Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London (c. 1500-1569)
Birth: c. 1500
Place of birth: probably Hanley, Worcestershire
Parents: Elizabeth Frodsham, wife of Edmund Bonner, sawyer. However, it was alleged that his father was actually George Savage, rector of Davenham, Cheshire.
Education: Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford, where he studied civil and canon law. In 1526, he received a doctorate in civil law and was admitted to the College of Advocates, London.
3rd September:
1553 – Edward Courtenay was created Earl of Devon. He had been imprisoned in 1538, at the age of twelve, due to his family’s links with the Poles and Nevilles, but was released shortly after the accession of Mary I.
1557 – News reached London that the English and Imperial troops had been successful in storming St Quentin, and there were widespread celebrations; bonfires were lit, bells were rung and there was singing. The good news was marred, however, by news of the death of Henry Dudley.
1588 (3rd or 5th September) – Death of Richard Tarlton, actor and famous clown, in Shoreditch. He was buried in St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch. Tarlton was a member of the Queen’s Men, but is famed for his post-play jigs as a clown.
1592 – Death of writer and playwright Robert Greene in Dowgate. He died from a fever and was buried in a churchyard near Bedlam. Greene was a prolific writer, writing autobiographical works, plays and romances, but is best known for his pamphlet “Greene’s Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance”, which is the first contemporary reference to William Shakespeare. It was actually an attack on Shakespeare, whom Greene accused of plagiarism, and of being uneducated.
1597 – Death of Sir John Norreys (Norris), military commander, at his brother Thomas’s home, Norris Castle in Mallow, co. Cork. He died in his brother’s arms, and it is thought that his death was due to trouble from old wounds, perhaps gangrene. Norris served as a soldier in France, the Low Countries and Ireland.
In this month’s Tudor Life magazine we delve into the life of the well known Dudley family. This family was unlike any other, and they enjoyed favour throughout the Tudor period, with Robert Dudley even possibly being a potential consort to Queen Elizabeth.
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27th August:
1549 – The Battle of Dussindale took place, ending Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk.
1557 – The storming of St Quentin by English and Imperial forces. Admiral de Coligny and his French troops, numbering only a thousand, were overcome by around 60,000 soldiers, and St Quentin fell. Henry Dudley, the youngest son of the late John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was killed by a cannonball during the storming.
1590 – Death of Pope Sixtus V at Rome.
1610 – Funeral of Lady Anne Bacon (née Cooke), mother of Sir Francis Bacon, at St Michael’s Church, near St Albans. Anne was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, and was known for her translation of John Jewel’s “Apologie of the Church of England”.
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth on 22nd August 1485. This battle was, of course, the start of the Tudor dynasty because it was at this battle that the forces of Henry Tudor, who had returned from exile to claim the throne of England, defeated those of Richard III. Richard was killed during the battle and Henry was crowned King Henry VII. He ruled until his death, by natural causes, on 21st April 1509.
You can read more about the battle in our article The Battle of Bosworth – 22 August 1485, and you can also find out more about the battle and the two kings involved with the following resources:
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MedievalCourses.com are commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth this week by offering 25% off all of their online history courses from today until the end of 24th August 2018.
All you have to do is choose your course (or courses!) at https://medievalcourses.com/overview/ and use coupon code BOS at checkout. You can use the code on as many courses as you like and what’s great is that the courses don’t have a set start or end date so you can buy courses now and then start them when it’s convenient for you.
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20th August:
1509 – Birth of Sir William Stanford (Staunford), judge and legal writer. Stanford served Mary I as one of her queen’s Sergeants, and is known for his legal books, “Les plees del coron” (1557), on criminal law, and “Exposicion of the Kinges Prerogative” (1567)
1580 – Death of Sir George Bowes, soldier and administrator, at Streatlam, county Durham. He was buried in the family vault at Barnard Castle Church. Bowes served Elizabeth I as a member of the Council of the North and the Ecclesiastical High Commission for York, a Justice of the Peace and Sheriff, and as the Earl of Sussex’s Deputy in co. Durham and Richmondshire, and Provost Marshal. Bowes was also chosen to escort Mary, Queen of Scots from Carlisle to Bolton Castle in 1568.
1588 – A thanksgiving service was held at St Paul’s in London to give thanks to God for England’s victory over the Spaniards.
1589 – Marriage of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, by proxy at Kronborg Castle, Helsingør, Denmark. James was represented by his ambassador at the Danish court, George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal.
1599 – Death of Sir Thomas Norris, soldier and Lord President of Munster, at his house at Mallow, County Cork, Ireland. Norris died from an injury to his jaw sustained in a skirmish with Thomas Burke and his troops in May 1599.
1610 – Death of courtier Edmund Tilney, censor of plays and Master of the Revels. He was buried in St. Leonard’s Church, Streatham, London.
1648 (or 5th August) – Death of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury and 1st Baron Herbert of Castle Island, diplomat, philosopher and the author of “The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth”. He was buried at St Giles-in-the-Fields, London.
As it is the anniversary of the execution of Catholic priest Thomas Abel (Abell) on 30th July 1540, I thought I’d share this photo that Tim took of a carving done by Thomas into the stone wall of the Beauchamp Tower during his imprisonment there. You can click on the picture to make it bigger. As you can see, it’s a rebus, i.e. a puzzle in which words are represented by pictures and letters – so we have “Thomas” then a picture of a bell with the letter “A” on it: Thomas Abell. It’s one of my favourite carvings in the Beauchamp Tower.
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On 17th July 1537, Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, was burned to death on the castle hill at Edinburgh after being found guilty of two counts of treason. She had been charged with plotting King James V of Scotland’s death (by poison) and assisting and corresponding with her brothers, Sir George Douglas and Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.
So who was Janet Douglas, and what led to her brutal death?
janet Douglas was the daughter of the Scottish nobleman, George Douglas, Master of Angus, and his wife, Elizabeth Drummond. Janet was born c. 1504 and her father died at the Battle of Flodden on 9th September 1513. Janet’s siblings included Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, who married Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV, and Sir George Douglas of Pittendriech. Janet married John Lyon, 6th Lord Glamis, when she was about sixteen years of age, in 1520. The couple had four children before Lyon died in 1528. Janet married her second husband, Archibald Campbell of Skipness, younger son of Archibald Campbell, 2nd Earl of Argyll by July 1532. The marriage was childless.
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As it is the anniversary of the execution of Sir Thomas More today and yesterday was the anniversary of the day that he wrote his very last letter, I thought I’d have a look at the letter and the people that More mentions in it. I hope you enjoy my talk.
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In today’s Claire Chats video talk, I finish my series on the treatment Mary received at the hands of her father following the breakdown of her parents’ marriage. I examine what happened to Mary after the death of her mother in January 1536 and Anne Boleyn’s execution in May 1536.
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In the second part of my series on the treatment that Mary, the future Mary I, received from her father following the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, I look at the years 1534 and 1535 and what happened to Mary after Parliament passed the First Act of Succession.
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In today’s Claire Chats video, I clear up a few misunderstanding that seem prevalent on social media regarding coronations, the numbering of monarchs, queens regnant versus queens consort, what makes a monarch and a few other issues to do with coronations and monarchy.
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4th June…
1534 – Death of Sir Edward Guildford at Leeds Castle. Guildford acted as guardian to John Dudley (future Duke of Northumberland) and held the posts of Marshal of Calais, Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.
1536 – Jane Seymour was proclaimed Queen at Greenwich Palace. Charles Wriothesley, the Tudor chronicler, recorded: “Also the 4th daie of June, being Whitsoundaie, the said Jane Seymor was proclaymed Queene at Greenewych, and went in procession, after the King, with a great traine of ladies followinge after her, and also ofred at masse as Queen, and began her howsehold that daie, dyning in her chamber of presence under the cloath of estate.”
1550 (some sources say 5th June) – Robert Dudley married Amy Robsart at the royal palace of Sheen at Richmond, near London. The marriage was attended by the then king, Edward VI.
1561 – The spire of St Paul’s Cathedral caught fire after being struck by lightning. The fire melted the Cathedral’s bells and lead from the spire “poured down like lava upon the roof”……
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.
The Anne Boleyn Experience Day 4 tied in with the anniversary of the execution of Queen Anne Boleyn on 19th May 1536 and it was a fitting day to spend at the Tower of London and to be staying at Hever Castle, the Boleyn family home.
On arrival at the Tower of London, we split into two groups and were then guided around the Tower by two fantastic Blue Badge Guides. After that, we had free time to grab lunch, see the White Tower, Beauchamp Tower, shop etc. Most of us also watched the performance on the South Lawn called “The Last Days of Anne Boleyn”, which was excellent. I’ll tell you more when I get home. We also laid roses with a card on the glass memorial. I decided to do this rather than have a Yeoman Warder lay them on Anne’s tile because I wanted tourists who didn’t know the importance of the date to see them and read it.
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After a night of not much sleep at all – I was too excited to sleep! – we enjoyed a lovely breakfast in the Astor Wing of Hever Castle before having free time to enjoy the gardens and castle. I love walking through the gardens before the public arrives because I can pretend that I am the lady of the manor.
The gardens just cannot be described in words. I cannot do them justice. They are breathtakingly beautiful. I did a couple of Facebook Live videos from the gardens and I hope my excitement and pure joy shone through, I was very excited. Then, I got even more excited because I visited the Hever Castle gift shop to find a display of my books. The staff were kind enough to allow me to take lots of selfies with my books. I also signed the copies they had so that they could sell them as signed copies. Seeing my books on sale in the shop of the Boleyn family home was truly a dream come true, one of those “pinch me” moments.
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It’s 1.15am as I write this, that’s how much fun I’m having. I’m buzzing! Let me tell you all about my day.
I travelled to London Victoria this morning and after having a Marks and Spencer’s lunch, I met up with my fellow tour guide, Philippa, and tour participant, Jodee, before meeting the rest of the group near Victoria. We then had fun [sarcasm] fighting our way through London traffic on the coach before reaching the lovely tree-lined lanes of Kent, aptly named the Garden of England. I would not want to be a coach driver navigating my way down those lanes!
We arrived at Hever Castle [a squeal of excitement might have come out of my mouth at this point] and were shown to our beautiful rooms, each one uniquely furnished and decorated. They are lovely. You can just see the upper part of the castle through my leaded windows. We had time to freshen up before meeting for pre-dinner drinks. We then had a delicious barbecue. I’m a vegetarian and my quinoa burgers were to die for, so good! And the salad bar was great.
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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.
William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, soldier and magnate and a man who served four monarchs, was the second son of Sir Richard Herbert of Ewyas (the illegitimate son of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, of the 8th creation) and his wife, Margaret, daughter of Sir Matthew Cradock of Swansea. Richard served King Henry VII as a gentleman usher. Very little is known of Herbert’s early life, only that he lost his father in 1510 and was then brought up by his mother and her third husband, William Bawdrip.
In 1514, Herbert entered the service of Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester, who was married to Herbert’s half-uncle’s daughter. John Aubrey recorded that William Herbert was known as ‘Black Will Herbert’ and that he was ‘a mad fighting fellow’. Aubrey also recorded that Herbert was illiterate, which seems to be a baseless accusation, and that he killed a mercer in Bristol and then fled to France, joining the army of Francis I. It is not known whether that claim was true and his name does appear in a coroner’s report.
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7th May:
1535 – John Fisher, former Bishop of Rochester, was visited by Thomas Cromwell, Master Secretary, and member of the King’s Council. Cromwell read out the “Act of Supremacy” and Fisher refused to acknowledge the King as the supreme head of the Church, saying “The King owre Soveraign Lord is not supreme hedd yn erthe of the Cherche of Englande.” It is alleged that Richard Rich tricked him into saying those words, telling him that the King wished to know his real opinion in secret, but whatever the truth of the matter, Fisher was found guilty of treason and executed on 22nd July 1535.
1536 – Queen Anne Boleyn’s chaplain, William Latymer, was searched by the mayor and jurates of Sandwich on his arrival back in England. He was returning from a business visit to Flanders, a visit he had undertaken on behalf of the Queen. Latymer had often brought Anne religious books back from the Continent, so it was lucky for him that he did not have anything which could have been deemed as heretical in his luggage. Records were made of the books that he was carrying and of those which he was having sent directly to London, but he was allowed to carry on with his journey.
1540 – Death of Sir William Weston, Prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England. He died at the priory on the day that the order to dissolve it was passed through the Commons. He was the uncle of Sir Francis Weston, a man executed in 1536 in the coup against Anne Boleyn.
Following on from last week’s Claire Chats video talk on hanging, drawing and quartering, this week I’m looking at other methods of execution used in England, and also Scotland, during the Tudor period. Brutal times!
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Congratulations to Mary, the winner of our competition to win a copy of Gareth Russell’s “Young and Damned and Fair”.
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16th April:
1512 – The Mary Rose began her first tour of duty in the English Channel on the hunt for French warships.
1521 – German Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, appeared in front of Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms. He had been summoned to the diet to either recant or reaffirm his religious views.
1550 – Birth of Francis Anthony, alchemist, apothecary and physician. He was probably born in London and was the son of Derrick Anthony, a goldsmith. Anthony was imprisoned twice for practising as a physician without a licence, and is known for his aurum potabile (drinkable gold), made from gold and mercury, which he claimed had amazing curative powers. His works included Medicinae chymicae et veri potabilis auri assertio (1610).
1570 – Baptism of Guy Fawkes, conspirator, at the Church of St Michael le Belfrey in York.
1578 – Burial of Thomas Drant, Church of England clergyman and poet. He was part of the “Areopagus” intellectual circle at court, but also had an ecclesiastical career and was chaplain to Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London. He is known for his work on prosody (metre), and actually drew up some rules concerning it, which were mentioned by Edmund Spenser, Gabriel Harvey, Philip Sidney, Edward Dyer and Fulke Greville.
1587 – Death of Anne Seymour (née Stanhope), Duchess of Somerset and wife of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector during part of Edward VI’s reign. Anne was a reformer and a literary patron. She died at Hanworth Place and was buried at Westminster Abbey.
1595 – Death of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby and literary patron. His sudden death caused rumours of poisoning and witchcraft, but nothing was ever proved. Stanley was patron of the Strange’s Men company of players, which probably included William Shakespeare, and he was also a patron of poets. It is thought that he also was a poet.
In this week’s Claire Chats, I talk about the medieval and Tudor traditions associated with Good Friday, the feast day commemorating Christ’s crucifixion.
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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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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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