HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/people/mary-tudor Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:40:39 GMT en hourly 1 The 'Nine Days Queen' is one of England's most controversial monarchs - here's why https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/nine-days-queen-england-controversial-monarch/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:40:39 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/nine-days-queen-england-controversial-monarch/ Has history captured Lady Jane Grey’s story accurately? As her childhood home re-opens to the public, we investigate the misunderstood queen In April 2026, Bradgate House – the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey – was reopened to the public after extensive conservation work, bringing with it a new wave of interest in the so-called ‘Nine Days Queen’.
But what do we actually know about this enigmatic Tudor noble, who is often cast as a tragic victim?
Who was Lady Jane Grey?
In 1537, Jane was born into the noble Grey family. Her parents were the Duke of Suffolk, Henry Grey, and Lady Frances Brandon.
As the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and great-niece of Henry VIII, Jane was orbiting the English throne from birth. However, as historian Nicola Tallis explains on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, “she wasn’t ever raised as an heir to the throne. She was just this great-niece of Henry VIII who had been living in the countryside."
In 1553, that all changed.
King Edward VI was in increasingly ill-health but, being the first English monarch raised as a Protestant, he was desperate for his Protestant legacy to live on. So, he issued his Devise for the Succession. This legislation barred both of Edward’s half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, from succeeding to the throne.
“[Edward] didn’t want his Catholic half-sister [Mary] to be given the opportunity to reverse all of his good work in the cause of religion”, explains Nicola. “However, Edward realised that he couldn’t exclude one half-sister without also excluding the other. And so, he bars both Mary and his younger half-sister Elizabeth from the succession by reason of their illegitimacy."
This catapulted Jane to first in line for the throne – a place she didn’t want to be.
A reluctant queen
On 6 July 1553, just a few weeks after the Devise for the Succession, Edward VI died at age 15. This officially made Lady Jane Grey the Queen of England.
“She had no wish or desire to be queen whatsoever, but this was an impossible situation for Jane because she was pressured into accepting the throne," says Nicola.
So, Jane reluctantly took to the throne and was publicly proclaimed Queen on 10 July 1553.
Though, it would not last long; Jane would hold the title for a mere nine days. She was soon toppled by Mary I.
Was she really queen?
There has been some debate about whether Lady Jane Grey should be considered one of Britain’s monarchs, given the fact that the Devise for the Succession was never passed through parliament.
But as Diarmaid MacCulloch, speaking to HistoryExtra, points out, “the monarchy has never descended by strict primogeniture, and Queen Jane had a perfectly good claim to the throne: the sort of claim that brought James VI of Scotland to be James I of England in 1603."
Tudor historian Tracy Borman agrees.
“Edward’s Devise for the Succession was legally binding, so Jane’s claim was entirely valid – and arguably more so than other monarchs who claimed the throne without being legally named."
So, why is Jane often left off the list of British monarchs?
“Mary I [Edward VI’s half-sister who took the throne from Lady Jane Grey] had to ensure that her subjects saw her – not the woman she had supplanted – as the only true queen," explains Tracy. The dismissal of Lady Jane Grey was, therefore, a form of propaganda.
- Read more | Mary I: your guide to the life and rule of Henry VIII's daughter – plus a timeline and 7 little-known facts
In the battle over religious belief, Catholic Mary I had many supporters following the intense Protestantism of Edward VI’s reign, and that meant Lady Jane Grey – as a devout Protestant herself – made many enemies. As soon as Mary came to the throne on 19 July 1553, Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Why was Bradgate House so important?
Within the tumultuous story of Lady Jane Grey’s life, Bradgate House was the place that defined her childhood and provided the environment that shaped her.
“Jane would have grown up in an elite Protestant setting at Bradgate and, during the reign of Edward, some star Protestant preachers such as Bishop Hugh Latimer were welcome guests there," says Diarmaid. This moulded Jane’s Protestant beliefs, which made her such a good candidate to follow in Edward’s footsteps.
Living at Bradgate also gave Jane the opportunity to be educated, in a world where women were still often limited in this regard. Speaking to HistoryExtra, biographer James D Taylor explains that Jane’s scholarly abilities and intellect were nurtured in an environment where education was encouraged: “at a time when schools that we know of now did not exist, [growing up at Bradgate] allowed Jane to read and study with the guidance of tutors."
What can we learn from the story of Lady Jane Grey?
Whether or not Jane is considered a true queen, she was a certainly a definitive figure of the Tudor period, and representative of the era’s religious tensions.
“She’s a great symbol of historical might-have-beens,” says MacCulloch.
Of her short reign, Taylor adds, “though ill-prepared to rule, she did the best she could in the short amount of time she sat on the throne."
Jane refused to have her husband, Lord Guildford, proclaimed king without an Act of Parliament and, as Tallis explains, “the odds did seem to be very much stacked in Jane's favour to begin with. Even Mary's supporters were urging her to flee abroad for her safety because they were convinced that Jane's reign was going to be secure.”
- Read more | The curse of the nine-day queen
But despite her best efforts, Jane couldn’t compete with a vengeful Mary I, who, after being denied her birth right once before, was not willing to let it happen again. When Jane’s father was revealed as a key conspirator in Wyatt's rebellion – a 1554 uprising that aimed to prevent Mary I’s marriage to Philip II of Spain – Jane’s fate was sealed.
On 12 February 1554, Jane was executed at the Tower of London.
But perhaps she shouldn’t be remembered solely as a victim.
“Jane's story vividly illustrates how powerless women could be in the face of ambitious male relatives," says Borman. “Yet it also provides an inspiring example of a young woman with unshakeable religious convictions and principles – one who might, if history had turned out differently, have proved an excellent queen.”
Nicola Tallis was speaking to Isabel King on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, available soon.
]]> Mary I: England’s most misunderstood queen? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/mary-i-reputation-video-academy-royal-women/ Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:04:38 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/mary-i-reputation-video-academy-royal-women/ In the fourth episode of her HistoryExtra Academy series on royal women, Kate Williams explores the life and reign of Mary I, England’s first crowned queen regnant, whose rule has long been overshadowed by her reputation for religious persecution Born into the tumultuous politics of the Tudor court, Mary I saw her mother abandoned by King Henry VIII, her brother enact religious persecution with fresh zeal and, when she was crowned, faced the pressures of a divided nation.
So does she deserve her reputation as ‘Bloody Mary’? Or has history judged her too harshly? In episode four of her HistoryExtra Academy series, Professor Kate Williams weighs up the actions of the woman crowned first queen regnant of England.
View Green Video on the source website
Enjoyed this episode? Find more in episode five of the academy series on royal women, and explore our previous series on royal residences
Professor Kate Williams is a historian, presenter the author of several books including Regina :A New History of Women and Power (June 2026)
]]> Think you know everything about the Tudors? Here are 15 facts that will prove you wrong https://www.historyextra.com/membership/think-you-know-everything-about-the-tudors-here-are-15-facts-that-will-prove-you-wrong/ Sun, 12 Apr 2026 15:00:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/think-you-know-everything-about-the-tudors-here-are-15-facts-that-will-prove-you-wrong/ Tracy Borman shares a selection of surprising insights into England’s most famous royal dynasty – from Mary I’s love of gambling to the truth about Henry VIII’s extramarital affairs 1. The Tudors weren’t known as the Tudors
Although we use ‘Tudor’ as a nifty shorthand for both the era and the dynasty, it wasn’t used at the time either by the monarchs or their people. Neither did they see it as a distinct period: in fact, Henry VII went to great lengths to emphasise the continuity with his royal predecessors, even down to using the same tailor whom Edward IV had employed.
He also emphasised his Lancastrian roots and tried to downplay his Welsh origins, aware that his grandfather Owen Tudor had married well above him when he bagged Henry V’s widow Catherine of Valois as a bride. Throughout the period 1485–1603, the people identified as subjects of each successive king or queen, as well as taking pride in their local affiliations, rather than seeing themselves as ‘Tudor people’.
2. They had a pretty dodgy claim to the throne
When Henry Tudor won the crown from Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, he was quick to stress his legitimacy. But there was more than a hint of protesting too much. In fact, the Tudors were descended from Edward III’s fourth son, John of Gaunt, and his long-standing mistress, Katherine Swynford.
Moreover, Henry VII’s father Edmund was the child of Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois, by her Welsh attendant. With such a dubious bloodline, it’s little wonder that England’s first Tudor king wasted no time in marrying Elizabeth of York, the eldest child of Edward IV. Their marriage united the warring houses of York and Lancaster and, crucially, gave the Tudors some much-needed legitimacy.
3. Henry VII was no miser
The first Tudor king has a reputation for penny-pinching. But while he kept a close eye on his expenditure, he knew how to splash the cash when it was to his advantage.
In the early years of his reign, when he was under constant threat from rivals and pretenders and many of his subjects questioned his right to be king, he spent lavish sums on dressing the part. Just over a week after defeating Richard III at Bosworth, he ordered a set of new gowns fashioned from cloth of gold, satin and royal purple velvet at a cost of £336, which roughly equates to £225,000 in today’s money.
During the two years that followed, he spent an eye-watering £5,386 (£3.6 million) on his wardrobe. But his generosity had its limits. His wife, Elizabeth of York, struggled to make ends meet throughout their marriage.
4. You would smell Henry VIII before you saw him
For the last 20 years of his life, Henry was tormented by pain from a chronic leg ulcer, which was aggravated by a serious fall from his horse while jousting in 1536. The ulcer often became inflamed and – unsurprisingly – Henry was a difficult patient, refusing to rest for long enough for it to heal. At its worst, the suppurating wound could be smelt from three rooms away.
- Read more | Was this the moment Henry VIII became a tyrant?
5. Henry VIII’s love of hawking was almost the death of him
Henry’s love of sport was well known throughout the court. As a young king, he would spend hours hunting, jousting, shooting arrows and playing tennis. Hawking was another of his favourite sports and his private apartments contained an impressive array of falconry equipment.
But in 1525, Henry was almost killed while pursuing his hawk. Attempting to pole vault over a ditch, instead he fell headfirst into it and almost drowned. Thankfully, his quick-thinking footman, Edmund Moody, managed to pull him out in the nick of time.
6. Henry VIII was a bit of a prude
Contrary to popular belief, Tudor England’s most-married monarch wasn’t much of a lothario. In fact, he had twice as many wives as mistresses. There is only evidence of three extramarital affairs.
The women involved were Bessie Blount (the mother of Henry’s not-so-subtly-named illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy), Mary Boleyn (sister of his second wife Anne) and ‘Mistress Shelton’, who was either Margaret or Mary Shelton, both cousins of Anne Boleyn.
Although there was a rumour that he once had an affair with Anne’s mother Elizabeth, he stoutly denied it: “Never with the mother!”
7. Anne Boleyn did not have a sixth finger on one hand
This oft-repeated tale is based on scurrilous gossip written almost 50 years after Anne’s death. A host of hostile Catholic tracts about Anne appeared in the 1580s as part of a smear campaign against her ‘heretic’ daughter, Elizabeth I.
Nicholas Sander was one of the most influential and claimed that Anne had been Henry VIII’s daughter as well as his wife, the result of his clandestine affair with her mother. Feeding on the rumours of witchcraft that had circulated at the time of Anne’s demise, he asserted that she had a sixth finger on her right hand and a large ‘wen’ (a boil or mole) under her chin.
Such blemishes were commonly thought to be the ‘Devil’s Mark’ – a symbol of having made a pact with Satan. In fact, Anne was proud of her long, slender fingers and always took care to show them off to best effect… all 10 of them.
8. Anne of Cleves was not ugly
You may have heard the story: Henry VIII fell in love with Anne of Cleves’ portrait and immediately signed on the dotted line of the marriage contract. But when he met his bride in person, he was appalled that she was nothing like her profile picture. So, he had the marriage annulled before you could say ‘off with her head’.
In fact, Holbein’s portrait was faithful to Anne, and many contemporary accounts praise her beauty. If anyone had cause for complaint about their betrothed’s physical assets, it was Anne. Henry was no oil painting by the time she married him in January 1540. Pushing 50, he was bloated, ulcer-ridden and almost certainly impotent. It was with understandable haste that Anne agreed to an annulment just six months later.
9. Edward VI kept a diary
The boy king was the only Tudor monarch to leave behind a private journal. But if you’re expecting a tell-all exposé full of secretly expressed desires, grudges and hopes, you might be disappointed. In fact, it’s a rather dry summary of the events of his reign.
Even the execution of his once-cherished uncle is afforded only the following curt line: “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off today.” Overall, the diary reveals a boy who was precociously intelligent, as might be expected for Henry VIII’s “precious jewel”, who had the best of everything growing up.
But he also appears cold, unfeeling and uncompromising – a dangerous blend of traits that might have made him an even greater tyrant than his father if he lived to maturity.
10. Lady Jane Grey was queen for 14 days, not nine
Jane has gone down in history as the ‘Nine Days’ Queen’. But while it’s true that she was proclaimed queen on 10 July 1553 and deposed by Mary Tudor on 19 July, her reign technically began as soon as Edward VI had breathed his last on 6 July.
On his deathbed, Edward changed the succession in favour of his Protestant cousin Jane to prevent his Catholic half-sister Mary claiming her right. He was heavily influenced by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had married his son Guildford to Jane.
Even so, Edward’s ‘Device’ for the succession was legally-binding, so Jane was the rightful queen as soon as the young king died. Yet she is always referred to as ‘Lady’ rather than ‘Queen’ and is often omitted from the roll call of English monarchs altogether. That owes much to Mary Tudor’s propaganda: to seize the throne, she had to present Jane as a usurper.
11. ‘Bloody Mary’ wasn’t all that bloody
Mary I’s obsession with returning England to the Roman Catholic faith spurred her to have around 300 Protestant heretics burned at the stake. But while there is no doubting the horrific nature of their deaths, Mary acted out of conscience rather than brutality.
Blinded by her own faith, she genuinely believed that she was saving her subjects from eternal damnation by bringing them into the Roman Catholic fold. Furthermore, the number of people who died on Mary’s orders was just a fraction of those who suffered at the hands of her far bloodier father, Henry VIII.
He sent more men and women to their deaths than any other Tudor monarch. Anyone who refused to fall in with his will was sent to the block – commoners, statesmen and wives alike. It even became a crime to think differently from the king. Contemporary records are patchy and inconsistent, so it’s impossible to quantify exactly how many deaths Henry was responsible for. Estimates vary from a few thousand to as many as 72,000.
12. Mary Tudor was a bit of a party girl
Despite her reputation for sober-mindedness and piety, Mary loved to have fun. One of her favourite companions was Jane Fool, a female jester. The queen was also an avid gambler and loved to play cards and board games. She also entertained lavishly and spent huge sums on feasting and drinking.
A scandalised Spanish ambassador reported: “There is plenty of beer here, and they drink more than would fill the Valladolid river [known as the Pisuerga river today]… The ladies and gentlemen put sugar in their wine, with the result that there are great goings on in the palace.”
13. Elizabeth I employed the original James Bond
The queen’s personal astrologer Dr John Dee was one of her closest advisers. She would regularly consult him about the most apposite moment to undertake key events, such as her coronation.
An astrologer, astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, Dee was one of the most learned men of the age. But he also carried out more covert assignments for his royal mistress. She employed Dee as a spy, and he would report on intrigues abroad using complex codes. He signed his letters with the numerals ‘007’.
14. Elizabeth I was (apparently) a man
The ‘Bisley Boy’ legend states that in 1542, the future Elizabeth I (then aged around nine) was sent to Overcourt House in the Cotswold village of Bisley to escape the plague in London. Whilst there, she sickened with a fever and died. Knowing that Henry VIII was on his way to visit his daughter, her panic-stricken governess searched the village in vain for a girl who resembled Elizabeth closely enough to fool the king.
The only child of the right age and colouring was a boy, so in desperation she dressed him in the princess’s clothes and the deception was complete. This unlikely tale dates from the 1800s and was made popular by Dracula author Bram Stoker in his book Famous Impostors.
There is no contemporary evidence to support it and more than a whiff of misogyny about the whole thing. How else could Elizabeth have ruled so successfully for so many years? She must have been a man.
15. Elizabeth I didn’t leave her throne to James VI
But as she lay dying at Richmond Palace in March 1603, she finally settled the matter, gasping that she would have none but “my nearest kinsman the King of Scots”.
This deathbed scene was recorded by the contemporary historian William Camden, who had been commissioned to write a biography of the celebrated queen during her lifetime. But dramatic new research by the British Library has proved that Camden was forced to rewrite it on the orders of the new king to make his accession look more predetermined than it had been.
Using transmitted light, the researchers found that in his original manuscript, written at the time of Elizabeth’s death, Camden had recorded that she died without naming a successor. But a few years later, his words were covered over with the lie that ushered the Stuarts to the Tudor throne.
]]> What did Anne Boleyn REALLY look like? Our new research could change everything https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-did-anne-boleyn-really-look-like-our-new-research-could-change-everything/ Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:30:55 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-did-anne-boleyn-really-look-like-our-new-research-could-change-everything/ Dark or brunette? Fair or swarthy? A paragon of beauty or a refined charmer? Our picture of Henry VIII’s ill-fated second queen has become distorted over five centuries – but new research by Owen Emmerson and others comes closer to revealing her true appearance Close your eyes and picture Anne Boleyn. Chances are you can conjure up a pretty clear and detailed image in your imagination – because few figures in English history seem as visually familiar as Henry VIII’s second queen.
Representations of her face appear everywhere: in films, television dramas and novels, in museum gift shops and digital reconstructions. She is often depicted in popular culture as an elegant brunette whose sophistication distinguishes her from others at court. Over time, this image has hardened into something close to fact. Anne Boleyn, we are told, was devastatingly beautiful.
Yet this certainty is built on fragile foundations, and surviving evidence provides a less concrete understanding of Anne’s appearance. No formal painted portraits from life survive today, though images in a number of smaller, more intimate formats – particularly miniatures – are candidates for having captured her true likeness based on contemporary encounters. The more-familiar portraits featuring the now-iconic ‘B’ pendant necklace, meanwhile, were likely created decades later, influenced by politics, artistic convention and hindsight.
For generations, historians assumed that any accurate representations created during Anne’s life had been lost altogether, erased after her execution in 1536 on the orders of Henry VIII. That story is compelling, but it is wrong. My research – which underpins Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn, a new exhibition at Anne’s childhood home, Hever Castle – suggests that her true likeness remained visible long after her dramatic death.
Her image circulated widely in several different forms: in print, on medals and in drawings that outlived her. Alongside written descriptions left by those who saw her, these sources allow us to come close to understanding how Anne Boleyn looked. They also prompt a more revealing question: during her lifetime, was Anne admired for beauty – at least, as the 16th century understood it? And how much did beauty really matter in a court where power, conviction and function carried far greater weight?
Ideals of beauty
Today, audiences are encouraged to believe that Anne Boleyn must have been very beautiful indeed to have displaced Queen Catherine of Aragon in Henry VIII’s affections, and to have inspired him to reshape England’s religious and political landscape in order to marry her. This assumption reflects modern ideas about attraction and agency far more than it does the reality of Tudor mores. Different priorities shaped ideals of female beauty then: light colouring and complexion were widely admired. In 16th-century England, though, beauty alone rarely secured influence. At court, education, connections and presence mattered far more than looks. Intelligence, conversation and the ability to command attention in a highly performative environment were prized qualities. Anne excelled in these attributes.
- Read more | Anne Boleyn’s fatal French connection
Anne stood out, but not because she perfectly embodied an ideal of beauty. Her continental education, her penchant for French fashions and her finely honed courtly manner set her apart in a milieu still shaped by conservative English expectations. Contemporary responses to her appearance consistently suggest moderate attractiveness rather than conventional beauty. To understand that distinction properly, we must turn to the accounts of her appearance and demeanour from people who saw her.
Consistent picture
Contemporary descriptions of Anne are limited but broadly consistent. Simon Grynaeus, a German humanist who visited the English court in 1531, wrote to a compatriot that she was “young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion”. In October 1532, the Venetian ambassador Carlo Capello, in a report later recorded in Marino Sanuto’s Diarii, described her as “not one of the handsomest women in the world… of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised… and her eyes, which are black and beautiful”.
Lancelot de Carle, secretary to the French ambassador in London, wrote a long poetic account of Anne’s fall and execution in 1536, emphasising her expression and presence rather than physical features. Even sympathetic observers were measured: the reformist cleric John Barlow described her as “reasonably good-looking”, a phrase that in Tudor usage suggested composure and refinement rather than striking beauty.
What emerges is not the image of a woman celebrated for physical perfection but of someone whose appearance was animated by intelligence and presence. Observers repeatedly returned to her eyes and manner. The French diplomat Lancelot de Carle said of her eyes that she “knew well how to use [them] with effect”, capturing a sense of engagement, wit and command that made her captivating in person.
For centuries, the absence of a painted portrait from Anne’s lifetime was explained by a dramatic story: that Henry VIII ordered every likeness of her be destroyed after her execution. The image of a furious king erasing the woman for whom he had broken with Rome is powerful, but has no basis in contemporary sources. The story appeared first in the 19th century, when historians sought an explanation for Anne’s apparent visual disappearance.
What happened after the queen’s fall was administrative rather than vengeful. Anne’s badges and monograms were removed from royal buildings and replaced with those of her successor, Jane Seymour, just as Catherine of Aragon’s emblems had earlier been replaced by Anne’s. The King’s Works accounts for September 1536 list payments for removing Anne’s devices alongside those of Cardinal Wolsey, the king’s former chief minister, by then long dead.
No orders to destroy Anne’s portraits have been found, and even the command to remove her emblems was carried out only partly. Many of her falcon badges remain in the roof of Hampton Court’s Great Hall, blackened with paint but intact. Moreover, inventories taken after Henry’s death show that he continued to own objects that had once belonged to Anne and were decorated with her iconography, albeit packed away in chests. Anne herself had become valueless to him, but the gold and silver fashioned into her goods had not. He did not destroy them, just ensured that they were no longer seen.
The people’s prints
Though no painted panel portrait survives from Anne’s lifetime, images of her certainly do. Some of the most revealing were created not for the elite interiors of palaces but for public circulation. In the summer of 1533, the prolific printer Wynkyn de Worde was employed to publish a pamphlet titled The Noble Tryumphaunt Coronacyon of Quene Anne. Its cover features a small woodcut long dismissed by historians as a generic courtly scene. However, in collaboration with historian Jessica Carey-Bunning, I have identified this as a narrative composition including three contemporary images of Anne Boleyn at distinct stages of her relationship with Henry VIII.
The woodcut provides a visual sequence affirming the validity of the union. To the left, Henry courts Anne; in the centre, the couple are joined in marriage; and in the most prominent image, at the right, Henry and Anne are crowned beneath a cloth of estate, the king’s hand resting on his queen’s stomach. To a contemporary viewer, this was an explicit declaration of pregnancy. When the pamphlet was published, Anne was about six months pregnant with the child who would reign as Elizabeth I.
This woodcut image operated as a tool of legitimacy, fertility and dynastic hope. It was intended not to capture Anne’s features but, rather, to put her face to work. It was circulated deliberately and widely at the most politically sensitive moment of her queenship.
Other contemporary images reinforce this visibility. A lead prototype or proof known as the ‘Moost Happi’ medal, likely commissioned in anticipation of a male heir and struck in 1534, depicts Anne in part profile wearing a gable hood, and bears the initials AR (for Anna Regina). Edward Hawkins, keeper of antiquities at the British Museum in the 19th century, suggested that another surviving lead prototype showing Henry was a companion to Anne’s medal. My discovery of a fully cast example of the companion medal of Henry, fashioned as a hat pin in modest tin, indicates that these likenesses were destined for a wide distribution beyond the court – an effort to disseminate images of the king and his new queen.
Another contemporary image of Anne survives in a sketch of her coronation banquet, depicting her crowned beneath a cloth of estate in Westminster Hall, the focal point of an elaborate theatrical display. Even in this crude drawing, Anne is unmistakably the axis around which the ceremony revolves. Together, these show that Anne was among the most visually represented queens of early Tudor England.
Something rarer also survives: a glimpse of Anne Boleyn as she may have been seen by those who knew her personally. A chalk drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor, depicts a woman in a fur-trimmed nightgown with a simple coif, her eyes lowered in contemplation. Though its subject has long been debated, recent scholarship by Dr Kate Heard has fundamentally reshaped understanding of this work, strongly supporting its identification as Anne Boleyn.
The drawing dates securely to Holbein’s second period in England, when he was working at the heart of the Tudor court, producing preparatory studies for both painted portraits and miniatures – and, crucially, working extensively under Anne’s patronage. The apparent informality of the portrait, once used to argue against the identification, now strengthens it. Comparable works by the Horenbout workshop similarly depict elite sitters such as Henry VIII’s son, the Duke of Richmond, in a state of undress, intended for private viewing.
Technical examination by the Royal Collection Trust has revealed that the sitter’s hair was originally far darker than it appears today. Layers of red, brown and black chalk have been largely worn away, with only remnants visible. Most compelling, however, is the later inscription identifying Anne as the sitter, based on an attribution by Sir John Cheke, who had met Anne in 1534, benefited from her patronage, and was closely connected to her circle through his wife, Mary Hill. If identified correctly, which now seems highly likely, this drawing represents the most direct surviving contemporary likeness of Anne. It shows her not as a crowned emblem of dynastic hope, as her public image had been crafted, but as a thinking, contemplative and private individual.
The Windsor drawing also unlocks the meaning of a later engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar titled Faith, or St Barbara, produced in 1647. This print, based on a now-lost Holbein design once in the Earl of Arundel’s collection, depicts a crowned female figure holding a chalice and wafer set against a landscape of cliffs and water.
When compared closely with the Windsor drawing, the resemblance is striking: they share the same profile, jawline, eye shape and cranial structure. The correspondence between the two strongly suggests that Holbein’s use of Anne’s face for Saint Barbara was drawn from his preparatory study. In this reading, the Windsor drawing was not an isolated likeness but part of a broader artistic conception.
The choice of that saint is significant because, like the reformist Anne, Barbara was associated with steadfast Christian faith and resistance to coercion when compelled to revert to traditional beliefs. In Anne’s book of hours, King’s MS 9, the illumination of Saint Barbara shares compositional similarities with the Windsor sketch and Hollar engraving, including a distinctive looped plait, indicating direct visual continuity. Portraying Anne in this guise would have aligned her queenship with conscience and reform.
Seen in this light, the image becomes both devotional and political. It presents Anne not simply as consort but as belief embodied. Saint Barbara was martyred and executed by the sword – a parallel that later viewers of this image could hardly have missed. The tragic irony is inescapable, though clearly it lies beyond the image’s original intent.
The possibility that Anne’s contemporary likeness survives in smaller, more intimate painted formats is strongly supported by this pairing of the Windsor sketch and the image of her as Saint Barbara. Two other near-identical portrait miniatures – one now in the collection of the Duke of Bucchleuch, the other in the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada – long associated with Anne, share a striking physiognomy with these two. When viewed together, the alignment of the facial structures is too close to be dismissed as a coincidence. These works appear to preserve a recognisable likeness circulating within and shortly after Anne’s lifetime, intended for private recognition rather than public proclamation.
Though we can’t be absolutely certain of the person whom they portray, these miniatures stand as the most plausible painted candidates for capturing Anne Boleyn’s likeness from life.
- Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love
Changing faces
After her execution, Anne’s image fell out of use. When it re-emerged during the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I, it was in a radically altered political landscape. One of the most familiar images of Anne today is the portrait painted c1584 and catalogued as NPG 668 in the National Portrait Gallery. Long treated as a posthumously created likeness of Anne herself, it preserves something else: Elizabeth’s face.
Art historian Lawrence Hendra has identified the creator of this famous panel painting as the as-yet-unnamed ‘Pearl Artist’. Comparing this artist’s other works – including portraits of Elizabeth I, her half-sister Mary I and her great-grandfather, Edward IV – it is clear that the painter used the same facial pattern for each sitter, including Anne Boleyn. The elongated facial structure, refined nose and controlled expression closely mirror Elizabeth’s physiognomy.
This effort to make Elizabeth’s relatives, some of whom likely bore no resemblance to one another, look alike was deliberate. In the 1580s, Elizabeth’s position was vulnerable. She was unmarried, without an heir, and facing both internal Catholic resistance and external threat. So repainting her ancestors with her own facial features anchored her visually as the rightful queen at a time when her legitimacy was again in question. Ensuring that Elizabeth looked like her father’s relatives as well as her mother, who had been accused of adultery, was a covert attempt to transform Anne from a condemned queen into a dynastic foundation stone, visually legitimising her daughter’s rule.
A different but equally deliberate innovation appears in the so-called Hever Rose portrait. Recent multi-modal scientific analysis by the Hamilton Kerr Institute, combined with dendrochronology (the dating of the wooden panel), places its painting in c1583, just one year before the famous picture in the National Portrait Gallery. Infrared reflectography reveals that the artist initially followed a pre-existing design but then interrupted it, inserting fully articulated hands holding a rose.
This moment matters, because it marks the first time Anne’s hands appeared in her posthumous iconography – a choice that was almost certainly polemical. In the early 1580s, defamatory claims by Nicholas Sander alleging that Anne possessed a sixth finger were already circulating widely in manuscript, years before they appeared in print. By depicting elegant, unblemished hands, with each finger made carefully visible, the artist offers a quiet but pointed rebuttal to this claim.
Both portraits respond to the same anxiety. In a period when Elizabeth’s legitimacy was under attack, Anne’s image was re-engineered to defend it: her face reshaped to mirror the queen’s, her body corrected to refute slander. Art became a form of political repair.
Lost likeness
Nearly five centuries after her execution, we may never know precisely what Anne Boleyn looked like. Her face survives only in fragments, refracted through prisms of politics, art and memory. Yet this uncertainty is not a failure of evidence; it is part of her history.
The images and descriptions that survive show that Anne was not invisible, and not admired solely for her beauty. She was compelling because of her presence, intelligence and conviction. She understood the power of being seen, and used imagery, print and ceremony to assert her place in the world.
In the end, the question of her appearance matters not because it satisfies curiosity but because it restores agency. Anne Boleyn was not merely a face shaped by others but an active participant – through her patronage of Holbein and the Horenbout family, not least – in how she was represented, remembered and contested. Approaching 500 years on, we are still learning to see her clearly.
Unpicking locks
What colour was Anne Boleyn's hair?
Modern portrayals often depict Anne with jet-black hair, reinforcing an image of dark, exotic beauty. The historical record, however, is more ambiguous. Contemporary descriptions mention dark eyes and darker complexion, but none explicitly describe hair colour – likely because it may not have seemed remarkable enough to comment upon.
Some later sources describe Anne as “witch-like” with black hair; others suggest chestnut or reddish tones. The poet Thomas Wyatt may have been referring to her when he wrote of a “brunet” woman. In Tudor usage, that could refer to dark hair, darker skin or both, and was often used to signal complexion rather than colouring alone.
Genetics adds more uncertainty. Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth I, was red-haired, as was Henry VIII in his youth. Red hair is linked to variants of the MC1R gene expressed only if inherited from both parents, so Anne must have carried at least one such variant. Though not proof that she herself was red-haired, this significantly increases the likelihood, and makes chestnut or auburn tones entirely plausible.
Later portraits often show Anne with lighter reddish-brown hair. These may reflect attempts to align her appearance more closely with Elizabeth’s, reinforcing dynastic continuity. In a culture where fair hair was associated with virtue, this shift was politically advantageous.
This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> The lie of succession: did James I steal Elizabeth I's crown? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-lie-of-succession-did-james-i-steal-elizabeth-is-crown/ Mon, 13 Oct 2025 08:00:19 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-lie-of-succession-did-james-i-steal-elizabeth-is-crown/ Did James I ‘steal’ Elizabeth I’s crown? Tracy Borman considers evidence that the transition from Tudor to Stuart dynasties may not have been quite as seamless as we’ve been led to believe Richmond Palace, 22 March 1603. Elizabeth I – the self-proclaimed Virgin Queen who had ruled England for 44 years, seeing off the Armada, healing religious divisions and creating a court so magnificent it was the envy of Europe – lay dying. Her anxious advisers clustered around her bedside, urging her to do the thing she had resisted throughout her long reign: name her successor.
Rousing herself from her stupor, the 69-year-old queen declared: “I will that a king succeed me, and what king, but my nearest kinsman, the king of Scots?” Wanting to make completely sure, her chief minister, Robert Cecil, asked whether that was her “absolute resolution” – to which she irritably retorted: “I pray you trouble me no more, I’ll have none but him.”
That “kinsman” was James VI of Scotland, son of Elizabeth’s old rival Mary, Queen of Scots. Her closest surviving blood relative, he had emerged as the front runner in the race for the English crown. He had the support of Cecil and most of his fellow privy councillors, who had been working behind the scenes to smooth James’s path to the throne. The queen, too, had shown him favour, sharing the pearls of her monarchical wisdom during their 20-year correspondence, as if grooming him as her successor. But she had always flinched from actually naming him as such. Now, almost with her last breath, she had. Elizabeth died two days later – and the Tudor dynasty gave way peacefully to the Stuarts.
This dramatic depiction of Elizabeth’s last-gasp naming of the Scottish king as her heir is based solely on an account by the contemporary historian and antiquarian William Camden. He had begun writing his monumental work Annales: The True and Royall History of the Famous Empresse Elizabeth (first published in Latin in 1615) during Elizabeth’s lifetime. Camden was close to some senior members of the queen’s court, and had access to the voluminous state papers of her reign, so historians have relied on his manuscript as one of the most important and accurate sources for the period.
However, none of those present at Elizabeth’s deathbed testified that she had spoken the words Camden quoted in his account, only that the dying queen had raised her hand to her head when James’s name was mentioned – an ambiguous gesture at best.
Rewriting history
Now, groundbreaking new analysis of Camden’s original manuscript by a team at the British Library has revealed that key passages were covered over and rewritten after Elizabeth’s death to make them more favourable to her successor. No fewer than 200 pages have been pasted in, 65 of which replaced original text with a new version. The use of imaging technology has enabled researcher Helena Rutkowska to see the words underneath for the first time in 400 years. Among the findings are that Elizabeth’s naming of James as her heir was a work of fiction, designed to make his accession appear more predetermined than it had been. In fact, she had been the only monarch in English history not to make provision for the succession.
- Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love
If this had been more widely known at the time, it might have had profound repercussions for the Stuart dynasty. Rather than welcoming James as the king to whom ‘Good Queen Bess’ had given her blessing, the people of England might have refused to accept him. After all, England and Scotland had been bitter enemies for centuries, with fleeting periods of peace cut short by the clash of arms or threat of invasion. And James was by no means the only candidate with a strong claim to Elizabeth’s throne.
Holding on by his fingertips
Camden had first been commissioned to write his history of Elizabeth’s reign in 1596 by William Cecil (Robert’s father), Lord Burghley – Elizabeth’s most trusted advisor, whom she dubbed her ‘Spirit’. It was not a task that the author had embraced with any alacrity, grumbling about the “piles and heaps of papers and writings of all sorts” that had been placed at his disposal. He made only a faltering start during Elizabeth’s lifetime and, as soon as she died, he quietly set down his quill, hoping that the idea would be forgotten.
Fast forward to 1607 and James VI & I had been on the English throne for four years. The initially peaceful transition from Tudors to Stuarts had given way to turbulence and uncertainty, conspiracy and persecution, witchcraft and gunpowder. With the accession of England’s first Stuart monarch, everything had been transformed – from court culture to royal ceremony, religious tolerance to parliamentary authority, morality to witch-hunting. Two countries that had been fierce rivals for centuries were now forged into an uncomfortably united kingdom. The fleeting popularity that James had enjoyed as the “bright star of the north” had been extinguished, and he was holding onto his new crown by his fingertips.
It was at this moment that James heard about Camden’s stalled biography of his predecessor, and spied an opportunity. To have a published account of Elizabeth’s reign – and, in particular, the succession – written by one of the most esteemed historians of the age would help silence any whispers of usurpation. If, that is, the author was prepared to write it to the king’s satisfaction.
It was with good reason that Camden expressed reluctance when first approached by the king to restart his history of Elizabeth. Quite apart from the heavy burden of research it entailed, writing the history of a queen who, even in death, was eclipsing her unpopular successor was fraught with difficulty. Camden knew that James would not want an unbiased appraisal but one written in his favour. Only the previous year, the king had ordered an account of the gunpowder plot to be rewritten so that it was even more complimentary towards him.
Restarting the history of Elizabeth was the very definition of a poison chalice, and Camden tried everything to avoid drinking from it. But James gave him no choice. At the king’s command, work on the book resumed in 1608. Camden was his subject to command, and the succession was his to rewrite.
Reviving the queen
By the time Camden again took up his quill, rewriting sections to James’s benefit, the cult of ‘Gloriana’ was already in full swing. Elizabeth’s former subjects were quick to forget that they had grown tired of “an old woman’s government” and had longed to have a king ruling over them. One contemporary reflected that, a few short years after Elizabeth’s death, “when we had experience of the Scottish government, then… in hate and detestation of them, the queen did seem to revive. Then was her memory much magnified.”
It was not long before praising the last Tudor queen became a powerful weapon used to attack her Stuart successor. Donning their rose-tinted glasses, her former subjects harked back to a halcyon time when England had enjoyed decades of peace and prosperity, triumphed over the might of Spain, and was presided over by a glorious queen and her court. The anniversary of Elizabeth’s accession day, 17 November, began to be celebrated each year with “joyful ringing of bells, running at tilt, and festival mirth… in testimony of their affectionate love towards her”.
But this sentimental reverence masked the intense uncertainty that had been generated by the persistent refusal of ‘Good Queen Bess’ to name her heir. It’s worth revisiting the history of this reticence and the concerns it had fomented among court and populace.
On 10 February 1559 Elizabeth had told the first parliament of her reign that “in the end this shall be for me sufficient: that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin”. She then declared that God would provide for the succession and would name an heir “peradventure more beneficial to the realm than such offspring as may come of me”.
This was all very well but, without the wisdom of hindsight, Elizabeth’s subjects had no idea that she would reign longer and more successfully than any of the other Tudor monarchs. Her three predecessors, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I, had reigned for six years, nine days and five years, respectively, and there was no reason to suppose Elizabeth would escape the ill health that dogged the Tudor dynasty. Indeed, nearly four years into her reign she almost died of smallpox. This catapulted the succession to the forefront of people’s minds and, once there, it would not be forgotten. “Now all the talk is who is to be her successor,” reported the Spanish ambassador, Bishop Álvaro de la Quadra, in 1562.
Elizabeth’s determination not to name her heir was born of direct experience. Being heir presumptive during her sister Mary’s brief, bloody reign had placed her in great jeopardy, including a spell in the Tower under threat of execution. “I stood in danger of my life, my sister was so incensed against me,” she told a delegation from parliament in 1566 that had been sent to persuade her to settle the succession. Elizabeth feared that, as soon as she named her heir, the individual chosen would be the focus of plots and rebellions, just as she herself had been during Mary’s reign. “Think you that I could love my winding-sheet?” she demanded to an ambassador, likening a named heir to a shroud.
Fierce rivalry
In remaining tight-lipped about the succession, Elizabeth gave rise to fierce rivalry between the blood claimants to her throne. Principal among them were Mary, Queen of Scots and her son James VI; his cousin Arbella Stuart; Lady Katherine Grey and her descendants; Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon; and the Infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip II of Spain. As Elizabeth’s reign progressed, most of the rival claimants fell by the wayside, either through natural death, disinheritance or execution. In the race for Elizabeth’s throne, it was less a case of ‘who dares wins’, more ‘survival of the fittest’.
In 1600, the English government official and keeper of records Thomas Wilson opined: “This crown is not like to fall to the ground for want of heads that claim to wear it.” Although he admitted that it was “straightly prohibited” to discuss the succession, he went on to give an account of at least 12 people with some kind of claim to the English throne who, in his words, “gape for” Elizabeth’s death. Of these, eight were home-grown candidates and four were from overseas. James VI might have emerged as the odds-on favourite, but his accession was by no means certain.
As her long reign wore on, Elizabeth showed through her subtle, steady guiding of the king of Scots that he was, if not her ideal candidate, then at least the best of a bad lot. In the years leading up to her death, she did as much as she could to secure the succession without placing herself in danger by naming an heir. For all the anxiety, intrigue and rivalry that this engendered, the wisdom of her policy was proved by the fact that, to her last breath, her personal power in England had not been challenged by any “rising sun”.
But the ultimate success of Elizabeth’s plan depended on James following the advice she had drip-fed him over the years. And that is where it fell apart. It soon became clear that the king had paid only lip service to Elizabeth’s guidance, and proceeded to flout it altogether when he took her throne. He refused to “play the king”, as she had urged, by investing in the magnificence of his court and public appearances, and instead spent most of his time in private with just a handful of favourites.
Parliamentary revolt
More ominously, James had no intention of sustaining the delicate relationship between crown and parliament that had been the cornerstone of Elizabeth’s success. Instead, he stood firmly by the Stuart belief in the divine right of kings, which in his view gave him the right to ride roughshod over the wishes of his people and his parliaments.
This soon sparked resistance from his new English subjects. After a series of bad-tempered exchanges, parliament refused to agree to James’s plan for a formal union between his two kingdoms. Undeterred, he announced that a shared currency would be issued – a 20-shilling piece known as the ‘unite’ – and commissioned a new flag, the ‘Union Jack’ (for Jacobus, or James). Thereafter, rather than working in partnership with his government, he abandoned it altogether, spending his days hunting and cavorting with his favourites. One contemporary noted that this was “the cause of indescribable ill-humour among the king’s subjects, who in their needs and troubles find themselves cut off from their natural sovereign”.
Meanwhile, growing popular resentment against the king erupted in numerous conspiracies to remove him from the throne. In June 1603, just three months after his accession, the ‘Bye’ plot came to light, involving a group of Catholics who planned to kidnap the king and secure concessions for the practice of their religion. More serious was the ‘Main’ plot to oust James and replace him with his cousin Arbella Stuart.
The most dangerous conspiracy of all came in 1605, when a group of Catholics led by Robert Catesby schemed to blow up the king and his parliament. It was only thanks to an anonymous tip-off that Westminster was searched by the royal officials, and Guy Fawkes was discovered with a huge cache of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliament just hours before he was due to light the fuse.
Lessons not learned
All of this might have made James pause to consider that perhaps he ought to follow his predecessor’s advice after all. Instead, he doggedly continued his preferred style of monarchy, no matter the cost. Worse still, in preparing his son and heir, Charles, for the throne, James passed on none of the lessons that Elizabeth had tried to teach him. Charles would be a king in the mould of his Stuart father, not his Tudor predecessor. He took his divine right to even greater extremes than his father, and dissolved parliament whenever it refused to carry out his will.
As Charles’s turbulent reign wore on, the spectre of uncertainty over the Stuarts’ right to the Tudor throne – uncertainly that, we now know was all too valid – was thrown into sharp relief. By 1642, he had pushed the supremacy of the royal will too far on both sides of the border. The kingdom was plunged into bitterly fought civil wars that culminated in Charles’s execution and the destruction of the monarchy. In the space of half a century, the crown that had glittered so brightly on Elizabeth’s head had been consigned to the flames.
CONTENDERS FOR THE CROWN
There was no shortage of people with designs on Elizabeth I’s English throne. But who had the best chance of success?
The Scottish thorn
Mary, Queen of Scots had the strongest blood claim to Elizabeth’s throne. She was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret, who married James IV of Scotland. As a Catholic, she enjoyed considerable support among those in England who opposed their queen’s Protestant faith. But Henry VIII’s will had barred his Scottish relatives from inheriting the crown of England. Furthermore, a law passed in 1350, during the reign of Edward III, decreed that “aliens” (those not born on English soil) could not inherit any land there. Nevertheless, Mary campaigned tirelessly to be named heir, and was executed for trying to take the English throne by force. (Contender rating: 6 out of 10)
The front runner
James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to his mother’s throne when she was ousted from it in 1567. He also inherited her claim to Elizabeth’s throne, though Mary’s execution in 1587 threw that into jeopardy, because those related to a convicted traitor were tainted by association. In his favour was the fact that by the time of Elizabeth’s death he had a proven track record of ruling a kingdom and, even better, was male. He also enjoyed the strongest support within the English government, and the tacit support of Elizabeth herself – though Henry VIII’s and Edward III’s statutes meant that James’s accession in 1603 was technically illegal. (Contender rating: 7 out of 10)
The arrogant orphan
Like James, Arbella Stuart was the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret, but had the advantage of being born on English soil. Team Arbella was also bolstered by the efforts of her two indomitable grandmothers, Lady Margaret Douglas (Henry VIII’s niece) and Bess of Hardwick, who promoted the claim of “poor orphan Arbella”. Arbella, though, was her own worst enemy. Haughty and arrogant, she alienated Queen Elizabeth, and her unstable temperament made her ill-suited for the throne. During James’s reign, she secretly married another blood claimant, William Seymour, grandson of Lady Katherine Grey (see below), and spent the rest of her life a prisoner in the Tower. (Contender rating: 5 out of 10)
The marrying type
Henry VIII had decreed that, in the event that his three children died without issue, the crown would pass to the descendants of his younger sister Mary. This gave Katherine Grey (Mary’s granddaughter) and her descendants the strongest legal basis for their claim, strengthened by the fact that Edward VI had made the Greys his primary heirs. Katherine sought to boost her chances further by secretly marrying Edward Seymour, the nephew of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour. But this backfired: Elizabeth condemned Katherine to life behind bars, and had her two sons declared illegitimate. However, they and their descendants continued to be seen as strong contenders for Elizabeth’s throne for years afterwards. (Contender rating: 6 out of 10)
The "nearest in blood"
Lady Margaret Stanley was the daughter of Eleanor Brandon, younger daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary. Margaret alleged that her cousins were debarred from the succession because of Lady Jane Grey’s treason, leaving her next in line by Henry VIII’s will and “as the nearest in blood… legitimately of English birth”. Also in her favour was the fact that she had two living sons, Ferdinando and William. She was, though, Catholic. (Contender rating: 4 out of 10)
The uninterested Yorkist
Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon was of the old Yorkist line. His great-great-grandmother was Lady Margaret Pole, niece of King Edward IV. His grandfather had for a time been a close personal friend of Henry VIII. In stark contrast to all the other contenders, though, Hastings showed no interest in the crown, and spent his life in loyal service to Elizabeth. Still, she didn’t trust him, and it was only after years in the political wilderness that she finally appointed him to office. (Contender rating: 5 out of 10)
The Spanish princess
When his own attempts to seize Elizabeth’s throne by force failed, Philip II of Spain promoted those of his daughter, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. She was said to be “of the ancient blood royal of England” through her mother, Elisabeth of Valois. As such, she was a legitimate descendant of John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III, whereas the Tudors were descended from his illegitimate line. But the people of England were notoriously xenophobic, viewing even James of Scotland as an “alien”, and unlikely to ever accept a Spanish queen. (Contender rating: 3 out of 10)
]]> Mary I: your guide to the life and rule of Henry VIII's daughter – plus a timeline and 7 little-known facts https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/mary-i-bloody-facts-life-death-legacy-illiegitimate-henry-viii/ Mon, 09 Dec 2024 15:11:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/mary-i-bloody-facts-life-death-legacy-illiegitimate-henry-viii/ Mary I, aka Mary Tudor or 'Bloody Mary', was the daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The first queen regnant of England, she succeeded the English throne following the death of her half-brother, Edward VI, in 1553. But how much do you know about her? From her phantom pregnancy to her military accomplishments, we bring you the facts about her reign For centuries, Mary Tudor has been known as a Catholic tyrant who burned nearly 300 people during her short, five-year reign. However, in recent years, historians have attempted to re-evaluate Mary’s reputation, and have argued that Mary deserves more recognition for her work than previously thought.
Here, we look back at the queen’s life…
Mary I: A brief biography
Born: 18 February 1516 at the Palace of Placentia, London Died: 17 November 1558 at St James's Palace, London Remembered for: Being the first queen regnant of England, and for burning nearly 300 Protestant men, women and children during her reign. Ruled: 1553–58 Family: Mary's father wasHenry VIII and her mother was Catherine of Aragon. After Henry’s divorce from Catherine in the 1530s, Henry married five more times. Mary had one half-sister, Elizabeth, and one half-brother, Edward. She also had an illegitimate half-brother called Henry Fitzroy, and it is possible that she had other illegitimate siblings that were not publically acknowledged by Henry VIII. Mary married Philip of Spain (later King Philip II of Spain) in July 1554. The couple had no children, so Mary was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth.
Mary I's childhood
Born in 1516, Mary received an impressive education from a young age. She was able to speak Spanish, French and Latin, and contemporaries commented that she was a remarkable dancer, and often showed off her talents to ambassadors when they visited Henry VIII at court.
When Mary was nine years old, Henry VIII sent his daughter to Wales with her own personal court to act as a royal representative. With this newfound position, many believed that Mary would succeed her father, despite being a girl.
However, by the end of the 1520s, Henry VIII had become frustrated with having no male heir to succeed him. The king hoped to get his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled in order for him to marry someone else and produce a male heir. During her parents’ divorce proceedings, Mary was forbidden from seeing her mother.
By 1533, Henry successfully divorced Catherine, made himself the head of the Church of England and married the noblewoman Anne Boleyn. As a result, Mary lost her title as ‘princess’, and was given the lesser title of ‘the Lady Mary’. After Anne gave birth to a baby girl called Elizabeth in September 1533, Mary was declared as illegitimate by an Act of Parliament and was removed from the line of succession. Mary was then forced to join Princess Elizabeth’s household, but frequently stated that she was too ill to attend court in order to avoid the new queen.
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What was Mary's place in the line of succession?
After Anne Boleyn’s fall from power and execution in May 1536, Mary was invited back to court. However, Mary, who was a staunch Roman Catholic, refused to accept her father’s position as the head of the Church of England. Eventually, Thomas Cromwell – Henry VIII’s chief minister – persuaded Mary to submit to Henry’s will and she returned to court during the late 1530s. Mary was then returned to the line of succession in 1544, where the Act of Succession stated she would ascend the throne if her younger brother Edward, who was born in 1537, were to die without issue.
After Henry VIII died in 1547, Edward ascended the throne at the age of nine. Mary and Edward had a tempestuous relationship as they differed greatly in their religious views – Edward was a Protestant, while Mary was a Roman Catholic. Shortly before his premature death in 1553, Edward VI removed both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession in favour of his cousin, the Protestant Lady Jane Grey. After Edward’s death in July 1553, Jane was proclaimed queen in London. Despite this, many did not recognise her as such, and saw Mary as the next legitimate heir.
Receiving the news of her brother’s death, Mary fled to Framlingham Castle in Suffolk, where she gathered her supporters and members of the local gentry. Mary then assembled troops and prepared to fight for her crown. In what many historians recognise as the only successful coup d’état of the 16th century in England, Mary demonstrated that she held great popularity with the public and proved that she was the legitimate heir to the throne. On 19 July 1553, Mary overthrew Lady Jane Grey and was officially proclaimed queen. Contemporary accounts state that people celebrated in the streets and bells were rung across the country.
When did Mary I become queen?
Mary was 37 and unmarried when she ascended the throne in 1553. She knew that in order to prevent her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth from succeeding her, she needed to marry and produce an heir to secure a Catholic succession. As a result, Mary and her closest aides quickly negotiated a marriage to the Catholic Philip of Spain – the heir to the Spanish throne.
- Read more | When Mary met Philip: a Tudor queen in love
However, members of Mary’s council and the public did not approve of this match. Prior to Mary and Philip’s marriage, in early 1554, a group of rebels assembled in London to demonstrate their retaliation to the marriage, led by prominent Protestant landowner Thomas Wyatt the Younger. Mary refused to hide away from this rebellion, and confronted the rebels by making an extraordinary speech at the Guildhall in London. Mary rallied the rebels to support her and asserted her authority as their anointed queen. As a result, the rebels dispersed, and Wyatt was later executed at Tower Hill. Despite these protestations, Mary married Philip of Spain on 25 July 1554 at Winchester Cathedral.
By the end of 1554, Mary was convinced that she was pregnant and preparations were made in the birth chamber at Hampton Court. In April 1555, bells rang and bonfires were lit around England as news spread that the queen had given birth to an heir. However, Mary was not pregnant. Despite this, she continued to claim that she was pregnant, and stayed in confinement until August 1555. After her physicians convinced her that she was in fact not pregnant, Mary eventually returned to court.
- Read more | Mary I's 'phantom pregancy'
Why is Mary I known as 'Bloody Mary'?
During her reign, Mary revived the heresy laws, which stated that a person who did not follow the faith of the realm would be burned to death.
During three years of Mary’s reign, nearly 300 men, women and children were burned at the stake across England for not converting to Catholicism, including Thomas Cranmer, who had been the Archbishop of Canterbury during Henry VIII and Edward VI’s reigns.
However, Mary did make great advances during her reign. She restored the navy, renewed the coinage and increased crown revenue, and also established new hospitals, improved the education of the clergy and increased the authority of local government. Despite this, many of her achievements have been overlooked.
In 1557, England was dragged into a war with Spain against France. This was a disastrous campaign for Mary’s troops and England officially lost possession of Calais in January 1558, which was its last stakehold in France.
- Read more about Mary's reappraised reputation | Mary Tudor: brutal but brilliant
When did Mary I die?
Mary’s health deteriorated soon after the Crown lost possession of Calais, and she died, possibly from cancer, on 17 November 1558, aged 42.
She was succeeded by her half-sister, who ruled as Elizabeth I. Mary was then buried in Westminster Abbey, despite claiming she wanted to be buried next to her mother in Peterborough Cathedral.
King James V and I arranged for Elizabeth I to be dug up from elsewhere in the abbey three years after her death and moved into Mary’s grave.
Timeline: Mary Tudor’s turbulent life
18 February 1516
Mary is born in Greenwich. She is the only child of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (pictured above), to survive infancy
23 May 1533
Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine is declared invalid five months after he marries a second wife, Anne Boleyn. Mary is deemed illegitimate and stripped of her succession rights
28 January 1547
Henry VIII dies and is succeeded by his son, as Edward VI. Mary repeatedly defies her fervently Protestant half-brother by refusing to renounce her Catholicism
6 July 1553
King Edward VI dies, aged 15. Lady Jane Grey, a Protestant relation of Mary’s, is proclaimed queen four days later
3 August 1553
Having gathered a military force in Suffolk and outmanoeuvred her rivals, Mary rides into London in triumph, accompanied by her half-sister Elizabeth. Lady Jane Grey is imprisoned in the Tower of London
1 October 1553
Mary is crowned queen by her lord chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, at Westminster Abbey
12 February 1554
Lady Jane Grey is executed on Mary’s orders. Her fate is sealed by the so-called Wyatt rebellion against Mary’s rule, in which her father is implicated
18 March 1554
Mary has her half-sister, Elizabeth, imprisoned in the Tower of London, after it’s alleged that she too supported the Wyatt rebellion. Yet lacking firm evidence of her sister’s guilt, Mary refrains from ordering Elizabeth’s execution
25 July 1554
Despite the reservations of some of the most powerful figures in the English court, Mary marries Philip of Spain at Winchester Cathedral
April 1555
Thanksgiving services are held in London after erroneous rumours spread that Mary has given birth to a son. Mary, it seems, has experienced a false pregnancy
21 March 1556
Thomas Cranmer, former archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake. He is one of more than 280 ‘heretics’ executed during Mary's reign
17 November 1558
Mary dies, aged 42, during an influenza epidemic. The English crown passes to her half-sister, Elizabeth
7 facts about the life of Mary I
1. Mary I was declared illegitimate by her father, Henry VIII
The only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Mary I was effectively bastardised when her father divorced her mother in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII claimed that the marriage had been incestuous and illegal, as Catherine had been married to his late brother, Arthur.
Following the birth of Mary’s half-sister, Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth I), in September 1533, an Act of Parliament declared the 17-year-old Mary illegitimate and removed her from the succession to the throne (though she was reinstated by the 1543 Third Act of Succession and by Henry’s will). Mary was denied access to her mother, who had been sent by Henry to live away from court, and never saw her again.
- Henry VIII’s six wives: your guide to the Tudor king’s queen consorts
2. Mary I remained a devout Catholic
Mary was later named heir to the throne after her younger half-brother Edward – but only after she had agreed to recognise their father as head of the church. Nevertheless, Mary remained a devout Catholic. She and her brother had a tempestuous relationship as they differed greatly in their religious views. When, aged nine, Edward VI inherited the throne in 1547 and confronted Mary’s Catholicism, she declared that she would rather lay her head on a block than forsake her faith.
3. Mary was the orchestrator of an extraordinary coup d’état
The first queen to rule England in her own right (rather than a queen through marriage to a king), Mary acceded the throne following her brother’s death in July 1553 in what Anna Whitelock describes as “an extraordinary coup d’état”. Edward had written Mary out of the succession and instead named his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey as heir to the throne, but Mary enjoyed widespread popular support and days later, on 19 July, she was proclaimed queen.
Writing for BBC History Magazine, Anna Whitelock argued: “The scale of [Mary’s] achievement is often overlooked. Mary had led the only successful revolt against central government in 16th-century England. She had eluded capture, mobilised a counter-coup and, in the moment of crisis, proved courageous, decisive and politically adept.”
- The Tudors: 51 moments that shaped the royal dynasty
4. Mary I is remembered as a bloody queen
Mary I is remembered for attempting to reverse the Reformation and return England to Catholicism. As her reign progressed, Mary “grew more and more fervent in her desire”: she restored papal supremacy, abandoned the title of Supreme Head of the Church and reintroduced Roman Catholic bishops.
Mary also famously revived old heresy laws to secure the religious conversion of the country – heresy being a treasonable offence. Over the next three-and-a-half years, hundreds of Protestants – most accounts say around 300 – were burned at the stake.
5. Mary I suffered a 'phantom pregnancy'
Aged 37 and unmarried when she ascended the throne, Mary knew that in order to prevent her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth from succeeding her, she needed to marry and produce an heir. Mary’s decision in July 1554 to marry Philip of Spain, who in 1556 was to inherit that nation’s throne from his father, Charles V, was “politically expedient”, says Anna Whitelock.
In an article for BBC History Magazine, Whitelock wrote: “The marriage treaty was as ‘favourable as possible for the interest and security and even the grandeur of England’, with Mary’s legal rights as queen preserved and Spanish influence kept to a minimum.”
In January 1554 Mary faced – and later defeated – a Protestant rebellion led by landowner Thomas Wyatt that aimed to prevent the match with Philip. Wyatt was later executed at Tower Hill. Mary imprisoned her half-sister Elizabeth at the Tower of London in 1554, suspecting her of involvement in Wyatt’s plot against her. Elizabeth was later released into house arrest in the country.
A peculiar episode in Mary’s reign was her phantom pregnancy of 1555. On 30 April “bells rang, bonfires were lit and there were celebrations in the street, following news that Mary I had given birth to a healthy son. But in reality there was no boy, and eventually all hope of a child died out.” The marriage was childless and Philip eventually deserted Mary, spending most of his time in Europe.
6. Mary I was a highly impressive queen
Historians have long focused on the negative aspects of Mary’s five-year reign, branding her a religious bigot and a military failure, but in recent years Mary has been largely reappraised.
Anna Whitelock says: “Mary’s accession had changed the rules of the game, and the nature of this new feminised politics was yet to be defined, yet in many respects Mary proved more than equal to the task. Decisions over the details of the practice and power of a queen regnant became precedents for the future. In April 1554 Mary’s parliament passed the Act for Regal Power, which enshrined in law that queens held power as ‘fully, wholly and absolutely’ as their male predecessors, thereby establishing the gender-free authority of the crown.”
Mary also restructured the economy and reorganised the militia, rebuilt the navy and successfully managed her parliament. By securing the throne, Mary ensured that the crown continued along the legal line of Tudor succession.
7. Mary I was not such a military failure
Mary is remembered for her unsuccessful war against France that led to the loss of Calais, England's last possession in France, in January 1558.
But before the loss of Calais, Mary enjoyed military successes. For example, in August 1557 English and Spanish forces captured Saint-Quentin, an action in which some 3,000 French troops were killed and 7,000 captured, including their commander Anne de Montmorency, the constable of France.
]]> What was Mary Tudor and Thomas Cromwell's relationship – did they plan to marry? https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/relationship-mary-tudor-thomas-cromwell-what-like/ Sun, 17 Nov 2024 21:45:15 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/relationship-mary-tudor-thomas-cromwell-what-like/ It was thanks to Thomas Cromwell that Mary Tudor – daughter of Catherine of Aragon – was demoted from heir to the throne to illegitimate outcast. So what was the relationship between the two really like? The relationship between Thomas Cromwell and Princess Mary, Henry's VIII's daughter with Catherine of Aragon, is under the spotlight in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. Here. Tudor historian Tracy Borman explores the true relationship between the disinherited princess and the Lord Privy Seal – and whether she really was his 'loving friend'
The future Mary I and Thomas Cromwell were diametrically opposed in every way that mattered.
She was a staunch Roman Catholic; he a reformist who masterminded the destruction of the monasteries and England’s break from Rome.
She was the daughter of Henry VIII’s first queen, Catherine of Aragon; he helped engineer the annulment of their marriage so that the king might marry Anne Boleyn.
Thanks to Cromwell, Mary suffered the misery and humiliation of being demoted from heir to the throne to illegitimate outcast.
- Read more | Thomas Cromwell on screen: is Wolf Hall the best depiction of the Tudor statesman?
Was Princess Mary Thomas Cromwell's 'loving friend'?
On the surface at least, relations between the two were cordial. Their letters were filled with respectful, even affectionate sentiments.
These should not be taken at face value, however. Even the fiercest of enemies would disguise their antipathy with the elaborate, courtly language of the Tudor age.
Thus, Elizabeth I referred to her most deadly rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, as her “beloved sister” right up until the point when she ordered her execution.
Nevertheless, there did seem to be a rapprochement between Mary and Cromwell after Anne Boleyn’s death in 1536.
Did Thomas Cromwell hope to marry princess Mary?
It was even rumoured that the king’s chief minister harboured secret plans to marry the Lady Mary so that his heirs might inherit the crown of England.
There is little reliable proof that Cromwell ever presumed so far. Even if he had, it is highly unlikely that Henry VIII would have sanctioned such a marriage, or that Mary herself would have agreed to it.
In fact, the real reason behind the apparent cordiality between Cromwell and Mary during the mid-1530s was that he was trying to persuade the king’s stubborn eldest daughter to acknowledge the invalidity of her parents’ marriage and accept her father’s new status as supreme head of the church.
When Mary continued to resist, Cromwell dispensed with the niceties and bluntly told her: “To be plain with you, I think you the most obstinate woman that ever was.” The gloves, at last, were off.
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]]> The ultimate Tudor quiz https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ultimate-tudor-quiz/ Tue, 14 May 2024 07:30:24 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ultimate-tudor-quiz/ They are one of history’s most famous families, but how well do you actually know the Tudors? Put your history knowledge to the test with our quiz… View Riddle on the source website]]> HistoryExtra Masterclass: Rivals to the Throne with Tracy Borman https://www.historyextra.com/membership/masterclass-rivals-throne-tracy-borman-video/ Tue, 21 Dec 2021 15:39:41 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/masterclass-rivals-throne-tracy-borman-video/ In our fourth session, find out more about the Tudor women who were the rivals to the throne of England… Ironically, given the prejudices against female rule, some of the most deadly rivals to the Tudor throne were women. Henry VIII was so paranoid about the so-called ‘White Rose’ faction, led by Edward IV’s niece, Margaret Pole, that his brutality towards them sent shockwaves across Europe. All of his daughter Elizabeth’s deadliest rivals were women. Her long reign was dominated by her turbulent relationship with Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as by the lesser-known but no less potent rivals such as Lady Margaret Douglas and the ill-fated sisters of Lady Jane Grey.
Tracy Borman is a best-selling author and historian, specialising in the Tudor period. Dr Borman has presented a number of history programmes for Channel 5. She is a regular contributor to BBC History Magazine and gives talks on her books across the country and abroad. She works part-time as joint chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces and as chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust.
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Browse all episodes in our Tudor Royal Women Masterclass with Tracy Borman
]]> The Tudors: 51 moments that shaped the royal dynasty https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/guide-tudors-history-key-moments-facts-timeline-kings-queens/ Tue, 16 Feb 2021 06:18:28 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/guide-tudors-history-key-moments-facts-timeline-kings-queens/ The Tudors are one of the best-known royal dynasties in history, popularised by the likes of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I. What are the most important moments that shaped the period? In this timeline spanning the Tudor era, historian Tracy Borman selects 51 pivotal events from 1485–1603… From Henry VII’s victory at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 to the dazzling reign of Elizabeth I, this chronological guide from historian Tracy Borman charts the history of England’s best-known royal dynasty through the 51 moments that mattered most. Read on to learn about the formidable characters and pivotal events that shaped the Tudor era…
The battle of Bosworth
22 August 1485
The Tudor age began on a remote field in Leicestershire. The battle of Bosworth pitted the forces of the Yorkist king Richard III against those of his Lancastrian challenger, Henry Tudor. Richard’s reign had begun only two years before upon the death of his brother, Edward IV, who appointed him lord protector during the minority of his 12-year-old son and heir, Edward V. But Richard had soon declared Edward and his younger brother illegitimate and claimed the throne for himself – they later became known as the Princes in the Tower. The two boys had disappeared in the Tower of London in the summer of 1483, and had almost certainly been put to death – at whose orders is still hotly debated.
The turbulence that followed presented Henry Tudor, who was waiting in the wings (or rather Brittany), with his chance. Although his claim to the throne was tenuous, he was one of the few surviving Lancastrian descendants and whipped up what support he could for an invasion. His forces were considerably outnumbered by those of the king, but Richard was undone by the treachery of the powerful Stanley brothers, who changed sides halfway through the fighting. He was hacked to death in the heat of the battle. Legend has it that his crown was found under a hawthorn bush and brought to Henry Tudor, who was proclaimed king – Henry VII.
Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York
18 January 1486
Henry Tudor may have triumphed at Bosworth, but his hold on the throne was by no means secure. Many of his subjects saw him as a usurper and there were other claimants with arguably stronger blood claims than his. Henry’s own claim was on the side of his indomitable mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. She was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III, and his third wife (and long-standing mistress) Katherine Swynford. But Katherine had given birth to Henry’s great-grandfather when she was still John’s mistress, so Henry’s claim was through an illegitimate line. It was something of which he was painfully aware and it would make him increasingly paranoid about rival claimants, particularly those of Yorkist descent.
Henry VII therefore decided to boost the legitimacy of the new Tudor dynasty by marrying a bride of that house. And chief among the candidates was Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. Elizabeth’s beauty and royal blood had attracted other suitors in the past – perhaps including her own uncle, Richard III, who was rumoured to have planned to marry her shortly before Bosworth. Elizabeth proved an excellent choice for his Tudor rival. Just eight months after the wedding, she gave birth to a son, Arthur. Six more children followed, three of whom survived into adulthood. The Tudor dynasty had been established.
- Q&A: Why were they called the Tudors?
Battle of Stoke Field
16 June 1487
Henry VII’s paranoia about rival claimants grew stronger as his reign progressed – with good reason. The 30 years leading up to his accession had seen the crown change hands numerous times, and there was no reason to suspect that this latest king would survive any longer than the one he had usurped. The first serious challenge to Henry’s authority came in 1487 in the form of the 10‑year-old pretender, Lambert Simnel. Struck by the boy’s resemblance to the sons of Edward IV, Simnel’s tutor, Richard Simons, decided to turn kingmaker. At first he planned to masquerade Simnel as Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the two princes who had disappeared in the Tower. But when he heard rumours that the princes had been murdered, he switched the boy’s identity to Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of Edward IV’s brother George, Duke of Clarence.
Henry VII had taken the precaution of confining Warwick to the Tower of London, but Simons spread the rumour that he had escaped. Gaining support from those sympathetic to the House of York, he took the boy to Ireland and began to gather an invasion force. Bolstered by 2,000 Flemish, German and Swiss mercenaries sent over by Warwick’s aunt, Margaret of York, Simnel’s army landed in Lancashire on 5 June 1487. They were defeated by the king’s forces at Stoke Field 11 days later in what is commonly regarded as the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. Henry pardoned Simnel and made him a spit-turner in his kitchens.
Henry VIII is born
28 June 1491
By 1491, Henry VII had reason to feel more secure on his throne. He had seen off the early threats to his authority, and his marriage to Elizabeth of York – which, somewhat against the odds, had grown into something of a love match – had yielded a male heir and a daughter, Margaret Tudor. Now, Elizabeth was pregnant again and, in June, she entered her confinement at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich. Originally built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in 1443, it remained one of the principal royal palaces for the next two centuries.
The birth of a second son was the cause of great rejoicing for the king, who always had an eye to strengthening his dynasty. The prince was christened Henry and later made Duke of York. He received an excellent education, becoming fluent in Latin and French, and showed a natural aptitude for sports. He spent a great deal of his childhood with his mother at Eltham Palace, and was devastated when she died in February 1503. Given that he had an elder brother, Henry was not expected to be king and it is possible that he was intended for the church – a career that this boisterous young prince was quite unsuited for.
The last pretender is executed
23 November 1499
Little is known of the early life of Perkin Warbeck, although – according to his later confession – he was born in Tournai and began his training as a merchant in Antwerp and other key trading cities in the Netherlands. In 1490, at the age of about 16, he travelled to Burgundy and first made the claim that he was Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, the younger son of Edward IV.
Burgundy was a centre for Yorkist sympathisers. Its regent, Margaret, was the sister of Edward IV and willing to support anyone who challenged Henry Tudor’s rule. On 3 July 1495, Warbeck landed at Deal in Kent with a small army provided by Margaret. He was swiftly defeated by Henry’s forces and fled first to Ireland and then Scotland, where he found favour with James IV, who promised to help him invade England. This came to nothing, and Warbeck was on the run once more.
In September 1497, he landed near Land’s End and found ready support among the Cornishmen who had recently rebelled against Henry’s rule. Having been declared Richard IV on Bodmin Moor, he and his army of 6,000 men marched eastwards towards London. But Warbeck was captured at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire.
Although Henry initially showed clemency towards the imposter, even welcoming him to court, Warbeck posed too great a danger to remain at liberty. He was confined to the Tower of London alongside Edward, Earl of Warwick, and the two were executed in November 1499.
Prince Arthur marries Catherine of Aragon
14 November 1501
Henry VII had ambitious marriage plans for his eldest son and heir, Arthur, Prince of Wales. He knew that securing a bride of sufficient stature would not only further legitimise his dynasty, but provide England with a much-needed international ally. The lady upon whom he had set his sights was Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Allying with these powerful Catholic monarchs would greatly strengthen Henry’s hand against England’s traditional enemy, France, so he pursued negotiations with vigour. The Treaty of Medina del Campo was duly signed on 27 March 1489, pledging Arthur and Catherine (then aged two and three) to be married when they came of age.
The Spanish princess eventually arrived in England in October 1501; Catherine and Arthur were married the following month and took up residence at Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches.
Death of Arthur, Prince of Wales
2 April 1502
Soon after the marriage Arthur’s health began to fail and, on 2 April 1502, he died, aged just 15, possibly from the sweating sickness. His parents were devastated upon hearing the news – a contemporary account records how the weeping king and queen comforted each other in their grief. Meanwhile, England had a new heir: Henry, Duke of York.
Arthur’s young wife Catherine was then betrothed to Prince Henry, but his father and Catherine’s parents disagreed over her dowry, and Catherine languished in political limbo until after Henry VII’s death.
Arthur's death certainly changed the course of English history, as Henry succeeded his older brother. Perhaps the largest issue of contention, which directly influenced Henry’s dramatic break with Rome, was whether Catherine and Arthur had consummated their marriage. Although it was never proven one way or the other, Henry claimed it was the catalyst for his later annulment.
Margaret Tudor marries James IV of Scotland
8 August 1503
The eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Margaret was born in 1489. Although it was sons that counted in royal families, daughters were useful for forging alliances; even before her sixth birthday, Henry had made plans for Margaret’s marriage. Greatly troubled by the King of Scots’ support for Perkin Warbeck, Henry resolved to tempt him into an alliance by offering his eldest daughter in marriage. A truce was concluded in 1497, but it wasn’t until January 1502 that the marriage treaty was finally agreed. Some of Henry’s councillors were against the match, arguing that it would give the Stuarts a claim to the English throne. But Henry retorted: “I foresee that our realm would suffer no harm, since England would not be absorbed by Scotland, but rather Scotland by England.”
The marriage was completed by proxy a year later at Richmond Palace and, in August 1503, Margaret arrived in Scotland. The wedding ceremony between the ‘thistle and the rose’ was conducted soon after.
Just as Henry’s councillors had predicted, it gave the Scottish rulers a claim to the English throne, although it was one that they would have to wait a while to capitalise upon. A century after the marriage, one of Margaret and James’s descendants would take the English throne.
Death of Henry VII; accession of Henry VIII
21 April 1509
The death of his wife and eldest son had plunged Henry VII into a deep melancholy from which he never fully recovered. Increasingly paranoid and miserly, he had failed to win over the English people, but had succeeded in establishing a relatively stable new dynasty – as well as a much healthier treasury. This was the legacy that he passed on to his 17-year-old heir, Henry, upon his death at Richmond Palace in April 1509.
“For the future, the whole world will talk of him,” remarked the Venetian ambassador with remarkable foresight upon the accession of Henry VIII. Everyone was full of praise for this ebullient, charismatic, intelligent and pleasure-loving new king – a true Renaissance prince, and the antithesis of his father in almost every possible way.
Henry had inherited the charm, charisma and good looks of his mother’s family, the House of York. Affable, quick-witted, idealistic and hugely generous, he was “the man most full of heart,” according to Erasmus. As if to distance himself from the old king, one of Henry’s first acts was to have his father’s despised ministers, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, arrested and executed for high treason. He also took his late brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, as his bride – this would have far-reaching consequences in the years ahead.
- Read more: Henry VIII’s six wives: your guide to the Tudor king's queen consorts
Battle of Flodden
9 September 1513
The treaty signed by Henry VII and James IV in 1502 was hardly one of ‘perpetual peace’, as it claimed to be. The long-standing hostilities had resumed soon afterwards and, in 1513, they spilled out into open conflict. James declared war on England to honour the Auld Alliance with France by diverting Henry VIII’s troops away from their campaign against the French king Louis XII. Henry had already antagonised James by claiming to be overlord of Scotland and, in late August 1513, the Scottish king gathered his troops and marched south towards England.
He encountered the English force, under the command of the Earl of Surrey, near the village of Branxton (rather than Flodden, from which the battle of Flodden takes its name) in Northumberland. What followed was the largest clash of arms ever between England and Scotland – and one of the most fiercely contested battles in history. “The battle was cruel, none spared other, and the king himself fought valiantly,” stated one contemporary chronicler.
James paid a high price for his bravery: he was mortally wounded by an arrow as he was advancing upon Surrey. His wife, Margaret, was appointed the formal guardian of their infant son (by now James V), and initially given powers of regency, although these were withdrawn when she remarried.
Wolsey is appointed lord chancellor
24 December 1515
Thomas Wolsey’s rise to power was thanks to his own political guile and the young king’s obvious preference for pleasurable pursuits over the business of government. Having served Henry’s father, Thomas Wolsey rapidly proved his worth to the new king. His servant, George Cavendish, observed how he “dayly attendyd uppon the kyng in the Court beyng in his especyall grace & favour”. His ecclesiastical appointments – notably as archbishop of York and cardinal – were swiftly followed by political ones. Towards the end of 1515, Henry raised him to the position of lord chancellor.
Not long after, Erasmus, who spent some considerable time at Henry’s court, described Wolsey as governing “more really than the king himself”. The fact that Wolsey was merely the son of a butcher made his rise to prominence a bitter pill to swallow for the blue-blooded members of Henry’s council and he soon had a coterie of dangerous enemies. But Wolsey cared little for that and his ambition knew no bounds. In the same year that he was made lord chancellor, he set about building a magnificent new palace for himself – Hampton Court – which he filled with priceless furnishings and works of art, together with a household of more than 400 staff. Soon, envious courtiers were whispering that Wolsey’s magnificence was beginning to eclipse that of his royal master.
Birth of the future Mary I
18 February 1516
Although the early years of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s marriage were happy and harmonious, a string of stillbirths and miscarriages had started to put a strain on their relationship. The joy that accompanied the birth of a son on New Year’s Day 1511 proved short-lived: the little prince died just seven weeks later. The birth of a healthy princess, christened Mary (and later to become Mary I), in February 1516 eased relations between Henry and Catherine. Even though she was not the hoped-for son, she could still be useful in the international marriage market and, more importantly, she was proof that Catherine could bear healthy children.
But Mary would be the only surviving child from the marriage, and Henry became increasingly convinced that he had displeased God by taking his late brother’s widow as a bride. For the first few years of her life, though, Mary was a source of delight to her parents. A pretty and precocious child, she entertained a visiting French delegation with a performance on the virginals when she was just four and a half years old. She would grow to be particularly close to her mother, with whom she shared a devout Roman Catholic faith and a love of all things Spanish. By contrast, her relationship with her father became increasingly strained.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold
7-24 June 1520
Henry VIII and Francis I, king of France, were natural rivals. Close in age, they were both lauded for their good looks, sporting prowess and cultural accomplishments, and had established magnificent courts. But on the surface, they were careful to maintain the impression of cordiality. To this end, they had signed a treaty in 1514 and, six years later, it was decided that the two kings should meet to “increase their bonds of friendship”.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold, which was organised by the Francophile Cardinal Wolsey and took place near Calais in June 1520, was one of the most ostentatious ever seen. This was an opportunity not just for a political rapprochement, but for each king to try to outshine the other. A dazzling array of fireworks, feasts and tournaments was staged, costing Henry and Francis millions in modern-day money. The tents, clothes and other fabrics displayed so much cloth of gold that it gave the meeting its name. The English king triumphed with an enormous temporary palace (covering an area of 10,000 square metres and erected by 6,000 men sent ahead for the purpose) and a wine fountain, but his French rival outwitted him in the field of combat.
Their natural competitiveness ensured that the meeting actually worsened, rather than cemented, their relationship. Within a short time, they were at war again.
Anne Boleyn arrives at court
Early 1522
In 1522 the ambitious politician and diplomat Thomas Boleyn secured a place for the younger of his two daughters, Anne Boleyn, in Catherine of Aragon’s household. Having taken up her appointment, Anne swiftly established herself as one of the leading ladies of the court. What set her apart was her style and sophistication, both of which had been honed to perfection during her service at the French court. Although she had strikingly dark eyes which “invited conversation”, Anne was no great beauty. The Venetian ambassador was clearly bemused by Henry VIII’s later fascination with her. “Madam Anne is not one of the handsomest women in the world,” he wrote. “She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised.”
The early relationship between Henry and Anne showed little of the intensity that it would later develop. Indeed, Anne had been at court for four years by the time there was any hint of romance. This was very different to Henry’s previous infidelities; Anne proved to be the most unyielding of mistresses. She persistently held out against the king’s increasingly fervent advances, insisting that while she might love him in spirit, she could not love him in body unless they were married.
It was an extraordinarily audacious ploy. She would not be a mistress; she would be queen.
- Read more: Did Anne Boleyn crave the crown?
Exit Wolsey, enter Cromwell
31 October 1529
When Henry’s VIII’s chief adviser Cardinal Wolsey fell from grace in October 1529 for failing to gain his master an annulment from Catherine of Aragon, it was expected that his favourite servant, Thomas Cromwell, would fall with him. Cromwell feared this himself and wept bitter tears of regret. But he soon rallied, pronouncing that he would go to the court and “make or marre”.
Acting as an intermediary between his fallen master and the king had all the makings of a thankless task, but Cromwell turned it to his advantage with spectacular success. Henry was quick to appreciate the skill of this self-trained lawyer and soon put it to his own use. Within days of his arrival, Cromwell had secured a seat in parliament and he was appointed a member of the council the following year. Far from being overawed by such a meteoric rise, he was outspoken and persuasive in his opinions, much to the annoyance of his higher-born colleagues. The similarity between this new kid on the block and the man whom he had effectively replaced could not have been lost on the king. Wolsey and Cromwell shared more than their humble birth: both were highly intelligent, ambitious, audacious and extraordinarily industrious.
But Henry had had his fingers burnt with the cardinal and was not about to entrust another adviser with as much power as he had enjoyed. Cromwell would have to work hard to gain his trust.
Henry marries Anne Boleyn
25 January 1533
In late 1532, Anne Boleyn finally submitted to Henry’s advances and became his mistress. The gamble seemed to have paid off: Eustace Chapuys, the Holy Roman empire’s ambassador to England, noted with some disgust that “the king cannot leave her for an hour”. By December, Anne was pregnant. Her royal lover and his ministers now had to act fast if the baby was to be born legitimate. On 25 January 1533, Henry married Anne in his private chapel at Westminster. The ceremony was conducted in great secrecy, for the divorce from Catherine of Aragon had not yet been secured. Convinced that the child Anne carried was a son, the king immediately ordered Cromwell to legitimise their union. The very day after the wedding, parliament was recalled to pass the necessary legislation. The divorce was finally confirmed on 23 May, and Anne was crowned on 1 June.
But the child that was born to Anne on 7 September was not the expected son and heir. It was a girl. Henry was devastated. He had overturned the entire religious and political life of England in order to marry Anne, on the promise that she would give him the prince upon which the stability of his realm depended. Little did he know that this “useless girl”, Elizabeth, would go on to become the longest-reigning of all the Tudor monarchs, Elizabeth I.
First Act of Supremacy
16 November 1534
In November 1534, during one of the most revolutionary parliaments of the Tudor age, the Act of Supremacy was passed. This legislation is often seen as the beginning of the English Reformation, although the foundations had been laid during the previous five years.
It declared Henry VIII to be supreme head of the Church of England and rejected all “foreign authority”.
At a stroke, this ended centuries of papal jurisdiction over the religious life of England. The initial inspiration for this seismic shift had been the king’s desire for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon: when the pope refused to grant it, Henry’s ministers concluded that the only option was to reject his authority. But the wording of the act made it clear that there were more revolutionary changes to come. It stipulated that Henry and his heirs “shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be”. This gave Cromwell carte blanche to undertake a thoroughgoing reformation of the English church, but its revolutionary tendrils would reach even further than that. By the end of his ascendancy, the entire government of the realm had been overhauled by his reforms.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries
21 January 1535
On 21 January 1535, Henry appointed Cromwell viceregent in spirituals, or ‘vicar-general’. This gave him considerable new powers over the church and he wasted no time in dispatching commissioners across the country to assess the state of each religious house. With typical attention to detail, he even investigated a few himself. Eustace Chapuys reported: “Wherever the King goes, Cromwell, who accompanies him, goes about visiting the abbeys in the neighbourhood, taking inventories of their lands and revenues.”
Motivated as much by tales of widespread corruption as by the prospect of seizing their immense wealth and landholdings, Cromwell began a programme of systematic dissolution which would see the closure and demolition of hundreds of monasteries. At the same time, he organised a series of executions to make an example of those who refused to recognise Henry’s supremacy. Principal among his victims were Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, both of whom had been thrown in the Tower for refusing to sign the oath of supremacy.
When Fisher and More resisted intense pressure from Cromwell to conform, they went to the block. His favour with the king now seemed unassailable. The Venetian ambassador scathingly remarked that although “this Cromwell was a person of low origin and condition; he is now Secretary of State, the King’s prime minister, and has supreme authority”.
Anne Boleyn is executed
19 May 1536
Although Henry VIII had pursued Anne Boleyn relentlessly for seven long years, shaking England to its core in the process, once won, she had proved a disappointment. Her high-handed and ‘unqueenly’ manner made her dangerously unpopular and sparked frequent rows with her husband. Most damning of all her ‘sins’, though, was her failure to produce the longed-for Tudor prince. When she miscarried a male foetus on the day of Catherine of Aragon’s funeral in January 1536, things began to unravel rapidly. “This king has not spoken 10 times to the Concubine… when formerly he could not leave her for an hour,” reported a gleeful Eustace Chapuys in February.
Worse still, for Anne, was the fact that her royal husband had already found a new favourite to replace her: the virtuous and rather insipid Jane Seymour. Henry wanted rid of Anne and there was only one man who could fix it: the same man who had arranged the marriage in the first place. Cromwell was swift to act. He gathered ‘evidence’ (flimsy at best) of her adultery with not one but five men, including her own brother. It was one of the most brutal plots in history, resulting in the beheading not only of the queen, but of all her alleged lovers.
Pilgrimage of Grace
1 October 1536
On 1 October 1536 Thomas Kendall, vicar of Louth in Lincolnshire, used his weekly sermon to speak out against the royal commissioners who were expected in the town the following day. It was rumoured that these men were planning to raid all of the local churches, as well as the monasteries, seizing their treasures and laying waste to their adornments. The rumours spread like wildfire and, within days, almost all of northern Lincolnshire was up in arms. Henry VIII’s religious reforms had swiftly sparked widespread resentment among his subjects – and this was the first open expression of their fury.
The uprisings, which became known collectively as the Pilgrimage of Grace, spread rapidly across the northern counties, winning support from nobility and commoners alike. They constituted the greatest threat to Henry’s authority that he had faced during his 27 years on the throne. Although he was inclined to clemency at first, when fresh revolts continued to break out during the early months of 1537, he took swift and brutal action. All the ringleaders were executed, including the most influential: Robert Aske, a one-eyed Yorkshire lawyer, who was hanged from the walls of Clifford’s Tower in York as a grim warning to the inhabitants of that rebellious city. For all his bluster, though, Henry’s confidence in the Reformation had been badly shaken.
Birth of Edward VI
12 October 1537
Henry VIII had married his third wife just 11 days after the execution of his second. Jane Seymour had proved a welcome contrast to Anne Boleyn. Meek and compliant, she was likely to give the king little trouble as a wife. What he hoped she would give him was a son. In May 1537, it was announced at court that the new queen was pregnant. Henry was transported with joy, convinced that this time God would grant him a boy. A mass was held to celebrate later that month.
Jane’s pregnancy progressed without incident and, in the middle of September, she began her confinement at Hampton Court. The king and his courtiers waited anxiously for news as Jane’s labour dragged on for two days and three nights. Finally, at about two o’clock on the morning of 12 October, the child was born. It was a boy. Henry’s long struggle for a son and heir was over at last. There was great rejoicing throughout the court and beyond. England had a male heir; her troubles would surely now be over. But Jane never recovered from the long and tortuous birth. She died, possibly of puerperal fever, some 12 days later. The grief-stricken king lamented: “Divine Providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of the death of her who brought me to this happiness.”
Every parish is given an English Bible
1539
One of the greatest legacies of the English Reformation was to provide every parish church in the country with a copy of the Bible in English. This gave the king’s subjects direct access to the word of God for the first time in history. The move was masterminded by Thomas Cromwell, whose reforming drive was motivated by personal piety, not just a desire to swell the royal coffers. So committed was he to the project that he had contributed £400 of his own money to bring it to fruition.
In 1538, he ordered that “one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English” should be set up in every church, so “that every man having free access to it by reading of the same may both be the more apt to understand the declaration of it at the preacher’s mouth, and also the more able to teach and instruct his wife, children and family at home”. The task of distributing copies of the ‘Great Bible’, translated by Miles Coverdale, to all 8,500 parishes in the country was a gargantuan one. It took several false starts before it was finally achieved.
Did you know…? Tudor London was a mudbath
Andreas Franciscius, an Italian visitor to London in 1497, was horrified by what he found. Although he admired the “fine” architecture, he was disgusted by the “vast amount of evil-smelling mud" that covered the streets and lasted a long time – nearly the whole year round. The citizens, therefore, in order to remove this mud and filth from their boots, are accustomed to spread fresh rushes on the floors of all houses, on which they clean the soles of their shoes when they come in.” Franciscius added disapprovingly that the English people had “fierce tempers and wicked dispositions”, as well as “a great antipathy to foreigners”.
- Read more about life in Tudor London
Henry VIII marries Anne of Cleves
6 January 1540
Within weeks of the death of the king’s third wife, Jane Seymour, the search was on for a successor. With no obvious home-grown candidate, the net had to be cast further afield. Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, soon became the lead contender. Her father had expelled papal authority from his realm and was therefore a natural ally for the English king.
But Henry’s ambassadors admitted they had heard “no great praise either of her personage or of her beauty”, so Henry demanded that Holbein be dispatched to Cleves to paint Anne’s likeness. The result was flattering enough to convince him that she would make a pleasant wife and the marriage treaty was duly signed. But when Henry met Anne of Cleves upon her arrival in England in December 1539, he was bitterly disappointed. “I like her not! I like her not!” he shouted at a dismayed Cromwell, and ordered him to find a way out of the marriage.
But the treaty was binding; it was with extreme reluctance that Henry was obliged to “put his neck in the yoke” and marry Anne on 6 January 1540. He found his bride so repugnant that he was unable to consummate the union. This at least made it easier to secure an annulment, which Henry succeeded in doing just six months later on the grounds that Anne had been betrothed to someone else before their marriage.
Cromwell goes to the block
28 July 1540
In a move that sent shockwaves across the court, Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, was arrested at a meeting of the Privy Council on 10 June 1540. His fall from grace had been spectacular, even in a court renowned for its swift turns of fortune: just two months earlier, the king had shown Cromwell great favour by making him Earl of Essex. The coup was almost certainly engineered by the minister’s arch rivals, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had long sought his destruction.
A bill of attainder was passed on 29 June. This claimed that the base-born minister had plotted to make himself more powerful than the king in all matters – political as well as religious – and had thus committed high treason, for which Cromwell was condemned to die. It went on to list a host of trumped-up charges, the most outlandish being that he had plotted to marry the king’s eldest daughter, Mary. A beleaguered Cromwell wrote a long and impassioned letter to his royal master from the Tower, begging for “mercye mercye mercye”’. His plea fell on deaf ears and, on 28 July, Cromwell was beheaded with three blows of the bungling executioner’s axe. Within a few short months, Henry was bemoaning the death of “the most faithful servant he had ever had”.
- Read more: The downfall of Thomas Cromwell
Catherine Howard is executed
13 February 1542
Henry VIII married his fifth wife on the very same day as Cromwell’s execution. Catherine Howard was only about 16 years old, making her the king’s junior by more than 30 years. A lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, Catherine had quickly beguiled the king with her seductive charms. But the new queen’s past did not bear scrutiny. Her first sexual liaison was with her music teacher when she may have been as young as 12 and it had been followed by a relationship with her kinsman, Francis Dereham.
- Read more: Did Catherine Howard commit adultery?
None of this was known to Henry, who prized chastity in his brides. Neither was he aware that, not long after the wedding, Catherine began an illicit affair with Thomas Culpepper, a gentleman of the privy chamber. When their affair was discovered, an investigation was launched into the queen’s conduct. Her previous indiscretions soon came to light. Confronted with the evidence, Catherine confessed on 8 November 1541. Her affair with Culpepper had been testified to by her lady-in-waiting, Jane Rochford, as well as by a love letter that Catherine had written to him, which she had signed: “Yours, as long as life endures.” Meanwhile, Dereham, she said, had used her “in such sort as a man doth use his wife many and sundry times”. Heartbroken and humiliated, Henry had no hesitation in sending her to the block.
Head to page 2 for more moments in our Tudor history timeline…
Henry marries Katherine Parr
12 July 1543
Henry spent a year licking his wounds after the humiliating betrayal of his flighty young fifth wife before yet again turning his thoughts to marriage. The lady he set his sights on was something of a contrast to his previous wives. The twice-widowed Katherine Parr joined the household of the king’s eldest daughter, Mary, in February 1543. At 31 years of age, Katherine was a comely, if not exactly beautiful woman. In contrast to her direct predecessor, she was highly intelligent and articulate, with strong religious principles of a reformist nature.
Despite Henry’s terrible track record (not to mention his increasing age and girth), being the wife of the king was still an attractive prospect, but Katherine was far from flattered by his attentions. In fact, she loved another: the handsome but reckless Thomas Seymour, brother of the late Queen Jane. Sensing a rival, the king found an excuse to send him away from court.
Katherine remained reluctant but eventually put her own desires aside and consented to be the sixth wife of this much-married monarch. The wedding took place on 12 July 1543 in the queen’s private apartments at Hampton Court Palace. There were just 18 guests.
The third Act of Succession is passed
Spring 1544
The first and second Acts of Succession (1533 and 1536) had declared Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, Mary, and her half-sister, Elizabeth, to be bastards. Elizabeth – just two years and eight months old at the time of the second act – had been quick to appreciate the change in her status, demanding of her servants: “How happs it yesterday Lady Princess and to-day but Lady Elsabeth?”
She and Mary had lived under the stigma of illegitimacy since the birth of their half-brother, Edward, in 1537, which had moved them further from the throne. But the benign influence of Henry’s last wife, Katherine Parr, changed all of that.
Taking pity on the disinherited girls (Elizabeth in particular, with whom she shared a passion for Protestantism), Katherine persuaded her husband to invite them to court more often. It was almost certainly her influence that led the king to assent to the third Act of Succession in spring 1544, which acknowledged Mary and Elizabeth as heirs to the throne once more.
This transformed the status of both girls from illegitimate daughters to royal princesses. But no one could have expected that they would actually come into their inheritance: Edward was a strong, healthy boy with every prospect of a long life.
Siege of Boulogne
19 July 1544
For most of his reign, Henry played a complex game of diplomacy with the two great potentates of Europe: Francis I of France and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. But peace never lasted long, and in 1543 Henry was on the offensive yet again.
When he discovered Francis had helped fortify Scotland against England, Henry made an alliance with Charles V and agreed to invade France. In early 1544, an English force departed from Calais and marched towards the coastal town of Boulogne, laying siege to it on 19 July.
Desperate to prove he was still a warrior king, Henry set out to join his troops a few weeks later. He arrived shortly after the French surrender on 13 September. But his triumph proved short-lived. The emperor promptly made a separate treaty with Francis I, and they agreed to unite their forces to reclaim Boulogne for the French.
Henry returned to England at the end of September, leaving the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk in charge of holding the town. But they disobeyed his orders and withdrew most of the troops to Calais.
The remaining English forces managed to withhold the French bombardment for several years, but it was an expensive and largely futile campaign. In 1550 a treaty was signed that finally returned Boulogne to the French, by which time both Henry VIII and Francis I were dead.
Katherine Parr narrowly avoids arrest
1546
Katherine Parr’s passion for the ‘new faith’ became ever more pronounced during her marriage to Henry as his sixth and final wife. Gathering around her like-minded women (including her stepdaughter Elizabeth), she would spend hours debating the finer points of reform and even wrote some religious treatises herself. In doing so, she made some dangerous enemies among the religious conservatives at court, notably Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.
When the king confided in him that he resented his wife’s outspokenness on matters of religion, Gardiner seized his chance. He and his faction gathered enough evidence of Katherine’s heresy to secure a warrant for her arrest. By chance, the queen heard of this before the men could reach her and immediately took to her bed, claiming that she was mortally ill. When the king rushed to see her, she cleverly told him that she was sick with fear that she had displeased him and proceeded to give a skilfully submissive defence of her actions, pleading that she was “a simple poor woman so much inferior in all respects of nature to you”.
Katherine had literally talked herself out of trouble. Henry was instantly mollified and railed against Gardiner for daring to question his wife’s loyalty. The queen knew, though, that it had been a close-run thing. She had narrowly escaped with her life and would not risk it again.
The Earl of Surrey is executed
19 January 1547
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey was the eldest son of an old stalwart of Henry VIII’s court, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. A gifted poet, Surrey was also highly volatile and a notorious drunk, whom the king called a “foolish, proud boy”.
Surrey made a dangerous enemy of the late queen Jane Seymour’s brother, Edward, who was a dominant force at court. Edward played on the ageing king’s increasing paranoia, convincing him that the Howards were plotting to place Surrey on the throne when Henry died. The fact that Surrey had displayed royal arms on his coat of arms was evidence enough for the king, who ordered his arrest and that of his father, Norfolk.
Both were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. But Surrey hatched a daring plan to escape from the Tower of London, where he and his father awaited their death. This involved squeezing through the shaft that ran from the latrine into the river below.
He almost succeeded, but guards raised the alarm when they saw his empty bed and found him making his way down the shaft. The hapless earl was executed on 19 January 1547. The king’s own death nine days later won Norfolk a stay of execution, and he was pardoned by Henry’s daughter Mary when she became queen in 1553.
Henry VIII dies
28 January 1547
In his later years, Henry was increasingly incapacitated by an old jousting wound in his leg, which had turned ulcerous. As a result, he had long since lost his sporting prowess and his girth had expanded at an alarming rate. When he became king, he had boasted a trim 32in waist; by the end of his reign it had expanded to a colossal 52ins.
A sketch taken by the Antwerp artist Cornelis Massys at the end of Henry’s life shows him as a grotesque figure. His beady eyes and tiny, pursed mouth are almost lost in the layers of flesh that surround them. He appears to have no neck, and his enormous frame extends beyond the reaches of the canvas. A contemporary chronicler corroborated this portrait: “The king was so stout that such a man has never been seen. Three of the biggest men that could be found could get inside his doublet.”
Henry’s obesity hastened his death, at the age of 55, on 28 January 1547, in the palace of Whitehall. He was buried next to his beloved third wife, Jane Seymour, at Windsor Castle and was succeeded by their nine-year-old son, Edward VI, under the protectorship of Jane’s brother Edward.
Did you know…? Edward VI might have had a 'whipping boy'
Education was seen as something of a luxury for most Tudors, and it was usually the children of the rich who received anything approaching a decent schooling. There were few books in Tudor schools, so pupils read from 'hornbooks' instead. Pages displaying the alphabet and religious material were attached to wooden boards and covered with a transparent sheet of cow horn (hence the name). Discipline was much fiercer than it is today. Teachers would think nothing of punishing their pupils with 50 strokes of the cane, and wealthier parents would often pay for a ‘whipping-boy’ to take the punishment on behalf of their child. Barnaby Fitzpatrick undertook this thankless task for the young Edward VI, although the two boys did become best friends.
The first Act of Uniformity is passed
31 January 1549
Although still very young, by the time of his accession, Edward VI was already strongly committed to the reformist faith. He and his half-sister Elizabeth had been tutored by men known to be sympathetic to the new Protestant teachings that were gaining ground across Europe.
Although he had spearheaded the English Reformation, Henry VIII had been a faithful Catholic at heart, only tolerating the radical new ideas when it served his interests to do so – notably in securing a divorce from his first wife.
But Edward was determined to introduce a full-scale Protestant reformation into England. He immediately issued a set of injunctions to the church which provided a blueprint for reform. Then, at the beginning of 1549, the first Act of Uniformity was passed. This established the Book of Common Prayer as the only legal form of worship in England.
Largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, the book not only provided an English-language translation of the Latin liturgical books, but set down – for the first time – a consistent form of worship for all the king’s subjects. It was nothing if not controversial: it was passed by the House of Lords with a majority of just two votes, and sparked riots later that year.
The Duke of Somerset is executed
22 January 1552
The turbulence that so often accompanies the succession of a minor soon dominated Edward’s court. A deadly rivalry sprang up between the lord protector, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Seymour’s position was rendered increasingly unstable by the behaviour of his volatile and ambitious brother Thomas, who recklessly attempted to get physical possession of the king in January 1549.
Breaking into Edward’s privy garden at Westminster, pistol in hand, Thomas tried to gain access to the king’s bedroom but was bitten by the boy’s pet spaniel. Without thinking, he shot the dog dead, which prompted a furore as the royal guard rushed forward, thinking an assassin was in the palace.
Thomas was arrested and taken to the Tower. He was found guilty of treason and his own brother was obliged to sign the death warrant, which was carried out on 20 March.
The Duke of Somerset survived for three more years, though, and was even allowed back into the privy council. But when he was discovered plotting against his rival, Dudley, the new de facto leader of government, he was rearrested and executed.
Somerset’s young nephew, the king, noted with cold detachment in his diary: “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.”
Did you know…? Edward VI might have had a 'whipping boy'?
Education was seen as something of a luxury for most Tudors, and it was usually the children of the rich who received anything approaching a decent schooling. There were few books in Tudor schools, so pupils read from 'hornbooks' instead. Pages displaying the alphabet and religious material were attached to wooden boards and covered with a transparent sheet of cow horn (hence the name). Discipline was much fiercer than it is today. Teachers would think nothing of punishing their pupils with 50 strokes of the cane, and wealthier parents would often pay for a ‘whipping-boy’ to take the punishment on behalf of their child. Barnaby Fitzpatrick undertook this thankless task for the young Edward VI, although the two boys did become best friends.
Edward VI dies
6 July 1553
In the spring of 1553, the 15-year-old king suddenly fell ill. An apparently minor chest infection had turned into something altogether more serious, and within weeks it was clear the boy was dying.
Anxious to prevent the accession of Edward’s staunchly Roman Catholic sister, Mary, Dudley orchestrated a coup by marrying his youngest son, Guildford, to Lady Jane Grey, the great-niece of Henry VIII, and placing her on the throne.
On 8 July, two days after Edward’s death, Jane (then aged 16 or 17 at most) was proclaimed queen and entered the Tower of London with great ceremony – and reluctance. She would reign for just nine days.
For all her dogmatism, Mary was a true Tudor princess and wasted no time in rallying thousands of subjects to her cause. Soon, the council turned its coat and declared for her. On 19 July, Mary was proclaimed queen, to the great rejoicing of Londoners.
Jane and her husband were convicted for treason in November, but the new queen bore them no ill-will and it was rumoured she would pardon them. A series of uprisings at the beginning of 1554 changed all of that.
Mary reluctantly acknowledged that Jane was too dangerous a threat to be allowed to live. She was led to her execution on 12 February, having watched the headless body of her husband, Guildford Dudley, being carried back from Tower Hill.
Wyatt’s Rebellion
January 1554
In stark contrast to her half-sister, Elizabeth, Mary was resolved from the start of her reign to marry as quickly as possible. But her choice was deeply unpopular among her xenophobic subjects: the Catholic king of Spain, Philip II.
Shortly after their marriage settlement was agreed in January 1554, Sir Thomas Wyatt (son of the famous poet) raised an army of 3,000 rebels and marched towards London from Kent with the stated aim of deposing Mary and replacing her with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was almost certainly innocent of any involvement in the plot, but Wyatt claimed he had written to her of his plans. Mary was taking no chances: having defeated the rebels – Wyatt would soon be executed – she had her sister brought to the Tower.
As she slowly mounted the steps, Elizabeth suddenly stopped and exclaimed: “Oh Lord! I never thought to have come in here as a prisoner; and I pray you all, good friends and fellows, bear me witness, that I come in no traitor, but as true woman to the queen’s majesty as any is now living.”
Subjected to interrogation by Mary’s ministers, Elizabeth defended herself so stoically they were eventually forced to concede defeat and she was released on 19 May – 18 years to the day since her mother, Anne Boleyn, had been executed in the fortress.
The first Protestant martyr is burned
4 February 1555
Upon her accession, Mary had made it clear that her most urgent priority was to return England to the papal fold. Driven on by an evangelising zeal, she ordered increasingly drastic measures in order to achieve this, not flinching from burning those subjects who persisted in their ‘heretical’ beliefs.
The first Protestant martyr was John Rogers, who went to the flames on 4 February 1555. Rogers had spent time in Antwerp, where he had met the influential reformer William Tyndale, whose teachings so inspired him that he immediately abandoned the Roman Catholic faith.
- Read more: Mary Tudor: brutal but brilliant
Rogers soon befriended other leading reformers and proceeded to evangelise about their teachings when he returned to England in 1548. This won him great favour with Edward VI, but he alienated Mary as soon as she succeeded to the throne by preaching about the “true doctrine taught in King Edward’s days”, and warning his hearers against “pestilent popery, idolatry and superstition”.
During the next three years, the fiercely dogmatic queen sent more than 300 Protestants to the flames in her quest to re-establish Catholicism’s supremacy in England. Most prominent among them were Thomas Cranmer, former archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. Many more Protestants might have followed if it had not been for ‘Bloody’ Mary’s early death after just five years as queen.
Mary I dies
17 November 1558
Mary had never enjoyed good health, and it deteriorated rapidly after she became queen. Desperate to conceive an heir, she suffered the humiliation of two phantom pregnancies during which she displayed all the symptoms of an expectant mother. But her swollen stomach may have been due to a cancerous tumour.
Early in 1558, as Mary persisted in believing that she would soon be delivered of an heir, it was obvious to everyone else that she was dying. By 28 October, wracked with pain, she finally acknowledged that there would be no “fruit of her body”, and confirmed that the crown would pass to Elizabeth. She begged her half-sister to uphold the Roman Catholic faith, but the knowledge of how unlikely Elizabeth was to honour this request tormented Mary until her last breath.
Upon hearing that Mary was dead and that she was now queen, Elizabeth proclaimed: “My Lordes, the law of nature moveth me to sorrowe for my sister: The burdaine that is fallen uppon me maketh me amazed.” When Elizabeth was proclaimed queen in the City of London, there was great rejoicing. All across the capital, church bells were rung and at night bonfires were lit, around which thousands of people gathered to drink and make merry.
The brief, brutal reign of Mary Tudor was over: now the nation’s hopes rested upon her beautiful and charismatic successor.
The Act of Uniformity
1559
Elizabeth I once famously declared that she had no wish to “make windows into men’s souls”, and this became immediately apparent during her first parliament.
The most pressing issue of the new reign was to provide clarity on the vexed question of religion. Elizabeth had witnessed first-hand her late sister’s disastrously dogmatic religious policy, which had torn the country in two and created a dangerous groundswell of opposition to the monarchy.
Although she was inclined to the Protestant faith, Elizabeth had no intention of trying to impose it upon her subjects in the same way that Mary had with Roman Catholicism.
The keynote of her religious settlement, which was expressed in the Act of Uniformity of 1559, was moderation. This reinstated the English Book of Common Prayer that had been introduced by Edward VI in 1549, and set down that all of Elizabeth’s subjects must attend church at least once a week or be fined 12 pence – a considerable sum for the poor.
Meanwhile, Matthew Parker was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. He shared the queen’s vision for a single, united Church of England; it was thanks to his influence that the Anglican theology began to take shape.
Mary, Queen of Scots flees to England
May 1568
From the earliest days of her reign, Elizabeth had been plagued by rival claimants to the throne. Chief among them was Mary, Queen of Scots. Nine years younger than Elizabeth and widely acclaimed for her beauty, Mary had a strong blood line to the English throne. And as a Catholic, she also rapidly became a figurehead for all of those opposed to the ‘heretical’ English queen.
That Elizabeth resented her charismatic cousin on a personal as well as a political level there can be no doubt. She quizzed her Scottish ambassador as much about Mary’s appearance as about affairs of state. On one occasion, she demanded to know whether Mary was taller than her, and when the beleaguered ambassador reluctantly acceded, Elizabeth snapped: “Then she is too high!”
Her jealousy increased when, in June 1566, Mary gave birth to a son, James. But things soon began to unravel for the Scottish queen. Always one to rule with the heart rather than the head, she formed a passionate attachment to Lord Bothwell, the chief suspect in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley.
Forced out of Scotland by a coup, Mary unwisely chose to throw herself on the mercy of Elizabeth, who had sent her messages of support.
But when Mary arrived in England in May 1568, Elizabeth wasted no time in making the Scottish queen her prisoner.
Did you know…? Elizabeth I owned more than 2,000 dresses
When her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed, Elizabeth was so neglected by her father, Henry VIII, that she soon outgrew all of her clothes, and her servant was forced to write to ask for new ones. Perhaps the memory of this humiliation prompted Elizabeth, as queen, to stuff her wardrobes with more than 2,000 beautiful dresses, all in rich fabrics and gorgeous colours. But despite her enormous collection, she always wanted more. When one of her maids of honour, Lady Mary Howard, appeared in court wearing a strikingly ostentatious gown, the queen was so jealous that she stole it, and paraded around court in it herself.
The Ridolfi Plot is revealed
Summer 1571
As Elizabeth’s reign progressed, the number of plots against her increased. Most were Catholic conspiracies, aimed at placing Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne.
In 1571, the most serious plot yet was discovered. At its heart was the dangerously ambitious Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who planned to marry the captive Queen of Scots and with her seize the English throne.
In early 1571, Mary wrote to the papal agent, Roberto Ridolfi, urging him to solicit help from the pope, Philip II and the Duke of Alva. Mary criticised her cousin for feigning a “willingness to entertain the suggestion of my liberation, to amuse herself at my expense”, and accused her of having been “many a time… on the point of compassing my death”.
This was treasonous enough, but there was still more evidence: Mary had embroidered a cushion for the Duke of Norfolk with a design that showed a hand clipping off a barren vine so that the fruitful vine might flourish. The message was clear: she, the fertile Queen of Scots, should supplant her childless cousin.
When Elizabeth heard of the plot, she reportedly flew into a “ferocious rage”. Norfolk was executed the following year, but Mary – “that devilish woman”– was allowed to live… for now.
- Read more: Who betrayed Mary, Queen of Scots?
Robert Dudley proposes to Elizabeth
1575
Although famous for being the ‘Virgin Queen’, Elizabeth enjoyed an intimate relationship with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
Friends since childhood, they had rapidly developed a relationship that many said went beyond the niceties of court gallantry. The pair acted more like lovers, even in public, as they shared intimate conversations and spent many hours together hunting, dancing and enjoying other courtly pastimes.
Rumours abounded that the pair would marry, particularly after Dudley’s first wife, Amy Robsart, was found dead at their home in Oxfordshire. But for all her flirtatiousness, Elizabeth showed no inclination to marry Dudley – or anyone else.
This did not stop him from trying, though. In 1575, Dudley staged a spectacular series of entertainments for the queen at his Warwickshire home, Kenilworth Castle, as a last-ditch attempt to persuade Elizabeth to marry him. But while she revelled in his attentions and at times seemed to be giving serious consideration to his proposal, Elizabeth remained tantalisingly out of reach.
Frustrated, Leicester turned his attentions to the beautiful and vivacious Lettice Knollys, whom he secretly married in 1578. When Elizabeth found out, she was incandescent with rage, boxing Lettice’s ears and screaming that “as but one sun lightened the Earth, she would have but one queen in England”.
The Duke of Anjou courts Elizabeth
1579
For the first 20 years of her reign, Elizabeth faced intense pressure from her councillors to marry and beget an heir. Although she flirted with several home-grown and foreign suitors, in reality she had no intention of ceding her power to a husband, famously declaring: “I will have but one mistress here, and no master.”
Elizabeth seems to have harboured a deep psychological fear of marriage, which is perhaps not surprising given the fate of her mother and stepmothers – not to mention her half-sister, Mary. But she appreciated the diplomatic necessity of at least pretending to consider the proposals of the various foreign princes who courted her.
Principal among these was Francis, Duke of Anjou and Alençon. Some 21 years Elizabeth’s junior, Anjou arrived in England in 1579, becoming the only foreign suitor to court the English queen in person.
Elizabeth, still smarting from Robert Dudley’s betrayal, welcomed Anjou with every courtesy and the pair struck up a flirtatious relationship. The queen nicknamed the young duke her ‘frog’ and conducted many private audiences with him. When he left the English court in 1581 with nothing more than “fair promises”, Elizabeth penned an apparently regretful poem On Monsieur’s Departure.
Sir Francis Drake circumnavigates the globe
1580
The Elizabethan age witnessed greater overseas exploration than ever before. One of its most celebrated adventurers was Francis Drake, a highly skilled sailor, navigator, privateer and politician. In 1577, he embarked upon what was termed a ‘voyage of discovery’, which was in fact an ambitious raiding voyage that marked the beginning of England’s challenge to Spanish global domination.
The queen heartily – but secretly – approved of the enterprise and gave it her financial backing, as did several leading members of her court, including Robert Dudley, Christopher Hatton and Francis Walsingham.
Their investment brought rich returns. By 1580, Drake had achieved considerably more than a modest ‘voyage of discovery’: he had circumnavigated the globe – the first Englishman to do so. Along the way, he and the crew of his famous galleon, the Golden Hind, had looted scores of Spanish ships and ports, and the treasures that they brought back swelled the royal coffers considerably.
Anxious to avoid war with Spain, Elizabeth played down Drake’s achievement in public, but in private she was delighted, and rewarded him with £10,000 and a knighthood.
Drake’s capture of treasure ships belonging to the most powerful monarch in the world made him a national hero and transformed England into a force to be reckoned with.
Walter Ralegh founds ‘Virginia’
1585
The other great Elizabethan adventurer was the charismatic Sir Walter Ralegh. A multi-talented courtier, politician, soldier, sailor, philosopher, historian and poet, he was one of the best-known men in England and a great favourite of the queen.
Although 21 years Elizabeth’s junior, he paid court to her like a lover, showering her with romantic poems and letters, all praising her beauty. Ever the gallant, he treated his royal mistress like a precious jewel and went out of his way to fulfil her every desire. According to popular legend, on one occasion, he threw down his cloak over a “plashy place”, so that the queen might walk over it without getting her feet wet.
But his ultimate compliment to Elizabeth came from his overseas ventures. Ralegh had for some time organised and financed exploration in North America, with the aim of generating huge wealth by mining gold and increasing trade (notably in tobacco, which he insisted was a cure for coughs).
Elizabeth did not allow her favourite to risk such hazardous voyages himself, so the first one, in 1584, was commanded by members of his household. The following year, Ralegh sent a party of colonists to found a settlement on the east coast of North America. They landed in North Carolina, which Ralegh named Virginia in honour of his royal mistress, the Virgin Queen.
The Treaty of Nonsuch
10 August 1585
Among the vast domains of Philip II of Spain were the 17 provinces of the Low Countries. The area was a flourishing centre of trade and brought great riches to the Spanish king. But it was also a centre of Protestantism, and the increasing religious tensions between the Dutch and their Roman Catholic overlord spilled out into open revolt in the 1560s, resulting in the seven northern provinces breaking away from Spanish rule and establishing themselves as an independent territory.
The proximity of the southern (Spanish) provinces to England’s coastline had always constituted a threat to Elizabeth, and in 1584 Philip II laid siege to the key port of Antwerp, part of the northern provinces.
In the same year, he signed the Treaty of Joinville with the Catholic League – a powerful body of Roman Catholic leaders committed to eradicating Protestantism altogether.
Elizabeth hated embroiling England in foreign wars, but Philip’s actions were too aggressive to be ignored. So, at Nonsuch, she made an alliance with the independent Dutch provinces, pledging 6,400 foot soldiers, 1,000 cavalry and 600,000 florins a year to support the revolt. To Philip II, it was a declaration of war. Three years later he would wreak his vengeance.
- Read more: Elizabeth I’s war with England’s Catholics
Mary, Queen of Scots is executed
8 February 1587
For as long as she remained a prisoner on English soil, Mary Stuart was the focus of plots and rebellions against Elizabeth. She had always carefully avoided being implicated in any of them, but by 1586, after 18 years of captivity, she had started to lose patience.
Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, sensed her desperation and lay a trap. He had discovered a plot led by Anthony Babington that aimed to assassinate Elizabeth and place Mary on the throne, and intercepted letters between Mary and the conspirators. This was evidence enough to condemn her, and Mary was sentenced to death. But Elizabeth flinched from signing her death warrant. If she executed an anointed queen, then it would give tacit permission for someone to do the same to her. Eventually, under extreme pressure from her council, she put her signature to the document. It was carried out before the notoriously fickle queen could change her mind, and Mary was executed at Fotheringhay Castle. No sooner had this been done than Elizabeth furiously upbraided her councillors, screaming that Mary’s execution was “a thing she never commanded or intended”.
It was all an act: anxious about the reprisals from Catholic Europe, Elizabeth was desperately trying to distance herself from all blame for Mary’s death. But she was fooling no one and would soon pay the consequences.
The Armada is scattered
August 1588
If Elizabeth had hoped that by putting Mary to death, she had extinguished her most dangerous rival for good, then she was mistaken. Her cousin had made sure that in the eyes of the world she died a martyr, not a traitor.
Mary had called upon the Catholic powers to avenge her death and, the very next year, the greatest of them took her at her word. In May 1588, Philip II launched his Spanish Armada against England. Of course, it was not entirely due to Mary, but her death had given Philip the excuse he needed finally to destroy this troublesome heretical queen whose privateers never ceased plundering his treasure ships. It was the greatest threat that Elizabeth had faced in her reign – and that England had faced since the Norman invasion more than 500 years before.
Philip gathered 150 ships laden with 30,000 men – the largest fleet ever seen in Europe – and set sail for England. The Armada was soon spotted off the coast of Cornwall, and Sir Francis Drake, who commanded the English navy, ordered his men to attack it as it sailed along the English Channel.
After a series of skirmishes, the English fleet rallied for a final, decisive attack near Gravelines in the Spanish Netherlands. Philip II’s ‘invincible’ Armada was scattered. It was Elizabeth I’s finest hour.
The Globe Theatre opens
1599
There were no purpose-built theatres in London until 1576, when the actor-manager James Burbage built the Theatre in Shoreditch. In the 1580s, it welcomed its most famous member in the form of the talented young playwright and actor, William Shakespeare, who joined the company, known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
Born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, Shakespeare became a father at the age of just 19. What first brought him to London is not certain, but he rapidly established a name for himself as a writer, with such early works as Henry VI, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors.
Shakespeare’s genius for wordplay, dramatic dialogue and characterisation was unprecedented, and the fact that he was also an actor gave him an edge over other notable playwrights of the age, such as Christopher Marlowe.
In 1598, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men leased a plot near the Rose, a rival theatre in Southwark, and the following year built the Globe out of the timbers of their previous playhouse, the Theatre. The quality of Shakespeare’s plays and Elizabeth I’s love of theatre (which made it respectable for the first time) ensured the Globe was packed with spectators every night for the next 14 years.
In 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, wadding from a stage cannon ignited the thatched roof and the theatre burned down in less than two hours.
It was rebuilt and remained the home of Shakespeare’s plays until the closure of all theatres by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan regime in 1642.
The Essex Rebellion
February 1601
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex was Elizabeth’s last great favourite. Some 30 years younger than the queen, he played the game of courtly love to perfection. Before long he was the queen’s closest confidant and enjoyed many promotions as a result. But in 1599 he overreached himself by defying her express command to quell a rebellion in Ireland and instead returned home in disgrace, having concluded a humiliating truce. Desperate to regain her favour, he burst unannounced into her bedchamber early one morning and found his royal mistress without her makeup, wig and other adornments with which she attempted to keep the ‘mask of youth’ in place.
- Read more: What did Elizabeth I really look like at 60?
Elizabeth was furious and refused to listen to his excuses. Scorning the queen as “crooked in her mind as she is in her carcass”, Essex gathered together a body of supporters, including his close friend Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and launched a desperate, badly organised revolt against Elizabeth and her council. This soon ended in ignominious defeat, and Essex and Southampton were conveyed to the Tower, along with many of their followers. A verdict of treason was swiftly passed, and Essex was beheaded at the Tower on 25 February.
The last Tudor parliament
30 November 1601
The business to be considered at the parliament that opened on 11 September 1601 was mundane enough: recent economic issues had raised some pricing concerns that needed to be addressed. But the speech Elizabeth gave when she attended on 30 November has secured its place in history.
To the astonishment of the 141 members of the House of Commons who were present that day, Elizabeth revealed that it would be her last parliament. She was determined to go out with a bang. Her ensuing speech was the most beautifully crafted and moving expression of love for her country that she had ever given – greater even than her famous Armada speech of 1588.
She told the hushed assembly: “I do assure you there is no prince that loves his subjects better, or whose love can countervail our love. There is no jewel, be it of never so rich a price, which I set before this jewel: I mean your love… And though you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had nor shall have, any that will be more careful and loving.”
The ‘Golden Speech’, as it became known, was printed and reprinted numerous times. Ironically, its name derives from a version published during Oliver Cromwell’s interregnum, which was inscribed: “This speech ought to be set in letters of gold.”
Elizabeth I dies
24 March 1603
Although in her later years Elizabeth started to lose her grip on the affairs of the court, she enjoyed good health almost until the end of her life. She still rode in the hunt, enjoyed her accustomed long walks “as if she had been only 18 years old”, and danced energetically until well into her sixties. But even this formidable lady could not defy time forever.
In January 1603, the queen left the court in Whitehall and moved to Richmond Palace, her “warm box”, to which she could “best trust her sickly old age”. Once there, she slipped into a steady decline and it soon became clear that it would be her final illness. Elizabeth, too, realised this and – ever mistress of her fate – apparently resolved to hasten her end. Her attendants looked on in despair as day after day the queen turned food and drink away, “holding her finger almost continually in her mouth, with her eyes open and fixed upon the ground, where she sat on cushions without rising or resting herself, and was greatly emaciated by her long watching and fasting”.
- Read more: Elizabeth I: the great unifier
Finally, in the early hours of 24 March, the queen breathed her last, relinquishing her hold on life “easily like a ripe apple from the tree”. The throne passed to James VI of Scotland, the son of her old rival, Mary, Queen of Scots. The brilliant, dazzling, incomparable Tudor age was at an end.
Tracy Borman is an author, historian and broadcaster, specialising in the Tudor period.
This article first appeared in the Christmas 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine
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