HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/tag/tudor-kings-and-queens Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:02:04 GMT en hourly 1 Royal rivalry: 10 monarchs whose fate was determined by their siblings https://www.historyextra.com/membership/royal-sibling-rivalries/ Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:01:54 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/royal-sibling-rivalries/ Through history, the role of the second or third royal sibling has not always been easy. Here, historian Sarah Gristwood explores 10 of the most famous – and dysfunctional – royal sibling relationships... In the bad old days of high infant mortality, any royal family needed an heir and several ‘spares’ – north of the border, James V and his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, are just two of the many British monarchs with elder brothers who died in infancy. William the Conqueror left England to his second son, another William, while the eldest son, Robert, inherited Normandy.

Since then, the history of these islands has been littered with famous second – or third, or fourth – royal siblings (or, more specifically, royal sons, since gender continued to trump age right into the 21st century), who for better or for worse have done much to shape the monarchy that we know today. Here are 10 of the most famous...

• Read more | 'Royal Family’: the fly-on-the-wall documentary the Palace doesn’t want you to see

Richard I (1157–99)

It wasn’t Richard the Lionheart, but his elder brother, Henry, who was crowned ‘the Young King’ of England, unusually during their father’s lifetime. In the event Henry predeceased his father, but perhaps the fact Richard hadn’t been raised for the job explains why the crusader showed so little real enthusiasm for hands-on rule of England, spending only a few months in the country during his 10-year reign.

Richard was himself succeeded by his younger brother, John. Fairly or unfairly, King John has gone down in popular history as a disastrous monarch whose reign was epitomised by his losing the crown jewels in the Wash – but he did inadvertently help to give us Magna Carta.

• Read more | When and how did Richard the Lionheart die?

John of Gaunt (1340–99)

By contrast to John I, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster – fourth son of the prolific Edward III – has traditionally been accorded a good measure of respect for the steering hand he kept on the country during the minority of his nephew, Richard II.

His harsh fiscal policies, however, made him a particular target of the Peasants’ Revolt – while almost as soon as John himself died, Richard II was deposed by John’s exiled son, the Bolingbroke of Shakespeare’s plays, who took the throne as Henry IV. These were the family divisions that, half a century later, would produce the Wars of the Roses.

Richard III (1452–85)

The best-known casualty of those wars was of course Richard III, whose death at Bosworth ushered in the Tudor dynasty. Richard was only the fourth son of the York family, but by the time he seized the throne the first, second and third sons were all dead – Edmund killed by the Lancastrians, and George, Duke of Clarence (after plotting against Edward) drowned in the famous butt of malmsey.

The grounds upon which Richard took the throne in 1483 – chiefly the supposed invalidity of Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville – are still debated today. So too, of course, is the fate of Edward IV’s sons, the princes in the Tower, and Richard’s role in their possible murder. Either way, Richard – his brother Edward’s most loyal supporter during his lifetime – provides the most dramatic prism through which to examine both the royal sibling bond, and the question of sibling rivalry.

Henry VIII (1491–1547)

It wasn’t Henry but his elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, who was expected to lead the Tudor dynasty through the 16th century. But Arthur died in 1502 – and if anyone ever forgot that in the glorious early days of Henry VIII’s reign, they had ample cause to remember two decades later, when Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was endlessly debated, and ultimately declared invalid, on the grounds that she had been his brother Arthur’s widow.

Indeed, there has been speculation that Henry’s position as a mere second son – reared with his mother and sisters, while Arthur was sent away to Ludlow – affected his later attitudes, and his infamous marital history.

Elizabeth I (1533–1603)

Elizabeth was Henry’s second surviving legitimate child; her sister, ‘Bloody’ Mary, Henry’s eldest. But both women accepted that first place in the succession went to their younger brother, Edward VI.

After Edward’s premature death in 1553, however, differences between the sisters led to Elizabeth being imprisoned in the Tower, in danger of her life. This was no simple case of sibling rivalry, of course, since religious differences led to real dispute as to whether the Catholic Mary or the Protestant Elizabeth had best claim to the throne. All the same, no one looking for the model of a happy family is ever going to pick the Tudors!

Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Elizabeth I

Charles I (1600–49)

When James VI and I’s eldest son, Prince Henry, died in 1612 of what was probably typhoid, shock waves went through the country. At 18, the vibrant Henry was already the great hope of the Stuart dynasty. His brother Charles, by contrast, was a sickly 11-year-old considered unlikely to survive. Perhaps early insecurities left the adult Charles, as a monarch, particularly susceptible both to the influence of his favourite Buckingham [George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham] and his Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria, and to an inflated conception of the monarchy.

Elizabeth of Bohemia (1596–1662)

It may seem like cheating to list two siblings as separately important, but it’s the descendants of Elizabeth of Bohemia, not of her brother, Charles I, who sit on the British throne today. When Charles I’s eldest surviving son, Charles II, was succeeded by his own younger brother James, the latter’s unpopularity and Catholicism led to his deposition in 1688.

The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of that year brought in, instead, James’s Protestant daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, while the Catholic descendants of James’s second marriage dwindled to the status of pretenders.

Anne (1665–1714)

When William and Mary died without children, the crown passed to another younger sibling. Mary’s sister, Anne, came to the throne under the Act of Settlement of 1701, which effectively secured the throne to the Protestant Hanoverian dynasty, since it was already apparent that Anne too was unlikely to bear a surviving child, despite 18 pregnancies.

Upon Queen Anne’s death the throne was offered to the Elector of Hanover, a grandson of Elizabeth of Bohemia, who became Britain’s George I. He and his Hanoverian descendants would reign, however, on very different terms from those earlier rulers had enjoyed. The stage was set for a modern, ‘constitutional’, monarchy (a position confirmed more than a century later when George’s great-great grandson William IV – succeeding his elder brother George IV – ceded yet further royal powers).

George V (1865–1936)

You might think that in the modern age the importance of the royal second sibling is outdated – we are, after all, past the days of high infant mortality.

King George V was born the second son of the future Edward VII, but his elder brother, Albert Victor, known as Prince Eddy, died of pneumonia in his twenties, while his grandmother, Queen Victoria, was still on the throne. By that time Eddy had been linked to the Cleveland Street scandal, which involved a homosexual brothel, amid wider concerns over his character and abilities. (He has, however unconvincingly, even been identified as Jack the Ripper). His brother George, by contrast, was a formidable figure who, besides taking on Eddy’s engagement to Princess Mary of Teck in 1917, changed the name of the royal family from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.

George VI (1895–1952)

The first half of the 20th century saw two second sons accede to the throne – both important in shaping the form of the present monarchy. George V was of course succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII, the future Duke of Windsor, but Edward’s reign lasted less than a year, and he was never crowned. When he abdicated in order to marry the divorced Wallis Simpson, his younger brother was forced to step up to the plate.

Diffident and reluctant – we’d come a long way from the power-hungry days of the medieval monarchy – George VI nonetheless saw the country through the dark days of Second World War. That example of dutiful service would model an ideal for his daughter, Elizabeth II.

A version of this article was first published by HistoryExtra in April 2018

]]> Why did Henry VIII boil his cook alive? 17 grisly tales from Tudor England https://www.historyextra.com/membership/why-did-henry-viii-boil-his-cook-alive-17-grisly-tales-from-tudor-england/ Sun, 19 Jul 2026 15:30:47 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/why-did-henry-viii-boil-his-cook-alive-17-grisly-tales-from-tudor-england/ Elizabeth Goff reveals a series of macabre Tudor tales, shedding light on the dynasty’s most shocking – and sometimes downright bizarre – moments We’ve all heard about Elizabeth I being the Virgin Queen and Henry VIII having a penchant for wife-swapping, but did you know Henry boiled a cook alive? Or that Elizabeth was rumoured to be a man? Mary, Queen of Scots has had many a film made about her, but none show how grisly her execution really was, or how Catherine of Aragon wanted to send her husband the body of a king to show off her prowess. These lesser-known stories are among the most intriguing about the fabulously dramatic, rather dark and utterly unhinged Tudor dynasty.

1. Did Henry VII marry a witch?

Richard III accused Elizabeth Woodville and her mother Jacquetta of casting a spell on King Edward IV, ensuring Edward would fall in love with Elizabeth and make her his queen. Jacquetta had once stood trial for witchcraft and Richard used this as the basis for his accusations. There was nothing more damaging for a woman’s reputation than that of witchcraft; it was a good excuse to blight a powerful woman. It also meant that Elizabeth’s children were ‘made’ with magic. So, perhaps Henry VII’s wife Elizabeth of York was actually a witch…

2. The groom of the stool

Wiping the royal bottom doesn’t seem like a particularly great job, but in the Tudor world it was an incredible honour. The Groom of the Stool would be with the monarch in their most intimate and vulnerable moments, privy to all sorts of conversations. Especially for someone like Henry VIII, who had notoriously difficult bowels; a trip to the loo could take hours! The groom would then report back to the king’s doctors on anything suspicious lurking in the royal chamber pot.

Such a high-ranking role didn’t protect you from the king’s wrath, though; Henry had one of his grooms executed during his disposal of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, when the man was accused of committing adultery with her.

3. Monkey business

Henry VII kept a monkey as his pet, much to the court’s chagrin as the creature was particularly troublesome, causing havoc wherever he went. The king was a thorough record-keeper, not only of his finances but also of his court; making notes of who said what, where and why. One day, Henry left his notebook unattended, and the monkey decided the time was ripe to dramatically rip the book to shreds. Therefore, Henry found himself with a rather irritating gap in his meticulous court notetaking.

4. Henry VIII boiled a cook

In 1531, a cook named Richard Roose was given powder by a stranger to pop in the food being served at a banquet. Roose claimed he thought it was a laxative and wanted to ‘play a prank’ on his master. Turns out, the powder was deadly, killing two attendees. Roose was then accused of poisoning, being tortured in various grim ways to reveal why he did it. Henry VIII had a great fear of poisoning and meted out a brutal end for Roose – boiling him alive. At the execution site at Smithfield he was lowered into a vast cauldron, being dipped in and out via heavy chains until he eventually died in agony.

5. Exploding, oozing coffins

Henry VIII’s body was more than a bit of a mess when he died; the smell of his pustulating leg when he was alive was almost too much to take, so when he died the rotting smell was very intense. His body had been prepped and wrapped in cerecloth, then placed into a lead-lined coffin.

While stopped at Syon Abbey during the journey to his burial site at Windsor, it was claimed that there was an enormous crack to be heard, and his coffin split, leaking out goo for the dogs to lap up. Many years later, his daughter Elizabeth I’s coffin also cracked and split, likely due to gasses building up in the cadaver.

6. The Tower's bloodiest death

Lady Margaret Pole was 67 when Henry VIII ordered her death. The regular executioner was away so Margaret had an apprentice for her end, who was unfortunately inexperienced in noble decapitations. Laying her head on the block, he missed her neck completely and hacked into her shoulders. When he managed to pull out the axe, he panicked and swung again, only to hit the back of her head. This went on and on, until finally Margaret’s head was removed at last. It’s said to be one of the bloodiest deaths the Tower of London has ever seen.

7. The King's mutilated body

In 1513, the King of Scotland, James IV, invaded England while Catherine of Aragon was acting as regent, and he was killed by English forces at the Battle of Flodden. To show off this great achievement, Catherine wanted to send her husband the mutilated body of the Scottish king, but Henry’s council blanched at the gruesomeness of the request and only allowed her to send the blood-stained cloak instead!

8. Humiliated in death

Katherine Parr had been happily ensconced in a tomb at Sudeley Castle for many years, albeit the chapel she was buried in slowly falling to ruin. Curious locals, however, wanted to find Henry VIII’s last wife and so dug her up. Opening her coffin, it revealed Katherine was still fresh and appeared perfectly preserved.

Over the years, she was intermittently reburied and dug up by the morbidly curious, with people taking souvenirs from her remains. It was then decided to bury her properly, but the team of men hired for the job got drunk instead, and pulled Katherine’s remains out from the coffin altogether. They mutilated her corpse by stabbing her, playing football with her head and ripped out the last of her hair and teeth. Thankfully, she was fully reburied after this horrific incident, remaining there, in peace, to this day.

9. Like father, like son

Little King Edward VI was raised to be a mini version of his father, from the rooms he lived in to the clothing he’d wear. He was indulged by everyone, with his happiness being their top priority. His father’s tyrannical nature wasn’t far behind either, with Edward allegedly ripping apart a falcon in a royal temper tantrum, feather by feather. He then went on to sanction the execution of both his uncles, coldly noting the events in his diary.

10. The boy king's suffering

It might be easier to list what Edward VI didn’t die of, his symptoms are so lengthy and grisly. During his reign he contracted smallpox that weakened his immune system, so he was susceptible to endless coughs, colds and fevers. Toward the end, Edward was coughing up foul-smelling bile, and his legs swelled so badly he had to remain in bed. His hair fell out, as did his nails (after turning black). When even just breathing became an issue he said he was glad to die, to end his terrible suffering. During his autopsy, putrefied ulcers were found on his lungs, leading to a modern diagnosis of tuberculosis.

11. The haunting of the Nine Day Queen

Lady Jane Grey was placed on the throne for nine days and was executed for it by Queen Mary – she was only a teenager. Her sad ghost is said to haunt the Tower of London on the anniversary of her death, wandering the battlements – sometimes with, sometimes without, her head. Her husband Guildford Dudley was executed with her, and his ghost can be heard weeping as he overlooks Tower Green to the chapel where he was buried. If you try and communicate with him, he only sits and stares out of the window, endless in his grief.

12. The scandalous Grey sisters

Jane Grey had two younger, lesser-known sisters, Katherine and Mary. Katherine courted endless drama by secretly marrying Edward Seymour, nephew to Henry VIII’s third queen, Jane. She became pregnant, enraging Elizabeth I, who duly sent her to the Tower. Katherine had a boy (cue more anger from Lizzie), and as both Katherine and Edward were at the Tower at the same time, she managed to get pregnant again, producing another boy.

Elizabeth’s rage was catastrophic – she separated the family, with Katherine dying not long after. Mary, having learnt nothing from her sister’s drama, also married secretly, to the queen’s Sergeant Porter, Thomas Keyes (the man responsible for the palace’s security). Equally incensed, Elizabeth separated them as well, with Mary never seeing her husband again.

13. Mary's phantom pregnancies

The entire court was ready for Queen Mary to have her first child in May, with her confinement starting in April 1555. She even invited her loathed sister Elizabeth to court, to watch herself get displaced in the succession. When no child came in May… or June, or even July, Mary was humiliated. She had all the symptoms of pregnancy, but no child to show for it. This happened again a few years later, with all the same pregnancy signs and Mary again convinced she was with child. It soon became clear she wasn’t pregnant but was likely at this point to be dying. Modern diagnosis offers possible pseudocyesis, dropsy, cysts or tumours.

14. Was Elizabeth I secretly a man?

Supposedly, when Elizabeth was nine years old, she was moved to the village of Bisley to avoid the plague. En route she sadly died, and her governess Kat Ashley had to make a decision – admit Elizabeth had passed away or replace her? For some mad reason Kat decided on the latter, and went into Bisley to find a suitable swap.

No girls matched the dead princess, so she selected a boy instead; he was of Elizabeth’s age and colouring, and the disguise supposedly worked well when he was dressed in Elizabeth’s attire. The king came to visit his daughter one day and didn’t catch the swap. Legend has it that Elizabeth Tudor was buried in the local church, and the Bisley Boy became Gloriana! Utterly untrue, but a great tale none the less.

15. The queen's gruesome teeth

Elizabeth adored sugar all her life and, as a result, her teeth gave her endless trouble, with toothache and abscesses being her constant companions. Once, Elizabeth became so irritable and ill with a particularly bad tooth that the Bishop of London offered to have one of his own removed, to show her how ‘painless’ it was! Elizabeth accepted, watching while the barber-surgeon plucked out a healthy tooth from the Bishop, finally agreeing to let him proceed with her.

Toward the end of her life, Elizabeth’s teeth become black with decay. To flatter their queen, her courtiers rubbed soot on their own teeth to match their monarch. She also lost so many teeth it made her face look quite hollow, so she resorted to stuffing her cheeks with bits of silk to pad them out and make her appear more youthful…though in the process, ambassadors reported she was terribly hard to understand.

16. The naughtiest duo of the Tudor court

Lettice Knollys was a cousin to Elizabeth and managed to enrage her like no woman had ever done before – she secretly married Elizabeth’s long-term favourite, Robert Dudley. Lettice’s disgrace knew no bounds, but Robert wormed his way back into the queen’s favour eventually. Lettice had a daughter Penelope, and in a strange dig at her rival, Elizabeth kept Penelope at court constantly, almost treating her like a surrogate daughter.

Her great favour with the queen became very useful when Penelope, having been wedded to a man she couldn’t stand, conducted quite a public affair with another courtier. Elizabeth usually frowned upon this disruption to the proper order of things, but as she had such a soft spot for Penelope, she let it slide.

17. The grisly death of Mary, Queen of Scots

After 19 years in prison, Mary, Queen of Scots met her end bravely. A scaffold had been erected and the headsman called to service. Blindfolded, she lay her head upon the block and ‘thwack’, down came the axe, not on her neck, but the back of her skull.

The headsman had to wrench it out and tried again; he didn’t quite make it, and had to saw the connective tissue holding Mary’s head to her body. Mary is meant to have cried out during the process, but hopefully she lost consciousness swiftly. When the head was eventually detached and held up to proclaim, ‘God save the Queen!’, it fell with a sickening thud to the floor, and the headsman was left holding Mary’s wig. It was then that the Scottish queen’s little dog came out from between her skirts, where it had been hiding during the ordeal. The little dog had to be washed as he was covered in his owner’s blood.

Elizabeth Goff is author of Bloody, Brilliant Tudors: 100 Tales of Gowns, Gossip and Gory Ends (The History Press, 2026)

]]> The curse of the Boleyns: how Anne's fall doomed her family https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-curse-of-the-boleyns-how-annes-fall-doomed-her-family/ Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:00:02 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-curse-of-the-boleyns-how-annes-fall-doomed-her-family/ The cultured charmer, the moneybags lord mayor, the powerful heiress, the scheming uncle. Anne’s colourful family shaped the mind and character of the future queen of England, as Tracy Borman reveals Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous women in history. Her story has been told countless times since her tragic demise almost 500 years ago. So determined was Henry VIII to make her his queen that he wrenched England away from Roman Catholic Europe and set in train a sweeping reformation that shaped the course of British history. But when Anne failed to give him a son, he had her executed on trumped-up charges of adultery and treason in 1536.

So far, so familiar. But though Anne’s turbulent relationship with England’s most-married monarch has been pored over for centuries, her backstory is relatively unknown. What – or, more precisely, who – made her into a woman so extraordinarily captivating that she held a king in thrall for seven long years and turned his entire kingdom upside down?

Humble roots

Though they rose to become one of the most powerful families in Tudor England, the Boleyns could boast neither royal blood nor aristocratic pedigree. They were likely of northern French descent, among numerous Norman families to settle in England after the conquest of 1066. The first known reference to the family is found in the deed for a small plot of land close to Norwich in 1188. The Boleyns remained in Norfolk for the next three centuries, where they made their living from the wool trade.

It was Geoffrey Boleyn (1406–63), Anne’s great-grandfather, who put the family on the map. He made a small fortune from his work as a hatter, and was appointed Master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. By 1451, he was so wealthy that he loaned Henry VI money for an expedition to France. Six years later, he was elected Lord Mayor of London. To signal his prestige, Geoffrey purchased several properties, including the manors of Blickling in north Norfolk and Hever in Kent.

Geoffrey’s son William propelled the Boleyns into royal circles when he entered the service of Richard III, who made him a knight of the Bath at his coronation in 1483. William also made an advantageous marriage to Margaret Butler, daughter and co-heiress of the seventh Earl of Ormond, a prominent Irish nobleman.

With a deftness that characterised the Boleyns’ rise to power, when Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, William declared his allegiance to the new king.

• Read more | What did Elizabeth I really think about Anne Boleyn? These secret symbols might unlock the truth

William also invested heavily in the education of his eldest son and heir, Thomas. Aged about eight when Henry VII took the throne, Thomas grew into a charming and cultured young man who soon won favour at court. Upon the death of his father in 1505, he became the head of the family and led the Boleyns to the apogee of their power. At Henry VIII’s accession in 1509, he was created a Knight of the Garter and an esquire of the new king’s privy chamber.

By then, Thomas was married with a growing family. Like his father, he had chosen a high-ranking bride. Elizabeth Howard was the eldest daughter of Thomas Howard, later the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and was appointed to serve Catherine of Aragon, the widow of Prince Arthur, whom Henry had married soon after becoming king. “She brought me every year a child,” Thomas said of Elizabeth, though only three survived to adulthood: Mary, Anne and George.

Two small brass crosses mark the burial places of Henry and Thomas Boleyn (junior) – one in the church next to Hever, the other close to Penshurst Place, the seat of Thomas Boleyn’s rival Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. (It’s thought that Thomas Jr may have been sent to Penshurst to receive an education.) There is no other record of the two boys or of Anne’s relationship with her lost brothers, assuming she knew them at all. The size of the crosses suggests that they died in their infancy – a reminder of the fragility of life in Tudor England.

The Boleyn children were raised at Blickling Hall and Hever Castle, though the latter soon became the principal family seat. Judging from the date of his first appearance at court around 1514, George seems to have been the youngest, and Mary was later referred to as the elder of the two daughters, though their birth dates are unclear.

• Read more | Five shocking tales from Britain’s royal palaces

It is also not clear how much time Anne spent with her mother, but they are thought to have been close. Elizabeth would have superintended her children’s early education, juggling that with her service at court. There was a rumour that Elizabeth was briefly the mistress of Henry VIII, but this is not substantiated by any reliable evidence, and Henry himself later denied it, exclaiming: “Never with the mother!”

From a young age, Anne and Mary were schooled in the accomplishments expected of young women at the time, including music and dancing, embroidery and religion. They were also taught literature and languages – the latter being something in which Anne excelled. Her father proudly noted that she was exceptionally “toward”.

Thomas played an important role in Anne’s education, and his humanist beliefs may have influenced her curriculum. He was a progressive thinker and espoused the emerging fashion for educating daughters, not just sons, as famously advocated by
his fellow courtiers Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.

Dazzling opportunity

In 1513, when Anne was probably around 12 years old, her father secured her a dazzling opportunity. She was sent to the palace of Mechelen in Brabant (a region now spanning parts of Belgium and the Netherlands) to join the court of Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands.

It was an education like no other, and profoundly shaped Anne’s outlook, accomplishments and intellect. Her new mistress was a woman who wielded real power in a male-dominated world. Years later, when a queen-in-waiting, Anne remodelled York Place in London on Margaret’s palace at Mechelen, creating the Palace of Whitehall.

Anne remained in close contact with the household at Hever throughout her years abroad. A letter she wrote to her father in around 1514 still survives. As well as showing off her new mastery of French, she assured Thomas that absence had made her heart grow fonder: “I promise you that my love is based on such great strength that it will never grow less.”

Anne’s courtly training continued when her father arranged for her to serve in the French court with her sister. While Mary enjoyed the glittering social life and is rumoured to have become a mistress of King Francis I, Anne preferred the company of his sister, Marguerite of Navarre. An intellectual powerhouse, Marguerite argued for the reform of the Catholic church and was a fierce advocate for female authority. The teenaged Anne soaked all this up like a sponge. By the time she left France in 1521, she was a changed young woman.

Back at Hever, another Margaret exerted a profound influence on Anne: her paternal grandmother, Lady Margaret Butler. Hers was one of the most powerful noble families in Ireland, and Margaret inherited considerable estates upon the death of her father, the 7th Earl of Ormond, in 1515. She was thus a rare example of a wealthy and independent woman in an age dominated by men.

Four years after coming into her inheritance, though, Margaret was suddenly declared insane and deprived of her lands. Whether she really was suffering from a mental illness (or, perhaps, dementia – by then she was aged about 65) is uncertain. Either way, it served as a salutary reminder to Anne of just how precarious a woman’s position could be.

Anne was also influenced by her elder sister, Mary – albeit as an example of what not to do. Returning from France some time before Anne, Mary took up a position in the household of Catherine of Aragon. In 1520, she married William Carey, a gentleman of Henry VIII’s privy chamber, but around that time she almost certainly began an affair with the king. It isn’t clear how long their liaison lasted, but Henry was rumoured to have been the father of at least one of Mary’s children. He neither acknowledged this nor made any provision for Mary once their affair ended. She was simply discarded, her reputation in ruins. It was a lesson Anne never forgot.

A shock proposal

Anne made her debut at the English court early in 1522, after her father secured her a place in Queen Catherine’s household. This exotic arrival from the French court was soon the talk of London. Her intellect, accomplishments and style made the other ladies of Henry’s court appear positively pedestrian. She danced and sang better than any of them and, though not conventionally beautiful, her charisma and self-confidence quickly attracted a legion of male admirers.

Anne’s self-serving uncle Thomas Howard, later Duke of Norfolk, tried to engineer a marriage with James Butler, her cousin and heir to the Earl of Ormond, which prompted the first in a series of clashes with his niece. Norfolk later ranted that Anne would be “the ruin of her whole family”. When it came to the Boleyns, blood wasn’t always thicker than water.

At least initially, the king himself appeared immune to Anne’s charms, and it was not until 1526 that he declared his interest in her. It was at this time that Hever Castle became Anne’s refuge. Contrary to the popular image of her father as a grasping courtier who pushed her into the king’s path to further his own ambitions, the evidence suggests that Thomas tried to protect Anne from Henry’s advances. Whenever his royal master became too overbearing, he arranged for his younger daughter to seek sanctuary at the family home. But the more Anne retreated to Hever, the more determinedly Henry pursued her.

When Anne went to stay at Hever for Christmas in 1526, she received a letter from the king. It was very different to his usual billets-doux: astonishingly, he proposed marriage. This must have sent shockwaves through the castle. Henry already had a wife – one who was greatly revered throughout England. But he claimed that his marriage to Catherine was unlawful and had been cursed by God, as evidenced by the fact that they had no living son.

Henry spent the next seven years trying to convince Pope Clement VII to grant an annulment of his marriage. For much of this time, Anne flitted between the court and Hever. She was attended by both her mother and her sister-in-law, Jane, who married George Boleyn around 1524. By contrast, Anne saw little of her sister, Mary, and later banished her from court for marrying William Stafford, a lowly soldier, claiming that it had brought disgrace on the Boleyns.

At home at Hever

The Boleyn family's manor has its own rich tale

The external form of the Boleyns’ family seat, Hever Castle in Kent, is thought to date from the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Two years after  Wat Tyler led a rebellion sparked by onerous taxation, John de Cobham – a wealthy landowner and tax collector – was granted a licence by Richard II to fortify his manor of Hever Cobham, presumably fearing future uprisings targeting tax collectors. He built high sandstone walls around the original manor house, as well as three portcullises and a moat. Hever was purchased in 1462 by Geoffrey and Thomas Boleyn. Soon afterwards, Geoffrey bought out his brother and took sole ownership. He renamed the manor Hever Castle, and proceeded to establish it as a luxurious family home complete with private reception rooms, fashionable oriel windows and fireplaces, and a remodelled great hall.

Geoffrey didn’t enjoy his new home for long because he died just a year later. His younger son, William, inherited Hever, among other manors, but spent most of his time at the Boleyns’ Norfolk seat, Blickling Hall. It was William’s son Thomas who established Hever as the principal Boleyn residence around 1505, almost certainly because of its convenient location. As one of Henry VIII’s most trusted diplomats, Thomas was sent on numerous missions overseas, and Hever was within easy reach of both Dover and the court in London. After the death in 1539 of both Thomas and his mother, Margaret, Hever passed into the possession of Henry VIII, who granted his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, the use of it during her lifetime. She seems to have taken a shine to the childhood home of her namesake and predecessor. She made substantial additions to the castle, including a new entrance hall and long gallery. The ownership of Hever changed hands several times over the following centuries, eventually falling into a poor state of repair. In 1903, it was acquired and restored by the American millionaire William Waldorf Astor. Much of the interior visitors see today is Astor’s creation, though the Boleyn apartments have recently been restored to their appearance in Anne’s heyday.

Source of solace

George was a constant source of solace and companionship to Anne. Like his father, he was a favourite of the king and rose rapidly through the ranks once his sister had caught Henry’s eye. George shared Anne’s reformist views, and they both imported radical religious texts from abroad that might have had them condemned as heretics.

Supported by her brother, Anne brought her influence to bear on Henry, persuading him that a king should be subject to no authority but God’s – a view that made the pope an irrelevance. Henry had the justification he needed to break with Rome and push through the annulment. In January 1533, he married Anne in a secret ceremony at Whitehall. Eustace Chapuys, ambassador to England from the Holy Roman Empire and a prolific letter-writer, claimed that both her parents were in attendance.

• Read more | What did Anne Boleyn REALLY look like? Our new research could change everything

Anne’s coronation on 1 June 1533 was – literally – the crowning glory of the Boleyns’ meteoric rise. But it was not long before cracks began to appear in her marriage. Things went from bad to worse in September 1533 when Anne gave birth to a daughter, the future Elizabeth I, rather than the hoped-for son. Over the following two and a half years she suffered a series of miscarriages, the last of them in January 1536. By then, her relationship with Henry had deteriorated so badly that he was seen to “shrink from her” in private.

End of the line

The end came in May that year, when Anne was arrested on trumped-up charges of adultery. Among her five alleged lovers was her brother George. The siblings were swiftly condemned and executed.

Their grief-stricken parents left court immediately. Elizabeth Boleyn died in the London home of Hugh Faringdon, Abbot of Reading, in April 1538. Her husband, Thomas, retreated to Hever, where he lived out his days in obscurity. He returned briefly to court in October 1537 to attend the christening of Henry VIII’s “precious jewel”, Prince Edward, born to the king’s third wife, Jane Seymour, who had replaced Anne. Thomas died at Hever in March 1539, shortly followed by his by then elderly mother, Margaret.

Anne’s former sister-in-law, Jane, who has traditionally – and unjustly – been blamed for testifying against her, went on to serve three more of Henry VIII’s wives. She was executed in February 1542 for aiding and abetting the adulterous liaisons of Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife.

The last of the Boleyns to survive was Anne’s sister Mary. Scant evidence for her life after 1534 survives, but the fact that her father bequeathed her some lands at Hever suggests that they were reconciled before his death. Mary died in July 1543, probably at her marital home, Rochford Hall in Essex.

Yet the family’s fortune would rise again, phoenix-like, from the ashes. Against all odds, Anne’s daughter Elizabeth became the longest-reigning and most successful of the Tudors. And the Boleyn bloodline endures even today, as King Charles III is a direct descendant of Mary Boleyn.

This article was first published in the July 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

]]> 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.

• Read more | Why did Henry VIII send Anne Boleyn to the block?

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.”

• Read more | Queens of bling: the importance of jewellery to Henry VIII's six wives

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.

• Read more | Tudors in turmoil: deciphering Hans Holbein’s masterwork The Ambassadors

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

]]> What was the most important year in history? We asked 9 experts – and this is what they said https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-was-the-most-important-year-in-history-we-asked-9-experts-and-this-is-what-they-said/ Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:30:15 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-was-the-most-important-year-in-history-we-asked-9-experts-and-this-is-what-they-said/ Our crack team of historians, broadcasters and authors offer their takes on a conundrum that continues to divide opinions AD 1000

Norse power: when worlds collide

This moment is surely imbued with the most global symbolism. It was when, according to the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, adventurers sailed across the north Atlantic from settlements on the west coast of Greenland to the edge of the North American continent. There they met inhabitants of coastal regions of what’s now Canada: ancestors of peoples such as the Beothuk and Algonquin. The circle of humanity was closed for the first time in recorded history.

In the 1960s, archaeologists found a Norse overwintering site at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. This backed up what the sagas had already described: a series of voyages west from Greenland, the discovery of new lands and resources, and increasingly violent encounters with the people they called Skrælingar – an unpleasant name meaning ‘wretched ones’. These cross-cultural encounters began promisingly enough, with red cloth and dairy products traded for animal pelts. Eventually, though, relations disintegrated into distrust, violence and murder – an uneasy foreshadowing of what would follow centuries later.

This is, of course, a moment of retrospective significance. Those voyagers didn’t realise that they had reached an entirely new continent. Their expeditions did not make big news around the world. For me, that makes this moment in history even more interesting. Because when we’re being carried along by the churning currents of time, it’s not always possible to tell which events and dates will mean the most to those looking back.

Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024)

1066

Conquest, castles, class shifts and chivalry

For British history, at least, the answer is 1066. This might seem surprising to people who remember only the battle of Hastings, the death of King Harold and the accession of William the Conqueror, but the regime change that followed the Norman takeover went far beyond just a new royal dynasty. As Domesday Book shows, by 1086 the old ruling class of Anglo-Saxon England had been replaced almost entirely, and more than 90 per cent of the land was now held by continental newcomers.

This had an immediate effect on the country’s physical appearance. Castles, which had hardly existed in England at all before 1066, were constructed in their hundreds. Cathedrals and abbeys were ripped down and rebuilt in a new Romanesque style. Notoriously, the north was brutally harried into submission and turned into a desert. Less perceptibly, but even more importantly in the long run, the Conquest also introduced new ideas about how society should be regulated. Slavery, which had been commonplace among the Anglo-Saxons, disappeared over the next half-century. The custom of sparing the life of a defeated opponent became the new norm among the ruling elite.

The rapid adoption of these new attitudes by the English set them apart from their insular neighbours, who continued to slaughter their enemies and practise war as slave-hunt. The novel perception of the Welsh, Scots and Irish as uncivilised barbarians was a direct result of the Norman conquest, and fuelled the aggressive English colonisation of those countries in the centuries that followed.

Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster

• Read more | Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066

1945

World war, international aftermath

At a global scale, the Second World War was the most momentous period in history. So it follows that the year of its conclusion – 1945 – was the most important year.

The list of transformations that took place because of that war is truly astonishing. There were massive advances in computer technology, radio technology, plastics research, jet planes, rocket science and the production of antibiotics. Nuclear power quite literally exploded into our consciousness in 1945. Super Glue was discovered during the war, as was the technology behind microwave ovens. And it was the final victory in 1945 that allowed such innovations to be released from the secrecy of wartime and into the wider world.

Alongside new technologies came huge social and geopolitical changes. It was in 1945 that today’s map of Europe was drawn during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. At the same time, the communist takeover of eastern Europe began. This was the year when the nations of Asia and Africa, inspired by wartime rhetoric, began their final push towards decolonisation. The international order was reborn with the establishment of the United Nations that summer, and a whole network of affiliated organisations followed. The list goes on.

The Second World War cast a shadow on the world so long that it still affects us to this day. The memory of 1945, and of all that it represents, is preserved in our culture of storytelling, movie-making and novel writing, and we still commemorate it annually. No other single year in history has ever held such power over us – nor is ever likely to do so again.

Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)

31 BC

Actium: turning the tide of Roman history

At noon on 2 September 31 BC, Marcus Agrippa stood aboard his flagship and gazed towards the Greek promontory of Actium. Some 60 of his enemy’s warships were speeding over the Ionian waves in the direction of the 400 vessels led by him and Octavian, who was watching from an advantageous point on land. Those approaching were part of the fleet of 230 led by Mark Antony, Octavian’s former Roman ally, and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt.

As they reached the melee, Cleopatra’s ships sailed straight into the middle of the battle line – and for a moment it seemed as if the tide might turn. Instead, they surged straight through and into the open sea: Cleopatra was escaping. Panicked, Mark Antony abandoned his flagship and followed her with several smaller vessels, leaving their remaining fleet to face the onslaught alone. Surrender followed.

At the time of the battle, the Roman empire was divided between Octavian in the west and Mark Antony in the east. With the suicides of Cleopatra and Mark Antony in 30 BC following their defeat at Actium, Octavian became sole ruler of Rome and conqueror of Egypt. Three years later, the Roman senate conferred on Octavian the title Augustus, officially marking the end of the Republic and the start of the Roman empire.

Had Antony prevailed, Rome’s centre might have shifted eastwards. Alexandria might have become a second capital, Rome’s ambitions would likely have turned towards Mesopotamia and Persia rather than Germania and Britannia, and today Europe might instead have a Greek rather than Latin language base.

Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author

1453

Bye bye Byzantines, all hail the Ottomans

It is, of course, an impossible task to select one specific year. Momentous happenings do occur, but they’re made possible by structural changes – political, economic, cultural – over many decades or even centuries. Having said that, I’d pick 1453. That was the year in which the Hundred Years’ War ended – but also, even more significantly, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. That marked the end of the Byzantine empire – the last remnant of the Roman realm – which had lasted for more than 1,000 years.

The city became the capital of the growing Ottoman empire, which endured until 1922 as a major global power. The religious make-up of the region changed dramatically, though it remained a melting pot of peoples of different cultures and faiths. The fall of Constantinople led to an influx of Greek scholars to Europe, who brought deep learning and fresh ideas that added extra stimulus to the Renaissance.

It also represented a tectonic shift in global geopolitics, changing the balance of power in the Middle East and radically reconfiguring trade routes between Europe and Asia. Some argue that growing complications involved in trading along overland routes through Eurasia stimulated European Atlantic exploration. It also contributed to a reconfiguration of the medieval slave trade. As it became harder for European traders to traffic people via the Black Sea, they turned increasingly to the coast of west Africa – fuelling the growth of one of the most appalling and tragic phenomena in human history.

Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford

1533

The wedding that reshaped England’s religious, social and political life

It’s for good reason that the dawn of the Tudor era has widely been considered to mark the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern age. The 118 years when this celebrated dynasty occupied the throne witnessed unprecedented change in every aspect of English life. And no single year was more transformative than 1533.

In 1527, Henry VIII had first petitioned the pope for an annulment from wife number one, Catherine of Aragon. He was driven by his all-consuming desire for a son and his obsession with Anne Boleyn, a woman of his wife’s household who had told him that if he wanted her, he’d have to put a ring on it.

Henry eventually took matters into his own hands by breaking with Rome and setting up a new Church of England, with himself as the supreme head. On 25 January 1533, he married Anne Boleyn. In May, his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was formally annulled and Anne was confirmed as his legitimate queen by the archbishop of Canterbury. She was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 1 June, by which time she was visibly pregnant. On 7 September, the new queen gave birth – not to the hoped-for son but to a daughter, the future Elizabeth I.

This proved to be the beginning of the end for Anne. But her marriage to Henry had sparked a seismic shift in England’s religious, political and social life that would reverberate down the centuries. It also produced a monarch who ruled for longer than any of her Tudor predecessors and blazed a trail for future queens regnant.

Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster

• Read more | Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn: the Tudor queen’s undying love for her mother

1858

Dawn of the Information Age

On 16 August 1858, Queen Victoria sent a message to US president James Buchanan. Ordinarily, it would have taken about 10 days for such a communication to cross the Atlantic by ship – but this one arrived in only 16 hours. It was sent to mark the connection of the first transatlantic telegraph cable – a direct line between the Old World and the New.

Shorter connections had already been completed between Britain and mainland Europe, including a cross-channel line in 1850, but the Atlantic presented a tougher challenge. For years, engineers including Samuel Morse had debated whether it was possible to lay 2,500 miles of cable beneath the ocean. The first attempt in 1857 failed when the line snapped. But now, at last, it was done. Some commentators hailed it as the Eighth Wonder of the World. An excited newspaper in Boston announced simply: “THERE IS NO MORE SEA!”

This first transatlantic cable failed after only three weeks, and it wasn’t until 1866 that a permanent line was established. But a precedent had been set: it would now be possible to connect every corner of world in an ever more extensive network of telegraph cables, eventually allowing huge volumes of information to pulse around the globe at previously unimaginable speeds.

It was many years later before this vision was fully realised, but in 1858 we see the beginning of the new Information Age – a recognisably modern moment that culminated in the arrival of the internet.

Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University

1917

When revolution reshaped alliances, identities and ambitions

In this pivotal year, Russia stopped fighting in the First World War and the US entered it. Neither country ranked much as a world power at the time, but wartime actions sparked global transformations. President Woodrow Wilson’s championing of international cooperation and American-style democracy (universal in rhetoric but deeply racialised in practice) signalled US ambitions for the world stage.

But the big story was Russia: its economy shattered by the war, its people toppled the tsar in March (February in the Julian calendar then in use), setting the stage for the Bolsheviks to seize power in November (Julian: October). The Russian Revolution – the most important event of the 20th century – was complete by the end of 1917, and the Soviet Union was secured by 1922.

Neither the civil rights movement nor decolonial struggles would have unfolded as they did without the Soviet Union, whether as foil or ally. In the US, for example, communist organising and Soviet propaganda forced segregationists to either justify or modify their system of racial division. In the world subject to European empire, Soviet communism offered intellectual and material resources to anticolonial nationalists.

Cold War historians tend to focus on the ascendant US and its Soviet nemesis duking it out for global hegemony via conflicts in Latin America, Africa and Asia. More salient are the ways in which the revolutionary model and the revolutionary challenge pushed communities, groups and nations to articulate who they were and who they wished to be. The Russian Revolution helped remake the world – and we live out its legacy.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University

• Read more | Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s all to do with the Vikings

490 BC

Marathon: a victory for democracy

Six decades after Cyrus the Great had founded the Achaemenid empire, the Persian forces of King Darius I – also ‘the Great’ – were pushing west to conquer all of Greece. Their primary aim was to lay waste to Athens, which had had the temerity to support a revolt against the empire that by then controlled swathes of the region. But they hadn’t banked on the determination and tactical nous of their opponents.

By September 490 BC, the Persian fleet had landed on the coast of Attica about 17 miles north-east of Athens, its troops disembarking onto the plain of Marathon. Around 10,000 Athenian men mustered in the surrounding hills, joined by 1,000 from Plataea – but were still vastly outnumbered.

On learning that the Persian cavalry was absent, Greek warriors led by Athenian general Miltiades swept down on the enemy. Against the odds, the Persian troops were routed – reputedly at the cost of only 192 Athenian dead. This was a critical moment in ancient history: it gave confidence to the Greeks that they could stand up to the mighty Persian empire and, thanks to their part in the victory, the Athenians emerged as the most important polis in Greece. It also provided momentum for Athens’ emerging democracy.

In the mid-19th century, English philosopher John Stuart Mill claimed that “as an event in English history, the battle of Marathon was more important than the battle of Hastings” because Greek (and, particularly, Athenian) victory in that clash was so linked to the development of democracy.

Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick

This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

]]> The SECRETS of Anne Boleyn's most treasured possession https://www.historyextra.com/membership/anne-boleyn-prayer-book-hever-video/ Fri, 09 Jan 2026 08:05:54 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/anne-boleyn-prayer-book-hever-video/ Discover the prayer book that Anne Boleyn carried around "like a handbag", as Dr Owen Emerson and Professor Kate Williams get closer to Anne’s treasured Book of Hours, a personal prayer book on display at Hever Castle Get closer to a remarkable Tudor artefact, as Dr Owen Emerson and Professor Kate Williams get closer to Anne Boleyn’s treasured Book of Hours, a personal prayer book on display at Hever Castle.

Including illustrations and prayers to be conducted at different times of day, this Book of Hours would have governed Anne Boleyn’s daily schedule – and it even features Anne’s handwriting. Discover the marginalia that shows how the doomed queen turned to the book for solace in times of tumult – from when she was close to death from a disease known as the Sweating Sickness, to the fearful moments when she waited for King Henry VIII to decide her fate.

View Green Video on the source website]]> Porpoise for breakfast and late night sex visits: Henry VIII's life in a day https://www.historyextra.com/membership/porpoise-for-breakfast-and-late-night-sex-visits-henry-viiis-life-in-a-day/ Fri, 05 Dec 2025 17:00:37 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/porpoise-for-breakfast-and-late-night-sex-visits-henry-viiis-life-in-a-day/ Ever wondered what Tudor England’s most famous monarch ate for breakfast? (Or whether breakfast was even a thing?) Tracy Borman examines Henry VIII’s daily routine – and sexual proclivities – during the year that he married Anne Boleyn The year 1533 was a big one for Henry VIII. It began with his secret marriage to Anne Boleyn, followed a few months later by the annulment of his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The new queen was crowned in June, then in September she gave birth to the future Elizabeth I, rather than the hoped-for male heir. And as if that wasn’t enough, the Reformation parliament passed radical religious legislation that would separate the country from Rome and make Henry supreme head of the new Church of England.

Amidst these seismic events, however, Henry’s daily life continued much as it had done during the previous 24 years of his reign. The Tudor court ran according to a strict routine, and nothing – not even the pope in Rome – could disrupt it.

In the early years of his reign, when Henry was at the peak of his youthful vigour, he would rise at the crack of dawn and go hunting for several hours – sometimes until dusk. The courtier and diplomat Richard Pace reported to Cardinal Wolsey that, during the summer, the “King rises daily, except on holy days, at 4 or 5 o’clock and hunts till 9 or 10 at night”. Henry would get up later in the colder months, typically at around eight o’clock.

But those carefree days had diminished by 1533. The king was paying much closer attention to affairs of state and was no longer living “in continuous festival”, as his first wife had put it in the early days of their marriage. Nevertheless, Henry still spent a decent amount of each day indulging in physical pursuits. Now in his early forties, he was almost as full of energy as he had been in his youth.

An “improbably large codpiece”

To get Henry ready for whatever the day held, his privy chamber staff had to rise even earlier than he did. Having cleaned the king’s chambers, the grooms would wake the esquires of the body, who slept in the ‘pallet chamber’ next door to the royal bedchamber. The esquires would enter their royal master’s bedchamber to “array him and dress him in his [under]clothes”, which were strewn with fresh herbs to keep them sweet-smelling.

Having been “loosely dressed” by his esquires, Henry would step into the privy chamber so that his six gentlemen could complete the ceremony of robing with whichever garments he had chosen for that day. Henry loved to show off his physique – as well as his riches – in the quality and quantity of the cloth from which his garments were fashioned. His broad shoulders were emphasised by padded and embroidered sleeves, the curve of his calf muscles was shown off to best effect by white silk hose, and his improbably large codpiece symbolised his masculinity and power. Clearly, he pulled it off. The Venetian ambassador, Sebastiano Guistinian, described Henry as “the best dressed sovereign in the world”.

Hair, ear wax and urine

When the king was dressed for the day, his barber would begin shaving his royal master and dressing his hair. He had to be a man of infinite trustworthiness: after all, he would be holding sharp blades to the king’s throat! During the early years of his reign, Henry was clean-shaven, as Catherine of Aragon preferred. But what she liked mattered less by 1533, when he sported a fine beard, which the barber would ensure was neatly trimmed.

• Read more | The swordplay’s the thing: Henry VIII's Masters of Defence and the thrilling world of 16th-century fencing

Luxury pervaded the business of hairdressing and shaving, as it did every other element of Henry’s daily routine. Inventories of his possessions list silver basins for shaving and facecloths trimmed with black silk, as well as a comb of “gold garnished with… stones and pearl”, a toothpick case of gold, and an “ear pick of silver”. Among the many gifts that the king had showered Anne Boleyn with during their courtship was a gold ear wax scoop. Who says romance is dead?

Next up, Henry would be examined by one of his team of physicians. They came armed with bladder-shaped flasks for inspecting the king’s urine and would also examine his stools. In submitting himself to the frequent attentions of his medics, the king was following royal protocol – after all, a sovereign’s health was of the utmost importance to the state. But Henry had always been prone to hypochondria and would be thrown into a panic at any sign of illness at court. The French ambassador described him as “the most timid person in such matters you could meet”.

Mrs Cornwallis’s sweet treats

Having been washed, groomed, dressed and examined, the king was at last ready to go out into the court. The first meal of the day was generally served at around 10.30 or 11 o’clock, although sometimes it was as late as midday (breakfast was not a thing until the reign of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth). This was known as ‘dinner’ and was substantial enough to maintain the king and his courtiers until late afternoon. It comprised an array of different meats, such as boar, pork, lamb and venison, as well as game birds like pheasant and rabbit, swan and more unusual fare like conger eel and porpoise. The king had a sweet tooth, too, and regularly gorged on custards, fritters, tarts, jelly, cream of almonds and quince marmalade. His favourite confectioner was a woman named Mrs Cornwallis, whom he rewarded with a fine house close to the Tower of London.

In contrast to the popular image of Henry seated at the top table of a great feast, devouring endless chicken legs and throwing the bones over his shoulder, he was a very fastidious eater and preferred to take his meals in private. He didn’t like to linger over his meals, either, because he was impatient to get on with his day.

WATCH | Kate Williams discusses the origins of Henry VIII's vast leisure complex, Hampton Court Palace

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Hunting, archery, bowling and tennis took up several hours. Sir William Kingston, who was a regular at Henry’s court (and was later Anne Boleyn’s gaoler at the Tower), observed that even after more than 20 years on the throne: “The king hawks every day with goshawks and others… both before noon and after.” Having practised these sporting pursuits from childhood, Henry was highly skilled, particularly at tennis. The Venetian ambassador enthused: “It is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play.”

“Tedious and painful”

The distinction between work and play was blurred during Henry’s reign. He would discuss politics with ambassadors and ministers while enjoying a game of bowls or practising archery, and would hold more private audiences with his advisors while being dressed or undressed, taking his meals or bathing.

The privy council was the beating heart of Henry’s government and would meet almost every day at around noon. By 1533, Henry was attending those meetings much more frequently than during the carefree early years of his reign. They would discuss all the most pressing matters of the day – of which there was no shortage in the year that the king rid himself of one wife, took another and separated England from Roman Catholic Europe. Thomas Cromwell was the most influential member of the privy council and worked closely with Henry, often holding private meetings with the king.

• Read more | The lie of succession: did James I steal Elizabeth I's crown?

Supper was served between three and four o’clock each afternoon and would typically comprise soups, pottage, roasted meats, tarts, custards, fruits, nuts and cheeses. If Henry was peckish in the evening, his cooks would prepare a snack known as a ‘rear night’ or ‘all night’, which was usually served between eight and nine o’clock.

Henry was renowned for his piety and spent a significant part of every day in worship. One ambassador reported: “He hears three masses daily when he hunts and sometimes five on other days.” This had been encouraged by his first wife, a devout Roman Catholic. By contrast, Anne Boleyn was a reformer and introduced Henry to radical religious texts that encouraged him to break from obedience to Rome. Although he admitted to finding writing “tedious and painful”, the king was a voracious reader, and his private library was filled with classical and theological texts from across the world.

Long trips to the loo

Every so often, the king would take a bath in his private apartments. But the leading physicians of the age cautioned against regular bathing in hot water because it opened the pores and allowed deadly diseases such as the plague, sweating sickness and smallpox to enter the body. Instead, cold water was used for washing the king’s hands and face first thing in the morning and before and after every meal. Even if Henry’s baths were infrequent, they were predictably luxurious. At the palaces of Richmond and Whitehall, Henry had steam baths installed, fragments of which are still preserved at Hampton Court.

Henry had his own private close stool (a type of portable toilet) in each palace. His ‘stool chambers’ at Greenwich and Hampton Court were kitted out with pictures and bookshelves to keep the king amused during the long hours that he spent there. His close stools were covered in embroidered velvet, stuffed with swan’s-down and studded with gilt nails.

To emphasise his magnificence, Henry staged lavish evening entertainments at court. His Master of the Revels devised plays, pageants and musical interludes to be performed in front of the king and his guests. Some of the more ambitious set-pieces involved mock battles and the famous ‘Château Vert’ pageant of 1522, when a certain young lady called Anne Boleyn made her first appearance at Henry’s court. As well as being an accomplished musician, Henry loved to show off on the dance floor. He “exercised himself daily in dancing” and “does wonders and leaps like a stag”, reported an astonished onlooker.

Most evenings, the king and his courtiers would indulge in gambling. Huge sums would be won and lost at cards, dice and board games. Between the years 1529 and 1532, Henry squandered a staggering £3,243 (equivalent to £2.36 million today). But there was always a jester or ‘fool’ on hand to cheer the king after his losses. Henry’s favourite fool was Will Somer, who entered his service in 1525 and kept the king entertained for the next 20 years. It was said that “in all the court few men were more beloved than was this fool”.

Henry’s bedroom antics

The king rarely retired before midnight, “which is our accustomed hour at court to go to bed”. An elaborate ceremony of disrobing began as soon as he stepped into the bedchamber. His gentlemen and esquires of the body would carefully untie, unbuckle and remove every item of clothing and then put on his nightgown. Another attendant would bring a basin of water and a cloth so that he could wash his face and clean his teeth. The king’s body servants would then comb his hair and cover it with a ‘night-bonnet’ of scarlet or black embroidered velvet before helping him into bed and lighting a candle next to it. Their work complete, all but one of the privy chamber attendants bowed low and backed out of the room, leaving their royal master to his rest.

Every detail of this protracted routine would be observed each night without fail. It only differed when Henry chose to visit his wife. On such occasions, he would summon his grooms of the chamber, who would dress him in his nightrobe and escort him with lighted torches to the door of the queen’s bedchamber. The king would rarely spend the night there, though, and would return to his own bedchamber once his, erm, ‘business’ there had been concluded.

But given that Anne Boleyn was almost certainly pregnant at the time she married Henry in January 1533, these conjugal visits would have been rare or non-existent until she gave birth in September. The wisdom of the day dictated that sex during pregnancy was harmful to the unborn child, so instead Henry found comfort with other women.

This caused the first serious rift between the newlyweds in August 1533, when Anne was about to enter her ‘confinement’ – the month-long period when a royal wife would live in complete seclusion to await the birth of her child. “The king’s affection for her [Anne] is less than it was”, reported the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys. “He now shows himself in love with another lady, and many nobles are assisting him in the affair.” When she heard of this, Anne was “very jealous” and confronted her royal husband. To her dismay, rather than offering placatory assurances, he spat back that she must “shut her eyes and endure” as more “worthy” persons had done. Henry’s affection for his new wife took another nose-dive when she gave birth to a daughter (the future Elizabeth I) on 7 September, rather than the hoped-for son.

• Read more | Inside the six wives' bedchamber: the stories of Tudor ladies-in-waiting

Adultery, treason and execution

As the year 1533 drew to a close, the court moved to Greenwich for the Christmas celebrations. “The King’s Grace kept great court, as merry and lusty as ever”, one guest observed. There was a good reason for Henry to be cheerful: Anne Boleyn was pregnant once more. Her New Year gift to the king was an exquisite table fountain of gold, studded with rubies, diamonds and pearls. Designed by Hans Holbein, it featured three naked women standing at the foot of a fountain, water issuing forth from their nipples – a clear allusion to her impending motherhood.

WATCH | HistoryExtra's Kev Lochun explores the story of the wife of Henry VIII who had a lucky escape

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Sadly, the queen lost the child a few months later and miscarried twice more in the two years that followed. The king, who in the early days of their courtship had been so enraptured that he had overturned his entire kingdom in order to marry Anne, now “shrank from her”. In May 1536, Anne was condemned on trumped-up charges of adultery, incest and treason and executed.

Earlier that year, Henry had suffered a serious accident whilst jousting, which brought the physical activities that had filled so many of his days at court to an abrupt end. Plagued by pain and humiliated by his expanding girth, this most famous of kings became the bloated tyrant of legend.

]]> Married three times by the age of 15: Margaret Beaufort, the woman who birthed the Tudor Dynasty https://www.historyextra.com/membership/married-three-times-by-the-age-of-15-margaret-beaufort-the-woman-who-birthed-the-tudor-dynasty/ Mon, 01 Dec 2025 09:00:03 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/married-three-times-by-the-age-of-15-margaret-beaufort-the-woman-who-birthed-the-tudor-dynasty/ The mother of Henry VII is often characterised as a domineering woman who plotted her son’s rise to the throne. But how true is that depiction? Lauren Johnson explores the life of the founding matriarch of the Tudor dynasty In March 1457, a short, slight widow left Pembroke Castle to embark on a 100-mile journey across territories stalked by civil war and pestilence. Her husband had died only four months earlier, carried off by plague contracted during imprisonment at another Welsh castle during the spurts of Yorkist resistance that marked the early Wars of the Roses. It was just weeks since she had given birth – a traumatic labour, endured without her family or support network. But she set out now to Newport with a firm sense of purpose. She would protect herself in one of the only ways a woman could at that time: by finding another husband.

This widow and mother was Margaret Beaufort. She was 13 years old.

The newborn she left at Pembroke would, in 1485, become King Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch. Reading history backwards, it has become fashionable to portray Margaret as an obsessive, Machiavellian mother so consumed by the idea of her son’s divine right to the throne that she would commit child murder to bring it about. She, it is insinuated, was the true assassin of the princes in the Tower who threatened the claim of her “good and gracious prince, king and only beloved son”. But this interpretation is entirely fictional, and mired in misogynist oversimplification. Margaret did not aspire to a crown, either for her son or herself, until the unprecedented events of the Wars of the Roses made it essential for their survival.

Child bride

The notion that Margaret’s child might inherit the throne would have been laughable in 1457. The king then was Henry VI (a Lancastrian), who had a healthy son and myriad cousins sharing his royal blood. In contrast, the Beauforts were products of an illicit liaison generations back between a Lancastrian prince and his children’s governess. And, though in later life Margaret and her son were close both personally and politically, for much of Henry’s youth her maternal style can best be described as ‘hands off’ – arguably, emotionally neglectful. Little wonder, given the circumstances of Henry’s birth.

Today we would consider Margaret a victim of child abuse. Her marriage to Henry’s father, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, took place when she was about 12 – the age of consent for medieval girls (for boys it was 14). This was her second marriage, her first having been dissolved in 1453, during a period of political turmoil.

Even in the 15th century, when marriages were arranged for cradle-bound babies, it was highly unusual for unions to be consummated before a bride was 16, and 20 was the average age of first pregnancy for most noblewomen. For good reason: medieval women’s bodies were still developing until then, and early childbirth was far likelier to end in stillbirth, maternal death or physically damaging complications. In later life, Margaret’s confessor, John Fisher, alluded to how underdeveloped Margaret had been when she gave birth, writing: “She is… a woman not of a great stature, but at that time it is said she was much smaller still, to such a degree that it almost seemed a miracle at her age that so little a body could bring forth a child at all.”

Margaret was forced into motherhood so that her husband could claim her considerable inheritance. Her father had died before her first birthday, leaving her an heiress worth, in modern terms, hundreds of thousands of pounds a year – and with a distant royal claim that had seen her welcomed to court as the king’s “right well-beloved cousin”. Ironically, Edmund Tudor died before his child was born, leaving Margaret to face childbirth alone, half a kingdom away from her family, whose main seat was in Lincolnshire.

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Given the trauma of this experience, it is understandable that Margaret left her baby as soon as was physically possible and set out to regain control of her life. Barely three months after leaving Pembroke Castle, she was betrothed again; before her son’s first birthday, Margaret remarried and moved back to Lincolnshire. Henry’s wardship was granted to his uncle, Jasper Tudor, and later to the Yorkist William Herbert. Henry would remain in the care of these Welsh lords, 300 miles from his mother, until he was 14.

Meanwhile, Margaret – still not yet 15 – was on her third marriage. She had reasserted the security torn from her by the marriage to Edmund Tudor. Her new husband, Sir Harry Stafford, was at least a decade older than her, but respectful and affectionate. Their household accounts show the couple working and travelling together, with thoughtful exchanges of anniversary and New Year gifts. In his will, Harry called Margaret his “best beloved wife”.

Margaret was welcomed with open arms by the Stafford clan, especially Harry’s politically astute mother, Anne, Duchess of Buckingham, who took “my daughter Richmond” under her wing and protected her interests at court. Most happily of all for Margaret, the Stafford marriage brought her back to her own adored mother and half-siblings, close to the estates where she had grown up. It must almost have felt to Margaret as if the last few terrible years – encompassing marriage, widowhood and childbirth – had never happened.

Distant mother

It was not unusual for medieval children to grow up apart from their parents, but it is noteworthy – given that both Margaret and Henry grew up without fathers – that, whereas she lived with her mother until adolescence, she left her son shortly after birth. And though there is little surviving evidence for the first decade of Henry’s life, it is unclear if mother and son were in contact. Margaret did not return to Wales for almost a decade. Perhaps she rationalised that she was acting in her son’s interests; he was a boy, in need of male role models. Given the violent turbulence of this period, though, it is significant that Margaret kept her distance.

She had chosen her alliance with the Staffords because, with civil war looming, they represented a dominant, stabilising force. But even they could not keep the incompetent Henry VI on his throne. In March 1461, he was deposed in favour of his charismatic young kinsman, Edward of York.

Margaret and her relatives quickly came to terms with the new king, Edward IV, but her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor, was a diehard Lancastrian whose rebellions incited Yorkist reprisals. Pembroke Castle was besieged, with Margaret’s son, Henry, inside. Fortunately, as titular Earl of Richmond, Henry was a valuable commodity. His life was spared and his wardship granted to a leading Welsh Yorkist, William Herbert. There is no sign that Margaret protested; perhaps she could not cope emotionally with the responsibility of mothering a child after enduring so much at such a young age.

Mother and son would not meet again until Henry was 10. The causes of their parting and ultimate reunion probably stemmed from the same root: Margaret hoped that she and Harry Stafford would have children of their own. But Henry’s birth had scarred her physically and psychologically, and as years passed it became clear that he would be her only child. Only when confronted with this realisation did Margaret belatedly seek to re-establish a relationship with her son. In September 1467, she returned to Wales for the first time since her remarriage, spending a week with Henry at Raglan Castle. He had grown tall and serious, with her capacity for quick learning. Perhaps she saw in his appearance and character glimpses of herself or her half-siblings – and perhaps, less comfortably, of Edmund Tudor.

The visit to Raglan marked the beginning of Margaret’s self-identity as Henry’s mother, but she was no closer to taking physical possession of her child. Two years later, after another outbreak of civil war, she attempted to regain legal control of her son. When William Herbert was executed after the battle of Edgecote in 1469, Margaret struggled to assemble lost legal documents; to reassert her guardianship of Henry, she convened assignations in the manor houses of aristocrats, and with lawyers in alehouses. Mother and son were reunited briefly in 1470, touring London and Surrey together, indulging their shared love of hunting. Presumably they discussed Margaret’s hope of regaining Henry’s birthright, which had been stripped from him and parcelled out to leading Yorkists – not the crown, which was still entirely outside her aspirations, but the earldom of Richmond.

Dangerous blood

The same forces that reunited Margaret and Henry also drove them apart. The internecine chaos unleashed on England in 1469 was finally resolved in 1471, when Edward IV conclusively vanquished his rivals in battle. Henry VI and his teenage son were killed. So, too, were several of Margaret’s Beaufort cousins and, within a few years, even Edward’s Lancastrian former brother-in-law, the Duke of Exeter. Suddenly, the possession of Lancastrian blood, no matter how thin, was dangerous. According to the Tudor poet Bernard André, Margaret advised Henry to flee into exile with his uncle Jasper: “Unless my imagination or maternal instinct deceives me… [Henry’s] life will be safer on the ocean’s waves than in this tempest on land.”

In September 1471, Henry and Jasper sought asylum in Brittany, where they remained until 1483. Meanwhile, Margaret was left in limbo. Alive to the dangers inherent in Henry’s distant royal claim and traditional family loyalties, she warned him not to return to England until she had assurances for his safety. Mother and son could communicate only through intermediaries, trusted servants who braved the Channel crossing.

Margaret demonstrated a profound sense of responsibility to Henry. The rightful Earl of Richmond was heir to a proud inheritance and, as any medieval aristocrat would, she fervently believed that her son should claim it.

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But it wasn’t until 1482, when Henry was 25, that making such a claim seemed possible. The death of her mother, and the ensuing business of settling her estate, enabled Margaret to cut a deal with Edward IV to bring Henry home safely. On 3 June 1482, Edward and Margaret publicly agreed that, if Henry returned “in the grace and favour of the king’s highness”, he could claim his grandmother’s substantial West Country estates. An undated pardon now in the archives of Westminster Abbey suggests that this may have been a precursor to the restoration of Henry’s earldom.

More privately – though loud enough that several leading courtiers later reported it – Margaret and Edward discussed how they were “related in the fourth… degrees of kindred”. This was almost certainly the first step in arranging a marriage between Henry and one of Edward’s daughters which, because of their relation, would demand a papal dispensation. Margaret, always less risk-averse than the men in her life, was willing to gamble her son’s life for this bright future. Unfortunately, 11 years of political exile had left Henry paranoid, and even these substantial guarantees did not convince him that he would be safe. He refused to return.

Then political upheaval simultaneously dashed Margaret’s careful plans and enabled her to contemplate a future for her son that would have previously been inconceivable.

Maternal kingmaker

Margaret’s hopes of regaining Henry’s Richmond inheritance were thwarted when, in April 1483, Edward IV died unexpectedly. With two adolescent sons, Edward’s dynasty should have been assured. Instead, his brother Richard detained those young princes and claimed the throne himself. A contemporary eyewitness reported that the princes “were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper, and day by day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows, until at length they ceased to appear altogether”. It was rumoured that Richard had murdered them.

For Margaret, like much of the English nobility, Richard’s accession was an unanticipated complication. Her hoped-for marriage between Henry and a Yorkist princess was dead in the water, and the princesses had fled into sanctuary. Moreover, after Harry Stafford’s death in 1471, Margaret had remarried the northern lord Thomas Stanley, whose family were stalwarts of the regimes of Edward IV and his son. Over the years, the Stanleys had had several ugly confrontations with Richard. Indeed, Stanley was briefly arrested during Richard’s coup.

A pragmatist above all else, Stanley soon came to terms with Richard and so, apparently, did Margaret. But the circumstances of Richard’s accession had entirely changed the political landscape. Disaffected opponents plotted rebellion, and Margaret – whose territories stretched from Flintshire to Lincolnshire, Surrey to Devon – had myriad connections through whom she gained intelligence about these nascent conspiracies.

The anti-Ricardians were a disparate band. There were servants of Edward IV who hated his queen’s Woodville relatives; the Woodvilles themselves, fearing reprisals; attendants of the lost princes, jealous of missed opportunities or genuinely concerned for their charges; even Lancastrian stalwarts who wanted rid of the Yorkists altogether.

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Their very heterogeneity was a boon to Margaret. If the princes were dead – and by August it seemed they must be – then the rebellion needed a new figurehead. It needed to be an adult with royal blood and no loyalty to Richard – and, because they would have to fight for the crown, a male. Most of all, it needed to be someone impartial enough to unify these factions. In short: Henry Tudor. The exceptional circumstances of summer 1483 made it possible for the first time for Margaret to hope not merely for her son’s return but for his accession as king.

A lifetime of political and economic activity had readied her for this moment. Even the collapse of their first rebellion in autumn 1483, which left Margaret under house arrest and deprived of her fortune, could not cow her. She was linked by blood, marriage and loyalty not only to most of the nobility of the realm but also to the working men and women who served them. Her vast network of connections can be read in her memberships of religious guilds, gifts and letters exchanged with neighbours, favours recorded in her household accounts, payments to merchants and craftsmen who provided for her husbands and family, and in many more ways – scarcely tangible then and almost entirely lost now.

The loyalty of these associates to Margaret was longer-standing, and more immediately beneficial, than their allegiance to Richard III. When Margaret mobilised her network, she was able to gather considerable sums of money – and money meant weapons and manpower for Henry, which he used to invade and then defeat Richard in battle at Bosworth.

Thus the mother who had been absent from her son’s life for so long was essential to the success of the campaign that won him the throne. Margaret enabled Henry to be crowned Henry VII in 1485 – and so to re-enter her life and build a close, lasting relationship. In an undated letter as king, son told mother: “I am as much bound [to you] as any creature living, for the great and singular motherly love and affection that it hath pleased you at all times to bear towards me.”

Perhaps Margaret had not shown that affection “at all times” – mother and son both had a habit of rewriting their pasts to better suit their present circumstances. But, after a long, difficult journey, they ultimately built a relationship that proved unbreakable.

Lauren Johnson is a historian specialising in the 15th and early 16th centuries. Her new book is Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker (Apollo, 2025)

This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors https://www.historyextra.com/membership/5-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-tudors/ Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:29 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/5-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-tudors/ Ruth Goodman, who teaches our new HistoryExtra Academy course on Tudor life, shares five insights about the dynasty’s legacy 1. The Tudors brought peace and prosperity to England

Bringing peace was probably the most important thing the Tudors did for us. The British countryside is littered with the sites of medieval battles – places where opposing forces stomped over crops, burned barns and rounded up people’s sons. For centuries, rival aristocrats made and broke alliances, and killed those who got in their way. Henry Tudor took the throne in exactly this way at Bosworth in 1485, when he persuaded a number of warlords to desert their king, Richard III. But there it stopped. Intrigue and power politics were thenceforth undertaken by more covert means. Everyone became a bit safer, the day-to-day became a bit more predictable, and lots of people got a little bit richer. Less war meant that more crops made it to market, more young men were available for work, and there was less damage done to buildings, less thievery with menaces and safer travel. In turn, this meant more trade and a greater willingness to invest. The peace the Tudors brought to their lands benefited all – rich and poor alike.

2. Henry VIII was a reluctant reformer

When the Tudors came to power, the Catholic church was already struggling to maintain its grip upon the minds and souls of Europe. New ideas about the nature of God and the state of Christianity were circulating. So when Henry VIII lost patience with the pope, there were plenty of people delighted by the opportunity to rethink England’s official religious position.

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Henry himself seems to have been happy to leave the religion as was. He just wanted the power and money the pope had been leveraging from his kingdom. He was quickly convinced, though, that he should also have the money and assets of the monasteries. A significant number of influential and vocal people wanted much more, however, pushing for a ‘purer’ form of Christianity that did away with priests entirely and abandoned the rituals and traditions of Catholicism. Others, of course, wholeheartedly defended the time-honoured form of faith.

The result was a fracturing of society. Hundreds, both Protestant and Catholic, were executed for refusing to change their form of faith and follow the state-sponsored format – one that changed radically several times. But for all the death and fear, the upset and soul-searching, a new freedom of thought also emerged.

3. The Tudor era brought a rise in literacy

A few years before Henry Tudor took the throne, in 1476, William Caxton printed his first book on English soil. As printing presses became established and the price of books plummeted, reading became affordable to many more people. There was also more choice. Alongside religious texts, books of popular stories, advice manuals, joke books, medical texts and scandal sheets were published. At the same time, there was a new religious pressure for Britons to learn to read. The Protestant faith required its adherents to stop relying on priests and to read the Bible for themselves. This applied to everyone: shepherds and ploughmen as well as nobles and merchants – even women. Teaching people to read became a new religious duty and literacy rates started to climb.

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4. They drove the expansion of industry

The Tudor monarchs – Elizabeth, in particular – were very keen to kickstart new industries and update old ones. In order to do this, specialist workers from Europe were encouraged to resettle on these shores. Some came as refugees fleeing religious persecution in France and the Low Countries, bringing new textile-making skills. Others were purely economic migrants with mining expertise or knowledge of new glassblowing and brass-founding techniques. The strategy worked – and these new arrivals provided the core of know-how and experience around which English industry could grow.

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5. The health of the nation improved

Rates of fatal illness fell during the Tudor period – though this was the result of sheer luck, as certain major diseases mutated into less virulent forms. When a new, often lethal form of the plague arrived in England in 1348 – the Black Death – it killed around a third of the population, suddenly and catastrophically. Plague returned to Britain many times over the centuries that followed but, by the start of the Tudor era, the outbreaks were becoming smaller and more people were surviving. Meanwhile, another major killer known as the sweating sickness – a mysterious disease causing rapidly developing symptoms including shivers, headaches, dizziness, pains and, soon afterwards, sweating and commonly death – came and went. The first epidemic broke out in 1485, just as the Tudor era was beginning, and the last came in 1551, after which it apparently vanished completely. With both of these big killers in retreat, the population began to grow.

Ruth Goodman is a social and domestic historian and broadcaster. Her books include How to Be a Tudor (Viking, 2015)

This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

Want to step even further into the world of the Tudors? In her brand-new HistoryExtra Academy series, Ruth Goodman takes you inside everyday life in the 16th century — from food and fashion to faith, work, and even love and marriage. The first three episodes are available now on the HistoryExtra app, with more to come soon. Start watching today

Want to ask Ruth a question? Join our live virtual Q&A on 19 November. Find out more here

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