Category: Tudors - Meandering Through Time

The Mystery of the Blue Ring

25/2/2024

Robert and Philadelphia Carey were two of the many children of Henry Carey, the son of Mary Boleyn and Anne Morgan. This family connection made them cousins to Elizabeth I. Robert was an ambassador and courier, and Philadelphia had risen through the ranks of the Tudor court, and by 1590 she held the important position of Lady of the Bedchamber.

Tradition has that this brother and sister were tasked with informing James VI of Scotland of the death of Elizabeth I.

The story goes that James VI of Scotland had given Philadelphia a 'blue ring' with the instructions that it was to be sent to him as a notification of Elizabeth's death. On the 24th of March 1603, the queen died, and waiting under the window of the royal bed chamber was Robert. As soon as the queen had died, Philadelphia dropped the ring to Carey so he could take it to the Scottish king.

A great story but was it true?

We know that Philadelphia was with the queen, and Robert Carey is known to have been in Elizabeth's court in the days before her death, but he made nothing of the ring in his memoirs, he only states

* 'that I heard with my ears, and saw with my eyes I thought it my duty to set down, and affirm it for the through, on the faith of a Christian, because I know there have been many false lies reported of the ed and death of that good lady'

Robert Carey, Ist Earl of Monmouth

Robert Cecil, Ist Earl of Salisbury

I always thought Robert Cecil sent word to the king, perhaps he sent it via Carey. Cecil had, about three years before the queen's death, begun secret correspondence with James continually assuring him that he favoured his claims to the English throne. So, how did James VI hear of Elizabeth's death?

* The Memoirs of Robert Carey - https://archive.org/details/memoirsrobertca00orregoog/page/n11/mode/2up

Hampton Court Statues

2/1/2023

During renovations in 1910, an original 16th century heraldic shield was found at the bottom of the moat of Hampton Court Palace that has been dated to around the time of the marriage of Henry VIII to Jane Seymour. The shield would have been held by a lion, which is thought to have represented the king himself. It would have stood on the bridge that leads into the palace.

Victorian replica of the original shield

At the centre of the shield is the image of the hawthorn bush topped with a crown, they are highly symbolic representations of both the Battle of Bosworth - the end of the Plantagenet dynasty and the beginning of the new reign under the Tudors.

It is interesting isn't it, that even thirty years into the Tudor reign this dynasty was still trying to justify their weak claim to the throne of England.

There is more about the finding of this shield on the History Royal Palaces website

www.facebook.com/HRPalaces/videos/10153516155153468/?fref=nf

Agnes Tilney - Duchess of Norfolk

10/12/2022

In the last week of November in 1541, Catherine Howard was imprisoned in Syon Abbey for adultery with Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper, her world was falling apart, but she was not the only one, other members of the Howard family also found themselves incarcerated.

In the months following Catherine's arrest, at least four of her family were imprisoned in the Tower of London for not disclosing what they knew of Catherine's past, one of them was Agnes, the sixty-four-year-old Duchess of Norfolk, she was Catherine's grandmother's cousin. All were charged with 'concealing the evil demeanour of the Queen, to the slander of the King and his succession' they were sentenced to life imprisonment and loss of goods.

After a search of the duchess's property, and the questioning of her servants, a charge was brought against her which was that she had opened the aforementioned Francis Dereham's private chest and destroyed documents, she admitted nothing. However, Agnes' main concern was the loss of her goods, when asked where she kept her money, she dropped to her knees weeping, asking God to save the king and give him a long and prosperous life.

Eventually, she admitted to hiding money in the private chamber of her home. When an inventory of Agnes' belongings was made there a vast amount of money, about three hundred and fifty pounds in today's money was found. The money was 'confiscated' and taken to Westminster Palace. Where it ended up, well, your guess is as good as mine!

On the 10th of December, the day that both Dereham and Culpeper were executed, Agnes was questioned again and this time she owned up to having prior knowledge of Catherine's wrongdoings at the time she was being put forward as a bride for the king, that she persuaded Catherine to bring Dereham to court and that she did burn his letters.

Barbara Brennan as Agnes, Duchess of Norfolk in the TV Series The Tudors.

It was deemed that Agnes was too old to stand trial. After having spent another six months in the tower she was released. She died four years later at her home in Lambeth.

Catherine of Aragon

2/10/2021

On the 2nd October 1501, Catherine of Aragon arrived at the Devon port of Plymouth

Catherine was greeted by the nobility who escorted them to St Andrews Church where thanks were given for her safe arrival and outside the townspeople clamoured to welcome their distinguished foreign guests.

Catherine was later escorted to Exeter where she was to stay for fourteen days. On the 16th her future father-in-law, Henry VII, sent messengers with a letter of welcome and a delegation of courtiers to escort her to London.

Catherine was to be married to Prince Arthur, the heir to the throne of England and of course we know that this marriage was short lived. Catherine would become queen of England on her marriage to Henry, Arthur's brother and for the first eleven years of her marriage she would be happy, but in what would later be known as the Kings Great Matter her life would be turned upside down.

Catherine was renowned for her strength of character and virtue, and I wonder if she could have seen her future would have had reconsidered this English marriage as she left the Alhambra in Granada for the port of Corunna to board a boat to England.

Execution of Catherine Howard

28/7/2020

On the 28th July in 1540 just nineteen days after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves, King Henry VIII took, as his fifth bride, the twenty-year-old Catherine Howard. Catherine was said to have been pretty - Henry's "rose without a thorn."

No doubt it never crossed Henry's mind what Catherine thought of him the fat 49-year-old - whose youthful physique had long gone.

Why did Catherine marry Henry then? The answer is quite simple, she married him because she had too.

Sadly, Catherine had let her new position as England's new queen go to her head and by the following year, she had begun a physical relationship with Henry's favourite courtier, Thomas Culpepper, which as we all know was her undoing.

While he was marrying Catherine, his friend and the fixer of his problems, Thomas Cromwell was climbing the scaffold to his execution. I have every sympathy with all of Henry's wives, each of them had to suffer this menacing tyrant in their own different ways. Poor Catherine's problem was that she was young and naive and you could argue easily lead, notably by Henry's onetime sister in law Jane Boleyn - but that's another story.

Execution of Thomas Cromwell

28/7/2020

On this day in 1540 the execution of Thomas Cromwell, adviser and one-time friend to Henry VIII.

James Frain as Thomas Cromwell in the 2009 series The Tudors

Chronicler Edward Hall wrote of Cromwell’s last words:

“I am come hether to dye, … for … I am by the Lawe comdempned to die, and thanke my lorde God that hath appoynted me this deathe, for myne offence: For … I have lived a synner, and offended my Lorde God, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes. And … beyng but of a base degree, … have offended my prince, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes, and beseche you all to praie to God with me, that he will forgeve me. O father forgeve me. O sonne forgeve me, O holy Ghost forgeve me: O thre persons in one God forgeve me. And now I praie you that be here, to beare me record, I die in the Catholicke faithe … . Many hath sclaundered me, and reported that I have … mainteigned evill opinions, whiche is untrue, but I confesse that like as God by his holy spirite, doth instruct us in the truthe, so the devill is redy to seduce us, and I have been seduced: but beare me witnes that I dye in the Catholicke faithe … . And I hartely desire you to praie for the Kynges grace, that he maie long … reigne over you. And once again I desire you to pray for me, that so long as life remaigneth in this fleshe, I waver nothyng in my faithe”.

And of his last moment Hall writes:

“.... committed his soule, into the handes of God, and so paciently suffered the stroke of the axe, by a ragged and Boocherly miser, whiche very ungoodly perfourmed the Office.
After his execution, Cromwell's head was boiled and placed on a spike on London Bridge, his face it was said, looking away from the city. I often wonder about men like Cromwell - why were they so eager to take the place of others who had gone to the block for not giving Henry what he wanted. Cromwell was in the pay of Cardinal Wolsey when he fell from grace in 1529, if he didn't learn anything then surely he must have been aware of the consequences of failing Henry when Thomas More was executed in 1535.

Or did he really think he was invincible?

Execution of Thomas Culpepper

3/7/2020

In 1541, it was rumoured that Catherine Howard had begun a physical relationship with Thomas Culpepper, her husband Henry VIII's favourite courtier. In a letter to Culpepper Catherine wrote

“praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here.”

This 'affair' would be their undoing.

Adultery with a queen was high treason, Thomas Culpepper was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but the sentence was commuted to beheading. He was executed on the 10th December in 1541.

You can read about Thomas's and Catherine's downfall in my blog Dangerous Talk Cost Lives.

meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/history-blog/dangerous-talk-costs-lives

The Culpepers were a big family from the county of Kent. Thomas Culpepper was born in 1514, the son, it is written, of Alexander Colepeper, but this is not the case, it likely that he was the son of a younger branch of the Culpepers. Catherine's mother was Joyce Culpepper, she was also from a different branch of that that family.

Torrance Coombs played Thomas Culpepper in the TV series The Tudors

Tamzin Merchant played Catherine Howard in the TV series The Tudors

Beunans Meriasek : Cornish Play

17/6/2020

In 1497, Henry Tudor, who took the crown of England from Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, began to levy taxes on the Cornish people to pay for his wars in Scotland. This lead to what history calls the Cornish Rebellion of June that year.

The rebellion began with voices of unrest in the village of St Keverne where Michael Joseph An Gof and Thomas Flamank spoke out about these taxes and what they thought the people of Cornwall should do about it. The rebellion ended on the 28th June with the execution of James Tuchet, Baron Audley who lead the rebels to London.

At that time, and written in the Cornish language was a miracle play called Beunans Meriasek, it's theme was about the struggle between good and evil. In this play, evil is represented by King Teudar.

It's likely the Cornish were using this play to criticise the king in a subtler way than that of violence.

Death of Prince Arthur

2/4/2020

Today marks the death of Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.

Arthur and his new wife, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, had left their home at Tickenhill Manor, where they had been living since their marriage. Just before Christmas 1501, they arrived at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, a fine castle that stands on the River Teme.

Even before the arrived at Ludlow, Arthur was suffering from ill health, he had been growing weaker since his wedding and by the beginning of March the following year both Arthur and Catherine were afflicted by an unknown illness. Although the real cause has never been established many historians believe it was sweating sickness or tuberculous.

Catherine recovered, Arthur did not, he died this day, the 2nd April 1502. He was just fifteen.

Henry VII did not attend the funeral, many believe he was too devastated by the boy's death, Catherine did not attend either.
Arthur’s untimely death led to his younger brother, Prince Henry, becoming the heir to the young boy's throne, and inheriting his lands and his wife.

Certainly, the event was a turning point in history.

Death of Henry VIII

28/1/2020

For someone like me who has trouble with dyslexia and the getting of numbers in the right order, the birth of Henry VII and the death of his son can be somewhat confusing. Henry VII was born on this day 1457, and on this day in 1547 his second son, Henry VIII died - that's exactly ninety years later.

Anyway, I seem to have got my sums right and the numbers are in the correct order so let's get on with a bit of information about the infamous Tudor king's final years.

Most of you will already know that Henry went into a physical and mental decline following a riding accident in the January of 1536. Henry was unconsciousness for two hours and his courtiers thought him dead. It was all downhill for the king after that, ulcerated legs, weight gain and an increased tendency to be irritable and quick to temper.

As his girth increased his courtiers began dressing in heavily padded clothes in an attempt to flatter him, and who can blame them, would you want to get on the wrong side of a grumpy monarch? Despite being grossly overweight Henry was still in search of a bride, on the 12th July 1543 he found one, the twice-married Catherine Parr. Catherine nursed, cared for and finally outlived him. On his death, he was succeeded by his son, Edward VI - he wasn't much fun either.

Henry was buried next to Jane Seymour, the wife who gave him his heir at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

There more about Henry in Tracy Boreman's article in this month's History Extra entitled Five things you (probably) didn't know about Henry VIII.

www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/king-henry-viii-facts-wives-spouse-execution-weight-reformation-cromwell/?fbclid=IwAR2XUlKbmSbIIKT5KmkYDtgJxJF1Zv49ucjVzBttIIiONVN4xX1oeQrEKRo