Was Bishop Stephen Gardiner a Secret Tudor?

By Nancy Bilyeau

Finding illegitimate children in the Tudor royal family is a favorite pastime for some. Chief among the theoretical parents of these children would be Henry VIII, of course. (You'd be amazed to learn how many debates rage over whether Mary Boleyn's two Carey children were fathered by Henry VIII shortly before he fell in love with Anne Boleyn...Or maybe you wouldn't!) Elizabeth I is also accused of giving birth to secret babies, with theories targeting Thomas Seymour and Robert Dudley that would make TMZ reporters blush.  As for the Elizabeth-as-bad-girl premise of the movie Anonymous, we are not going there.

The one and only accepted illegitimate child of a royal Tudor is Henry Fitzroy, son of Henry VIII and Bessie Blount, a beautiful maid of honor to Catherine of Aragon. Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, may or may not have been considered as a possible heir to the throne by Henry VIII before the boy died in 1536.

But was there another Tudor male in the 16th century, born on the wrong side of the blanket as they used to say, who not only lived through four Tudor reigns but was a key player at court?

Stephen Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester, was the grandson of Jasper Tudor, Henry VIII's great-uncle, and a mistress named Mevanvy ferch Dafydd from Gwynnedd, according to a persistent theory. If the rumors are true, Gardiner's mother, Ellen, was first cousin to Henry VII. She married a cloth merchant named Gardiner and Stephen was one of their children. He attended Cambridge at a young age and studied the classics, even meeting Erasmus.

Before we go any further, it must be said that Gardiner brought out fear and dislike among many of those who knew him. Moreover, in Tudor television series, Stephen Gardiner has been portrayed with evident relish by a series of actors as a Grade A Jerk:

"The Six Wives of Henry VIII"




Wolf Hall

The Tudors

In these shows, he's the man you love to hate. When Edward Seymour punches Gardiner in the face during the last episode of The Tudors, you feel good. When the bruise-faced bishop goes running to Henry VIII to tattle and has the door closed in his face, you feel even better.

Screenwriter license aside, how did this loathsome churchman reach a position of power in the Tudor court? Was it that he was family? Not likely. Henry VIII didn't care for his extended family; he executed them steadily throughout his reign.

The reason for Gardiner's prominence in the 16th century was his brain. Even his enemies grudgingly conceded his intelligence. His nickname during his lifetime: "Wily Winchester." The lawyer, royal secretary, councilor, and bishop survived Henry VIII's reign. A religious conservative, he was thrown into the Tower of London during the reign of Protestant Edward VI and occupied a cell for years. One of Queen Mary's first acts was to spring him (along with his old friend the Duke of Norfolk). Gardiner crowned her and served as her lord chancellor. He distrusted Princess Elizabeth and pressured the Queen to imprison her half-sister after the Wyatt Rebellion. It's safe to say that if he had lived to see Elizabeth take the throne, he would have been ushered back into the Tower.

In her book Henry VIII: The King and His Court, Alison Weir describes Gardiner as "an able but rather arrogant and difficult man":

He was of swarthy complexion and had a hooked nose, deep-set eyes, a permanent frown, huge hands, and a "vengeable wit." He was ambitious, sure of himself, irascible, astute, and worldly. Henry came to rely on him, sending him on important diplomatic missions and telling everyone that, when Gardiner was away, he felt as if he had lost his right hand; yet he was also aware that the Secretary could be two-faced.

Henry VIII and Bishop Gardiner had a complex relationship. They feuded with each other (as much as one can feud with Henry VIII), and the king withheld promotions Gardiner obviously longed for. Then, suddenly, he would be back on top. When the king made him bishop of Winchester, he said, "I have often squared with you, Gardiner, but I love you never the worse." Gardiner was an enemy of Cromwell's who relished destroying him. He also despised Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, but was unable to turn the king against him. In 1540-1541 Gardiner was in Germany, representing England at a Diet convened to try a last time to heal the breach between Catholic and Protestant. (Both Calvin and Charles V also attended.) It was a delicate and important mission--which failed, through no fault of Gardiner's.

Henry VIII

But the bishop tried to have Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr, arrested for heresy, and when his plot failed, that contributed to his decline of influence. The king excluded him from his will. Henry's technique in controlling his councilors was to pit them against each other and stoke their fears. Gardiner's Protestant opponents claimed after Henry VIII's death that in excluding him from the will and list of councilors for Edward, the king explained that only he could control Stephen Gardiner.

The bishop's relationship with Henry's oldest daughter, Mary, also had its difficult moments. Early in his career, Gardiner devoted his legal brain to the king's case for annulment of the first marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Therefore, even though he was one of Mary's adherents, she never could bring herself to trust him completely. Once she was queen, Gardiner wanted her to wed an Englishman, and opposed her marriage to Philip of Spain, repeatedly trying to talk her out of it.

Mary I

Stephen Gardiner died in 1555. One story has it that on his deathbed he said, "Like Peter, I have erred. Unlike Peter, I have not wept."

A strange thing to say. He was, it's safe to say, a strange man.

But was he related to the Tudors, whom he served and quarreled with for so many years? Returning to Jasper Tudor, the man was something of a warlord in a time when he didn't have a choice. During the Wars of the Roses, Jasper possessed two qualities in short supply: loyalty and patience. He supported his half-brother, Henry VI, without question, and did everything possible to help his nephew, the future Henry VII.

It was very important that Lancastrian nobles marry and beget heirs--the Yorkists were way ahead in that regard. Yet Jasper did not marry until after the Battle of Bosworth when he was 54 years old, and he wed the dowager duchess of Buckingham. They had no children. Since much of his earlier life was spent in battle, regrouping from battle, going into hiding, and living in exile in France or Brittany, perhaps he did not feel a wife was possible. A mistress made more sense.

In Gardiner's lifetime, no one said he was the grandson of Jasper Tudor, or at least it hasn't shown up in contemporary letters and papers. In the 18th century, this "fact" popped up in Cockayne's Peerage and a reverend's genealogical table. It gained strength over the years, though some always had their doubts.

Recent studies of Jasper Tudor do not dispute that he fathered one or two illegitimate daughters but suggest there could be some confusion over whether Ellen married the Gardiner who was the father of Stephen or another man with the same last name. It's unclear. The suggestion that he would need discreet royal blood to get into Cambridge and then rise in legal and ecclesiastical circles is not true. Gardiner's father was a prosperous cloth merchant, and the Tudor period was a time of men rising on their merits: the "new men," as they were called.

And so Stephen Gardiner may have achieved every illustrious promotion and survived every shouting match with a strong-willed king or queen not because he had Tudor blood but .... because he was Stephen Gardiner. A reality I suspect that Wily Winchester would have been prepared to accept.

~~~~~~~~~~

Nancy Bilyeau is the author of the Tudor trilogy The Crown, The Chalice, and The Tapestry, published in nine countries. The main character is a Dominican novice named Joanna Stafford; an antagonist running through the plot of each book is Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.

The Crown was an Oprah selection in 2012. The Tapestry was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier award for Best Historical Suspense this year.

Nancy is giving away seven signed hardcover copies of The Tapestry. To enter, please go HERE.

Crests, Blood and Power – The Howards' Rise in Tudor Times

By Lizzy Drake

Photo 1: Framlingham Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Norfolk (Holly Stacey)

The Howard dynasty in Tudor times was a highly rich and powerful one, but there was a time when their precious heads were on the proverbial block before being given a chance to prove themselves loyal to the 'new' Tudor crown. Having been Yorkist and fought for Richard III where Henry Tudor took the crown at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the family was viewed with suspicion, not in part for the fact that they had a Plantagenet lineage and could, with the backing of loyal Howard and old Yorkist ties, easily have attempted to take the crown for themselves. Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, was stripped of his title and lands and sent to the tower for three years. The former Duke was, however, clever enough to know how to show his loyalties had changed, for when an opportunity for escape from the tower came, he refused to take it. Who knew that his family would land so close to the king in the form of two queens. Or, perhaps, Thomas Howard had a keen sense of destiny, for the years to come allowed him to show both his guile and servitude in rising back to his position and beyond.

While Thomas Howard was in prison, his family and heirs were still expected to serve the crown and country, providing from their own pocket to help defend and serve it. The Howard male children were educated in court and also taught to train in combat for any upcoming threat. Thomas Howard II was also betrothed to the queen's sister, Anne but because the alliance was so threatening to the current monarchy, their vows were postponed until 1495, though it was the Queen who had to provide her sister and husband 20 shillings a week (Denny, p.21). In 1503, Margaret Tudor was escorted by the Howards to her groom, King James IV and then later, both Thomas Howards travelled on an embassy to Flanders, an obvious show of trust and by the time the crown passed to Henry VIII, the Howards had managed to become an invaluable asset.

It proved a good move for Henry VII not to have executed Thomas Howard, as he proved to be a superb ally both in court politics and, in particular, in the battlefield. It was at the Battle of Flodden (during Henry VIII's reign, and where the Scottish king lost his life) Howard truly proved his worth, fighting so valiantly, he earned back his family title of Duke of Norfolk, while his son, also a Thomas Howard, took the title Earl of Surrey (soon to be passed down to his own son, as Thomas Howard the elder was an aged 70 years by this point and soon to be laid to rest).

Photo 2: portrait of Thomas Howard 2nd Duke of Norfolk

In fact, things were going so well for the Howards by late 1513 that they had fortune enough to make many repairs on their family estate at Framlingham Castle, rebuilding the gatehouse and adding the coat of arms above it, putting up highly decorative Tudor chimneys and the chambers adjoining the gatehouse to accommodate the castle porter and staff. The coat of arms, still visible today as visitors enter the castle, is highly chipped, but a beautiful reminder of the seat of power the Howards held with the Tudors from this upward turning point.

Photo 3: The Howard coat of arms on the new gatehouse built in 1513 (Holly Stacey)

The Howards adopted the motto, Sola virtus invictia, 'Virtue alone invincible'. Their coat of arms was 'red with a silver stripe between six silver crosses', with the crest of a lion 'on a chapeau (Denny, p 20).” Though a contemporary drawing of the Howard coat of arms for Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (beautifully shown in the Framlingham Castle Guidebook), included the cross with the three-pointed label in his arms which was Edward the Confessor's emblem, in which claimed the royal ancestry. Evidently, claiming to be royal blood was too dangerous to broadcast, especially to a king who wanted to eliminate all potential rivals in an increasingly dangerous court, although at the time, there was a power struggle between the Seymours and the Howards. While the very ill King Henry VIII was waning, the Seymours were concerned that the Howards would make a bid for the throne by putting the rightful heir, Edward, aside, and ascending though their Plantagenet bloodline; something they were supposedly able to do should the king have no heir, or as Britannica.com puts it:

'Returning to England in 1546, he found the king dying and his old enemies the Seymours incensed by his interference in the projected alliance between his sister Mary and Sir Thomas Seymour, Jane’s brother; he made matters worse by his assertion that the Howards were the obvious regents for Prince Edward, Henry VIII’s son by Jane Seymour. The Seymours, alarmed, accused Surrey and his father of treason and called his sister, the Duchess of Richmond, to witness against him. She made the disastrous admission that he was still a close adherent to the Roman Catholic faith. Because Surrey’s father, the Duke of Norfolk, had been considered heir apparent if Henry VIII had had no issue, the Seymours urged that the Howards were planning to set Prince Edward aside and assume the throne. Surrey defended himself unavailingly and at the age of 30 was executed on Tower Hill. His father was saved only because the king died before he could be executed (britannica.com/biography/henry-howard-earl-of-surrey).'

Photo 4: Henry Howard (wiki photos)

The Howards created an amazing dynasty for themselves and it was clear that they took family honour to the absolute limit and coupled it with unparalleled ambition for power cutting just shy of actually seizing the throne, though it does seem evident that Henry Howard had this intent. Historians often dwell on the two women who, through the 2^nd Duke of Norfolk, found themselves as Henry VIII's queens, and the other, who produced some of his illegitimate children, but it may be said that without the cleverness, patience and political acumen of Thomas Howard the elder and the younger, neither would have worn their crown, nor indeed, would the family have risen from the ashes like a phoenix of lore.

References:

deLisle, Leanda; Tudor, The Family Story; Vintage Press, London 2014

Denny, Joanna; Katherine Howard, A Tudor Conspiracy; Piatkus, 2005

Doran, Susan; The Tudor Chronicles 1485-1603; Metro Books, New York

Elton, G.R.; England Under the Tudors; Routledge, 1991

English Heritage; Framlingham Castle

Online references:

http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/anne-boleyns-family-part-two-howards/

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Howard-Earl-of-Surrey

_______________________________________________

Lizzy Drake has been studying Medieval and Tudor England for over 15 years and has an MA in Medieval Archaeology from the University of York, England. She has been writing for much longer but the Elspet Stafford Mysteries began her writing careen in the genre. The First Elspet Stafford book, A Corpse in Cipher - A Tudor Murder Mystery, is available now.

When not writing or researching, Lizzy can be found reading or gardening. She balances time between her two homes in Essex, UK and California.

You can follow her on Twitter (Lizzy Drake@wyvernwings)

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A Royal Affair: Henry VIII’s first ‘mistress’

By Lauren Johnson

Whether justly or not, when we think of Henry VIII we think of romantic intrigues. Even schoolchildren can recite the fates of his six wives: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Although Henry had the rather unusual habit of marrying his mistresses, there were other women in his life who have been forgotten. It is a little verbose to remember all of these romances: ‘divorced, affair, illegitimate child, possible illegitimate child, beheaded...’ doesn’t have such a ring to it. One of these forgotten women is Lady Anne Hastings - the young king’s first extramarital dalliance.

It was spring 1510. The eighteen year old Henry VIII had been a king and a husband for less than a year. His wife, Catherine of Aragon, was sequestered with her ladies for her first ‘confinement’ - the final stages of a pregnancy that was to prove false. As the weeks passed and still no child appeared, Henry grew restless. He began to seek female attention elsewhere. His eye fell on the darkly attractive Lady Hastings.

Anne, Lady Hastings (wikimedia commons)

She was born Anne Stafford, daughter of that infamous Duke of Buckingham who had supported the usurpation of Richard III and then raised a rebellion against him. By Henry VIII’s reign the Staffords were at the heart of court politics. Anne’s brother Edward now held the title of duke, making him the senior nobleman in the country. Their sister Elizabeth, Lady Fitzwalter, was one of Catherine’s senior ladies in waiting, her experience of pregnancy proving particularly useful as she kept her mistress company in the royal chambers. And Anne herself was recently married - for the second time - to another prominent courtier, Lord George Hastings. Henry had given her a wedding gift of a few shillings last December. It was not a mark of particular attention, but by May 1510 the Spanish ambassador, Luis Caroz, was reporting that the king had become very interested in Anne indeed. She was ‘much liked by the King,’ said Caroz, so he ‘went after her’.

Henry was aided in this endeavour by his childhood friend and now Groom of the Stool - the most trusted royal body servant - William Compton. Compton carried messages between the pair, even visiting Anne’s private chambers to do so. It was not long before rumours about the relationship started to seep out. So closely was Compton embroiled in the affair, in fact, that there was some confusion as to who exactly was wooing Anne.

‘Another version’ of the story, Caroz reported, ‘is that the love intrigues were not of the king, but of [Compton], his favourite.’ However, Caroz was unconvinced of this, thinking it more likely that Compton ‘carried on the love intrigue, as it is said, for the king... That is the more credible version.’

When Anne’s family learnt that their married sister was being courted by a king they immediately stepped in to end the affair. Curiously, Anne’s husband was not the first to react. Perhaps he hoped to gain something from this royal attention. Instead, the Staffords closed ranks. Whispers of the affair had reached as far as the Queen’s cloistered chambers, coming to the ear of Anne’s sister Lady Fitzwalter. Whether eager to protect her royal mistress or to preserve the family honour, Lady Fitzwalter leapt into action, organising an ‘intervention’. She made the mistake of inviting her brother.

Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham (wikimedia commons)

The third Duke of Buckingham was an infamously proud and choleric man. When he learnt that his sister’s name was being associated not only with the king but with his servant, he was outraged. He stormed to Anne’s chambers. By spectacular ill fortune, his visit to his sister coincided with the arrival of William Compton. Buckingham ‘intercepted [Compton], quarrelled with him, and the end of it was that he was severely reproached in many and very hard words’.

Compton did not take this treatment lying down. He reported it immediately to the king who - rather confirming Caroz’s suspicion that Henry himself was the lady’s suitor - ‘was so offended at this that he reprimanded the duke angrily.’ Buckingham fled from the king’s presence in a fierce temper. Lord Hastings, perhaps inspired by the duke’s affirmative action, had Anne spirited away ‘and placed her in a convent sixty miles’ away.

Worse was to follow for the Staffords. When Henry discovered that the source of all this trouble was his queen’s servant Lady Fitzwalter he had her and her husband turned out of court. By now the whole situation was getting out of hand. In his frustration at the loss of Lady Hastings, Henry was threatening the jobs of half the royal servants.

‘Believing that there were other women in the employment… [sneaking] about the palace insidiously spying out every unwatched moment, in order to tell the queen [stories], the king would have liked to turn all of them out, only that it has appeared to him too great a scandal.’

Inevitably, the queen learnt of the dalliance. Recently emerged from her miserable lying in with no child to show for it, and still only months into her marriage, Queen Catherine did not take news of her husband’s infidelity well. ‘Almost all the court knew that the queen had been vexed with the king,’ reported Caroz, ‘and the king with her, and thus this storm went on between them.’

In the fullness of time Catherine forgave Henry and during her next confinement we do not hear of any further adulterous intrigues around the king. The Staffords returned to court. The ‘storm’ subsided.

As far as we know, the relationship between Henry and Anne never went beyond flirtation. Indeed, after 1510 we never hear of their names being associated again. Henry would go on to have other mistresses - Bessy Blount, Mary Boleyn, those infamous wives - but his feelings for Anne seem to have been cooled by the furore his attentions had caused.

The same is not true, however, of Anne and Compton. Despite both being married - apparently contentedly - the pair continued to enjoy a close relationship for years to come. So close, in fact, that in 1527 Compton was forced to swear on the sacrament that he had not committed adultery with her. Perhaps that was true. But the will he wrote in 1523 suggests that even if their relationship was not physical, it was certainly very affectionate. This will - written shortly before he went to war on the Scottish borders - asked that, in the event of his death, prayers be said for himself, his wife and Anne. It also gave Anne a life interest in some of his estates. Such generosity to a woman outside one’s kinship group was very unusual. It suggests that while the royal affair swiftly blew over, Anne’s relationship with Compton was deeper and more abiding. The king’s first ‘mistress’ was not an easy woman to forget.

Henry’s relationship with Lady Hastings features in Lauren’s new book, So Great a Prince: England and the Accession of Henry VIII (Head of Zeus). The book explores the year 1509 from the perspective of both king and country.

She is also the author of The Arrow of Sherwood (Pen & Sword Fiction) and wrote the play Lady Unknown.

She blogs at laurenjohnson1, tweets @History_lauren and facebooks at Lauren Johnson: Author & Historian. Her website is Lauren-Johnson.com.

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Uncovering the Death of Owen Tudor

by Tony Riches

In this post I’d like to focus on the legends surrounding Owen Tudor’s death. For once, we can pinpoint his location at a specific date and time, as his defeat by the forces of Edward IV at the Battle of Mortimer’s cross is well documented. While his son Jasper Tudor managed to escape, Owen was taken prisoner and marched to the nearby market town of Hereford. Probably the most reliable account is in The Chronicle of William Gregory, written soon after the event:

Ande in that jornay was Owyn Tetyr i-take and brought unto Herforde este, an he was be heddyde at the market place, and hys hedde sette a-pone the hygheyste gryce of the market crosse, and a madde woman kembyd hys here and wysche a way the blode of hys face, and she gate candellys and sette a-boute hym brennynge, moo then a C. Thys Owyne Tytyr was fadyr unto the Erle of Penbroke, and hadde weddyd Quene Kateryn, Kyng Harry the VI. ys modyr, wenyng and trustyng all eway that he shulde not be hedyd tylle he sawe the axe and the blocke, and whenn that he was in hys dobelet he trustyd on pardon and grace tylle the coler of hys redde vellvet dobbelet was ryppyd of. Then he sayde, "That hede shalle ly on the stocke that was wonte to ly on Quene Kateryns lappe," and put hys herte and mynde holy unto God, and fulle mekely toke hys dethe.

(Source: British History Online)

There are some intriguing details here, notably the non-linear structure, which we can learn from as we try to envisage the scene. Gregory suggests that right until the end, Owen believed he would be spared. When the collar of his red velvet doublet was ripped off it seems he realised there would be no last minute pardon and submitted to the inevitable and ‘fully meekly took his death.’ The most memorable imagery is of the ‘mad woman’ who combed the hair of his severed head and washed the blood from his face before surrounding it with lit candles. It is not difficult to see her instead as a grieving lover, or at least someone who wished, for whatever reason, for Owen’s body to be shown some respect after his death, despite Edward’s order for his head to be put on public display.

Was the story embellished in the retelling? Gregory was not present, so would have had to rely on secondary sources, and for me, the detail of Owen’s last words seems fanciful. This short account does offer a glimpse into Owen’s character, however. It seems he places more trust in his captors than he should – perhaps because of his royal connections? Sadly he had underestimated the vengeful young Edward IV, whose own father had not been shown any mercy when captured two months before, his severed head displayed on a pike over the Micklegate Bar at York.

Owen was buried in the chapel of the Greyfriars Church in Hereford, later pulled down after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. A plaque marks the spot of his execution in Hereford High Street, his only memorial. I would like to remember Owen, not as a victim of the Wars of the Roses, but as an adventurer, a risk-taker, a man who lived his life to the full and made his mark on the world through his descendants.

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

Tony Riches is a UK historical fiction author living in Pembrokeshire, Wales. You can find out more on Tony’s blog ‘The Writing Desk’ at www.tonyriches.co.uk and find him on Twitter @tonyriches.

Owen – Book One of the Tudor Trilogy is now available in eBook and paperback on Amazon and all formats on Smashwords.

The Taming of Katherine Parr

by Danielle Marchant

This month sees the release of Philippa Gregory’s latest historical novel The Taming of the Queen, which is about Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr. As with all historical novels and dramas, there’s always anticipation on how the character is going to be portrayed and how their story will be told. In some cases, the historical fiction version of the characters tends to be a lot more exciting and dangerous than the real life characters. The various portrayals of Anne Boleyn is a good example of this, where in fiction she is often portrayed as a home-wrecking, man-eating Sex Goddess with a sixth finger, whereas in reality it has been argued that she was probably far more sober and God- fearing. The fictional portrayals of Katherine Parr, however, tend to buck the trend.

Katherine, as the famous nursery rhyme told us, was the one that survived. She was the sober nursemaid, the much-needed mother figure for Edward, Elizabeth and Mary who liked nothing more than to change Henry’s bandages for his putrid leg wound. However, in an interesting reversal – and of course, with the exception of the “The Tudors” TV drama series - it was actually the real Katherine that lived a far more interesting, exciting and even dangerous life compared to her fictional portrayals. It’s almost like the image of the real Katherine has been straitened to nothing more than a boring nursemaid, skulking in the shadows of the far more famous of Henry VIII’s wives. The real Katherine has been tamed. However, the real Katherine, who is possibly the least famous of all of Henry VIII’s wives, not only narrowly escaped facing the same tragic fate as that of two of Henry’s other wives, but she also was a major influence on the future Queen Elizabeth I.

In March 1543, thirty-year-old Katherine was widowed for the second time after the death of her husband Lord Latimer, but financially she was comfortable. She found herself in a position of freedom and was able to think about what she wanted to do with her life. There were two things that were certain for Katherine. She knew that she definitely wanted to stay at court, and she wanted to remarry. She had also fallen in love. The man that had stolen her heart was Thomas Seymour, the King’s brother-in-law. Four years later, she had told Seymour: “As truly as God is God, my mind was fully bent the other time I was at liberty to marry you before any man I know.”

This is quite a passionate image of Katherine, an image we don’t often associate with the real Katherine. However, Katherine had to forget about Thomas. There was another man who wanted her hand in marriage – it was the King. Despite already going down the aisle five times before, it didn’t deter him from a sixth trip. This time he was looking for an attractive woman without a reputation (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard would have come to mind on the latter point). Lady Latimer ticked these boxes, so the King popped the question and, forgetting all about Thomas Seymour, she wisely accepted. They were married on the 12th July at Hampton Court Palace in the Queen’s Closet. This does show another quality that isn’t emphasised that much when referring to Katherine – bravery. She was brave in the sense that she was about to marry a man who had executed two of his previous wives.

In addition, she showed bravery in her religious beliefs. She wasn’t afraid to talk about her beliefs later on in the marriage. This was incredibly risky because it later nearly led to her being put in the Tower. Henry caused some confusion with his religious beliefs. When Katherine first married the King, we don’t really know what Katherine’s religious beliefs were at the time. However, even though the King had embraced the Reformation and the break with Rome, on the other hand, he was not a Lutheran and still very much believed in the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine at mass. Katherine, however, did seem to demonstrate reformist – even Calvinist – beliefs, which became more apparent as the years went by. Henry and Katherine would often have religious debates, but at this stage it didn’t cause any particular concern to Henry. She collected books such as a 1542 English translation of A Sermon of St Chrysostome by the Oxford Scholar John Lupset. Katherine also wrote books for her ladies and friends. They were books of prayers, beautifully bound in gilt and leather, sold at 16 shillings, or £250 a copy in today’s money. Katherine was particularly in awe of the Great Bible, printed in Paris, which then emerged in England in April 1540. The Great Bible showed the word of God in the English language – it spoke directly to the people, including Katherine, without any additional interpretations from Priests. This encouraged Katherine to become more involved in the great religious debates. Her enthusiasm reached a peak in 1545, when Katherine went on to write the “Lamentation of a Sinner”. Based on St. Paul’s teachings and the epistles, it was the first work of its kind written by a woman. So, not only was the real Katherine brave, passionate and religious, she was also creative. These are qualities that are not often associated with Katherine.

However, Katherine's involvement in religious discussions and the views she expressed in her writing began to cause suspicion to the King, and this provided ammunition to the conservative faction at court. Bishop Gardiner and his cronies looked at everything that could be used against her – the books she wrote, the books she read and even her ladies-in-waiting were held with suspicion. There were three ladies in particular that became a focus of this campaign – Lady Herbert (Katherine’s sister), Lady Lane (Katherine’s cousin) and Lady Tyrwhit. John Foxe recalled the events later in the Elizabethan period:

It was devised that these three should first of all have been accused and brought to answer to the six articles (the act passed in 1539) and upon their apprehension in court, their closets and coffers should have been searched, that somewhat might have been found by which the Queen might be charged; which being found, the Queen herself presently should have been taken, and likewise carried by night by barge to the Tower.

However, fate intervened. The King revealed to one of his physicians, Dr. Wendy, what he was going to do, but the bill of articles against Katherine, signed by the King himself, had been accidently dropped by an anonymous councillor. It was then found and brought to the Queen. As you could imagine, Katherine flew into panic mode – she “fell immediately into a great agony, bewailing and talking on in such sort”. Dr. Wendy was summoned to the Queen and advised her that she should “shew her humble submission to the King”.

Katherine took on board this advice, and one night she went to the King’s Bedchamber. The King decided to launch a debate on religion, a topic they were always guaranteed to have a debate on. However, instead of speaking her mind on religious matters, she instead said to him: “God has appointed such a natural difference between man and woman, and your majesty being so excellent in gifts and ornaments of wisdom, and I a silly poor woman, so much inferior in all aspects of nature to you”.

Katherine was now playing the part of a submissive wife. She said that she only debated with him on religion to distract him from the pain caused by his ill health. She said it was ridiculous, the thought of a woman trying to teach her husband. Both made peace with each other, and all was well. When Chancellor Thomas Wriothesely arrived with his armed guards of forty men to arrest the Queen, Henry sent him away, shouting “Knave, arrant knave, beast and fool”. Katherine had lived to see another day. This does show a very clever and witty side to Katherine as well – she certainly knew how to turn a negative situation into a positive one.

Wriothesely’s involvement is interesting as it refers to another unknown side to the real Katherine. Katherine was not one to give in to self-pity. Wriothesely’s wife, Jane, who was also Katherine’s lady-in-waiting, had lost her baby son. Katherine wrote a letter to her in March 1545, and even though this was written in an age when child mortality was common, its tone still seems very cold and harsh:

It have pleased God of late to disinherit your son of this world, of intent he should become partner and chosen heir of the everlasting inheritance, which calling and happy vocation ye may rejoice. If you lament your son’s death, you do him great wrong and show yourself to sorrow for the happiest thing there ever came to him.

Even though this was written in an age of religious fervour, Katherine’s tone in this letter still comes across as very cruel to a grieving mother who has just lost her child. With the exception of being a step-mother, Katherine at the time of writing this was not a mother herself, so would not have related to the pain that Jane was experiencing. Katherine, based on her own personal experiences, was a woman who kept a lid on her emotions and didn’t dwell on the past, and probably felt that in her own way, she was trying to help Jane. However, this would have provided little comfort to Jane and her husband. Their reaction to the letter is not known, however, it’s very possible that this may have caused so much upset that it fuelled Wriothesley’s anger towards Katherine later on.

As part of the campaign to put Katherine in the Tower, Wriothesley tried to link Katherine to Anne Askew, a heretic who became a martyr for her reformist beliefs and was burnt at the stake in July 1546. The torture Anne endured while being interrogated was particularly shocking as they resorted to putting her on the rack in a desperate attempt to get her to blurt out the names of members of Katherine’s privy chamber. Even Wriothesley himself turned the rack. Was this his revenge for the hurt Katherine had caused him and his wife before with her letter about their son? Anne Askew described her torture:

Then they put me on the rack, because I confessed no ladies or gentlewomen to be of my opinion; and there they kept me a long time, and because I lay still and did not cry, my lord chancellor and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead.

The incident was also particularly shocking to her contemporaries as Anne was born into the gentry, and the gentry were never tortured. Even more disturbing, it is possible that the King himself gave them permission to torture her.

The fate of Anne, along with the attempt to put Katherine in the Tower, was evidence of a move against reformist belief in the last two years’ of the King’s reign. The campaign had begun in April 1546 – coincidently, soon after the conservative Bishop Gardiner’s return from Europe. In a sense, it was probably a blessing that Katherine did have this side to her where she could keep her emotions in check – it may have caused anger to the Wriothesleys, but at the same time, it ultimately helped her to face the King when she was interrogated herself over religion and come out of the situation calmly and unscathed.

Another fascinating but little-known fact about the real Katherine was how well she got on with her step-daughter, Mary Tudor. We’ve always been given the impression in fiction that the two simply did not get along due to their religious differences - Protestant Katherine vs Catholic Mary. This image, however, was created later on. We do know that when Mary became Queen, she did ban Katherine’s book The Lamentation of a Sinner. However, Mary did accept the changes her father had made, and the Mass was just as important to her as it was to her father and Katherine. Mary even helped Katherine to translate Erasmus’s Paraphrases of the New Testament, where she translated St. John’s Gospel. Due to illness, Mary was unable to finish her part of the project, but Katherine’s chaplain, Francis Mallet, intervened to finish Mary’s work. It has been suggested that the illness was an excuse to not finish the work, but this is unlikely as later on, Mary became uncomfortable with the idea of gaining credit for work that was not entirely her work. Katherine, however, reassured her:

All the world knows that you have toiled and laboured much in this business, I do not see why you should repudiate that praise which all men justly confer on you. However, I leave this whole matter to your discretion, and whatever resolution you may adopt, that will meet my fullest approbation.

This shows how very supportive and encouraging Katherine was as a step-mother to Mary and had helped her to become a published author.

Katherine also had a pleasure-loving side. She fully embraced the role of Queen. Her household ate, drank, were merry, sung, danced and took part in sports. Katherine kept hounds and hawks for hunting, parrots for entertainment, and she loved dogs. Katherine’s spaniel, Rig, owned an impressive collar of crimson velvet embroidered with damask gold and it had rings made of silver gilt to attach its lead.

Katherine loved clothes and her wardrobe was full of beautiful and expensive items. Crimson was her favourite colour and she even dressed her footman and pages in Crimson. Even her own lavatory had a crimson velvet canopy, cushions covered in cloth of gold and a seat of crimson velvet. A removable commode was covered in red silk and ribbons, attached with gilt nails. She chose luxurious, expensive fabrics, such as cloth of gold and silver (silver being her favourite), damasks, taffetas, silks, satins and velvets. In the three years that she spent being Henry’s sixth wife, she had bought 315 yards of black velvet, 95 yards of black satin and 35 yards of orange damask. Katherine also had a thing for shoes – she owned no less than an impressive 117 pairs of shoes, although this number did eventually drop to 47 pairs.

What is possibly the most important but little-known fact of the whole Tudor period was that Katherine was a huge influence on the future Queen Elizabeth I. The many little ways that Katherine had helped to mould the young Elizabeth would emerge later on and help to make her the kind of Queen that she became.

Katherine was meticulous in her choice of clothes and jewels for portraits. She wanted to show the world that she was Queen, that she was a regal figure in her own right. Even more interesting, these portraits were not ordered by the King; the Queen had requested these herself. There were more portraits of Katherine than there were of any other Queen of England in this period – but, with the exception of Elizabeth I.

Queen Elizabeth has been seen in many portraits, bedecked with jewellery and fine fabrics, giving a clear message to those looking at her portrait that she was Queen and was so in her right - in very much the same way as Katherine had done once before. Therefore, the young Elizabeth had definitely watched her step-mother and took notes. The image that Katherine gave to the public would have no doubt made a lasting impression on Elizabeth, teaching her the art of being a Queen.

The young Elizabeth and Katherine also shared a love of studying, and Elizabeth became aware of Katherine’s religious interests. As a New Year’s gift in 1544, Elizabeth endeavoured to impress Katherine with a translation of Margaret of Navarre’s Le miroir de l'âme pécheresse. Elizabeth called it The Mirror or Glass of the Sinful Soul. While accomplishing this, Elizabeth learned that the writer “can do nothing that good is or prevaileth for her salvation, unless it be through the grace of God”. This was the earliest statement of Elizabeth’s religious views and was evidence of how possibly Katherine’s reformist beliefs were influencing Elizabeth’s. When Elizabeth grew up and became Queen, unlike her siblings Edward and Mary, she did not favour just Catholicism or Protestantism alone; she worked towards a middle way between the two, leading to the creation of the Church of England. So, having been exposed to her step-mother’s beliefs and then, seeing the two extremes of religion in the reigns of both of her siblings – Protestant Edward and then Catholic Mary – this all must have had an impact of how she wanted to run the country and mediate its spiritual and ecclesiastical issues.

Possibly the most important tutorial in being a Queen that Elizabeth observed came in the summer of 1544. In that summer, the King had sailed to France and Elizabeth observed Katherine as a Queen Regent. This would help to prove to the young Elizabeth that in an age when women were seen as inferior to men, a Queen could rule England just as well as any King. Only Katherine of Aragon had been made Queen Regent before Katherine Parr. Katherine Parr excelled in and took great delight in her new responsibility, handling with ease the mass of papers, taking part in discussions with advisers and make important decisions. This definitely had a great influence on the young Elizabeth who later on as Queen faced and defeated the Spanish Armada. Everything that Elizabeth had learned about being Queen was epitomised in what was to be her most famous speech, given to her army at Tilbury in 1588:

I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down my life for my God and for my kingdom and for my people, my honour, and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.

Therefore, the real Katherine Parr was brave, passionate, religious, creative, witty and clever, liked glamour, escaped with her life from the Tower and helped to mould and influence one of English history’s greatest Queens. She even got on well with a Catholic. However, many of us don’t know this because the real Katherine has been tamed.

Images:
- Katherine Parr – artist unknown, painted in 1545.
- Katherine Parr – artist unknown.
- The young Elizabeth.
- Elizabeth I “The Rainbow Portrait”

Sources and suggested further reading:
Katherine the Queen – Linda Porter, Macmillan, 2010.

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By Danielle Marchant
I am an Independent Author from London, UK. I am the author of “The Lady Rochford Saga”, based on the life of Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford. Both parts 1 and 2 are out now, and I am currently working on part 3, due for release Spring/Summer 2016:

Amazon

Visit my Facebook page and website.

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

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Janet Wertman is a freelance grantwriter by day and a writer of historical fiction by night. She is currently working on a novel of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, which is expected to be released in 2015. She regularly blogs about the Tudors and what it’s like to write about them – please visit her website:  www.janetwertman.com.

Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas in Early Tudor England

by Lauren Johnson

Christmas might seem a distant memory for us now, swaddled in a mental blanket of too many mince pies and flutes of fizzy wine. But five centuries ago Christmas would still be going strong on 1 January. During the Twelve Days of Christmas celebrated by the early Tudors, New Year marked a halfway point: the major feast of Christmas day was over, the minor celebrations of Holy Innocents and various saints’ days had passed, but there was still the major festivity of New Year’s Day to enjoy, not to mention the biggest party of all: Twelfth Night.

Christmas – New Year – Twelfth Night. These were the holy trinity of celebration and for many people they involved the greatest festivities of the entire year.

Wressle Castle, Yorkshire - Dupont Circle, Wikimedia

In the household of Henry Percy, Fifth Earl of Northumberland, New Year’s Day dawned with a cacophony of trumpet blasts. First they belched out their tunes outside the Earl and Countess’s door, and then their children’s. Unpleasant as this sounds to us perhaps it wasn’t so bad for Harry Percy – he didn’t celebrate the turning year (and work on his ‘morning after’ headache) until that night, when he sat in state in his great hall at Wressle Castle and had largesse proclaimed by his heralds. The Earl celebrated the Twelve Days of Christmas in style: his half-dozen musicians played, there were dances, pageants, disguisings, plays, wassailing, carol-singing and gambling. He even had his own bearward to bring "his lordship’s beasts for making of his lordship’s pastime".

A similar barrage of entertainment took place in the royal court – Henry VII’s wife Elizabeth of York rewarded her musicians for their Christmas entertainments, possibly including a New Year awakening like that enjoyed by Northumberland. Henry himself sponsored ‘players’ of plays and also regularly rewarded his Chapel Royal for their involvement in courtly performances. The gentlemen and children of the Chapel mounted a performance, which on Twelfth Night 1495 saw the future master of the Chapel, William Cornish, dressed as St George charging at a dragon. Around this fantastical pageant were staged a play and a courtly disguising. Henry and Elizabeth’s son Henry VIII took a much more active role in court celebrations, inserting himself into the pageantry of disguising and masquing.

Elizabeth of York: Wikimedia Commons

Both Henry VII and Henry VIII also partook of the more transgressive elements of the Twelve Days, permitting a Lord or Abbot of Misrule to control courtly entertainment. This inversion performance, in which a low status figure was elevated to a role of authority for anything from a day to several months, appears all over the country during Christmas. Merton College, Oxford, elected a King of the Bean (Rex Fabarum) who ruled from St Edmund’s eve in November until Candlemas (2 February). He sat in state in the college hall and dispensed ‘justice’ throughout his reign, beating those whose service displeased him. St Thomas’s Day (29 December) saw ‘Yule and his wife’ riding through York in a ‘barbarous’ manner, while in Norwich the ‘King of Christmas’ paraded in tinsel with other disguised figures in the fifteenth century. In Coventry in 1518-9 the vintner Henry Rogers kept open house during Christmas and made one of his sergeants Lord of Misrule.

The London Inns of Court – those seats of legal education – saw some of the most raucous Christmas celebrations take place. Lincoln’s Inn had its own Master of Revels and staff as well as nominating a King for Christmas who was to sit on Christmas day. He was displaced by the King of the Cockneys on Holy Innocents and a marshal who was king on New Year’s Day. With all these kings knocking around perhaps it is unsurprising there was an anti-king called Jack Straw who caused damage to the Inns at Christmas 1517, broke down doors and was banished. The Inner Temple gave its Lord of Misrule a fantastic court on St Stephen’s Day (26 December), when animals were hunted around the hall. Probably not part of this hunt but intriguing nonetheless, there are references to Christmas keepers of a marmoset, baboon and lion at Furnival’s Inn in the fifteenth century. 

Lincolns Inn Fifteenth Century undercroft.
Wikimedia Commons: Stephencdickson

Boy Bishops paraded and preached across the country, either on St Nicholas’s Day (6 December) or the Feast of Holy Innocents (28 December). Both dates were associated with children in a typically morbid medieval fashion: St Nick had saved young women from a life of prostitution by giving them dowries and raised a bunch of beheaded boys from the dead; Holy Innocents was the anniversary of Herod’s massacre of children under the age of two. Boy Bishops appear everywhere from Exeter to York and Norwich to Gloucester. In Oxford four colleges sponsored a Boy Bishop in the fifteenth century and in 1508-9 Lincoln College paid six pence to ‘St Nicholas clerk’. In Louth, Lincolnshire, the Boy Bishop received six pence for his service on Holly Innocents. For visiting the Earl of Northumberland’s home and delivering a sermon the ‘Barne Bishop’ of either Beverley or York (bairn being northern dialect for child) received a whopping 20 shillings. At St Paul’s Cathedral, London, the boy bishop got supper on the eve of Holy Innocents, and was loaned a horse, entertained on Innocents’ day, then permitted to stay up late. He was dressed in clothes befitting the high status of a real bishop, with mitre, crozier and bejeweled robes, in which he delivered a sermon on the feast day of Holy Innocents.

Beyond lords of misrule and boy bishops (or girl abbesses) the Christmas season saw music and plays erupting throughout the country. A number of towns maintained musicians or ‘waits’ to perform during such periods. Newcastle-upon-Tyne paid locally sponsored ‘waits’ (musicians) and two minstrels. Lincoln had waits from the 1420s as well as enjoying a play of the Nativity on Christmas morning by the mid-fifteenth century. The Howard earls of Surrey and dukes of Norfolk had maintained players since the Yorkist regime and were still putting on pageants and disguisings under Henry VII. Henry borrowed players from the households of others: the Earls of Oxford, Northumberland and Wiltshire, the Duke of Buckingham; players from Essex, Wimbourne Minster, France. He was also the first King of England to maintain his own players – and he set up troupes for his wife and sons. Plays were performed in Oxford colleges too: Thomas More wrote one performed at Magdalen College c.1495.

Throughout England revelry took place during the Twelve Days of Christmas – it was a welcome excuse to forget the miserable winter darkness and cold, to gather around fires and communally in halls, eating and drinking without restriction, and being entertained by pleasures as simple as parading children in costumes or as lavish as court pageants. Most highly prized were good company, plenty of food and drink, and some entertainment. In many ways, the early Tudor Christmas was not so dissimilar to our own.

To read more about the food eaten at Christmas in the early Tudor period, check out my blogpost on the topic here.

Brief Bibliography
J.J. Anderson, Records of Early English Drama: Newcastle Upon Tyne (Manchester University Press, 1982)
E.K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage: Two Volumes Bound as One (Dover Publications Inc, 1996)
John Elliott Jr, Alan H. Helson, Alexandra F. Johnston, Diana Wyatt (eds.), REED: Oxford (British Library & Toronto University Press, 2004), 2 volumes
Ian Lancashire, ‘Orders for Twelfth Day and Night c.1515 in the Second Northumberland House Book’, English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 10 (1980)
Alan H. Nelson & John R. Elliott Jr (eds.), Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court (D.S. Brewer, 2010)
W. R. Streitberger, Court Revels, 1485-1559 (University of Toronto Press, 1994)
Meg Twycross (ed.), Festive Drama: Papers from the Sixth Triennial Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, Lancaster, 13-19 July 1989 (D. S. Brewer, 1996)

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Lauren is the author of The Arrow of Sherwood (Pen & Sword Fiction, 2013) and currently working on a history of the year 1509 for Head of Zeus (2016).
She blogs at laurenjohnson1, tweets @History_lauren and facebooks at Lauren Johnson: Author & Historian. Her website is Lauren-Johnson.com.

Will the Real Anne Boleyn Please Stand Up.

by Judith Arnopp

Anne Boleyn, National Portrait Gallery

I am often told that readers are fed up with Tudors.  They know the stories, they’ve heard it all. The need for Tudor novels is over. But the reading public doesn’t seem to believe that. Since I first became an author of historical novels the most recurrent question has been, “Have you written any Tudor books?” 

It seems to me that the reading public, both in England and especially overseas, cannot get enough of Henry and his wives. I think the reason for this is not just the glitz and the danger of Henry’s court; it is the many different interpretations we can put upon the stories and the people that inhabit them. There are more explanations for what went on than there are stars in the skies, and there are novelists enough to encompass them all. Added to that of course is that new generations are emerging all the time; a new batch of people who know nothing about the Tudors.

Anne Boleyn remains the number one favourite; the wife that everyone loves to read about. She has been depicted in many different ways; a schemer, a witch, a victim, a whore. She has been demonised by some novelists, and sanctified by others but how close to we ever come to the real Anne? We can never really know the truth about her, we can only piece little snippets together to make up a shadow of the real woman. That is what makes history, and enigmatic figures like Anne, so irresistible. Anne Boleyn was, and still is, a fascinating woman who deserves after all this time a fair reappraisal of her life and death.

In his nonfiction book The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Eric Ives,  now sadly passed on, reveals a credible figure. He has done the hard work for us, demolishing many of the myths that in the space of several centuries have solidified into fact, and illustrating that what remains is an intelligent, ambitious, but God-fearing woman who happened to win the love of a king. 

 

It is refreshing to discover that perhaps Anne was not a scheming witch with a penchant for sleeping with half the court, (her brother included). Nor was she a woman who gave birth to a monster and plotted the death of the king. Ives’ research reveals someone more sinned against than sinning, and a woman whose mistakes were human ones. Anne was a queen who failed to produce an heir, and a woman who fell foul of the King’s most powerful advisers.  The woman that emerges from Ives’ research is the Anne Boleyn that walks the pages of my novel The Kiss of the Concubine.

To be honest, the real Anne is so obscured by myth and legend that we know much less about her than we think we do. We are not even sure what she looked like. We think of her as dark haired and thin but the familiar portraits we see of her are not contemporary; the originals were lost long ago. Experts disagree, but the oldest 17^th century portrait now in the National Portrait Gallery is likely to be a copy of an original, and is favoured by Eric Ives as being the one that comes closest to a real likeness. 

There are several written descriptions from her contemporaries and, while none rate her as a great beauty, none remark upon any physical failing either. The fact that she doesn’t emerge as breathtakingly beautiful is refreshing, and illustrates that Henry may have been more taken with the personality within, than with an alluring or fashionable face and figure.

Brantome, a courtier from France, wrote in his memoirs that Anne Boleyn was ‘the fairest and most bewitching of all the lovely dames of the French court.’ (Weir, p. 151) And Lancelot de Carles stated that she was beautiful with an elegant figure and was ‘so graceful that you would never have taken her for an Englishwoman, but for a Frenchwoman born.’ (Weir, p. 151)

This is praise indeed, perhaps a little too flattering to be true, and many eyewitnesses agree that her looks were unfashionable and not to every one’s taste. As Francesco Sanuto, a Venetian diplomat, illustrates with his description of Anne as  ‘Not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, a bosom not much raised and eyes which are black and beautiful.’ (Ives, p. 40)

It is only after her death that the really detrimental reports begin to emerge. Writing in the reign of Elizabeth I, Catholic supporter, Nicholas Sander, describes Anne as, “rather tall of stature, with black hair and an oval face of sallow complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under the upper lip, and on her right hand, six fingers.  There was a large wen under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness, she wore a high dress covering her throat. In this she was followed by the ladies of the court, who also wore high dresses, having before been in the habit of leaving their necks and the upper portion of their person uncovered.” (Ives. P.39)

 attributed to John Hoskins [Public domain]

But, although there are common factors when it comes to colouring and bone structure in all these descriptions, I think we can dismiss the idea that she was seriously disfigured in any way. The 16^th century was a superstitious time and the characteristics described here all point to witchcraft. It is a clear attempt by Sander to demonise the former queen. Even had the king not been superstitious, I cannot image Henry VIII, who had the pick of the court ladies, finding a woman disfigured in this way to be even remotely attractive, let alone spend seven years of his life trying to get her into his bed. You can read a more in depth look at Anne’s appearance on an earlier blog I wrote for the English Historical Fiction Authors here.

Anne was accused of adultery, incest, high treason, and plotting to kill the King, and she died for those crimes. Yet none of these charges would stand up in a modern day courtroom. Eric Ives states that it can be proved that she was elsewhere on at least twelve of the occasions when she is supposed to have been committing adultery. The only actual ‘confession’ came from her musician Mark Smeaton, who we believe was subjected to torture in the Tower. Although Anne’s sister in law, Jane Rochford, gave evidence against Anne and her husband, George, she later retracted it in February 1542 before she herself faced execution for her involvement with Katherine Howard’s downfall.

While Anne was imprisoned in the Tower, Henry had his marriage to her annulled on the grounds of his former relationship with Anne’s sister, Mary. This made their daughter Elizabeth illegitimate. In truth, this should also have made the charge of adultery invalid, but this was Tudor England when justice was anything but just.

So, those are the bare facts. We can assume Anne was dark, and had attractive eyes and an oval face. We know she was intelligent and witty; even her detractors credit her with that. We know she was pious and refused to be Henry’s mistress, holding out until he promised marriage. That could make her a schemer, but equally it could make her chaste. During her marriage to Henry she tried and failed to produce a son, suffering several miscarriages and providing the king with just one daughter, later to become the greatest queen that has ever lived, Elizabeth. We also know that Anne worked in tandem with Cromwell and others toward church reform, and we also know that at a later stage there was a disagreement between them, and Anne’s downfall followed swiftly after.

Most novels of Anne I have read (but I confess I haven’t read them all) hold Henry alone to blame for Anne’s downfall. They show him as falling out of love with Anne, and place Jane Seymour as the sinister ‘other woman’ whose presence at court and her influence over the fickle king makes Anne’s fall inevitable. There is little evidence to suggest this and perhaps there were other reasons; perhaps another agenda came into play. Perhaps it was politics and not passion that killed her.

In writing The Kiss of the Concubine I have worked closely with the writing of Eric Ives and other prominent Tudor historians to come up with a less clichéd reason as to why Anne Boleyn had to die on that bright May morning in 1536.

Further reading

Lispcombe, Susannah, 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII, 2009.

Fraser, A. The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 1992.

Ives, E. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 2004.

Weir, A. The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 2007.

Weir, A. Mary Boleyn, 2011.

Weir, A. The Lady in the Tower,2009.

Fox, J. Jane Boleyn, 2007.

Denny, J. Anne Boleyn, 2007.

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Judith’s other work (click on the link for more information)

Intractable Heart: the story of Katheryn Parr –NEW.

The Kiss of the Concubine

The Winchester Goose

The Song of Heledd

The Forest Dwellers

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