The Portraits of Lady Margaret Beaufort

by Judith Arnopp

Most of us are familiar with the portraits of Margaret Beaufort. Invariably she is depicted toward the end of her life, elderly, austere, and pious. It is difficult to imagine this staid, nun-like woman as a gurgling baby, or a naughty child; even less as a vigorous young woman. 

But people, even Countesses, are not born pious. Her face must once have been unlined, she may have been frivolous, perhaps even reckless. She was certainly determined; her crusade to secure her son Henry VII on the English throne involved intrigue against a reigning monarch. Against all odds, she financed her son’s campaign and in doing so, changed her life forever. 

With Henry’s accession to the throne, she became the most powerful woman in the realm, and she did not waste her new-found success but became one of Henry’s chief advisors, her charitable work extending to the foundation of universities, and championing the arts.

The portraits we see today are not contemporary. Without exception, she is depicted in her later year, clothed in a peaked white headdress, usually with a book, and always in the act of religious contemplation with an aura of chastity and charity.

Of course, portraits are not always about the subject’s appearance; sometimes a painting depicts a person’s character rather than how large the sitter’s nose may have been. Margaret, in her exalted position, would have been keen to project an authoritative, reverent persona but she evolved into a nun-like figure, as a young woman she would have suffered all the uncertainties, the passions and the flaws that we all experience. That is the Margaret made more fascinating simply because of the lack of portraiture from the uncertain days of her youth.

There are no extant portraits of Margaret from her lifetime, the ones we see today were made during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Undoubtedly they are copies of a lost original so, particularly if we compare them to the effigy on her tomb at Westminster, we can be fairly sure of her appearance during the later years of her life. This portrait of Margaret is believed to have been part of a set of corridor portraits including Henry VII, Henry VIII, commissioned during the reign of Elizabeth I. Again Margaret is in a religious pose, her clothing and book of hours illustrating her religious devotion. It is the best-preserved portrait we have of Margaret, the detail of the golden arch beneath which she sits, and the ornamented cloth of state is still visible to the naked eye.

My personal favourite portrait of Lady Margaret hangs in St John’s College in Cambridge. It was painted by Rowland Lockey in the 16th century. Margaret is shown at prayer in a lavish apartment, presumably her private chamber. She kneels at a desk with a heavy embroidered cloth and before her is a prayer book, a sign of piety and learning, and beneath it the ‘chemise’ cover she wrapped it in. Above her head, a tester bears the Tudor rose. The chamber itself is sumptuous, testament to her love of comfort, the stained glass windows with the badge of the Beauforts and of England.

This portrait tells us more about her lifestyle than the others. We can see that despite her sombre attitude, she lived luxuriously, as one would expect. Her dark clothes, although quite dour to our modern eyes, were of the best quality, black being among the most expensive and difficult hues to buy. 

After her death ‘seven gowns of black velvet were found, trimmed with ermine, and a mantle of tawny.’ And, most interesting of all, was ‘a scarlet gown with a long train, ornamented with the badges of the Garter and evidently to be worn on St George’s day. In another inventory we find a crimson gown to be work with her ‘circuit’, not a diadem but a surcoat, such as she had worn at Christmas 1487.’

So, a new Margaret begins to emerge, a woman who favoured scarlet and ermine, whose ‘chariot men wore scarlet. The very buttons of the horse harness were of gold of Venice.' This speaks less of piety and very much of majesty, perhaps even a little vanity.

The National Portrait Gallery has a portrait previously thought to be Margaret but now largely dismissed. It features a younger woman, hands clasped in pious prayer, her head covered with a veil. The painting is dark but the gown appears to be dark red, the veil itself lavishly embroidered. The nose is long and heavy, the eyes heavily lidded, as Margaret is shown in other portraits, and the face is pensive. Whether the sitter is lost in religious contemplation or distracted by plots of rebellion, it is difficult to judge. 

As I said earlier, the portrait is no longer believed to represent Margaret but it is intriguing none the less and I confess I used it during my research to picture the younger Margaret, the young woman who, widowed three times and separated from her only son, had no notion of the triumphs the future held.

[1] Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother p188

[2] Ibid p189

Portraits from Wikimedia Commons

This is an Editor’s Choice from the #EHFA archives, originally published February 25, 2019.

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Judith Arnopp is the author of eleven historical fiction novels including The Beaufort Chronicle: the life of Lady Margaret Beaufort. 

Connect with Judith at https://author.to/juditharnoppbooks. Judith's books are available through Amazon including The Beaufort Bride, The Beaufort Woman: Book Two of the Beaufort Chronicles, and The King's Mother: Book Three of the Beaufort Chronicles. 

A Thought for Edward VI on a Difficult Day for Him

by Janet Wertman

Despite his enormous promise, Edward VI was a tragic figure, on so many levels.

The first level involves the wrongs his father did to get him. Henry VIII firmly believed he needed a male heir. When his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, proved unable to fulfill this obligation after twenty years of marriage, Henry abandoned her. That the Pope disagreed didn’t matter – Henry abandoned the Catholic Church as well, founding the Church of England to seal his right to remarry. Then when Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, birthed only a daughter and experienced several miscarriages, Henry had her executed on trumped up charges to pave the way for the third wife who would finally give him the son he craved. Jane Seymour, Edward’s mother, is often said to have “walked through Anne’s blood” for her title. In Jane’s defense, we must remember that she paid for the privilege with her life.

The second level involves the circumstances of Edward’s youth. His mother died in childbirth, and his first two stepmothers were little involved in his life. Edward got lucky with his third stepmother, Katherine Parr, who finally gave the five-year old prince a real experience of family life. Life further opened up to him as other children were brought into his household to share his life and his education.

Barnaby Fitzpatrick, the son of an Irish peer, became his whipping boy (since Edward’s teachers could not in good conscience administer corrective beatings to “this whole realm’s most precious jewel”). Still, the fear that surrounded the young prince must have been oppressive: Henry was terrified that something would happen to his only son. Very few people were allowed to visit Edward’s household out of fear of the plague. All of his food was tasted. Every servant was schooled in the rigorous standards of security and cleanliness that Henry imposed. Such constant caution would inevitably be deeply internalized.

Even when Edward acceded to the throne, things did not improve by much. He was so young, only nine years old. This is wonderfully captured in many of the unintentionally poignant entries in his Chronicle (which was, in the words of Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, “in part private diary, in part an educational exercise, and in part considered notes on policy and administration”), like the one he wrote about his coronation, in which he proudly described how he had dined with his crown on his head. Yet the real power belonged to his uncle, Edward Seymour Duke of Somerset, who was named Lord Protector to rule while Edward was still a minor. Importantly, this went against Henry VIII’s wishes – Henry hadn’t wanted anyone to be in a position to divert power from his son: he had envisioned a “Regency Council” that would rule collectively. Nevertheless, Somerset was able to quickly seize control thanks in large part to a last-minute “unfulfilled gifts clause” added to Henry’s will under the dry seal that allowed the executors to distribute lavish gifts to their friends.

Unfortunately, Somerset was not as respectful of his young nephew as he should have been. Somerset was proud and self-interested and kept the young King dependent on him for as much as he could. This encouraged Somerset’s younger brother, Thomas Seymour, to hatch a scheme to replace Somerset as proxy ruler. In the middle of the night on December 16, 1549, Seymour tried to break into the sleeping King’s apartments at Hampton Court Palace. He made it into the privy garden (he had keys), but one of the King’s pet spaniels started barking. Seymour shot and killed it, which brought guards running. There was no defense for being outside the King’s bedroom in the middle of the night with keys and arms – and using them both. It was alleged that Seymour’s plan was to kidnap the King, perhaps force him to marry Lady Jane Grey (Seymour’s ward); this was treason enough. It was suspected that he might himself marry the King’s sister Elizabeth then kill the King and seize the throne. There could be no mercy. Thomas Seymour’s was the first death warrant that Edward VI had to sign, and today is the anniversary of Seymour’s execution (a topic I have covered in a companion post on my own blog, I hope you’ll visit!).

And as if sentencing one uncle to death wasn’t bad enough, less than two years later the not-even-fifteen-year-old King had to do it again. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, engineered a coup d’etat against Somerset. The charges were less clear than the ones against Thomas Seymour, but no less deadly. Edward himself summarized them in his Chronicle as "ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars in mine youth, negligent looking on Newhaven, enriching himself of my treasure, following his own opinion, and doing all by his own authority, etc." Although Somerset survived this plot, he tried to fight back against Warwick (who had by then become the Duke of Northumberland) – and lost. That was fatal. To use Edward VI’s own words again, on January 22, 1552 "the duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o'clock in the morning".

The next year was a good one for Edward VI – Northumberland made every effort to incorporate him into the running of the government. But then the young King fell ill from what is now believed to have been tuberculosis. As death approached, the fervent Protestant grew terrified at the idea that his staunchly Catholic sister Mary would inherit his throne. He created his own Devise for the Succession which bypassed both his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, and settled the crown on his cousin, Lady Jane Grey. It is not clear whose idea this was, but we do know that Northumberland stood to benefit greatly from this arrangement: Lady Jane Grey was married to his son. Regardless, the Devise failed when England rallied behind Mary as the next rightful heir (in case you were wondering, Northumberland was the first person executed during Mary’s reign).

Tragic all around.

***

SOURCES:

The Chronicle of Edward VI

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, England’s Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI (1966)

Wikipedia, Luminarium

This Editor's Choice was originally published on March 19, 2015.
~~~~~~~~

Janet Wertman is a freelance grant writer by day and a writer of historical fiction by night. Books 1 & 2 of the Seymour Saga will be joined in 2020 by The Boy King, which will cover the reign of Jane’s son, Edward VI.

Janet regularly blogs about the Tudors and what it’s like to write about them. Connect with Janet:  Website: https://www.janetwertman.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janetwertmanauthor/

Something about Mary

by Judith Arnopp

Anthonis Mor, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 1554 - Public Domain

Mary was the eldest of Henry VIII’s children. In her infancy she was lauded as a princess, the king referred to her as his ‘pearl’ and she was afforded every honour due to a Henrygirl in her position. Her mother, Catherine of Aragon, after suffering numerous miscarriages and still births was growing old. and her fertile years were at an end. As her fertility died, so did Henry’s love for her.

Anne Boleyn was everything the queen was not; young, fertile, witty and entrancing and Henry was unable to resist. In the years that followed, Mary and her mother’s status was brought into question, the marriage declared illegal and Mary was branded illegitimate. Teenage years are often difficult. Our emotions are in turmoil as we struggle to come to terms with the adult world. Imagine the thirteen year old Mary, isolated from those she loved, separated from her mother and compelled to deny the validity of her parent’s marriage and condemn herself as illegitimate.

Anne Boleyn National Portrait Gallery - Public Domain

In 1533 Henry and the now pregnant Anne Boleyn were married – seventeen-year-old Mary was heartbroken, the hurt intensified when she was sent as a servant to the household of her new sister, Elizabeth.

I would imagine there are difficulties for anyone accustomed to being the apple of their father’s eye when suddenly supplanted by the arrival of a new sibling but Mary was not just replaced in her father’s affection but in every aspect of her former life. Her titles were stripped, her property removed and her status demolished along with any hope of ever becoming queen. Her father’s love must have seemed like some distant dream, and since her nebulous status made her all but unmarriageable her future looked bleak.

Yet, she seems to have borne no ill-will toward Elizabeth. The same cannot be said for Anne however, whom Mary refused to acknowledge as queen and declared she knew no queen of England other than her mother. The Spanish ambassador, Chapuys, began a rumour that Anne was plotting to poison Mary, a rumour (if it were a rumour) that undermined Mary’s security even further.

During my studies of Mary, I discovered an isolated figure, never more so than during this traumatic period. She was not allowed to see her mother again and was inconsolable when Catherine died in January 1536, just four months before Anne Boleyn herself went to the scaffold. With Anne’s demise one might have imagined Mary’s trials were at an end but although her new step-mother, Jane Seymour, went out of her way to reunite Mary and Henry and persuaded the king to bring her back to court, Mary’s humiliation was not over. Henry insisted she accept him as head of the church in England, renounce papal authority and acknowledge Henry and Catherine’s marriage was invalid and she herself illegitimate. One would imagine that this was a very high price to pay for paternal love that should have been her due.

Henry VIII Holbein - Public Domain

Even after Mary returned to court and her household was reinstated and she was reunited with her lifelong friend, Susan Clarencieux her life continued to be difficult. As the dissolution of the monasteries intensified, Mary saw the church she saw as the ‘true church’ all but demolished. She had to sit quietly while monks and nuns were punished. Henry was no longer the golden king of Mary’s infancy but became increasingly ruthless, a trait that grew worse after Queen Jane died shortly after childbirth, providing Henry with Edward, the son he’d longed for.

After the execution of her fifth step-mother, Katherine Howard, Mary was invited to act as hostess at court until the king married his final wife, Katheryn Parr. For a short time the royal family were reunited and almost ‘normal’ or at least as normal as the Tudors ever managed. Encouraged by Parr, Henry welcomed all three of his children back into the fold and, although they remained illegitimate both Mary and Elizabeth were reinstated in the line of succession, after Edward. It was only a brief respite for Mary, who under her brother’s strictly Protestant rule, was to suffer further subjection and torment.

All things considered, there is little wonder that Mary grew into a troubled adult, and ultimately became as harsh a ruler as her father. Of all the women I have studied and written about in my novels, Mary strikes me as the most pitiful. She wasn’t friendless; the people loved Mary from her cradle to her deathbed but for much of the time were afraid to show it.

Edward VI Attributed William Scrots - Public Domain

From infancy she suffered trauma that would have broken most people. But Mary stood firm for as long as she could under constant pressure from her father and his councillors, her brother and his protectors and never ceased to champion her religion. Isolated and terrified, she stood for what she believed was right and, once the crown was finally within her grasp, she did not hesitate to step up to the mark and fight for it.

In a premeditated act, the Duke of Northumberland persuaded Edward to name his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his heir in Mary’s place. Having previously married Jane to his son, Guildford Dudley, Northumberland clearly planned to manipulate her and rule in her stead. But Mary was having none of it and rallied an army at Framlingham Castle where support for Northumberland quickly crumbled.

Mary’s reign has been largely regarded as a failure and from our perspective it is easy to see how she earned the title Bloody Mary. As queen, Mary married against the will of the people. She failed to understand the desire of the populace to worship in the manner of their choosing. She failed to provide an heir, suffering phantom pregnancies and dying before her innovative plans for England came to fruition. Yet some of those plans were promising.

She began many policies that have since been laid at Elizabeth's door: reforms to the economy, naval expansion and colonial exploration and had her reign been longer, she may have been remembered very differently. Her success is always measured against Elizabeth's yet Mary had just five years against Elizabeth's forty-four. As with her father, Mary is remembered for her very worst acts yet there was much more to her than religious persecution and brutality. I do not seek to whitewash her actions but to consider the events of her life as she saw them, and it cannot be denied that Mary flew the Tudor banner bravely. She was stalwart, stubborn and loyal. She was sometimes unwise, she was overly passionate and she could be harsh but despite everything, she was loved by her people.

Mary Tudor by Hans Eworth. National Portrait gallery - public domain

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Judith Arnopp is the author of twelve historical fiction novels, her latest being in The Heretic Wind: the life of Mary Tudor, Queen of England available on Kindle, in Paperback and soon on audible.

To find out more please visit her website www.judithmarnopp.com

16th Century British Furniture Primer

by K.M. Pohlkamp

My character hears approaching footsteps, and she knows she mustn’t be discovered with the poison in her hand. Rushing to her intended victim’s bed chamber, she hides behind the...

Uh… What does she hide behind? What furniture would have existed in a 16th century noble bedroom?

Such plot questions often send me into a consuming spiral of research, and this one was no different. But I vehemently maintain perusing Tudor history websites counts as writing - it’s for research! And at least it’s more easily justified than scanning my Twitter feed.

Unfortunately, however, as the prominent British woodwork journalist, Charles Hayward, truthfully writes of England:

“...[T]he troublous times through which this country went in the Middle Ages certainly enabled destruction to carry out its work of waste. An army marching through an enemy country would spare little that came its way, and even in peaceful times the outbreak of fire must have been an ever-present source of danger. Domestic houses are invariably built of timber and, as the fire on the open hearth is almost never allowed to go out, being just fanned to a flame every morning, the chances of the building catching fire is high.”

In addition to the likelihood that furniture was destroyed, few pieces existed to begin with. During the medieval period, furniture was sparse and a symbol of status and wealth resulting from the scarcity of wood and skilled artisans.

However, Henry VIII began to change this. The King benefited from the frugality of his predecessor, Henry VII, and used the Crown’s amassed financial reserves to outfit his palaces with luxurious furniture. Cardinal Wolsey shared the King’s fondness for lavish spending and an inventory of Hampton Court records once listed 280 beds.

During Tudor England, a well-off master bedroom contained a bed, a chest to hold clothes, and possibly a cupboard. Beyond the bedroom, homes of nobility usually also contained a large table, a chair for the owner of the house, benches and stools for the rest of the household, a cupboard, and a chest. Poorer souls often only had a mattress and stools or benches. It was not until later in Queen Elizabeth’s reign that wealth and prosperity became more commonplace and yeomen famers were able to purchase additional pieces of furniture. But what did Tudor furniture look like? As with most historical questions, the few surviving pieces, writings, and artwork can help us piece together the past.

Cupboards, Aumbrys and Chests

From 1300-1550, the armoire or aumbry served the equivalent purpose of today’s cupboard. In English, the term armoire evolved to aumbry, then ambry and almery, which derives from a term for hutch, which was a box storing meat and bread scraps to be given to the poor. It is not until later in the reign of Henry VIII that the word “cupboard” is found, but in this time period, both terms are appropriate. John Smythe (1490-1544) of Blackmore Priory referred to a “fine almery with four dores for breade” in his 1543 will, and a 1527 inventory of Cardinal Wolsey’s possessions included 21 “cupboardes of waynescotte whereof V be close cupboards.”

Regardless of its name, this piece of furniture was used to store food. The first aumbrys were simple boxes with shelves and doors, but later, “Gothic tracery” was added to the front to provide ventilation for the purposes of food preservation.

A press cupboard from 1610¹

Depiction of late-16th-century three drawer chest¹

Tudor-style cabinet⁵

The “court cupboard,” or set of shelves, first appeared in Britain during the Tudor period and is believed to have come from Italy or France. These pieces sometimes included hidden drawers used by aristocracy to store plates, eating utensils, wine, and other things. The top was often covered with cloth.

Example of a court cupboard and its hidden drawers¹

Chairs

While chairs became more common in Tudor England, they were still expensive. The use of chairs was often restricted to high-ranking persons. Consider the platforms at the end of great halls featuring an imposing throne chair. Even in an upper-class home, children and servants used stools and only the head of the house had a chair. Everyone else was left to settle with benches, stools, and even sit on chests. The poor only had stools and benches.

The transition from sitting on chests to chairs is evident in 16th century chair design which was inspired by the six-board chest. This can be seen by comparing the depicted chair’s construction with the chest above.

Box chair 10th-16th century¹

Beds

In the late 16th century, the “tester” (or canopy) above beds of the privileged were no longer suspended from the ceiling, giving rise to the “four-posted bed.” Curtains were still hung from the tester to reduce draft and contain warmth.

Sketch of a "four-posted bed" from the late 16th century¹

In a middle-class home, the mattress was often stuffed with flock (a type of rough wool). The poor, however, slept on mattresses stuffed with stray or thistledown that were laid upon ropes strung across a wooden frame.

To explore some design terminology evident in the depicted bed, the two foot posts of the piece are elaborately decorated with vertical lines known as flutes which are topped with ionic capitals. The large turned shapes of the posts are called bulbs and note how thick they are. These shapes would diminish in breadth in later Jacobian furniture. The frieze, or central area under the bed’s tester, could have been inlayed with an emblem, a family crest, or another decorative motif. Common themes for bed decor was for each post to represent one of The Four Evangelists, or angels.

Wood Paneling

In affluent houses, walls might be lined with oak paneling to keep out drafts if they were not already lined with tapestries for the same purpose. The earliest wood panels in Britain were made from riven oak, smoothed with an adze. Three common designs for wood paneling appeared in Tudor homes: the linenfold, the parchemin or vine pattern, and more Renaissance inspired carved panels.

Linenfold Wood Panel⁷

Rare pair of early 16th century parchemin panels⁸

Windows

Wait… Huh? 

In the 15th century a small minority of people could afford glass windows, however, in the 16th century they became more common – but again, they were still expensive. Thus if you moved to a new house, the windows moved with you along with the furniture. Period windows were made of small pieces of glass held together by strips of lead, known as “lattice windows.”

Technique and Decoration

16th century furniture was made by guilds that specialized in the trades of upholstery, turning, joinery, and carpentry. Guilds determined who was allowed to practice the trade in order to maintain standards and regulate prices. This also controlled how much furniture was produced and resulted in common designs. For example, members of carpentry guilds were not allowed to use mortice and tenon joints and "joiner” guilds were not allowed to use nails.

Amongst woodworkers, early 16th century to ~1650 is known as “The Period of Oak” until England’s native oak wood was replaced with walnut and mahogany. Hinges at this time were made of iron.

As far as design, British oak furniture falls into three distinct eras: Gothic, Renaissance, and the Jacobean/Commonwealth periods.

During Tudor England, Gothic motifs fell out of fashion and were deemed too crowded with detail, however, the painted ornate styles hung around in England more so than the rest of Europe. This may have been influenced by Henry VIII’s separation from the Roman Catholic Church that delayed the spread of Italian Renaissance styling to the country.

Tudor furniture décor was dominated by turning, painting, and inlays (where wood is set into recessed areas), especially of floral and geometric designs. As mentioned above, to our modern eyes Tudor furniture had large turnings and coarse design not found in the finer craftsmanship of later periods that reduced the size of design elements. It looks “heavy” or “massive” and consequently was not terribly comfortable – though I would rather sit in a straight-back chair then on a stool or the floor. But the “massive” quality may have contributed to the durability of furniture. Furniture was expected to last for generations and be passed to children and grandchildren.

Panels, such as on chests, cabinets, or beds, were often decorated with biblical or mythological subjects. Round-headed arches and semi-circular fan patters were used along with animal forms (dolphin or lion head) and of course the Tudor rose, carnation, or a vine.

However by 1530, the impact of Italian Renaissance design begins to appear in English furniture. These new motifs of symmetry, classical antiquity, and humanism coordinated well with the old linen-fold designs. The design transition was accelerated by Elizabeth I who opened England to Italian aesthetics.

(Lastly for the curious reader, my assassin crouches behind a tall, oak chest as the door creaks open in her wake, but TBD if the cover proves sufficient...)

References and For Further Reading:
[1] McInnis, Raymond. A History of Woodworking: Narratives of Woodworking Ephocs in America and Britain. Accessed 6/27/18: http://www.woodworkinghistory.com/index.html

[2] Symbols of Status in 16th Century and 17th Century England. Accessed 6/30/18: https://sites.google.com/site/splendor319/home

[3] Muscato, Christopher. 16th Century English Furniture: History & Styles. Accessed 6/30/18: https://study.com/academy/lesson/16th-century-english-furniture-history-styles.html

[4] The Red List. Furniture Design: English Tudor & Elizabethan (second half of the 16th century). Accessed 6/30/18. https://theredlist.com/wiki-2-18-392-887-view-15th-17th-centuries-profile-english-tudor-elizabethan-second-half-of-the-16th-century.html

[5] European Furniture Styles Handbook: Tudor Furniture. Accessed 6/30/18. http://www.european-furniture-styles.com/Tudor-Furniture.html

[6] Lambert, Tim. A World History Encyclopedia: Life in 16th Century England. Accessed 6/30/18. http://www.localhistories.org/tudor.html

[7] Panel-Linen Fold. Heartwood Carving Design, Fabrication, Restoration and Customization. Accessed 6/30/18. https://www.heartwoodcarving.com/panel-linen-fold-folded-linen-carving

[8] Rare pair of 16th century parchemin panels. Woodcock Antiques. Accessed 6/30/18. https://www.woodcockantiques.com/product-page/a-rare-pair-of-early-16th-century-panels

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

K.M. Pohlkampis the author of the Readers’ Favorite 5-star novel Apricots and Wolfsbane, which follows the career of a female poison assassin in Tudor England. The historic thriller was short listed for the 2018 International Chaucer Historical Fiction Awards and received a 2018 Best Book Award – Historical/Tudor from the Texas Association of Authors. K.M. is a proud mother of two, a blessed wife to the love of her life, and a Mission Control flight controller at NASA. Originally from Wisconsin, she now resides in Houston, Texas.

Website: www.kmpohlkamp.com
Twitter: @KMPohlkamp
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Common Myths of the Wars of the Roses: Richard III: Victim of Tudor Propaganda? Part 2

I have come to loathe the phrase ‘Tudor propaganda’ which is trotted out so regularly – especially online – that it has become a joke. It is used to stop argument and debate rather than to further it.

So, this is how I see it.

Propaganda has to be a deliberate and concerted attempt to mislead by repeatedly using information which you know or suspect to be false. So, is that what Henry Tudor – and his successors – were doing?

There is no question that Henry VII was determined to promote his own image by presenting himself as the king who brought unity to a divided land.

Young Henry VII
[Public domain via wikipedia]

It is often said that history is written by the victors, so it would be very surprising if the supporters of the victorious Henry Tudor started his reign by congratulating the late Richard III on his excellent reputation and achievements. Naturally, the very reverse was the case: King Henry was keen to emphasise the faults of his predecessor because his own claim to the throne was about as solid as the proverbial chocolate teapot. Compared to Richard, Henry was a novice for he had not even managed an estate let alone governed a country!

Thus, by painting a dark image of Richard, Henry could distract from his own major shortcomings: a weak dynastic claim and complete inexperience of government.

Inevitably, this involved blackening Richard’s name but Henry had to be careful what he said because he was pledged to marry Richard’s niece, Elizabeth of York, and thus he could not blacken the name of York entirely.

Sometimes when a country seeks unity after conflict they choose to forgive – though not forget - past acts in order to move forward.  Henry did do that to some extent and by presenting the short reign of Richard III as an aberration, he found a means of unifying the majority of political interests behind him.  Since he had pretty much appeared from nowhere, having held no high office and with no large retinue of supporters, he needed to justify his kingship. 

So, after 1485, there was indeed a concerted attempt to present Richard’s reign as a disastrous interlude which only the timely arrival of young Henry Tudor had resolved. This was where the weight of emphasis was and the early Tudor pageantry and badges – most obviously the Tudor Rose – hammered home the message of unity, made flesh by the symbolic union of Henry and Elizabeth.

Let us not forget though that most of those who inhabited the Tudor Court in Henry VII’s reign would have supported this approach because that was how they viewed the immediate past too. Many – perhaps the majority - of his supporters were men who had loyally served Edward IV, but presumably most had little love for the dead king because they had abandoned him in favour of Henry. As I indicated in the first part of this discussion, ‘the strength of their opinion is shown by their willingness to support an exile about whom they knew nothing and whose claim to the throne could not have been weaker.’

All the same, there was no guarantee that Henry Tudor could keep the throne. Many had supported Henry only because he had formally committed to marrying the Yorkist heiress, Elizabeth. However much Henry disliked this fact, it remained true. Therefore, it made sense for him to focus the heat on Richard as an individual - the usurper - not Richard, of the House of York. 

After his victory in 1485, Henry was merely making as much capital as he could out of a legacy that many folk regarded as genuine. In this approach then, Henry was pushing at an open door.

It is a very long stretch to move from the clear intention on the first Tudor king’s part to promote his own image at the expense of his predecessor, to the suggestion that throughout the entire period of the Tudor monarchy, lasting about 120 years, there was some sort of orchestrated attempt to blacken Richard’s name. Such an idea is quite simply nonsense.  So what were the contemporary writers saying?

Edward Hall's Chronicle
[Public domain]

Those who wrote about the past in the Tudor period such as Polydore Vergil, Thomas More and Edward Hall would have grown up accepting the version of events, as presented in 1485 and 1486, as fact.

Edward Hall’s Chronicle is the best example of a contemporary history because, unlike More, he was at least trying to tell the history of what we know as the Wars of the Roses in his Chronicle: The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Houses of Lancaster and York.  

Hall wrote in Henry VIII’s reign though his chronicle was published after his death – and Henry’s! Though Hall had many original sources to refer to and took pride in listing them, he relied heavily on Thomas More’s account of Richard’s reign. More was not especially concerned with the veracity of his work. He accepted the “received history” and used it to present moral arguments. From a twenty-first century perspective this makes More unusual but for writers of the period – all God-fearing men – separating moral judgements from history would be an alien concept. Frequently Hall made judgements on events by use of spectacular adjectives. Thus, men’s actions were “glorious” or “detestable” or “odious” but then Hall did want his work to be interesting to read!

Was Hall writing propaganda?

Not really, no.  His was the earliest attempt at a comprehensive history of the struggle between Lancaster and York. Like an awful lot of historians since his time, Hall assumed that what had been said by folk in authority was probably true.  As far as he was concerned, it was a great story with a happy ending – King Henry VIII - though we might judge Henry rather differently.

Hall was attempting to explain what had happened to cause division in the state and he traced it back to the demise of Richard II in 1399. In doing so, he laid down the traditional view of the origins of the Wars of the Roses. Reading Hall, one is astonished how little that view changed over the next four centuries. Since the second half of the twentieth century, though historians have analysed more rigorously and critically the sources available, yet in some respects Hall’s account remains largely unchallenged.

Although Hall had access to sources long since lost to us, he lacked the one thing we do have: perspective. Surely though, we cannot blame him for that.

It does make his work biased and flawed, but it does not make it propaganda. He saw Richard III through a Tudor lens, but that does not mean it was a Tudor plot – nor, crucially, does it mean that what he wrote is actually incorrect.

Hall was not attempting to deliberately twist the truth.  Although the Privy Council did make some changes to Hall’s Chronicle before publication in 1548 and again when it was republished in Elizabeth’s reign, that was normal enough and there is no suggestion that the Tudor state significantly adulterated his account.

Hall’s Chronicle is evidence enough that the line taken by Henry VII in 1485 had been successful if, fifty or more years later, it was accepted as fact. So Hall was certainly furthering the Tudor image, but that does not mean that everything he wrote about Richard III was wrong.

If the ‘Tudor propaganda’ tag is applied to one man more than any other, it is William Shakespeare. His tragedy, Richard III, is regarded as the ultimate Tudor propaganda.

William Shakespeare
[Public domain via wikipedia]

Indeed, if you Google Richard III, you’ll find a lot about the play before you discover anything much about the king! It’s certain that the play has coloured opinion over the centuries but that does not make it propaganda.

Shakespeare drew inspiration for his plays from two chronicles in particular: Hall’s and the more contemporary, Raphael Holinshed – who also drew heavily from More and Hall.

Hall would have provided him with the entire historical backdrop not just for Richard III but for all his other history plays from Richard II onwards.

Shakespeare was thus making use of the best possible source of historical information available to him at the time.

It is ludicrous to suggest that Shakespeare set out to destroy Richard III’s name – but I have seen it written many times online. The playwright was creating an interesting character – as is shown by our fascination with him ever since.

Some will say that he was ‘under pressure’ from Queen Elizabeth to blacken Richard’s reputation. No, he was not. He was under pressure not to write plays that annoyed the queen, or other prominent courtiers, because he relied on their patronage to make a living. The queen, however, was far more interested in what he wrote in Richard II than Richard III because in the former he concentrated on the theme of kingship and sovereignty. He raised the spectre of an anointed monarch being overthrown, eloquently presenting the victim’s views as well as the usurping Henry IV. For Elizabeth, who several times faced the threat of being removed, that was a far more important issue.

So, in conclusion, the writers of Tudor England reflected not simply the line taken by the victor in 1485, but the accepted ‘world view’ of Richard III. 

Are there aspects of that which we would now question? Yes, of course there are – and rightly so, but please let us banish the old red herring of ‘Tudor propaganda’.

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Derek Birks was born in Hampshire in England but spent his teenage years in Auckland, New Zealand, where he still has strong family ties.

For many years he taught history in a secondary school but took early retirement to concentrate on writing. Apart from his writing, he spends his time gardening, travelling, walking and taking part in archaeological digs at a Roman villa. Derek is interested in a wide range of historical themes but his particular favourite is the late medieval period. He writes action-packed fiction Now the violent events of 1483 are played out in the sequel, The Blood of Princes.

Connect with Derek through his Website, Twitter (@Feud_writer), and his author sites through Amazon UK and Amazon US.

The Counter-Reformation of Mary I

By Samantha Wilcoxson

Queen Mary I
Portrait by Eworth

Queen Mary I does not enjoy the popularity of her sister or the entertainment value of her father. Her relatively short reign was spent striving toward a goal that few of us understand today. The modern worldview that firmly separates church and state makes it difficult to comprehend how responsible Queen Mary felt for her subjects' salvation and how passionately she believed she was doing the right thing with her attempt at counter-reformation in England.

We look back with the benefit of almost 500 years of hindsight and wonder how Mary failed to realize that her plans to return England to Catholicism after her father's break from Rome twenty years earlier were doomed. The fact that Protestantism flourished after Mary's death indicates to us that Mary should have seen the signs that it was coming or that she should have taken a dose of modern tolerance and embraced her subjects' differences, but to promote either of these ideas is to fail to fully understand the mindset of a 16th century monarch.

As Eamon Duffy states in his Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, "No sixteenth-century European state willingly accepted or could easily imagine the peaceful coexistence of differing religious confessions." Even Mary's sister, Elizabeth, who would later claim "no desire to make windows into men's souls" was scarcely less active in her persecution of Catholics. In Mary's time, the idea that faith was separate from law or that varying beliefs could thrive within one geographic area was not the progressive thought we believe it to be but something between heresy and treason.

Mary I's Entrance into London
Oil Painting by Shaw

Mary did not go into her reign believing counter-reformation would fail but that she was obligated to give it her best shot. Quite the contrary. When the common people helped secure her crown, which they knew meant a return to the Catholic mass, Mary was certain that most of her subjects shared her ambitions. Not only did she have vast popular support, but she had her cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole. He had almost been elected to the papacy in 1550, and with his support England's smooth transition to the 'true faith' seemed assured.

During Mary's first Parliament, the marriage of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon was deemed valid, erasing Mary's illegitimacy if not the scars left from that difficult period of her life. Her brother Edward's religious reforms were also overturned, allowing Mary to reasonably believe the changes she planned to make would occur quickly and easily.

Pole published sermons to be used throughout Mary's kingdom in an effort to reach those too young to remember the old faith that they might embrace it. However, they soon realized that reformed teaching was being perpetrated at some of the highest levels in the church. Heresy is a charge that does not make sense to the modern mind but was more serious than we can imagine in the 16th century. To secure the salvation of her subjects, Mary believed that it was necessary to outlaw Protestant books and teaching. When some reformers resisted, the burnings began.

Procession into St Mary's
Engraving by Myers

The 284 people burned for heresy during the reign of Queen Mary is what she is chiefly remembered for. The most notable, historical figures such as Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer, did go to the stake with Mary's consent, but many of the other, more controversial convictions occurred under the supervision of local law enforcement who sometimes allowed charges of heresy to be used more to settle scores than root out false teaching. Burning heretics was meant to give them a foretaste of hell in the hope that they would recant and be saved for eternity. Better to suffer a finite time on Earth than forever in hell. However, Mary and her counter-reformers were surprised to find that a shocking number of convicted Protestants held firm to their beliefs, becoming witnesses to their faith rather than examples of recantation.

In the meantime, Mary made what was possibly her most serious mistake. Instead of choosing an eligible Englishman, such as Edward Courtenay or even Reginald Pole, as a husband, Mary fell in love with Prince Philip of Spain. Fear that this would make England a vassal of Spain or the Holy Roman Empire, which Philip's father ruled, caused rebellions and distrust of Mary's queenship much more than her return to Catholicism had. When the two fused into one surge of disillusionment with Mary's reign, the objectives that had seemed within reach fell away from England's first queen regnant.

Illuminated Manuscript of
Mary blessing cramp rings

During her five year reign, Mary suffered two false pregnancies, likely caused by uterine cancer. The marriage that she fought so hard for proved loveless and childless. Finally, her devotion to her people and her faith failed to be enough to see England restored to Rome and what she considered the 'true faith.' She died knowing that Elizabeth, the sister she did not trust but had little choice but to name as her heir, would reverse all of her efforts. Little did she know how stridently that sister would also work to blacken her name in order that the name of Elizabeth I would shine more gloriously.

The auspicious beginning of Mary's reign and the outpouring of love from her subjects would have helped heal the wounds left from a difficult life at the hands of her father and given her hope for the future. However, Mary could not see as clearly as we see today that successful counter-reformation in England was not what God had in mind for her after all.


Additional Reading
Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor by Eamon Duffy
The First Queen of England by Linda Porter


All images in the public domain through Wikimedia Commons

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Samantha Wilcoxson is the author of the Plantagenet Embers series featuring women of the Wars of the Roses and Tudor England.

An incurable bibliophile and sufferer of wanderlust, Samantha lives in Michigan with her husband and three teenagers. You can connect with her on her blog or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

The Rose - Emblem of England

By Deborah Swift

The rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meaning that by now it hardly has any meaning left: Dante's mystic rose, and 'go lovely rose', the Wars of the Roses, rose thou art sick, too many rings around Rosie, a rose by any other name, a rose is a rose is a rose...'
Umberto Eco : Reflections on The Name of the Rose.1983 

The Symbolism of the Rose

For centuries, flowers appeared in Western Art primarily for their symbolism. In the case of roses, these usually revolved around ideas of heavenly and earthly love. Early roses had only five petals, and legend says the original colour was always white. The ancient Greeks believed that roses only turned red after Venus chased after her lover, Adonis, and pricked her finger on a thorny rose bush in her lust to catch him.

Another Christian legend is, that the blood of the crucified Christ spilled down onto a white rose bush which grew at the foot of the cross, and since then, the roses there grew red instead of white. Red and white roses were also symbols of the Virgin Mary, representing sacrifice and purity, and rosary beads (a rosary is a rose garden) are still associated with Mary. Rosary beads refer back to the 11th century, when, the story goes, Godgifu ( Lady Godiva) gave a set of beads as an offering to the Virgin Mary at St Mary’s Abbey, Coventry (later Coventry cathedral). 

This portrait shows the 26-year-old Elizabeth I dressed in coronation robes upon which the rose emblem is fiercely evident. This particular image was used as the basis for coins and seals, hence the reason she is shown full face. The portrait is based on a now lost original which dated from 1559. Elizabeth's long flowing hair was traditional for a coronation. and her elaborate gown is made from woven gold and silk thread and was also used by Mary I, five years earlier. The decoration of Tudor roses and fleurs-de-lis refers obliquely to the English sovereignty and the English claim on French land.

What is the Tudor Rose?
The Tudor rose, one of the most distinctive and unmistakable flowers in England, has been in use as the country’s emblem since the Tudor Era. It is a representation of the merging of two warring houses, and the end of years of conflict.

This illustration in the painting at the top of this post is by Albert Payne from 1910, and depicts The Plucking of the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens - an event that supposedly happened in the mid-fifteenth century but was probably a fiction - invented by Tudor propagandists and popularised by Shakespeare. Do Read the scene here - it's wonderful and very dramatic! The scene in the painting represents both the dynastic struggle for the throne, and the bringing about of unity with the rise of the Tudors.

The years of armed conflict, sometimes known as the Cousins’ War (both Richard, Duke of York, and Henry Tudor were directly descended from Edward III and therefore cousins), are most commonly known as the Wars of the Roses which came to an end with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. King Richard III was defeated by the Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor, who ascended the throne as Henry VII.

Their marriage united the two warring houses, and so Henry VII introduced the Tudor Rose, which combined the red rose of Lancaster with the white rose of York. The Tudor Rose was adopted as the national emblem of England, and became a symbol of peace and unity in the period after the long civil war.

The Tudor Rose is a common sight in England even today. It can be seen as a symbol on a number of old buildings, most notably Hampton Court Palace, which was built during the reign of Henry VIII. The badge is found on the uniforms of the Yeoman of the Guard at the Tower of London, on the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom, and also on the back of our 20p coins. It is a common emblem in stained glass in public houses and palaces all over England.

The Popularity of Roses in Tudor Gardens

Because of this, cultivated roses in the Tudor garden were very popular. Roses were used in cookery, for making rosehip wine and also for perfumes, cut flower arrangements and pot pourri mixtures to keep rooms smelling sweet. In a London where people lived very closely together without any proper sanitation or drainage, the smell in summer could be unbearable, and roses, with their strong scent, were used to allay the stench. Levinus Lemnius, a Dutchman visiting England in 1560, was impressed by the English use of herbs in the home; 

their Chambers and parlours strawed over with sweet herbes, refreshed mee, their nosegayes finely entermingled with sondry sortes of fragrant floures in their bed chambers and privie roomes, with comfortable smell cheered me up, and entirelye delighted all my sences.

Because of the new interest in rose varieties, in gardens as a status symbol, and added to this the fact that new roses were also arriving from abroad, a great deal of 'rose lore' was published in the Tudor era. Some of this lore was useful; some of it deluded by our standards today. 

Harking back to the York/Lancaster division, Thomas Hill's book ‘The Gardener’s Labyrinth’ of 1577 suggests that you can turn white roses red by placing the white flowers in the mouth of a pot filled with the best redde wine, close to, but not actually touching the wine. Then, by keeping the pot tightly-stoppered all day the roses will have become red by the evening!

He also suggests you can turn red flowers white by holding them over

‘the smoke of brimstone beaten into a fine powder and burnt on a new tile stone'

Another of his ideas, of how to have fresh roses at all times of the year was equally suspect, involving gathering half-open rosebuds at sunset, 

'touche them not with a hande in gathering, with a sharpe knife properly gather them'

 After that you had to put them in a jar stoppered with horse dung, and bury the pot underground.

A bestseller in the field or herbal advice was Hugh Platt's The Jewell House of Art and Nature which contains a whole section devoted to the art of distillation of flowers. He advises his ladies to collect rose petals, spread them out on on clean linen to dry them, or to put half-opened roses in shallow boxes of washed and dried sand, to sprinkle them with another fine layer of sand and to build up four or five layers of drying roses and leave them in the sun.  

'and so you may have rose leaves and other flowers to lay about your basons, windowes and court cupboards, all the winter long.'

Echoes of the past
There is something quintessentially English about roses. Partly it is because of our gardens, lavishly furnished with traditional rose-beds, partly it is because of fairy tales we remember like Snow White and Rose Red and The Sleeping Beauty. Much of it is also because of the way our royal family has adopted the Tudor Rose to convey the absence of division, something as a nation we should all aspire to. In the early part of  the 20th century, and still surviving in rural England to this day, (picture above from the Edwardian era) the ceremony of the 'Rose Queen' was very popular. In early summer, processions were led by a young woman, who had been crowned the "Rose Queen" for the year. In some communities, the Rose Queen and May Queen have become indistinguishable, but in some villages they are still distinctly different ideas. The Rose Queen may be particular to a church, but can also represent the whole village or community. Her duties are often as an ambassador at local fetes or charities, where her presence acts as a kind of blessing. The rose and royalty, and the link to sovereignty and the land are still strong in our customs and folklore.

Pictures from wikipedia, unless linked.

Bibliography

The Rose - Jennifer Potter

Culpeper's Herbal

Elizabethan England - Dodd

The Tudors - Terry Breverton

Building the House of Tudor BBC

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Deborah Swift  worked as a set and costume designer for film and TV before publishing her first novel. She also developed a degree course in Theatre Arts at the Arden School of Theatre, where she taught scenography and the history of design. In 2007 she took an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and since then has juggled writing with teaching. Her first novel, The Lady's Slipper, about the wild flower of that name, is available for free download here.