Tim here and I've taken over this challenge to ask Claire some Tudor history questions for a change. The questions were provided by the following historians: Sarah-Beth Watkins, Rioghnach O'Geraghty, Toni Mount & Catherine Brooks. Claire did well - but how well will you do???
Note that the answers are below the questions, so no cheating! Let us know how you do in the comments below. Good luck!
THE QUESTIONS
1) Lady Jane Grey married Guildford Dudley in 1553 but who were the other two marriages that day?
2) Henry VIII built a chain of coastal defences to protect England from invasion. Apart from Dover, name two of the other major castles.
3) Henry VIII died in 1547 and his death was announced on 31 January in Parliament but by whom?
4) What is the similarity between James Bond and John Dee?
5) What was a 'hornbook'?
6) What is belladonna, and why would you want it in your beauty regime?
7) John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth but his son Thomas, Earl of Surrey, wasn’t allowed to inherit the title because they’d both fought against Henry Tudor. Almost three decades later, Thomas was finally awarded his father’s title because of his outstanding service to Henry VIII during a campaign which ended with another Tudor victory. Which battle was this?
8) Henry VIII and Francois I, King of France, both died in 1547. They were succeeded by Edward VI and Henri II, respectively, but Russia also had a new monarch that year – its first tsar. He out-survived both his contemporary kings, dying in 1584. What was his scary name?
9) Queen Elizabeth’s court astrologer, John Dee, received much of his information about the stars – including the calculations for the most propitious date for her coronation – through his acquaintance and correspondence with a famous Danish astronomer. The astronomer was even visited at his island observatory by James VI of Scots. Who was this astronomer, notorious for wearing a false, brass nose, having had his own cut off during a duel?
10) In 1584, a Dutchwoman, Dinghen van den Plass, introduced something quite new to England. Without it, Elizabethan fashions would have looked very different and a contemporary, Philip Stubbs, called it ‘the devil’s own instrument’. What did she introduce?
11) What were the names of Jasper Tudor’s two illegitimate daughters?
12) Where was thought to be the original site of the Battle of Bosworth before the Bosworth Battlefield Survey proved it was actually fought about a mile south-west from there?
13) Who is commonly thought to have administered the blow that killed RIII?
14) There was one more major battle following Bosworth in 1487. Where was it?
THE ANSWERS
1) Katherine Dudley to Henry Hastings and Katherine Grey to Henry Herbert
2) Deal, Hurst, Pendennis, Portland, Sandown, Southsea, Walmer, Yarmouth
3) Lord Chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley
4) They were both given the number 007: one by the producer of the very first James Bond movie, the other by Elizabeth I
5) A teaching aid. Letters and numbers were either painted directly onto a sheet of paper or parchment which was attached to a board. The writing or numbers were then covered with a very thin layer of cow horn, thin enough that it could be seen through, to protect them from the hands of students.
6) Belladonna is a very poisonous plant, Atropa belladonna, which is otherwise known as deadly nightshade. The plant has medicinal uses but needs to be used with great caution. One of the purposes for which it is still used in medicine is as a mydriatic, that is, something that causes the pupil of the eye to expand, and back in Tudor times, it was popular in perfumes and cosmetics for that reason, since they considered expanded pupils to be attractive.
7) Flodden Field, 1513
8) Ivan the Terrible
9) Tycho Brahe
10) Starch – making possible those stiff, intricate neck ruffs
11) Helen Tudor and Joan Tudor
12) Ambion Hill
13) Sir Rhys ap Thomas
14) Stoke Field
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