TOMBS of HENRY VIII’S QUEENS: PART TWO by LINDA FETTERLY ROOT

Westminster Abbey

If the pop quizzes so popular on social media were to ask: ‘Which of Henry VIII’s wives is buried at Westminster?’,  I suspect the correct answer would be the least popular.  I would have guessed Katherine Parr, a woman of untarnished reputation and an Anglican scholar. And I would be wrong.  So would scores of others who had been to the site and read the grave markers in Henry VII’s Lady Chapel where the other Tudors are interred. The last of Great Harry’s wives to die is buried at an obscure location in the nave. Her name is Anne of Cleves.

ANNE OF CLEVES:  

The German princess Anne of Cleves is as obscure in death as she had been in life. She is buried in the nave, and for political and security reasons, her grave is not easily accessible to the public because it is within the sanctuary.  It is said that a visitor standing on the tip of the toes can see the marker, a rather recent addition which is only slightly higher than the floor. Apparently, there was a more visible tomb which was obscured to make a place for another queen’s mother and grandmother to sit at Elizabeth II’s coronation.  Earlier photos of the site are copyrighted and licensed at a king’s ransom.

Anne of Cleves' days as Henry’s consort were short-lived. She was never crowned and Henry swore the marriage was never consummated. Apparently,  the bride was too sexually naïve to know, one way or another, or perhaps she was astute enough to keep her mouth shut. Henry exercised  no such restraint. He found his bride ill-mannered, unappealing and malodorous. He complained of sagging breasts. He is quoted as referring to her as The Flanders Mare. Considering his expanding girth and abscessed leg wound, one might find his comment coming from the pot who called the kettle black. By 1540, the historical Henry was no longer the well-proportioned, athletic Henry portrayed in the Anne of Cleves episodes of the Tudors.

The Holbein Portrait {PD US} Wikimedia 

The king had entered into the marriage contract based on a portrait he had commissioned from court portraitist Hans Holbein, but looks were not the only matter of concern.  A match with a daughter of the Duke of Cleves was meant to solidify his alliance with the German states.  Once contracted, there was no diplomatic way to avoid a wedding without making enemies of the German princes, which Henry could ill-afford. Thus, in January 1540, a disgruntled Henry went through with the ceremony, but neither Holbein nor Thomas Cromwell recovered from the king’s disfavor.  After the wedding night, Henry told Cromwell that he had not liked her much before the bedding, and afterward, he liked her not at all. In February, she was told to leave the court. In early July, the marriage was annulled for lack of consummation and allegations of a pre-contract between Anne of Cleves and the heir to the House of Guise.  By the end of the month, Cromwell had paid for his failed matchmaking with his head, and on the same day, Henry married adolescent Kathryn Howard.

Anne of Cleves stayed on in England.  The king gave her the title of the King’s Sister. She never spoke ill of Henry and had a good relationship with both of his daughters. She is open game for historical novelists because she left an empty slate. She made no enemies and kept her opinions to herself. She survived Henry and his 5^th and 6^th consorts and avoided confrontation during Somerset’s protectorate of Edward VI  and during the Boy King's reign.  When the powers behind the throne rejected Lady Jane Grey and declared for Mary Tudor, Anne of Cleves joined the Lady Elizabeth in the parade marking Mary I's entry into London.  When Catholicism was in vogue during Mary’s reign, Anne abjured the Protestant faith she had adopted when she came.  She ended her days at Chelsea Old House after Queen Mary became suspicious of her relationship with Elizabeth and Frances Brandon, the Duchess of Suffolk.  She lived in quietude, known for the efficient management of her estates, her pleasant temperament, and her generosity to her servants. Henry could have done much worse.

And he did.

KATHRYN HOWARD

Church of Saint Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London (Wikimedia)

Henry's fifth wife, young, vivacious and unfortunately, promiscuous Kat Howard takes us on our second visit to the Church of Saint Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. In today’s terms, she would be called a Trophy Wife. At the time of her marriage in July 1540, she was probably no more than nineteen.  Kathryn was one of a brood of several children born to Lord Edmund Howard, the financially challenged younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk. Queen Anne Boleyn’s mother had been their sister. The dead queen had been a cousin.  Kathryn’s parents were both previously married with children.  Hence, Kathryn had so many older siblings of the whole and the half that her parents did not bother to record her birth date. It is believed to have been between 1521 and 1523.

With too many daughters in the family, her parents sent her to Lambeth House to live in the household of her paternal grandmother Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who ran an ex-officio home for high-born but impoverished surplus daughters. In that setting,the seeds of Kathryn’s fall were sown.  A visit to the Dowager’s household would have found it well-managed in every respect but one—the supervision of the teenage girls who had been deposited there.  The atmosphere portrayed in the mini-series The Tudors is reasonably accurate.  The girls lived in a dormitory and behaved as if it were a long term sleepover. It was a fine place for a robust good time, but not a training-ground for queens.

Kathryn was not a beauty nor was she especially bright, but she was a Howard and vivacious. How far her sexual dalliances as a ward of Lady Agnes Howard may have progressed is a case in controversy. The popular nominees as the girl’s despoiler include her music teacher Henry Mannock, her cousin Thomas Culpepper, and a young aristocrat, Francis Dereham, to whom she was possibly betrothed. Kathryn  might have married Dereham, had she not met the king on a visit to the Bishop of Rochester’s House. Henry's interest did not escape the attention of Kathryn's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.

Not much later in a move probably brokered by Norfolk, she left her grandmother’s house to become a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves.  Norfolk and the Catholic faction promoted her rise in the king's affection. Already determined to rid himself of his German bride, Henry had discovered a replacement more to his sexual taste,  and the Catholic faction saw a way to get rid of both the German consort and Thomas Cromwell, who was already the subject of Henry's animus.

Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk

Weeks after Anne of Cleves agreed to an annulment on terms allowing her to remain living comfortably in England, Henry married Kathryn at Oatlands.  She was likely not yet twenty and he was forty-nine, obese and diseased. But he was infatuated with his young bride.

Kat Howard's uncle and his allies who had promoted her so vigorously had not wasted any time by vetting her. Not long after her honeymoon, Kathryn renewed her relationship with her cousin Tom Culpepper, meeting with him privately in trysts arranged by her cousin-by-marriage, Lady Rochford, sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn. Kat Howard had never been especially discreet, and her new royal status did not change that.  The anti-Howard faction took notice, even if  their smitten king did not. When they had enough evidence, they presented it to the king. After ordering the queen's  arrest, he never saw her again. The men in Kathryn's past were quickly dispatched.  The queen's case presented some dicey legal issues, and  trial was delayed so Parliament could pass a law making it a capital offense for a consort to withhold knowledge of prior sexual conduct. Also, a Bill of Attainder would eliminate the need for an embarrassing trial. Soon any issues stemming from a precontract with Dereham were moot. Culpepper had confessed to a relationship with Kat while she was queen before he died. Evidence included a  letter to Culpepper before his arrest which Kathryn signed 'Yours as long as life endures,' which turned out to be not very long at all for either of the lovers. The cuckolded King of England wanted blood.

By January 1542, enemies of the Howards had accumulated enough evidence of an on-going affair with Culpepper to send both the silly queen and her lady, Jane Rochford, to the block. The two women joined their Boleyn relatives  in the pile of bones in the floor of Saint Peter ad Vincula.

Norfolk was included in the attaint, but his fall was more of a bounce.  Soon he was back in favor and appointed Lieutenant of the Armies. His eventual fall from grace had more to do with his conservative but astute decision to lift the siege on Montreuil and retreat to Calais, which embarrassed Henry during his war against the French. The behavior of his two royal nieces had little to do with it.

KATHERINE PARR:

A slightly different likeness of Katherine Parr
Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Seymour, Baron Sudeley

Katherine Parr is buried in Saint Mary’s Church at Sudeley Castle. It is the only private English castle to have a Queen buried on its grounds.  

Young Elizabeth

After Henry VIII’s death, the dead king's son Edward VI gave Sudeley 
to his uncle Thomas at the same time he made him a baron, probably at Thomas’s older brother Edward Seymour’s suggestion. Edward, Earl of Somerset was the self-appointed Protector of the Realm.  After their marriage, Seymour and his wife, who had been granted the title Queen Dowager for Life, resided at Chelsea with Lady Jane Gray and Lady Elizabeth as their wards.

Those who remember their Tudor history will identify Sudeley as the new home of Thomas Seymour, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, who, driven by ambition that outstripped his wit, married Henry’s widow and later broke her heart by making advances to his ward, the adolescent Lady Elizabeth, later Queen of England. Both women suffered over the love triangle. Seymour's unbridled ambition later put Elizabeth's life at risk. 

By the time Katherine became pregnant, Elizabeth had been sent to Hatfield in disgrace. The Queen Dowager moved her household to Sudeley for her laying in.  Six days after delivering a daughter, she died. She had not been a young woman when she married Seymour, and although she had been widowed twice when she married the king, all of her prior marriages had been childless. She would have been 35 at the time she gave birth to Seymour’s child.  Pregnancies were dangerous under the best of circumstances, but a first pregnancy in what was then well into middle age was especially precarious.  Some of  Seymour’s vociferous enemies suspected poison. Others blamed it on the stress his dalliance with Elizabeth caused the Queen. Nevertheless, although she had been heartbroken when she caught him and Elizabeth embracing, Katherine had forgiven her husband and had renewed a warm correspondence with Elizabeth, who sent a hand-knit baby gift.

Katherine Parr was buried at Sudeley Castle in Saint Mary’s Chapel. Thomas engaged in a series of madcap maneuvers aimed at displacing his brother Edward. In the last escapade, he shot the young king's dog. Seymour was executed for treason seven months after Katherine died. He is buried in the floor at the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower.

Queen Katherine's lead coffin was not identified until 1782. When it was opened, her corpse was well preserved. Drunken grave robbers ravaged the site ten years later, and what was left was buried in the tomb of one of the castle’s subsequent owners. Gothic architect George Gilbert Scott restored the site in the early 19th century and commissioned John Birnie Philip to create a tomb effigy for Katherine Parr. It seems a suitable resting place for a woman who understood the concept of duty but was never bound to silence and who appreciated beauty. She was a competent scholar and the first female English  writer to publish under her own name in England.  She was a gifted woman who deserved better of the men in her life. Her writings are available through the Women Writers Project and on Amazon.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

 Photographs are from Wikimedia Commons.  Online sources are numerous. Print sources include:  

John Field, Kingdom Power and Glory, A Historical Guide to Westminster Abbey, James& James, 1996: Derek Wilson, The Tower of London, Constable/Dorset 1978:and Julia Fox, Jane Boleyn: The True Story of Lady Rochford, Ballantyne Books, New York, 2009, among others.

LINDA FETTERLY ROOT is a former major crimes prosecutor, armchair historian, and author of the historical novels in the Legacy of the Queen of Scots series, and two epic novels set in the life and times of Marie Stuart. She lives in the historically rich ‘wild west’ north of Palm Springs, on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, with her canine partners Maxx and Maya, and assorted wild things. https://www.amazon.com/Linda-Root/e/B0053DIGM8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1473349726&sr=1-2-ent

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

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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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The Prophetess & the End of the World

By Nancy Bilyeau


In the spring of 1881, families across England deserted their homes, too distraught to sleep in their beds. They slept in fields or prayed in churches and chapels for God to spare their lives in the apocalypse that was foretold: "The world to an end shall come; in eighteen hundred and eighty one."

The author of their terror was Mother Shipton, also known as Ursula Shipton, a woman whose prophecies had been circulating through England and beyond for centuries. The first famous man whose life she prophesied was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the minister to Henry VIII until 1530. In often cryptic verse, the crone-like seer predicted wars, rebellions and all matter of natural disasters. After London burned in 1666, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary: "Mother Shipton's word is out." Her prophecies were published in one form or another over 20 times between 1641 and 1700. In the 1800s, her predictions grew even more terrifying: The end-of-the-world was foretold in a book published in 1862. Its other prophetic verse included: "A carriage without a horse shall go; Disaster fill the world with woe; In water iron then shall float; As easy as a wooden boat."

The world did not end in 1881. People began sleeping in their beds once more. It was not the first time that fear of a Mother Shipton prediction convulsed a nation and it would not be the last.

Today there is considerable skepticism that a voluble prophetess named Mother Shipton ever existed. Many of her written predictions are, after all, confirmed forgeries, created to sell greater numbers of chapbooks and almanacs. Her 1684 "biographer" spun spooky details of her birth and existence; the 1881 end-of-the-world prophecy was debunked when the Victorian editor Charles Hindley publicly confessed to concocting the verses himself.

Entrance to Shipton Cave

Nonetheless, belief in Mother Shipton persisted. Today a thriving tourist attraction called Mother Shipton's Cave, at Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, features the cave where she was born and the petrifying well where objects can turn to stone. There's also a shop selling mugs, tea towels, thimbles, and wishing-well water in dark pink, ruby red and kelly green.

But just because Mother Shipton has become the label on kelly- green wishing-well water does not mean that she has no basis in fact. Like Robin Hood or King Arthur, it's believed that if we were able to trace the myth-making back to the very beginning, a living, breathing person could be identified

There are no written references to Mother Shipton in the 1500s. That name does not appear in print until 1641. But a mention of a "witch of York" in a chilling letter written by King Henry VIII himself could be the elusive source of the legend.

The context of the letter is critical. It was written to Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, while the duke was in the middle of a clean-up operation following the Northern rebellion against the king known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Thousands of commoners and a fair number of nobles rose up against the reforms in religion forced on the country by Henry VIII. The rebels were particularly aggrieved by the fresh taxes and the closing of the monasteries, which in the poorer regions of the North were needed sources of food, shelter, and medical care. The Duke of Norfolk had easily defeated this 1537 outbreak, which followed the main rebellion of 1536, and he was now imprisoning and then executing people without trial, imposing martial law. He wrote his king that he hanged more than 70.

A watercolor of the rebellion showing, somewhat inaccurately,  that the army was led by priests and monks

Henry VIII dictated the following letter to Norfolk in response:

“We shall not forget your services, and are glad to hear also from sundry of our servants how you advance the truth, declaring the usurpation of the bishop of Rome… We approve of your proceedings in the displaying of our banner, which being now spread, till it is closed again the course of our laws must give place to martial law; and before you close it up again, you must cause such dreadful execution upon a good number of inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them, and setting their heads and quarters in every town, as shall be a fearful warning, whereby shall ensue the preservation of a great multitude... You shall send up to us the traitors Bigod, the friar of Knareborough, Leche, if he may be taken, the vicar of Penrith and Towneley, late chancellor to the bishop of Carlise, who has been a great promoter of these rebellions, the witch of York and one Dr. Pykering, a canon. You are to see to the lands and goods of such as shall now be attainted, that we may have them in safety, to be given, if we be so disposed, to those who have truly served us..."

"The witch of York"...could this be a contemporary reference to a woman who not only caused enough trouble to incite the wrath of Henry VIII but also transformed into Mother Shipton? Her legend grew and grew in the 1600s, in published almanacs: Ursula was born in a cave in 1488, the child of an orphan servant girl and an unknown father--perhaps Lucifer himself. She was singularly ugly, called "Devils Bastard" and "Hag-face." Nonetheless, Ursula married a builder named Toby Shipton and lived quietly with him, never prosecuted for witchcraft though regularly uttering prophecy. "Her stature," wrote her biographer, "was larger than common, her body crooked, her face frightful; but her understanding extraordinary." How much of this describes the same "witch of York" cited by Henry VIII is unknown.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

The fact that Mother Shipton's first known prediction concerned the fate of Cardinal Wolsey is significant. According to Wolsey's gentleman usher and later biographer, George Cavendish, Wolsey, near the end of his life, was disturbed by a prophecy heard. Cavendish wrote: " 'There is a saying, quoth he, 'that When this cow rideth the bull, then priest beware thy skull." According to Tudor-court interpretation, the cow was Anne Boleyn, who in her holding sway over Henry VIII and convincing him to divorce his queen to marry her, triggered the break with the Catholic Church. Mother Shipton was not attributed to this prophecy by Cavendish. But in the future, her soothsaying would intertwine with Wolsey's fate.

Belief in prophecy ran through every level of Tudor society. It reached a fever pitch during the dangerous 1530s, when queens and courtiers were beheaded, monasteries fell, and rebels were hanged from trees across the North of England. 

Many prophecies were used for political purposes. Uprisers against Henry VII said they were following the ancient sages. The rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace cried that Henry VIII was the ancient 'Mouldwarp,' a monster ruler foretold by Merlin who would be "cast down." Anthony Babington, who conspired to assassinate Elizabeth I, carried a prediction of Merlin's sayings. One popular prophecy during Elizabeth's time was "When HEMPE is soon, England's done." HEMPE was thought to stand for Henry-Edward-Mary-Philip-Elizabeth.  Madeleine Dodds in Political Prophecies in the Reign of Henry VIII wrote:  "Political prophecies tended to be invoked at a time of crisis, usually to demonstrate that some drastic change, either desired or already accomplished, had been foreseen by the sages of the past."

In the 1700 and 1800s, Mother Shipton's prophecies broadened to cataclysmic disasters, amazing inventions, and, of course, the end of the world. Stripped of politics, they were more potent than ever. Perhaps they filled a deep craving within to feel that everything happens by some design, even if it is drawn by an ancient mystic, sage or witch. We are all of us fulfilling an obscure and coded destiny.

It's a craving that we still see around us today. It just might be part of being human.

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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of the Tudor-era thriller The Crown, now on sale in North America, the United Kingdom and nine foreign markets. It was put on the short list for the Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award for 2012.

The sequel, The Chalice, which goes on sale on Feb 28th, 2013 in the United Kingdom and March 5th, 2013 in North America, revolves around a deadly prophecy. And yes, Mother Shipton is part of the plot.

For more information, go to www.nancybilyeau.com