in France, whether it was in time for Mary’s marriage on 9th October or whether it wasn’t until her coronation in the November, but Anne served Mary from that time until Mary returned to England in the spring of 1515. Anne was retained by the new queen consort of France, Queen Claude, wife of Francis I, and served her until late 1521 when Anne was recalled to England in late 1521.
So, Anne spent seven years in France, serving at the royal court, but was she linked to Francis I romantically during that time?
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Helena, Lady Gorges, was born in Sweden in 1548 and was the daughter of Ulf Henriksson of Östergötland and his wife, Agneta Knuttson. Before her two marriages, she was known as Helena (Elin) Snakenborg, the surname coming from her mother’s family, who came from Mecklenburg. Helena’s father was a nobleman of the Bååt family and her mother descended from the earls of Orkney.
In the mid 1560s, Helena was chosen to serve Princess Cecilia of Sweden, Margravine of Baden, daughter of King Gustav I (Gustav Vasa) of Sweden, as a maid of honour. In late 1564, Helena left Sweden to accompany her mistress on a voyage to England to the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Their journey took almost a year due to bad weather and the need to avoid travelling through certain countries. Shortly after her arrival in England, Helena fell in love with William Parr, Marquis of Northampton and brother of Catherine Parr (Henry VIII’s sixth wife). When Princess Cecilia left England in 1566, Helena remained in England and joined Elizabeth I’s household in around 1567. Helena served Elizabeth I as maid of honour and then gentlewoman of the privy chamber.
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Here is the full version of our 76-page April edition of Tudor Life Magazine. This month we have articles about some of the strange and bizarre myths and mysteries surrounding the Tudors.
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Sir Anthony Browne was born in c.1500 and was the son of Sir Anthony Browne and his wife Lucy. Browne’s father was a member of the Browne family of Betchworth, in Surrey, and his mother was a widow of Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam of Aldwark, Yorkshire. She was also the daughter and coheir of John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu and son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury. Browne’s great uncle was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the famous “Kingmaker”. From his mother’s first marriage, Browne had a half-brother, William Fitzwilliam, 1st Earl of Southampton, whose later career resembled his in many ways.
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On this day in history, 19th March 1568, Elizabeth Seymour, the wife of John Paulet, Lord St John died. She was laid to rest on 5th April in the Paulet family church of St Mary at Basing, Hampshire.1 She was around fifty years of age.
The undated inscription on the wall of the vault in the church (as transcribed by Lord Bolton, 16th Dec. 1903) reads:
“Hic jacet D[omina] Cromwell, quondam conjux Johis, Marchionis Winton.”2
Known by her superior title of Lady Cromwell, Elizabeth was never a Marchioness – her husband succeeded his father as 2nd Marquess of Winchester after her death.
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King Edward IV married the Lancastrian widow Elizabeth Wydeville [Woodville] in the spring or summer of 1464. In nineteen years of marriage, Elizabeth gave birth to ten children, seven of whom were daughters. The eldest daughter Elizabeth, born in 1466, remains the most well known in popular and scholarly circles and Edward IV’s other four daughters are significantly neglected both in factual and fictional accounts of their lives. The emphasis on Elizabeth and the neglect of her sisters are perhaps understandable, in that Elizabeth married Henry Tudor in 1485 and gave birth to Henry VIII in 1491. A queen of England undoubtedly attracts more attention than a countess or viscountess. Yet the lives of Elizabeth of York’s younger sisters are interesting in shedding light on the marriage policies of the houses of York and Tudor in an era of intermittent dynastic and political conflict. They also illuminate the contrasting fortunes of members of a side-lined royal dynasty.
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Thank you to Tudor Society member RealTudorLady for asking this question: “I have been reading recently that Anne Seymour, wife of Edward Seymour was jealous of Queen Katherine Parr and that the two women hated each other. This was rumoured to stem from Anne Seymour (Stanhope) demanding precedence over the Dowager Queen as her husband was Lord Protector and although she was not entitled to this she demanded it anyway. She also told her husband to get rid of his brother. Is there any truth to these rumours?”
Historian and author Conor Byrne answered the question…
The suggestion that Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, experienced conflict with the dowager queen, Katherine Parr, in 1547-8 can be dated to rumours circulating in the duchess’s lifetime. It has also long been claimed that Anne encouraged her husband, the Lord Protector, to assent to the execution of his younger brother Thomas Seymour, who was the husband of Katherine Parr.
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Sir William Compton was an ambitious royal servant and a close friend of the king, yet he has been rather neglected and there is little information available on him.
William Compton was born in around 1482 and was the only son of Edward Compton of Compton in Warwickshire and his wife, Joan, daughter of Walter Aylworth. He was around 11 years of age when he became the ward of Henry VII following his father’s death in 1493. Henry VII made him a page of Henry, Duke of York, the future Henry VIII. Compton was around nine years older than the king’s son, but they became close friends, and when Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, the young king kept Compton close by appointing him a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber. Compton was made the new king’s groom of the stool. This position made Compton one of Henry VIII’s most intimate and trusted servants, and meant that he controlled access to the king.
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Today, I am concluding my examination of Catherine of Aragon’s pregnancies and what evidence we have for them from the primary sources.
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On 6th February 1561, poet Tailboys Dymoke (pseudonym Thomas Cutwode) was baptised 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 in 1599 under the name of Thomas Cutwode, “cut wood” being the English translation of Dymoke’s first name, the French “taille-bois”. The poem comprises 187 seven-line stanzas, so is rather long
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As this week was the anniversary of Queen Catherine of Aragon giving birth to a still-born daughter in 1510, I thought I’d look at the primary source accounts we have of Catherine’s pregnancies.
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