The Tudor Society

YOUR SEARCH UNCOVERED 1657 RESULTS

  • What was the legal and social status of male homosexual relationships in Tudor and Elizabethan England?

    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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  • This week in history 30th July – 5 August

    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.

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  • August 2018 – Tudor Life – The Religious Impact of the Tudors

    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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  • 6 June 1522 – Emperor Charles V’s grand entry into London

    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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  • June’s Live Chats – 9 and 23 June

    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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  • Katherine Brettergh (1579 -1601)

    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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  • This week in history 28 May – 3 June

    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.

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  • Douglas Sheffield, Baroness Sheffield (c.1542/3-1608)

    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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  • This week in history 14 – 20 May

    Mary, Queen of Scots

    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.

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  • Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria (1538-1612)

    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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  • Put Out the Lights – a Tudor-themed play on in May in Ipswich

    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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  • Was Anne Boleyn a mistress of Francis I?

    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 Gorges (1548-1635)

    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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  • April 2018 – Tudor Life – Myths and Mysteries

    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 (c.1500-1548)

    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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  • 19 March 1568 – Death of Elizabeth Seymour, Lady Cromwell by Teri Fitzgerald

    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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  • Katherine of York, Countess of Devon

    The daughter of King Edward IV, Stained glass window of the northwest transept of Canterbury Cathedral,

    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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  • Did Anne Seymour and Katherine Parr hate each other?

    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 (c.1482-1528)

    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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  • Catherine of Aragon’s Pregnancies Part 2: 1513 – 1518

    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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  • Tailboys Dymoke or Thomas Cutwode (1561 – c.1602/3)

    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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  • Catherine of Aragon’s Pregnancies Part 1: 1509 – 1511

    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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  • 1 February – A busy day in Tudor history!

    1 February seems to have been a rather busy day in the Tudor period and here are three events, linked to further reading about them…

    1514 – Henry VIII granted the dukedom of Suffolk to Charles Brandon, his future brother-in-law, and also made Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and Howard’s son, also called Thomas, the Earl of Surrey. Charles Somerset was also made Earl of Worcester.

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  • This week in history 22 – 28 January

    22 January:

    1528 – Henry VIII and Francis I declared war on Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
    1552 – Former Lord Protector of England, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, was executed by beheading on Tower Hill in London. He was laid to rest in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London, and records show that he was buried next to Anne Boleyn in the chancel area. Click here to read more.
    1554 – Thomas Wyatt the Younger met with fellow conspirators at his home of Allington Castle in Kent to make final plans for their uprising (Wyatt’s Rebellion) against Mary I and her decision to marry Philip of Spain – click here to read more.
    1561 – Birth of Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban, the Elizabethan Lord Chancellor, politician, philosopher, author and scientist, at York House in the Strand, London. Bacon is known as “the Father of the Scientific method” and developed an investigative method, the Baconian method, which he put forward in his book Novum Organum in 1620. Some people (Baconians) believe that Francis Bacon was the true author of William Shakespeare’s plays.
    1575 – Death of James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran and Duke of Châtelherault, at Kinneil. Arran was appointed Regent for the infant Mary, Queen of Scots after James V’s death in 1542, but surrendered the regency to Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise in 1554.
    1613 – Death of Sir David Williams, Serjeant-at-Law in Elizabeth I’s reign and Puisne Justice of the King’s Bench in James I’s reign, from a fever at Kingston House, Kingston Bagpuize, Berkshire. His body was buried at St John’s Chapel, Brecon, and his entrails were buried at Kingston.

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  • Lady Jane Grey Resources

    Lady Jane Grey is a hot topic at the moment with Helen Castor’s programme having recently aired in the UK. I thought it would be useful for members if I created this list of useful resources to find out more about Queen Jane, who was a fascinating Tudor woman.

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  • January’s live chats – 13, 24 and 26 January!

    Yes, you read it correctly! January is a busy month for live chats and I do hope you’ll be able to make at least one of them.

    Saturday 13 January – Henry VIII, tyrant?
    This is January’s informal live chat and it’s on Henry VIII. Was he a tyrant? Was he just misunderstood? Did he get worse as his reign went on? Did his health problems cause his behaviour? Have your say, share your views, share book recommendations, pose questions for other members… Let’s debate this iconic king!

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  • Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (1443-1524)

    Thomas Howard was a politician, English nobleman and lived to a ripe old age of 81! For someone who spent a lot of time in the English court, he also had very stable connections which kept him in his position, especially since he was the grandfather of two queens of England, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, making him the great-grandfather to Queen Elizabeth I. Serving four monarchs as both statesmen and solider, who was Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Surrey?

    Thomas Howard was born in 1443; he was the only son of Sir John Howard and Catherine Howard, daughter of Lord William Moleyns. Having been educated in Thetford school as he got older Surrey started a career as a henchman in court. In the service of Edward IV, Thomas, who was still a young man, took the king’s side when war began in 1469 and having taken the Kings side took sanctuary in 1470 when the king fled to Holland. After he sustained an injury in 1471, he was appointed as a knight in 1478 at the marriage of the king’s son. In the same year, he was appointed as a Knight of the Garter and became appointed to the privy council.

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  • Discover the Tudors tour – Last few Early Bird tickets

    I posted about this new luxury Tudor tour last month but Philippa has just let me know that there are still some Early Bird tickets available (saving of £300 per person) so I wanted to let you know.

    I’m really excited about this tour because it doesn’t just focus on the well-known London Tudor attractions, it also takes participants to Windsor, Hatfield, Stratford-upon-Avon, Kenilworth and Bosworth, all with private guided tours. One of my very favourite historians, Leanda de Lisle, has just confirmed that she’ll be speaking to our group too!

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  • England’s Forgotten Queen: The Life and Death of Lady Jane Grey

    I am so looking forward to this 3-part TV programme from the BBC presented by historian Helen Castor. It’s on in the UK on BBC Four at 9pm on 9th, 10th and 11th January and as well as Helen Castor, it features historians like John Guy, Leanda de Lisle, J Stephan Edwards and Anna Whitelock.

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  • Lady Katherine Gordon

    Born around 1474, Katherine Gordon was the daughter of George Gordon, second Earl of Huntly, and Elizabeth Hay. Her father acted as Chancellor of Scotland from 1498 to 1501. Little is known of Katherine’s early life, but she was reputed to be beautiful and charming. The future Henry VIII is said to have ‘marveled at her beauty and amiable countenance, and sent her to London to the Queen’. On 13 January 1496, when she was about twenty-one, Katherine married the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck. Her husband had claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, son of Edward IV, since 1491. The prince had been incarcerated in the Tower of London by his uncle Richard III in 1483, and his fate was still unresolved eight years later. In 1495, Perkin arrived at the court of James IV of Scotland, having previously been supported by Charles VIII of France, Emperor Maximilian and Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy. Shortly after his marriage to Katherine, Perkin was granted Falkland Palace as a base for his adherents and as the headquarters at which his invasion of England was planned. Henry VII of England, in response to Warbeck’s activities, prepared an army with which to invade Scotland.

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