Отправлено: 25.01.12 22:04. Заголовок: Tudor Times Weekly London Gazette Всегда свежие новости

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 Отправлено: 25.01.12 22:07. Заголовок: 25 January 1533 – Ma..

25 January 1533 – Marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

According to Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn on St Paul’s Day, the 25th January 1533. In a letter to Archdeacon Hawkyns, written in June 1533 and recording Anne Boleyn’s coronation, Cranmer wrote:-
“But now, sir, you may not imagine that this coronation was before her marriage; for she was married much about St Paul’s Day last, as the condition thereof doth well appear, by reason she is now somewhat big with child.”


Cranmer went on to challenge the rumours that he had performed the ceremony:-
“Notwithstanding it hath been reported throughout a great part of the realm that I married her; which was plainly false, for I myself knew not thereof a fortnight after it was done.”2
So secret was the marriage ceremony that even Cranmer had been kept in the dark until a couple of weeks afterwards and Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, was still writing to the Emperor at the end of March about rumours of a wedding being planned before Easter, little did he know that Anne and Henry were already married! Of course, the reason why it was kept secret was because Henry VIII was still married to Catherine of Aragon.
The Catholic apologist, Nicholas Harpsfield gave more details of the wedding in his “A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce between Henry VIII and Catharine of Aragon” written in Mary I’s reign:-
“The first whereof was that the King was married to [the] Lady Anne Bulleyne long ere there was any divorce made by the said Archbishop [of Canterbury]. The which marriage a was secretly made at Whitehall very early before day, none being present but Mr Norris and Mr Henage of the Privy Chamber and the Lady Barkeley, with Mr. Rowland the King’s chaplain, that was afterward made Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. To whom the King told that now he had gotten of the Pope a lycence to marry another wife, and yet to avoid business and tumult the thing must be done (quoth the King) very secretly ; and thereupon a time and place was appointed to the said Master Rowland to solemnize the said marriage.”3
Harpsfield goes on to describe how when a troubled Lee asked to see the licence so that it could be read to all present “or else we run all and I more deep than any other into excommunication in marrying your grace without any baynes asking, and in a place unhallowed, and no divorce as yet promulged of the first matrimony”, the King replied, “I have truly a lycence, but it is reposed in another sure[r] place whereto no man resorteth but myself, which, if it were seen, should discharge us all. But if I should, now that it waxeth towards day, fetch it, and be seen so early abroad, there would rise a rumour and talk thereof other than were convenient. Goe forth in God’s name, and do that which appertaineth to you. I will take upon me all other danger.”4 Lee had two choices: ask for the licence, showing that he did not trust his King, or get on with the ceremony, and I don’t think he can be blamed for going ahead with the marriage!
As I have said in previous posts, some sources actually give St Erkenwald’s Day 1532, the 14th November, as Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII’s wedding date. The chronicler Edward Hall wrote:-
“The kyng, after his returne [from Calais] maried priuily[privily] the lady Anne Bulleyn on sainet Erkenwaldes daie, whiche mariage was kept so secrete, that very fewe knewe it, til she was greate with child, at Easter after.”5
This was straight after their return from Calais, from a trip where Anne Boleyn had played the part of Henry VIII’s consort and where she had been accepted by Francis I. We know that they started co-habiting after this trip and that Anne was pregnant by the time of the ceremony in January 1533, so a marriage or a betrothal in November 1532 does make sense.
Click here to read more about the possible St Erkenwald’s Day wedding.
Why Get Married Before the Annulment?
As I have mentioned above, both the November and January wedding dates were before Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was annulled. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer did not make the declaration of annulment until the 23rd May 1533 so Henry was still legally married to Catherine of Aragon BUT an annulment isn’t like a divorce, it doesn’t just bring a marriage to an end, it declares that a marriage was never valid. Cranmer’s ruling in May 1533 meant that Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon had never been valid, there had never been a marriage, so his marriage to Anne, regardless of when it had taken place, was thereby legal – complicated!
So, in my opinion (and it’s a very humble one!), Henry and Anne knew exactly what they were doing in the autumn and winter of 1532/1533. Anne had been accepted as Henry’s consort by Francis I in October and Cranmer was on the case, Henry and Anne were sure that Henry’s marriage to Catherine would be annulled shortly so they made the decision to start living together as man and wife. I believe that they became betrothed, consummated that betrothal and then ‘rubber stamped’ that commitment with a marriage ceremony in the January. They had to make sure that if Anne got pregnant, as she did, that the baby would be seen as legitimate and Anne was obviously pregnant months before the ruling on the annulment. A marriage before the annulment was therefore imperative as their legal union would be ‘back dated’ to that and Anne’s baby would be legitimate. That’s how I see it anyway! Protestants in Elizabeth I’s reign emphasised the St Erkenwald’s Day marriage date so that Elizabeth was seen as definitely being conceived during a legal marriage.

 Отправлено: 28.01.12 12:49. Заголовок: Henry VII and Henry ..

28th January .
Henry VII and Henry VIII – The Birth of One and the Death of the Other


Today I will be remembering two Tudor monarchs: Henry VII and Henry VIII – one who is famed for starting the Tudor dynasty and the other for the number of wives he had. Two very different men, but father and son, and two great kings. One was born on this day in history, the other died.

On this day in history, 28th January 1457, Henry VII or Henry Tudor was born at Pembroke Castle in Wales. His parents were Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond and son of Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois, and his 13 year old wife, Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, and his mistress (and later wife) Katherine Swynford. It was through this Beaufort side, going back to John of Gaunt, that Henry VII derived his claim to the throne of England and he became King after defeating Richard III and his troops at the Battle of Bosworth on the 22nd August 1485. He ruled for over 23 years.



Also, on this day in history, 90 years later in the early hours of the 28th January 1547, Henry VIII died. He had been ill for some time and had made amendments to his will at the end of December. In early January, De Selve and La Garde, the French ambassadors, had reported to Francis I that Henry was ill but he was well enough to meet with ambassadors on the 16th January. However, on the 27th January, the King was too ill to attend the commission which agreed on the Duke of Norfolk’s attender and it became clear that he was dying. His doctors were afraid to tell the King that the end was near, for fear that they’d be accused of treason, so Henry’s good friend Sir Anthony Denny broke the news to the King. Henry asked for Archbishop Cranmer and then slept for a few hours. By the time Cranmer arrived, the King was unable to speak but when the Archbishop asked him to give a sign that he trusted in God the King was able to squeeze his hand. He lapsed into unconsciousness and died in the early hours. He had been King for over 37 years and his iconic portrait is recognised by people all over the world, who either love him or hate him.

 Отправлено: 29.01.12 16:57. Заголовок: 29 January 1536 – An..

29 January 1536 – Anne Boleyn’s Miscarriage

On this day in history, 29th January 1536, Anne Boleyn suffered her second and final miscarriage. It was her third pregnancy – she had given birth to healthy baby girl, the future Elizabeth I, on the 7th September 1533, and then had suffered a late miscarriage in the summer of 1534 – and the loss of this baby must have been a devastating blow for both Anne and King Henry VIII.
Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, reported Anne Boleyn’s miscarriage in a dispatch to Emperor Charles V:-


“On the day of the interment [Catherine of Aragon's funeral] the Concubine had an abortion which seemed to be a male child which she had not borne 3½ months, at which the King has shown great distress. The said concubine wished to lay the blame on the duke of Norfolk, whom she hates, saying he frightened her by bringing the news of the fall the King had six days before. But it is well known that is not the cause, for it was told her in a way that she should not be alarmed or attach much importance to it. Some think it was owing to her own incapacity to bear children, others to a fear that the King would treat her like the late Queen, especially considering the treatment shown to a lady of the Court, named Mistress Semel, to whom, as many say, he has lately made great presents.”1
and the chronicler Charles Wriothesley recorded:-
“This yeare also, three daies before Candlemas, Queene Anne was brought a bedd and delivered of a man chield, as it was said, afore her tyme, for she said that she had reckoned herself at that tyme but fiftene weekes gonne with chield; it was said she tooke a fright, for the King ranne that tyme at the ring and had a fall from his horse, but he had no hurt; and she tooke such a fright withall that it caused her to fall in travaile, and so was delivered afore her full tyme, which was a great discompfort to all this realme.”

So, it seems that Anne lost a son and not the “shapeless mass of flesh” that Nicholas Sander wrote of in 1585 – and note that he was the ONLY person to write of this, plus he said Anne had six fingers! – or “a baby hardly malformed, with a spine flayed open and a huge head, twice as large as the spindly little body”, which is how this baby is described in Philippa Gregory’s “The Other Boleyn Girl”. This was a normal miscarriage, a heartbreaking tragedy, but something which was a common occurrence in Tudor times and which still is today. It is so sad that this pregnancy did not go to term as I’m sure that a healthy son would have made Anne secure in her position as queen. Catherine of Aragon’s death and this miscarriage left Anne in a very vulnerable position and her enemies were to take advantage of this.


29 January 1536

Catherine of Aragon’s Funeral

On the 29th January 1536, Catherine of Aragon was buried in Peterborough Abbey, now known as Peterborough Cathedral. In her last days she had requested to be buried in a Chapel of her beloved order, The Observant Friars, but the recent dissolution of the monasteries meant that there were none left.


This strong woman who had refused to recognise the annulment of her marriage to Henry VIII and who still saw herself as Queen of England was buried at Peterborough as Princess Dowager, referring to her marriage to Prince Arthur, the Prince of Wales, and the Bishop of Rochester even said in his sermon at her funeral that “in the hour of death she acknowledged she had not been Queen of England”! Henry VIII was using his first wife’s funeral as propaganda and I don’t blame the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, who comforted Catherine in her last days, for not attending and choosing to remember her in his own way.
Catherine of Aragon’s tomb can still be visited today and Peterborough Cathedral have marked her tomb with the words “Katharine Queen of England”. The Cathedral also commemorate her life and death by holding a special programme of events every year at the end of January – The Katharine of Aragon Festival – and I think it is a fitting tribute to this wonderful woman. RIP Queen Catherine of Aragon.

7th January 1536, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton Castle. She had been ill for a few months but felt worse after drinking a draught of Welsh beer in December 1535 and this, combined with the embalmer’s report that all of her organs were healthy apart from her heart, “which was quit black and hideous to look at”, gave rise to rumours that Catherine had been poisoned. However, the embalmer, who Giles Tremlett points out was a chandler (a candle maker) and not a medical expert, also found a black body attached to Catherine’s heart, and Tremlett concludes that “a secondary melanotic sarcoma was almost certainly to blame”, a secondary heart tumour caused by cancer in another part of the body.

Catherine of Aragon’s Last Days
On the 29th December 1535 Catherine’s doctor sent for Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial Ambassador and a friend of Catherine’s – Catherine had taken a turn for the worse. Chapuys sought permission from the King to visit Catherine and it was granted. Mary was not so lucky, Henry refused to let her see her mother in her last days, something which must have broken the hearts of both women.


As Chapuys travelled to Kimbolton, Catherine received a surprise visitor, her former lady-in-waiting and confidante, María de Salinas, now Lady Willoughby, on New Year’s Day. Giles Tremlett writes of how María had rushed up from London on hearing the news of Catherine’s illness and that “she acted out an elaborate charade to force her way into the house, claiming the letter licensing her to enter was on its way” and pretending that she had been thrown from her horse and was in urgent need of shelter. She was allowed in.

The Catherine that María saw on that day must have been a far cry from the Catherine she had once known. Tremlett describes how Catherine “could barely sit up, yet alone stand”, that she had been unable to keep food down and that she was unable to sleep due to severe pains in her stomach. Chapuys arrived the next day and although the former queen was weak she was still lucid enough to know that she needed witnesses in the room when she first spoke to him so that she could not be accused of plotting against the King, later conversations, however, were in private. Chapuys visited Catherine every afternoon for two hours over four days and he reported that she was worried about her daughter, Mary, and her concern that the Pope and Emperor were not acting on her behalf. Catherine was also worried that she might be to blame for the “heresies” and “scandals” that England was now suffering from because of the battle over the divorce. She was haunted by the deaths that had resulted from Henry’s Great Matter and the fact that it had led to England breaking with Rome – were they down to her stubbornness, her refusal to go quietly? These were the questions preying on her mind during her last days.
Catherine’s health seemed to rally in the first few days of January, she ate some meals without being sick, she was sleeping well and was chatting and laughing with visitors, so Chapuys was dispatched back to London. However, on the night of the 6th January, Catherine became fidgety and in the early hours of the 7th she asked to take communion. It was unlawful for communion to be taken before daylight but Jorge de Athequa, Catherine’s confessor and the Bishop of Llandaff, could see that his mistress did not have long to live and so administered communion and listened to her confession. Tremlett points out that although he had promised Chapuys to get a deathbed vow from Catherine that she had not consummated her marriage to Prince Arthur, Llandaff forgot. Catherine settled her affairs, giving instructions on what she wanted done with her worldy goods and her burial – she wanted to be buried in a chapel of Observant Friars (Franciscans). It is also said that she wrote a letter to her former husband, Henry VIII, although Tremlett believes that the letter “is almost certainly fictitious”:-

“My most dear lord, king and husband,
The hour of my dear now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part I pardon you everything and I wish to devoutly pray to God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants, I solicit the wages due to them, and a year or more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.”
Tremlett writes of how Catherine then prayed, asking God “to set Henry back on the right path and forgive him for wronging her” before asking her Father’s pardon for her own soul. She continued praying until the end, until her loving Father took her into Paradise. Catalina de Aragón, daughter of the great Catholic Reyes, Isabel I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, was dead. She had died not in some sumptuous palace surrounded by her loved ones, but in a small, dark, cold castle with her faithful staff in attendance. A sad end to a woman who had once been Queen of England and who had defeated the Scots as Regent.
Although, as Tremlett points out, Catherine “died, her mind still troubled by whether she had been good to a country which, in the end had been bad to her”, she was finally at peace, and I hope that her friends had been able to reassure her and ease her worries during those last days. I can’t see that Catherine could have acted any differently. She had married Henry VIII before God and despite the annulment and his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, Catherine believed that she was still his true wife and Mary his legitimate heir. She had to fight for what she believed, for the sake of her soul and for that of her husband. I’m sure that her conscience would have been even more troubled if she had agreed to the annulment and risked their souls.
Catherine and Peterborough Cathedral


On the 29th January 1536, Catherine of Aragon was laid to rest at Peterborough Abbey, now Peterborough Cathedral. She was, of course, buried as the Dowager Princess of Wales, not as Queen, but her grave is now marked with the words “Katharine Queen of England”.

 Отправлено: 03.02.12 00:32. Заголовок: 2nd February 1550 ..

31 January 1510

Catherine of Aragon Loses a Baby

On this day in history, 31st January 1510, Catherine of Aragon went into premature labour and gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Fray Diego, her confessor, reported that the loss of the baby occurred “without any other pain except that one knee pained her the night before.”



What was heartbreaking about this miscarriage was that Catherine’s abdomen stayed rounded and kept growing, leading her physician to concluded that she was still pregnant and that she had lost one of a pair of twins. Even though she began to menstruate again, it’s understandable that Catherine and Henry clung on to that hope and Catherine went into confinement in March 1510 to await the birth of the remaining twin. The birth never happened, it was a phantom pregnancy and Catherine’s abdomen began to return to normal. How heartbreaking!

 Отправлено: 03.02.12 00:32. Заголовок: 2nd February 1550 ..

2nd February 1550

Sir Francis Bryan, the Vicar of Hell

On this day in history, 2nd February 1550, Sir Francis Bryan died suddenly at Clonmel in Ireland. He had settled in Ireland after marrying Joan Butler, dowager countess of Ormond, and had travelled to Tipperary as Lord Justice “to check the incursions of the O’Carrolls”.


In “The Tudors”, Sir Francis Bryan is a one-eyed rake who likes to have his wicked way with the ladies, but was the real Sir Francis Bryan really like that? Here are some facts about him:-
He did indeed have one eye – He lost an eye jousting in 1526 and historian Susan Brigden writes of how he joked about it “for he wrote of the one-eyed Robert Aske ‘I know him not, nor he me … yet we have but two eyes’ (LP Henry VIII, 11.1103)”.
His birthdate is not known but is thought to be around 1490.
He was the first surviving son of Sir Thomas Bryan and Lady Margaret Bryan (née Bourchier) who was lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon and governess to Princess Mary, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Edward.
Brigden believes that Bryan may have spent some of his youth in the household of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal, Westmorland, in Northamptonshire because he later referred to him as his patron. Parr was the father of Queen Catherine Parr.
His sister, Elizabeth, married Sir Nicholas Carew.
He was Anne Boleyn’s cousin – His mother was Elizabeth Boleyn’s half-sister.
In April 1513 he was Captain of the Margaret Bonaventure.
In 1516 he became the King’s cupbearer.

He was known for his skills at jousting and hunting and became the King’s master of the toils in 1518, a position he held for the rest of Henry VIII’s reign.
He was also known for his rich clothing.
in 1518 he became a gentleman of the privy chamber – He lost this position in Wolsey’s purge but then regained it in 1528.
Bryan was knighted in 1522 for his courage during the capture of Morlaix in Brittany, serving under the Earl of Surrey.
His first wife, who he was married to by 1522, was Philippa, daughter and heir of Humphrey Spice and widow of John Fortescue of Ponsbourne in Hertfordshire. The marriage was childless.
Bryan had a reputation for gambling and was a court favourite.
By 1526 he held the position of chielf cupbearer and master of the henchmen.
During the King’s Great Matter, Bryan was Henry VIII’s “trusted emissary to those with most power to bring about the king’s remarriage: Clement VII and François”.



Brigden writes of Bryan, “Bryan became known for his unusual willingness to tell the king the truth, but also for his employment of dubious means to gain diplomatic ends”, and writes of how he slept with a courtesan at the papal court to gain intelligence.
Bryan was the one who informed the King of his excommunication in August 1533.
In the 1530s he served as sheriff, JP and MP.
In May 1536, when the Boleyns fell from power, he was summoned to London for questioning but was not arrested. He had previously distanced himself from the Boleyns and allied himself with the Seymours.
Bryan was sent to tell Jane Seymour the news of Anne Boleyn’s execution and benefited from Anne’s fall, becoming Chief Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber.
Thomas Cromwell referred to Bryan as “the vicar of Hell” in a letter to Gardiner and Wallop on the 14th May 1536. According to Catholic recusant Nicholas Sander, the King also referred to him by this nickname. Sander writes “This man was once asked by the king to tell him what sort of a sin it was to ruin the mother and then the child. Bryan replied that it was a sin like that of eating a hen first and its chicken afterwards. The king burst forth into loud laughter, and said to Bryan, “Well, you certainly are my vicar of hell.” The man had been long ago called the vicar of hell on account of his notorious impiety, henceforth he was called also the king’s vicar of hell.”
Bryan’s motto was Je tens grace (‘I look for salvation’) and he was a staunch Catholic. Brigden writes “He owned a copy of the Matthew Bible of 1537, and was intrigued by the humanist enterprise of scriptural translation and exegesis. Although he could not translate scripture himself, he was the patron of scholars of Greek who could, and his own household was a kind of academy.”
In 1537 he was sent to Paris to secretly arrange the kidnap or assassination of Cardinal Pole but it was suspected that he actually tipped Pole off.
He acted as ambassador to Francis I in 1538 in Nice while Thomas Wyatt acted as ambassador to Charles V but was recalled due to his reckless gambling, drunkenness and all round bad behaviour. He never acted as ambassador to the French king ever again.
Bryan sat on the jury which found his brother-in-law, Carew, guilty of treason in 1539.
He was appointed vice-admiral in January 1543 but this was revoked in the February after he went against the instructions of John Dudley, Viscount Lisle and lord admiral.
In October 1543 he acted as ambassador to Charles V.
In October 1546 he was given the freedom of the City of London.
He was made knight-banneret in 1547 for his role in the expedition against the Scots as commander of the horse.
After his wife’s death in 1542 “he followed Wyatt’s satirical advice to marry a wealthy widow” and in 1548 married Joan Butler, dowager countess of Ormond, and daughter of James fitz Maurice Fitzgerald, tenth earl of Desmond.
Brigden describes how “through his marriage Bryan wielded Ormond authority in south Leinster, controlling the estates of Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond (1531–1614), in his minority and a private army of gallowglasses in co. Kilkenny” and “Through the office of lord marshal, to which he was appointed in January 1549, he commanded royal forces in Ireland”. Bryan had become a powerful and wealthy man.
He died in Ireland on the 2nd February 1550, his last words allegedly being “‘I pray you, let me be buried amongst the good fellows of Waterford (which were good drinkers)’”.
Like his good friend Thomas Wyatt, Bryan was a poet.
Thomas Wyatt wrote of Bryan:
“To thee, therefore, that trots still up and down
And never rests, but running day and night
From realm to realm, from city, street, and town,
Why dost thou wear thy body to the bones?”
There are no portraits of Sir Francis Bryan.

 Отправлено: 03.02.12 02:30. Заголовок: Mary Boleyn the Unkn..

Mary Boleyn the Unknown Sister

Part One: Birth

Over the next few weeks/months I will be looking at Mary Boleyn’s life and trying to explore further into the mysteries that surround this remarkable woman. So little is known about Mary Boleyn and she is often overshadowed by her sister Anne and brother George. It can be quite frustrating at times when trying to research Mary’s life as there are just so little records and details that have been recorded about her. We know very little about her whereabouts during large period of her life, we know little of her actions and even less about her personal thoughts and feelings. Even where she was buried remains a mystery and we cannot even say for sure where or when she was born! It is my aim to at least explore some of these mysteries and bring the little we know about Mary Boleyn to life.


Mary Boleyn was the sister of Anne Boleyn, who would eventually become the second wife of Henry VIII, only to meet her end upon the executioner’s block three years after her marriage. Mary Boleyn is often overshadowed by her more famous sister, but Mary was quite a remarkable woman in herself. She travelled overseas, spent time learning and furthering her skills and knowledge in France, she married a well-to-do man at court – a cousin to the King no less. She would have two children, of whom there would continue even to this day to be great speculation if they were the children of Henry VIII. She would taste the rewards of success and face the scant world of being cast off. She would defy her father, even her sister the Queen and marry for love. She would survive her family’s tragic fall from grace and she would live on with a man whom she loved deeply and with her whole heart. Her life would end with no record or pomp, but she would leave this world quietly with little recognition for the life she had led. Mary Boleyn was quite a remarkable woman because she followed her heart and married, in 1534, for love. She defied the social rules of the time and followed the greatest feeling and passion a person can have – love. Simple, uncomplicated, overwhelming love.



So little is known about Mary Boleyn that not even her date of birth or where she was born was recorded. Although it was not uncommon for birthdates not to be recorded during the Tudor period, so the fact that Mary’s date of birth has not been written down is not unusual. Yet this lack of recorded date of birth does make it quite frustrating for us in today’s times to even work out the age and birthday of this fascinating woman.
It is generally believed that Mary Boleyn was the first child born to Elizabeth Howard and Thomas Boleyn. Thomas Boleyn was born in possibly 1476/1477 and was a prominent member of King Henry VIII’s court. He was fluent in many languages including French and Latin and was well educated. He was also quick witted and very good at sports, especially jousting which Henry VIII also enjoyed. He used his intellect and talents to work his way up through the English Court and throughout his early years at court received a number of rewards, these included being knighted in 1509 and being made a Knight of the Garter in 1523. He also went on a number of diplomatic missions for Henry VIII and was also ambassador for a period of time in the Low Countries and France. Elizabeth Howard was the younger sister of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Little is known about Elizabeth Howard; however a verse dedicated to her by a poet John Skelton describes her as being very pretty. Hart writes that “Elizabeth, was a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon from 1509” (Hart 2009, p. 52) and shared her time between the court and her home at Hever Castle. It is frustrating to know so little about Elizabeth Howard, a woman who was the mother and grandmother of two Queen’s of England. But that is a story for another time!
Even Thomas Boleyn’s marriage to Elizabeth Howard is not recorded, but it is generally believed that they married sometime in 1499. We do know however that “Elizabeth Howard’s jointure was settled on her in the summer of 1501” (Ives 2004, p. 17) and Ives suggests that the marriage of Elizabeth and Thomas must have been relatively recent to this date. In 1536 Thomas Boleyn wrote to Thomas Cromwell, right hand man to Henry VIII, stating that “When I married I had only £50 [nearly £25 00] a year to live on for me and my wife, as long as my father lived, and yet she brought me every year a child” (Weir 2011, p. 11). From Thomas Boleyn’s statement we can assume that the couple was married in 1499 then the first child born to Thomas and Elizabeth came into the world in approximately 1500, and then four more children followed one each year. Once again the names, births and deaths of each of the Boleyn children is a story for another time!
There has been a great deal of debate as to which daughter was oldest, Mary or Anne. The strongest evidence to suggest that it was Mary Boleyn who was the oldest daughter comes from a letter her grandson wrote. On October 6th 1597 George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon wrote to Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley. He wrote that he believed he was entitled to the earldom of Ormond, which had belonged to his great grandfather Thomas Boleyn. He stated that as the grandchild of the oldest daughter, and sole heir of Thomas Boleyn, he had a right to the title. In this letter George Carey also wrote that this father, Henry Carey, Mary Boleyn’s son, also asserted that he had a right to the earldom of Ormond.
This was a bold letter for George Carey to write. His second cousin was Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn, sister to Mary. If Anne Boleyn had been the oldest daughter then it would have been Elizabeth I whom would have been entitled to the earldom of Ormond. Therefore it can be strongly suggested that George Carey would have had to have been more than certain his grandmother was the oldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn as he was claiming the right to the title of Ormond over his second cousin the Queen.

It could also be suggested that because Mary Boleyn’s marriage was arranged first she would have had to have been the oldest daughter, as often daughters had their marriages arranged for them in order of age, with older daughters in the family having precedent over younger daughters.
Also when Anne Boleyn was created Marquis of Pembroke by Henry VII, the letters patent giving her this title referred to her as “Anne Rocheford, one of the daughters and heirs of Thomas earl of Wiltshire and Ormond” (Wilkinson 2010, p. 11). If Anne Boleyn had been the oldest daughter would the papers not state this? Instead they simply state that she was one of the daughters of Thomas Boleyn.
Also in William Camden’s manuscript Ánnales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha’ published in 1615, he writes that Anne Boleyn was “begotten by Thomas Boleyn among other children” (Weir 2011, p. 13). Once again if Anne Boleyn had been the oldest child surely Camden would have written this.
Yet there is evidence which counteracts the thought that Mary Boleyn was the oldest daughter born to Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. In the book ‘A catalogue and succession of the kings, princes, dukes, marquesses, earls, and viscounts of this realme of England’ written by Ralph Brooke, published in 1619, he writes that Anne was the eldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn.
Also Weever in ‘Ancient Funerall Monuments’ published in 1631 states that within the Chapel St Peter ad Vincula is buried Anne Boleyn, eldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn.
To add to the assumption that Mary Boleyn was the second daughter of Thomas Boleyn is the script written upon Lady Berkeley’s tombstone. Lady Berkeley died in 1635 and she had been the granddaughter of Henry Carey, son of Mary Boleyn. The inscription upon her tombstone states that Mary Boleyn was the second daughter of Thomas Boleyn. This inscription completely contradicts what Lady Berkeley’s father, William Carey had written in his letter, stating that his mother was the oldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn.
Personally I find it more difficult to believe that Mary Boleyn was the second daughter of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. Although there is evidence to suggest she was the second daughter, all the evidence comes from 1619 or later, over a century after Mary Boleyn was born. Also there is no direct evidence from a relative of Mary stating she was the second daughter. There is the inscription upon Lady Berkeley’s tombstone, great granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, but this inscription would not have been written by Lady Berkeley herself, but rather by someone that knew her.
I believe the strongest piece of evidence there is to work out the position of Mary Boleyn’s birth comes from her grandson George Carey. George Carey was born in 1547 and his father was the son of Mary Boleyn and surely would have known when his mother was born. Also, George Carey was writing about his right to the earldom of Ormond, which if he was not entitled to it would have been directly challenging his second cousin Queen Elizabeth I. He also stressed in his letter that his father knew that he had a right to the earldom. I believe that George Carey would have had to have been very sure about his right to the title as he was running a great risk of offending and challenging Elizabeth I, his second cousin and Queen.
Therefore I believe that the evidence strongly supports the claim that Mary Boleyn was the oldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. If we believe that the couple were married in 1499 and that Elizabeth gave Thomas a child every year after their marriage, then we can strongly assume that Mary Boleyn was born in approximately 1500.
Although we have established an approximate date of Mary Boleyn’s birth, it should be added that is not even known where Mary Boleyn was born. Once again it is generally believed that she was born at Blickling Hall, which belonged to her father. This assumption is made as Blickling was the Boleyn family home before Thomas Boleyn moved the family to Hever Castle early in the 16th century. Matthew Parker, who was Anne Boleyn’s chaplain “spoke of her coming from Norfolk, so perhaps she was at least born at Blickling” (Loades 2011, p. 16). If Anne Boleyn was born at Blickling, and it is believed she was born after Mary, then it can be strongly suggested that Mary was born at Blickling Hall.
Mary Boleyn’s birth is shrouded in mystery. We know nothing of what the pregnancy was like for her mother, nor do we know any details about the actual birth. I have tried my best to lay out all the evidence for and against Mary Boleyn being the oldest daughter as well as the date and place of her birth. It is my belief that Mary Boleyn was born in 1500, at Blickling Hall and she was the oldest daughter and child of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. Yet it appears, as with every aspect of Mary Boleyn’s life, there is some mystery surrounding the facts and details of her birth.

 Отправлено: 03.02.12 02:33. Заголовок: Mary Boleyn the Unkn..

Mary Boleyn the Unknown Sister

Part II


In part one of this series on Mary Boleyn, I established that Mary Boleyn was born in approximately 1500 and was most likely the first child of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. Records also tell us that in 1514 Mary Boleyn was selected as a maid of honour to Mary Tudor who travelled to France to wed King Louis XII. Yet, as with much of Mary’s life, we know absolutely nothing about her first fourteen years of life. Due to the lack of information we can only make educated guesses at what Mary Boleyn’s childhood was like and the type of education she received.
There is one fact that we know for certain about Mary Boleyn and that is that she was able to write in English. In 1534 Mary wrote a letter to Thomas Cromwell, asking for his assistance after she and her second husband, William Stafford, were banished from court. This letter shows us that Mary could write and most probably also read, and it can be argued that Mary learnt this skill during her younger years.



Eric Ives, who is one of the most renowned writers about Anne Boleyn states that Thomas Boleyn, Mary’s father, “was careful to ensure that Anne had the best available education, and he was obviously also responsible for the education of her brother, George – possibly a product of Oxford and later a recognised court poet.” (Ives 2004, p. 10). Noticeably there is no mention of Mary Boleyn’s education but I suggest that since Mary Boleyn was approximately a year or so older than her sister Anne, that it could very well be that they were educated together or shared the same tutors. I would think it a little strange if a tutor was hired to teach Anne and George and Mary was completely excluded.

In her book ‘Mary Boleyn: The True Story of Henry VIII’s Favourite Mistress’, Josephine Wilkinson writes that Mary received an education which was suited for a young lady of Mary’s status. She would have been taught to read and write – of which we know Mary was certainly able to do both. She would have been taught important skills such as sewing, embroidery, singing and dancing, which were all essential for a young woman. We know that during New Year’s 1533 Mary was given a gift by the King and in return she gave the King a blackwork collar she had made herself. I propose that Mary must have been quite good at sewing to make such a gift fit for a King. She would have also learned how to play the virginal and lute. Table manners were essential as well as being taught all the necessities to conform to the religious beliefs of the time. In addition to this Mary would have been taught to ride a horse as well as some archery and hunting. Wilkinson also stresses that Mary would have been taught to obey men, namely her father and then her husband.
It is also quite possible that Mary Boleyn learnt to speak and perhaps write in French. Her father, Thomas, was a diplomat and he was considered to be one of the best speakers of French in the English court. In 1514 Mary was chosen as a maid of honour to Mary Tudor who was about to travel to France to wed King Louis XII. A position within the future French Queen’s court would have been highly sought after and it can be assumed that Thomas Boleyn used his influence to gain Mary a spot, and that she was accepted because she had at least some knowledge and skills in speaking French. Certainly having a young woman who spoke French would have been a great assistance to the future Queen.
It has been suggested that Mary had little or no interest in intellectual pursuits and that she had no outstanding skills or qualities that would attract her to others. It was therefore for these reasons that Anne was chosen to further her education at the court of the Archduchess, Margaret of Austria. However since there are no surviving records of Mary’s education or personal notes or letters from her early years there is no way to say this for sure. Perhaps Mary was more interested or had more skills with other pastimes rather than reading or writing. Perhaps Thomas Boleyn believed that his second daughter Anne would be more likely to be accepted into Margaret of Austria’s court. Again with the lack of records or facts recorded about Mary Boleyn we simply cannot state what sort of a student she was or what her strength or weaknesses were. Sadly we cannot even say what were her interests or favourite pass times.
We also can only briefly track Mary’s whereabouts from the time of her birth until she travelled with Mary Tudor to France. It has been strongly suggested that Mary was born at Blickling Hall where her parents resided in 1500. In 1505/6, after the death of his father and Thomas Boleyn came into his inheritance, he moved his family to Hever Castle in Kent. Mary’s father was a member of King Henry VIII’s court and records show us that he was often at court or on diplomatic missions overseas. It is quite unlikely that Mary would have travelled with her father overseas, especially as a very young child.
Little is known about Elizabeth Howard, Mary’s mother. Kelly Hart in her book ‘The Mistresses of Henry VIII’ states that Elizabeth Howard was a lady in waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon from 1509. Unfortunately we do not know how much time Elizabeth Howard spent at court, or how long she was a lady in waiting to the Queen. Nor do we know if Mary resided at court with her mother during her service to the Queen. If her mother was busy attending the Queen it could be quite possible that Mary stayed at Hever with her sister and brother to continue her education, but unfortunately we cannot say if this for certain. From this sketchy evidence I propose that Mary would most likely have spent the majority of the first fourteen years of her life at her family’s home at Hever Castle in Kent.
Once again it is most frustrating to know so little about Mary Boleyn’s education and the experiences during her formative years that influenced her later decisions in life. Personally I find it frustrating when people suggest that Mary was dull and dim witted as there is simply no evidence to suggest this. Perhaps Mary was not a great intellect like her younger sister or brother, but once more we do not know this for sure. Maybe Mary preferred to keep to herself or she had great skills in other areas such as sewing or playing instruments or dancing, which were all fine qualities for a young woman of the times to possess. Certainly she must have had something about her to capture the attention of Henry VIII, not only to become his mistress but to continue as his mistress for several years. There is so little we know about Mary and her education and early years of life make up a large part of this. If only a long lost letter or document would be discovered which finally shed some light on these formative years of Mary Boleyn’s life.

 Отправлено: 03.02.12 17:52. Заголовок: Anne Boleyn Fellowsh..

Anne Boleyn Fellowship member Dr Linda Saether shares her experience visiting the Vatican Archives and actually holding the real love letters written by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. The Da Vinci Code has nothing on this!


The Vatican Love Letters of Henry VIII


by Dr Linda Saether

In Henry VIII's letters to Anne Boleyn I found these lines:

"Mine own Sweetheart.........
Wherever I am, I am yours..........
Written by the hand of him who is, and always will be yours...."

The passion found in those lines and the seventeen letters he wrote in the early days of his arduous pursuit of her have evoked sighs through the centuries, regardless of age, gender or culture. Love needs no definition. Its magic needs no explanation. How all that passion between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn changed the course of British history and placed Anne Boleyn, as Queen of England, on a scaffold to be executed by a French swords man only a few years later, has been the source of a five hundred year old controversy.



How these very personal letters ended up in Rome, hidden, for centuries, in the Vatican archives will never be known. One can only assume that they were stolen by supporters of Katherine of Aragon, the Queen that Henry VIII sought to divorce despite their Catholic marriage vows. According to Henry, his union with Katherine was sinful and unlawful in the eyes of God, incestuous in fact, due to Katherine's prior marriage to Henry's brother Arthur. His grounds for divorce was that this sin had cursed their union resulting in their inability to produce a male heir for the sake of England. Although the Queen swore her brief marriage to Henry's brother was never consummated and the Pope had granted dispensation for their union, Henry didn't budge. It was widely known that making Lady Anne Boleyn his wife and Queen had become Henry's obsession. An obsession that eventually led England away from the grips of Rome and towards a religious reformation with Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the English Church. Perhaps the Pope himself read these letters meant for Henry's darling Anne and realized just how obsessed Henry had become. And then quietly had them buried in the archives.
Through my own research, I found that these letters were not available for public viewing at the Vatican, and rarely has more than one letter ever been sent to foreign exhibits. During a recent trip to Rome, I made it my mission to see these letters for myself and determine how they had fared over the centuries. This turned out to be a far more difficult and yet a far more interesting quest than I could have imagined.

 Отправлено: 07.02.12 18:51. Заголовок: The Shrovetide Joust..

The Shrovetide Joust of February 1526

The shrovetide joust of 1526 was the first indication of Henry VIII’s courtly pursuit of Anne Boleyn. According to the chronicler Edward Hall, it was on this day that Henry VIII rode out in cloth of gold and silver “richely embraudered, with a mannes harte in a presse, with flames about it, and in letters were written, Declare ie nos, in Englishe, Declare I dare not”.


The Marquis of Exeter and his men and their horses were in green velvet and crimson satin embroidered with burning hearts. Above these hearts was a lady’s hand coming out of a cloud with a watering can, dropping silver droplets on them – I guess to cool the burning hearts!
This display – and it must have been a sumptuous display – showed clearly that the King had found a new love. He was besotted. Anne had won his heart. It was a courtly love display in the best chivalric tradition and I suspect that Henry had no idea at this point that Anne would be any more than a flirtation or possibly a mistress. Of course, Anne was to refuse to become his mistress, even his maîtresse en titre, and Henry’s love for her would lead to him offering her marriage instead.

Edward Hall goes on to describe how many spears were broken at that joust and that this was the occasion when Francis Bryan lost one of his eyes – ouch!

 Отправлено: 12.02.12 14:17. Заголовок: 12th February 1554 ..

12th February 1554

Lady Jane Grey


At 10am on the 12th February 1554, Guildford Dudley was led out of the Tower of London and up onto Tower Hill where he was executed by beheading.
Guildford’s wife, Lady Jane Grey, watched from her window as she waited for her turn. As she was led out of the Tower to be taken to the scaffold within the Tower walls, she was met by a cart carrying the bloody remains of her husband. How awful! Jane was then also executed by beheading.


On this day in history, 12th February 1554, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Guildford Dudley, were executed by being beheaded.
The Execution of Guildford Dudley
At 10am on the 12th February, Guildford Dudley, brother of Robert Dudley and son of the late John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was led out of the Tower of London and up to the scaffold site on Tower Hill. No priest accompanied him on to the scaffold and Eric Ives writes that this suggests that “Guildford had remained staunch to reform”1. On the scaffold, Guildford addressed the crowd briefly and then got down on his knees and prayed “holding up his eyes and hands to God many times”2. After asking the crowd to pray for him, he put his neck on the block and the executioner beheaded him with a single blow of the axe.
Of Guildford Dudley’s execution, Eric Ives writes:-
“Recourse to the axe did not win the Queen [Mary I] many friends. Richard Grafton, who very probably had known Guildford, recalled ten years later that ‘even those that never before the time of his execution saw him, did with lamentable tears bewail his death’.”3
Although his wife, Lady Jane Grey, had allegedly refused to see Guildford, she had insisted on watching the execution from a window and the chronicler, Raphael Holinshed, writes of how, as she was being led out of the Tower to be executed, Jane met the cart carrying Guildford’s body – how awful!
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
Although her husband had been executed on Tower Hill, Lady Jane Grey was executed inside the Tower of London, on Tower Green. Once the executioner had had time to make his way back from Tower Hill, Jane was led out to the scaffold. Although her ladies “wonderfully wept”4, Jane, who was dressed all in black, managed to maintain her composure. She addressed the waiting crowd:-
“Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same; the fact indeed against the Queen’s Highness was unlawful and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency before the face of God and the face of you good Christian people this day.
I pray you all good Christian people to bear me witness that I die a true Christian woman and that I do look to be saved by no other mean, but only by the mercy of God, in the merits of the blood of his only son Jesus Christ. I confess when I did know the word of God I neglected the same and loved myself and the world, and therefore this plague or punishment is happily and worthily [deservedly] happened unto me for my sins. I thank God of his goodness that he has given me a time and respite to repent.
Now good people, I pray you to assist me with your prayers. Now good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assist me with your prayers.”5
Eric Ives writes of how, in her speech, Jane was showing that “she was dying confident in salvation by faith alone”4 and that she believed that “praying for the dead was a Catholic superstition”. Jane was being true to her reformist faith.
After her speech, Jane knelt and said Psalm 51, the Misere, in English, “Have mercy upon me O God, after they great goodness: according to the multitude of thy mercies, do away mine offences”. She then embraced John Feckenham, Mary I’s chaplain and confessor, the man who had been sent to Jane to prepare her for her death, and said to him “Go and may God satisfy every wish of yours”6. Jane then gave her handkerchief and gloves to Elizabeth Tilney, and her prayer book to Thomas Brydges, the deputy lieutenant of the Tower, who had been charged with passing it on to her father. She then removed her gown, headdress and collar, refusing the help of the executioner. After forgiving the executioner and begging him “despatch me quickly”, Jane knelt at the block, tossing her hair forward and out of the way, and putting on the blindfold. It was then that she lost her composure and panicked, “What shall I do? Where is it?”. A bystander took pity on the floundering girl and guided her to the block where she lay her neck, praying “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” The executioner took her head off with one blow.
This time last year, I ended my article on Jane’s execution with the words of Jane’s biographer, Eric Ives, and I’m going to do the same this year. His words are better than any I could write about Jane and are incredibly moving:-
“The pages of history are asterisked with names which defy the erosion of time. Jane Grey is one such, but strangely so. Truth to tell she counted for little. She was important for barely nine months, she ruled for only thirteen days. She contributed little to writing and nothing to ideas. She founded no dynasty and left almost no memorabilia. Then what is it, keeps the story of Jane alive while many more significant figures in history are recalled only by scholars? For many years Jane was a saint in the Protestant pantheon, but martyrs are now out of fashion – and so too ideal Victorian maidens. In the West, growing secularization ensures that relatively few people even understand the issues which meant so much to her. And yet her name still lives. Something is due to a memorable sobriquet: “the nine days queen” – not any Jane, that Jane. Romance, too, is part of the explanation; along with Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard and Mary Queen of Scots, Jane completes a quartet of Tudor queens who died on the scaffold. Undeniable, too, there is the macabre attraction of the girl sacrifice. She died Jane Dudley, but is universally remembered as Jane Grey, Ariadne chained to the rock. All this and more. But the fundamental justification for remembering Jane is the justification for remembering Anne Frank centuries later. They speak for the multitude of brutality’s victims who have no voice.”7
While Eric Ives sees Lady Jane Grey as a “victim”, Leanda de Lisle writes of how “Jane died a leader, and not merely a victim”8 and sees her as “a Protestant Joan of Arc, calling up fresh troops to fight against Mary Tudor while her own generals betrayed her”9. Whichever view you have of this Tudor queen, her life deserves to be remember and her death commemorated. Visitors to the Tower of London today will be able to pay their respects in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, where there is a memorial tile to Lady Jane Grey on the floor by the altar table.
RIP Lady Jane Grey, or Queen Jane, and Guildford Dudley.

 Отправлено: 13.02.12 15:35. Заголовок: Jane Boleyn – Histor..

Jane Boleyn – History’s Scapegoat

Today Tudor history lovers everywhere will be remembering the tragic end of Queen Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII who was executed on this day in 1542. Many will not remember that Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, was also executed and some will agree with the sentiments of one tumblr “confession” which said “Jane Parker deserved her execution more than any woman Henry VIII put to the block”. She got what was coming to her, karma is a beautiful thing, she deserved it, she betrayed Anne Boleyn, she was a liar…blah, blah blah…
But I, for one, am giving Jane Boleyn the benefit of the doubt. In my opinion, Jane the monster, the liar, the voyeur, the jealous and spiteful cow, belongs to the realm of fiction and should stay there. The real Jane Boleyn is a bit of a mystery but deserves more than to be slandered by people who know nothing about her. Don’t you think?
The Jane Boleyn of History Books
But it’s not just the likes of Philippa Gregory (à la The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance) and Michael Hirst (The Tudors) who depict Jane as a “horror” – Philippa Gregory’s words, not mine – historians do too.



In “The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn”, Alison Weir writes of how “most sources agree that the only evidence for incest would rest upon the testimony of Jane Parker, Lady Rochford” and that Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the 17th century biographer, described Jane “as the ‘particular instrument’ in the ruin of her husband and his sister “, basing his account on contemporary evidence: Anthony Anthony’s lost journal. Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador; an anonymous Portuguese account; the writings of Lancelot de Carles, secretary to the French ambassador, and Jane’s execution confession all, according to Weir, back up the fact that Jane was the woman who gave evidence against the Boleyn siblings.
Weir goes on to write of Jane’s jealousy of the close relationship between George and Anne, the unhappiness of her marriage to George, the possibility that George had “subjected Jane to sexual practices that outraged her” and her resentfulness towards Anne over her banishment from court after she plotted with Anne to remove a lady from court, a lady who had caught the King’s eye. These reasons, along with her father’s sympathy with the Lady Mary, could, Weir theorises, have led to Jane’s betrayal of the Boleyns.
Lacey Baldwin Smith, Catherine Howard’s biographer, says of Jane: “the lady was a pathological meddler, with most of the instincts of a procuress who achieves a vicarious pleasure from arranging assignations” and C.Coote said “the infamous lady Rochford… justly deserved her fate for the concern which she had in bringing Anne Boleyn, as well as her own husband, to the block.”
So, people can be forgiven for judging Jane harshly, I suppose, when historians do too.
In Defence of Jane Boleyn
Jane Boleyn is judged harshly because many people believe that she betrayed her husband, George, and her mistress Queen Anne Boleyn by providing Thomas Cromwell with ‘evidence’ of incest. But did Jane betray Anne and George Boleyn?
No, I don’t believe so and I’m not the only one. Historian Julia Fox argues against this fallacy in her book on Jane, calling Jane “a scapegoat”, and her husband, historian John Guy, in a review of Alison Weir’s “The Lady in the Tower”, points out the following:-
That Chapuys never named Jane Boleyn as the witness against George and Anne
That the Portuguese source also did not name Jane, writing of only “that person”
That Lord Herbert of Cherbury was not quoting from Anthony Anthony’s lost chronicle but from his own book
That Jane’s execution confession was a forgery and the work of Gregorio Leti, a man know for making up stories and inventing sources.
That Lancelot de Carles was talking about Lady Worcester, not Jane Boleyn
But what about George Boleyn’s own words at his trial? I hear you ask. Yes, at his trial, George, according to Lancelot de Carles, said:-
“On the evidence of only one woman you are willing to believe this great evil of me, and on the basis of her allegations you are deciding my judgement.”
But he doesn’t say “On the evidence of my own wife you are willing…”, does he? He says “one woman” and seeing as it was the Countess of Worcester’s conversation with her brother, regarding the Queen’s inappropriate relationship with her brother, that was the Crown’s main piece of evidence, then surely he was referring to her. When Jane wrote words of comfort to George in the Tower, he didn’t throw a hissy fit and write back telling her to go to hell, he sent his thanks. OK, he wouldn’t have known at that time that she had given evidence against him, but would she have dared to write to him if she had? Hmmm…
We have no concrete evidence that Jane did betray George and Anne or that she was the sort of woman who spied through keyholes and lied, and I don’t feel that we can question depictions of George and Anne without questioning those of Jane. She deserves to be defended too, I feel.
Jane Boleyn and Catherine Howard
But what about Catherine Howard? What on earth was Jane doing becoming involved in Catherine Howard’s adulterous liaisons with Thomas Culpeper? How can we defend her actions in 1541?
Well, I had a discussion with Julia Fox about Jane’s involvement in Catherine’s affair with Culpeper and Julia said that she had considered various theories but had ruled all of them out bar one. Jane didn’t need any money, she had been left well provided for by Thomas Boleyn, so she didn’t need any monetary persuasion to help the couple. There is no evidence that she was mad prior to her imprisonment in the Tower so it was not madness which drove her to recklessly help the couple betray the King. Julia Fox believes, therefore, that she was persuaded to help Catherine once and that she was then on a slippery slope heading in one direction. She’d done it once, so could not refuse again. We also have to take into account that Thomas Cromwell, the man who had helped her in the past, was dead and gone so she had nobody to turn to, nobody to confide in and to act as a go-between between her and the King. Jane was on her own with a dreadful secret which could cost her her head and she didn’t know what else to do apart from carry on helping Catherine and Culpeper. She had already incriminated herself so it got harder and harder to back out, so, instead, she just carried on and ended up digging her own grave.
Jane may have been guilty of stupidity, in not learning from what happened to Anne Boleyn and the five men in 1536, she may have been guilty of giving Cromwell evidence that Anne had spoken to her of the King’s impotence, but she was simply being honest. Anne confiding in Jane, and Jane passing the information on to her husband, speaks clearly of a close relationship between the three of them, not distance and jealousy.
We quite rightly defend Anne Boleyn and George Boleyn against those who have maligned them but isn’t it time we defended Jane too?

 Отправлено: 21.02.12 21:40. Заголовок: 20th February 1547 ..

20th February 1547

The Coronation of Edward VI

On this day in history, 20th February 1547, King Edward VI was crowned King at Westminster Abbey. However, the celebrations had begun the day before…
On the afternoon of Saturday the 19th February, the boy King processed out of the Tower of London. He was dressed in white velvet, which was embroidered with silver thread and decorated with lovers’ knots made from pearls, along with diamonds and rubies. He also had a gown of gold mesh and a sable cape, and the horse upon which he rode had been dressed in crimson satin decorated with pearls.
The procession consisted of the King’s messengers, the King’s gentlemen, his trumpeters, his chaplains and esquires of the body, all walking. Then came the nobility on horseback and members of the council paired with foreign diplomats. After them, processed the gentlemen ushers and Henry Grey, the Marquis of Dorset and Constable of England, bearing the sword of state. Finally, there was the nine year old king, Edward VI, escorted by the Duke of Somerset (his uncle, Edward Seymour) and the Earl of Warwick (John Dudley). They were followed by the Sir Anthony Browne (the King’s master of the horse), the henchmen, the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, the pensioners and the guard.


Edward VI’s biographer, Chris Skidmore, writes of how Cheapside was richly decorated with cloth of silver and gold, but that some of the pageants arranged for the day, at very short notice, “turned into shambles”. One pageant drew on the coronation of Henry VI as King of France in 1432, another boy king, and another made use of Jane Seymour’s phoenix, Henry VIII’s lion and the roses and hawthorn bush devices of the Tudor dynasty. Skidmore describes how the phoenix descended from the heavens to land on a mount decorated by red and white roses and hawthorn bushes. A crowned lion then approached, followed by a young cub. At the cub’s appearance, two angels descended and crowned him with an imperial crown. The phoenix and lion then departed, leaving the crowned cub alone.
Other displays along the route included depictions of Edward the Confessor, St George and “Truth”, a child representing the New Religion. Skidmore writes of how the young king particularly enjoyed watching a tightrope walker, who balanced along a cable as he descended to kiss the King’s foot.
The next day, at 9am, King Edward VI travelled to Whitehall by barge. He was met by the guard and pensioners and then he walked to the chamber of the Court of Augmentations, where he put on his Parliament robes of ermine trimmed crimson velvet. The King then processed to Westminster Abbey for the coronation ceremony under a canopy carried by the barons of the Cinque Ports. He was flanked by the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Bishop of Durham, and followed by John Dudley, William Parr and Thomas Seymour, who all bore his train. Behind them processed the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, the nobility, the pensioners, the guard and the court servants.
A dais had been erected in the richly decorated Abbey. On it, was a throne decorated in damask and gold, with two cushions to help raise the small King. The traditional coronation ceremony, used since 1375, had been adapted for the boy King. Instead of twelve hours, it would be seven. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, had also changed the coronation oath so that “reformation of the Church could now be enabled by royal prerogative, the king as lawmaker”. The changes were explained in a sermon by Cranmer, who also likened Edward to the Biblical Josiah, and then the young king was anointed and crowned with the St Edward’s crown, the imperial crown and a custom-made lighter crown. Edward then held the orb, the sceptre, St Edward’s staff and the spurs. He was King and the nobility now came before him, one by one, to kiss his left cheek.
The coronation ceremony was followed by a banquet in Westminster’s Great Hall, more feasting and entertainment at Whitehall, and then two days of jousting and feasting. Those Tudors knew how to celebrate!
Chris Skidmore writes of how “Edward was like no other king that had gone before him” because he had been born with the title of Defender of the Faith and was the first king “to be crowned with the powers that the royal supremacy brought with it; no king, before or since, was ever given such an unequivocal mandate for absolute rule.” How sad that Edward never got the chance to rule by himself. He died on the 6th July 1553 at the age of fifteen.

 Отправлено: 13.03.12 12:59. Заголовок: 12th March 1539 On ..

12th March 1539

On this day in history, 12th March 1539, Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormond, and father of Queen Anne Boleyn, died at Hever Castle, aged around 62. His servant, Robert Cranwell, wrote to Cromwell the next day to inform him of his death:-
“My good lord and master is dead. He made the end of a good Christian man. Hever, 13 March.”



Henry VIII ordered masses to be said for his soul, a clear sign that Thomas was back in favour at his death, and Thomas was laid to rest in the family church, St Peter’s Church at Hever. You can still see his tomb there today. It is decorated by a magnificent brass which shows him dressed as a Knight of the Garter and above his right shoulder sits his daughter Anne’s falcon crest and at his feet there is a griffin. His son, Henry Boleyn, is buried nearby, his tomb marked with a small cross on the stone floor.

 Отправлено: 16.03.12 19:56. Заголовок: Was Elizabeth Tailbo..

Was Elizabeth Tailboys the Daughter of Henry VIII?

It is well known that Elizabeth, or Bessie, Blount was the mother of Henry VIII’s only acknowledged illegitimate child, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset. What is less well known is that Bessie bore a second child within a year of Henry Fitzroy’s birth, something that must raise the possibility that this second child, a daughter named Elizabeth Tailboys, was also the child of the king. The article below is based on a chapter of my biography on Bessie Blount, which was released recently. Further information and references are contained in that chapter, but I have attempted to set out some of the most important below and to summarise my research.



Henry Fitzroy was recorded as being six years old in June 1525. His mother made her last recorded appearance at court in October 1518. It can be assumed that her pregnancy was not then obvious. She later moved to the privacy of the prior’s house at the monastery of Blackfriars in Essex where she gave birth. Fitzroy’s biographer, Beverley Murphy, has convincingly argued that Fitzroy was born in June 1519 and this would see plausible based on the above.1
In an Inquisition Post Mortem for Bessie’s youngest son, Robert Tailboys, which was dated dated 26 June 1542, Elizabeth Tailboys, was described as being then twenty-two years old.2 She must therefore have been born between July 1519 and June 1520. Obviously she cannot have been born within nine months of her mother’s eldest child, meaning that April 1520 must be the earliest possible birth date. Even a birth date of June 1520, the latest possible birth date, would mean a conception in early September 1519, within a few months of Henry Fitzroy’s birth.
If Elizabeth Tailboys was indeed the child of Bessie’s first husband, Gilbert Tailboys, her parents must have married within weeks of Henry Fitzroy’s birth. Gilbert was a few years older than Bessie, most likely being born between 1495 and 1496. He certainly fathered Bessie’s third child, George Tailboys, who was named after his father and was born after the couple are known with certainty to have been married. In an Inquisition Post Mortem for Gilbert’s father, dated 25 March 1539, George was stated as being then sixteen years old.3 He must therefore have been born between April 1522 and March 1523, meaning that there was a two year age gap between George and Elizabeth, but only a one year age gap between Elizabeth and Henry Fitzroy. This in itself makes it more probable that the two eldest children had the same father, rather than Bessie’s second and third child.
Gilbert’s father, Sir George Tailboys, suffered from ill health for much of his adult life and, in March 1517 concerns over his mental state were such that his lands were placed in the custody of Cardinal Wolsey and a number of Sir George’s Lincolnshire neighbours.4 By 7 July 1517 Gilbert had been taken into Wolsey’s household as a servant.5 The king first began to show generosity to Gilbert in April 1522 and in June 1522 Bessie was recorded as Gilbert’s wife for the first time. This argues for a marriage in spring 1522, which would allow for George to have been conceived soon after the wedding and to have then been born in early 1523.
There is also evidence that Henry VIII took an interest in Elizabeth Tailboys, above and beyond that which would be expected of the child of a former mistress. During his northern progress in 1541, for example, Henry spent the night of 13 October at Nocton in Lincolnshire, the home of Elizabeth and her first husband, Thomas Wymbish.6 It was also Henry who provided this wealthy husband for Elizabeth. Wymbish had become a royal ward after the execution of his guardian, John, Lord Hussey, in June 1537. In 1539, Henry granted the wardship and marriage of Thomas Wymbish to Edward, Lord Clinton, who was Bessie Blount’s second husband, allowing for Elizabeth’s marriage to be arranged.7 Wymbish’s betrothal to Dorothy Hussey was broken to allow his new match.
Following the death of Bessie’s two sons by Gilbert Elizabeth unexpectedly inherited the Tailboys barony and estates. Her husband petitioned for the right to describe himself as Lord Tailboys in right of his wife, something which Elizabeth, who always used the title of Lady Tailboys herself, resisted. Wymbish had good grounds for making this request as married women in the Tudor period could not legally own property themselves. Also, there was a recent precedent in that the king’s friend, Charles Brandon, had taken the title of Viscount Lisle when he was merely betrothed to the Lisle heiress. Unusually, the king heard the case at court, questioning the judges personally.8 Henry finally declared that ‘as it standeth by law, that tenants by courtesy should have the dignity, so it standeth with reason; but I like not that a man should this day be a lord, and to-morrow none, without crime committed, and it must so fall out in the husband of a baroness, if she die having never had by him any children’. Without a child being born to the couple Wymbish’s request was therefore denied, allowing Elizabeth to retain her title for her sole use for the remainder of her life.
In addition to safeguarding Elizabeth’s title and inheritance, Henry VIII made sure that she was financially secure. A document of 2 December 1546 made only weeks before the king died contains the details of an exchange of lands between Henry and Wymbish and Elizabeth in the north of England.9 The couple desired this exchange, signing the document personally. They also confirmed that they ‘do fully and clearly bargain and sell unto the same our sovereign lord the King’, something which again suggests that the bargain was welcome to them. In exchange for their lands in Northumberland, the king gave two manors, one of which had been confiscated from the recently dissolved religious house of Little Malvern in Worcestershire. Such religious land was highly coveted and, although the transaction involved an exchange rather than a grant, Elizabeth and her husband achieved an advantageous deal. The couple had already arranged to sell some of their acquisitions and, just over three weeks later, Wymbish sold the lands that he had received from the king in Hanley in Worcestershire to a local man, William Pynnock.10 Tellingly, in the charter recording the sale, Wymbish declared that he had obtained the lands, amongst other property, by ‘the gift and grant of the king’. Further lands acquired by the couple from the king in Warwickshire and Worcestershire, which were to be held for Wymbish and Elizabeth jointly and then for Elizabeth’s heirs alone, were sold by the couple in the first years of Edward VI’s reign.
There is further evidence that Henry VIII took an unusual interest in Elizabeth Tailboys. At a meeting of the royal council on 6 February 1547 at the Tower of London to discuss the minority of the young king, Edward VI, following Henry VIII’s death, it was contended by Sir William Paget, Henry’s secretary, that the king had been concerned about the decay of the nobility and had proposed that a number of other men receive new peerages.11 The list suggested was made up of both the grandees of the late Henrician court and family members of the king himself, such as his brother-in-law, William Parr, and his kinsman, Lord St John. Surprisingly, at the end of a long list one ‘Sir _ Wymbisshe’ was suggested to become a baron. Whilst the gentleman named was a knight, an honour that Thomas Wymbish never acquired, it does seem entirely possible that he was the ‘Wymbisshe’ that the king meant. That he was included in such an illustrious list would seem surprising. It is less surprising however if there was indeed a family connection between the king and the husband of Elizabeth Tailboys.
Wymbish never acquired his barony. This did not mark the end of the Privy Council’s interest in Elizabeth however as, at a meeting at Greenwich on 13 June 1550, the council were called upon to consider ‘a domestic quarrel’, discussing ‘the controversy between the Lady Tailbois and her husband, Mr Winbushe’.12 Whilst details of the quarrel do not survive, it was distinctly unusual for the Privy Council to be called upon to consider a domestic quarrel. Even more unusually, the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Lord Admiral and the king’s Master of Horse were deputed to consider the matter in further detail. Although, as a baroness in her own right, Elizabeth had a certain standing, the interest taken by the Privy Council in her affairs appears surprising. It would be less surprising if she was commonly, if privately, known to be the king’s half-sister, rather than merely the daughter of a long-deceased former royal mistress.
Further evidence of royal interest in Elizabeth can be seen from her second marriage to Ambrose Dudley, the son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who attempted to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne in place of the Catholic Princess Mary in 1553. Ambrose, along with his father and brothers, found himself in the Tower following Mary’s accession. In late 1554 Elizabeth commissioned the noted scholar Roger Ascham to write a Latin petition on her behalf to Queen Mary’s new husband, Philip of Spain, begging for the release of her husband.13 Philip evidently listened to this petition and only four months later Elizabeth sent a further petition, thanking Philip for restoring her husband to liberty, and requesting that he also restore her lands to her.14 That King Philip took a personal interest in Elizabeth Tailboys is clear from this correspondence – something which once again demonstrates the unusual level of royal access possessed by Bessie’s daughter, who was, after all, at that stage the wife of an imprisoned traitor.
If Elizabeth is to be accepted as the king’s daughter, the question must be asked how Gilbert Tailboys came to adopt her as his own child. It can perhaps be reasoned that Gilbert, who benefitted both financially and in gaining his independence through his marriage to Bessie, was unconcerned about taking on a step-daughter when his wife had already proved herself capable of bearing a healthy son – he had good reason to believe that his own male heirs would soon follow. It is likely that he considered that Elizabeth’s chances of inheriting his estates to be remote. Gilbert, who also later came into dispute with his mother over his appropriation of his indisposed father’s estates (apparently at the cost of his own sister’s dowries) also appears to have been ambitious and to have not had a particularly close relationship with his family.
There is some evidence that Elizabeth Tailboys was not entirely accepted by the Tailboys family and, again, this can be taken as evidence of her paternity. During Edward VI’s reign a legal case was brought by Elizabeth and Thomas Wymbish against Gilbert’s mother, Elizabeth, Lady Tailboys, alleging that she had taken steps to occupy lands that the younger Elizabeth had inherited and to despoil them between the years 1544 and 1547.15 The younger Elizabeth and her husband obtained a writ against the elder Lady Tailboys in 1547, as well as bringing an action for damages for the sum of one hundred marks. Throughout the proceedings the younger Elizabeth was referred to as the granddaughter of the deceased Sir George Tailboys, Gilbert’s father. However, it is possible that the elder Lady Tailboys’ defence contained a statement of the family’s own beliefs about her true paternity. In her defence, the elder Lady Tailboys claimed that she had committed no trespass on the land which was included in the Tailboys manor of Goltho. This was because, in a document signed in the fourth year of Henry VIII’s reign, George Tailboys had settled the manor on himself and his wife and then to the ‘heirs of their bodies between them lawfully begotten’. It is arguable that the elder Lady Tailboys meant to imply that the younger Elizabeth was not actually a member of this category. This is not made explicit in the case but it is perhaps telling that the court, which gave credence to the document produced by the defendant, did consider that the younger Elizabeth and her husband had a right to enter the land at Goltho. Clearly the court felt that the document gave the younger Elizabeth, as the granddaughter of George Tailboys, a right to enter and make use of the lands, notwithstanding the interest of George’s widow which was apparently something less than a full life interest given the judgment of the court. The elder Lady Tailboys would surely have read and understood the terms of this document, something which does suggest very strongly that her objection was based on the younger Elizabeth having no rights to the land due to her failure to satisfy the requirement of being one of the heirs of her and her husband’s bodies lawfully begotten.
A second case was also brought over the land at Goltho in the final year of Edward VI’s reign which again suggests hostility towards the younger Elizabeth by the wider Tailboys family.16 At the Lincoln assizes, Elizabeth and Wymbish complained that Sir William Willoughby, Lord Willoughby of Parham, Sir Edward Dymock, the elder Lady Tailboys and her son William Tailboys had taken their freehold of Goltho, denying their rights to the manor. Lord Willoughby of Parham was the grandson of the elder Lady Tailboys and Sir Edward Dymock was her son-in-law. Gilbert’s younger brother, William, was a priest (and, thus, unlikely to produce heirs of his own) and Lord Willoughby and Sir Edward Dymock were therefore amongst the co-heirs looking to inherit the Tailboys lands if Elizabeth Tailboys died without issue. The evidence of this case shows the Tailboys family grouped together in an attempt to limit Elizabeth’s rights to the Tailboys estates. Clearly, the family had no objection to inheritance by (or through) a woman, as the participation of the WIlloughbys and Dymocks in the case shows. The hostility appears to have been personal towards Elizabeth and, whilst not conclusive proof, does again tantalisingly hint that she was the king’s daughter rather than Gilbert’s. Elizabeth even moved in quasi-royal circles, receiving a bequest in the Will of Sir Charles Brandon, an illegitimate son of the king’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, for a ring to the value of five marks.17
In order for Elizabeth Tailboys to have been the daughter of Henry VIII, it would have been necessary for him to have visited Bessie Blount at Blackmore over the summer of 1519. Henry VIII did indeed spend time in Essex that summer, arriving in the county on 20 August.18 He was at Havering-at-Bower between 20 August and 23 August, before arriving at Newhall later that day, remaining there until 12 September. Between 12 and 14 September he was at Heron Hall in Essex before spending two nights at Barwick and then the rest of the month at Wanstead. On 30 September Henry finally returned to London. Bessie is known to have been at Blackmore that summer, which is only thirteen miles from Newhall. Havering-at-Bower is a similar distance away. Heron Hall is even nearer, at only just over six miles away. Given that the court, which was encumbered with baggage and household goods, was able to travel an average of nine miles a day, thirteen miles was an easy ride for a small party on horseback. Henry had already shown an interest in his newborn son by making Cardinal Wolsey his godfather and it is inconceivable that he would not have taken the opportunity to see Henry Fitzroy for himself.
Given that Bessie had been pregnant on her arrival at Blackmore, it seems more likely that it was the period after Henry Fitzroy’s birth that saw the king’s visits which gave rise to Blackmore’s reputation as the scene of Henry VIII’s ‘lascivious dissipation’.19 Traditionally, a garter of the Order of the Garter which was kept in a house at Blackmore was said to have been left with Bessie by the king on one of his visits to her – whilst the garter was actually from a later period it does suggest that Henry was recalled as having been in the area during Bessie’s occupation.20 Henry’s later affair with Mary Boleyn endured through at least one of her pregnancies and there is certainly no guarantee that Bessie’s first pregnancy was indeed the end of the affair. It may simply be that a rapid second pregnancy ended any intention that she had of returning to court.
Based on the evidence of Henry’s interest in Elizabeth Tailboys, the likely time that she was conceived and Henry’s presence in the area at that time, it seems highly probable that she was the king’s child. Her gender simply meant that she was of little significance to the king and he had no reason to acknowledge her as he did her elder brother, particularly following the bastardising of the daughters from his first and second marriages. The later sixteenth century antiquary John Leland recorded that it was well known that Henry Fitzroy was born at Blackmore to Bessie when she was ‘then Lady Talboys’.21 Perhaps this misapprehension was due to an extended stay at the religious house due to the birth of a second child, who did indeed take the Tailboys name. It is very unlikely that Bessie and Gilbert were married until 1522, when he began to receive grants of property, as Gilbert’s consent to a marriage with the king’s cast-off mistress would almost certainly have had to have been bought. Until he began to receive the grants in 1522 Gilbert, who was a mere member of Cardinal Wolsey’s household with a still-living father also did not have the resources to support a wife and family.
One further piece of evidence survives. In the seventeenth century Lord Herbert of Cherbury wrote an early biography of Henry VIII, having the benefit of sources that are now no longer extant. In his work he mentioned the love affair between Bessie and Henry, commenting of their son that ‘the child, proving so equally like to both his parents, that he became the first emblem of their mutual affection’.22 The word ‘first’ in this context could be taken to mean ‘foremost’, suggesting that Henry Fitzroy was the principal emblem of Henry and Bessie’s love. However, it is possible that ‘first’ should be given its more literal meaning and that Lord Herbert was aware of evidence that Henry Fitzroy was only the first child of his parents, implying that there were at least rumours of another.
So, was Elizabeth Tailboys the child of Henry VIII or Elizabeth Tailboys? I would contend that the time of her birth and other evidence of her life makes it more likely that she was indeed a daughter of the king. However, I leave you to make up your own minds.

 Отправлено: 02.04.12 15:11. Заголовок: 1st April 1536 – Jan..

1st April 1536 – Jane Seymour and Henry VIII

On this day in history, 1st April 1536, Eustace Chapuys wrote a very long and detailed letter to his master, Emperor Charles V, in which he mentioned an incident concerning King Henry VIII and his alleged new flame, Jane Seymour.




Chapuys wrote of how he’d heard that the King had sent Jane “a purse full of sovereigns” and that on receiving the purse, Jane had kissed the letter and begged the messenger to tell the King that she could not take the purse because “she was a gentlewoman of good and honorable parents, without reproach, and that she had no greater riches in the world than her honor, which she would not injure for a thousand deaths, and that if he wished to make her some present in money she begged it might be when God enabled her to make some honorable match.”
According to Chapuys, Jane was being coached by Sir Nicholas Carew and the Catholic faction in how to appeal to the King and also to tell him how much the people of England “detested” his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Was Jane’s behaviour all part of an act or was she simply being a virtuous woman who was concerned about her reputation? It’s hard to know. Whatever the truth behind Jane’s actions, Henry was warming to the thrill of the chase and had moved Edward Seymour and his wife, Anne Stanhope, into Cromwell’s chamber (poor Cromwell had been moved) to make it easier for him to see Jane.

 Отправлено: 04.04.12 19:51. Заголовок: George Boleyn He ..

George Boleyn

He was born into a life of great wealth and prestige. His father was a highly respected courtier and diplomat. George himself was attractive and intelligent to the extent that his ‘great wit’ was later commented on in poetry. He was, therefore, not only born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was also born lucky. He was the only surviving son and heir. He represented the Boleyns’ future, and a promising future at that.


Yes, there would no doubt have been pressure placed upon him to succeed, but he had bred into him the confidence which would have alleviated that pressure by the knowledge of his own abilities.
Good looking, gifted and rich. It is difficult to imagine a better start in life for a young boy who had pride and ambition instilled in him from birth.

He was introduced to Henry VIII’s court at the tender age of ten and was an instant hit, being appointed one of Henry’s pageboys shortly afterwards. He had charm and charisma to add to his other attributes. His wit and humour made him popular, and life must have seemed extraordinarily easy. He was a talented sportsman and later discovered a propensity for poetry. He was made for great things, to be a courtier in his father’s footsteps, a trusted adviser to the King. He had a charmed life.
And then, in the mid 1520s, his sister Anne caught the King’s eye. For the first time in his charmed life the Boleyns greatest asset was usurped. As Anne’s position as queen consort became established George was no longer the most important Boleyn sibling. He took second stage to a sibling, and a woman at that.
How did he cope with the transition? It is a testament to his character and his affection for Anne that throughout the late 1520s and through into the mid 1530s he exhibited nothing but love and support to the sister who had taken his limelight. Of course it was in his interests to do so, but every position of power and authority bestowed upon him from then on would be questioned by enemies and rivals.Was he awarded a Viscountcy on his own merits? Was he appointed ambassador to France at the age of twenty-five on his own merits? Was he appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports at the age of thirty on his own merits? For a proud young man with ‘great wit’, that must have been hard to take.
His life, after Henry became attracted to Anne, certainly changed. It is hard to say how his career would have progressed without that happening, but I don’t doubt that he would have been highly successful in any event. Whether George Boleyn felt his life changed for the better once Anne’s own destiny was established is only something he could answer.
What it did mean was that, with Anne’s influence over Henry and Henry’s desire to marry her, George’s commitment to religious reform had a far greater chance of success. For that alone he had reason to support her rise. But whether he was content with being the powerful brother of the queen consort, or whether his pride would have preferred recognition in his own right without the ‘brother’ tag is again something only he could answer. The ‘brother’ tag certainly made his life even easier. Into the mid 1530s his charmed life continued. He held roles of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports from June 1534 onwards, he was a politician and a leading light in the Reformation Parliament and was also a busy diplomat attending a total of six embassies to France.
Irrespective of being the queen’s brother he never sat back on his laurels, and the evidence we have indicates he was highly active in the roles appointed to him, and highly thought of by Henry. He worked hard and diligently in defiance of those who may have questioned his abilities. He was too proud not to do so. He may have taken his personal abilities and attributes for granted, but he does not appear to have taken his position as Henry’s brother-in-law for granted, and that is a credit to him. He wanted recognition in his own right, and I think that shows in his scaffold speech.
Life carried on for George Boleyn as it always had, with a charmed existence, until 2nd May 1536. Waking up that morning, just like any other morning, but this time walking straight into a nightmare. Nothing, during his thirty-two years of life, could possibly have prepared him for the horror of that moment, or the horror of the dreadful, shameful and completely unfounded allegations laid against him.
He had shown great strength of character throughout his life and career, but he had never needed the degree of character required to get him through this ordeal. How on earth could anyone who had lived a life such as his possibly cope with what he needed to cope with?
He initially wept with the shock, horror and shame of it all. But did he crumble? Did he give up? No, he walked into court with his head held high and destroyed the prosecution case with his wit and courage, in a trial considered to be one of the most sensational of the sixteenth century. And when he was condemned did he rail against the sentence? No, he accepted it with the dignity which was expected of him. When he faced death did he show fear. Yes, but only for those who may have suffered as a result of his death. On the scaffold did he show weakness. No, he gave an impassioned speech before submitting to the axe.
Those last fifteen days of George Boleyn’s life, compared to the previous thirty-two years, were so completely opposite that it’s hard to imagine anything more diverse. Yet in death he showed what he had always been made of; strength, wit, courage and determination. However, whatever had gone before was, to modern eyes, lost in the final act. For that reason alone, perhaps the greatest tragedy of being George Boleyn is that, as far as history views him, his death became his finest scene.

 Отправлено: 22.05.13 12:55. Заголовок: A royal visit to Lee..

A royal visit to Leeds Castle: Henry VIII and the Field of Cloth of Gold

On this day in 1520 King Henry VIII stayed at Leeds Castle with Queen Catherine of Aragon and an entourage of 5000 people. This was the best-documented royal visit to Leeds Castle and was a stop off between Greenwich and northern France for a ceremonial meeting with Francis I of France. This meeting became known from its magnificence as the Field of Cloth of Gold and was part of unsuccessful diplomatic attempts by Francis to woo the English away from their alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.



Staying at Leeds Castle
King Henry VIII travelled from London to Dover with an entourage of 3,997 people set out from Greenwich Palace on Sunday 21 May, 1520 and reached Leeds Castle on Monday 22nd May on the way to France. Queen Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife, travelled in the same cavalcade accompanied by a personal suite numbering 1,175. Obviously not all of this vast concourse would have found quarters in the Castle, but the King, Cardinal Wolsey and nine other Bishops would have. The entire upper floor of this part of the Castle was exclusively reserved for the Queen and her closest household staff, indeed the fireplaces decorated with her royal coat-of-arms and the symbols of Castile, a castle and a pomegranate, remain to this day.

At the time, Sir Henry Guildford was the Constable of the Guard at Leeds and as such was responsible for preparing the Castle for the King’s visit. It was his job to ensure food and sleeping places for everyone. He was paid £66-3s-3D (approx. £25,500 in today’s money). And given that the King had already paid some £860 for the necessary repairs and alterations to the Castle, the visit was an expensive undertaking; especially considering the Royal party only stayed for one night before moving on to Dover Castle.

From the castle, they moved to Charing for their next night’s stay. They reached Canterbury on the 25th of May, from where they moved on to Dover, before proceeding to France on the 31st of May, probably on board the flagship of the fleet, the ‘Henri Grace de Dieu’, or ‘Great Harry’.

Embarkation from Dover
Henry VIII rested in Priory while all the 27 ships were loaded, sailed across to France, unloaded, returned and reloaded. The hulls of the ships were too deep to come right inshore and so, small rowing boats were used to take the people to the ships, and they then had to climb up rope ladders to get on board. Once on board they hung their coats of arms on the side of the ship. This represented the passenger list and was a record of who was on which ship.

A copy of the painting of the “Embarkation from Dover” hangs in the Henry VIII Banqueting Hall at Leeds Castle. Henry VIII commissioned the paintings and in all probability the artist had not even visited Dover. They were pained around 1540, at least 20 years after the event.


The Field of Cloth of Gold
The kings spent huge amounts of money, wanting to outshine the other. Tents for people to stay in were made of gold cloth and there were wresting competitions, fountains which ran with wine, jousting tournaments, and much feasting and dancing. On the last day there was even a firework display.

They took all of their own food to eat during the 17 day meeting. Royal records show that venison from the Leeds park and butter from the dairies were supplied. We also know from Royal Household accounts that their fish menu included; 9100 plaice, 7836 whiting, 5554 soles, 2800 crayfish, 700 conger eels, 3 porpoises and a dolphin.

The original painting of the Field of Cloth of Gold is in Hampton Court palace.




Do you fancy sleeping under canvas just as Henry VIII’s entourage would have done in 1520? Leeds Castle has launched a new glamping site based on Medieval design to form a ‘village’ on the one-acre castle vineyard.

Bookable until September, Knight’s glamping offers guests a spectacular setting and the luxury of a four poster bed, warming log burning stove, crisp cotton bedding and cosy fur throws. Book your tent here!
Posted by Leeds Castle at 01:26
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