Category Archives: Sixteenth Century

Eleanor Pole

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eleanor pole.jpgKatherine of Aragon’s household included thirty-three ladies in waiting according to Harris. No doubt as the years passed and Henry’s eyes and hands wandered Katherine wished several of them many miles away from the royal court. However, it is interesting to note that in the early years there was a sense of continuity between the household’s of Elizabeth of York and Katherine of Aragon. One of the women who served both Elizabeth and Katherine was Eleanor Pole.  It should also be noted that once Henry began to play his royal game of divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived many of the ladies-in -waiting found themselves in situ rather longer than the various queens they served.

 

It is also interesting to note the way in which the Tudors sought to employ their family in much the same way as earlier monarchs had done. Eleanor’s mother was Edith St John – making Margaret Beaufort Eleanor’s half aunt; so Henry VII was some sort of cousin. More practically Eleanor’s father had served Henry VI and was in cahoots with Jasper Tudor. Weir notes that Eleanor was one of Elizabeth’s favourite women and that Henry VIII eventually awarded her a pension.

Eleanor’s brother Richard Pole served Prince Arthur and went on to marry the daughter of the Duke of Clarence: history knows her as Margaret, Countess of Salisbury meaning that Richard Pole was the father of Cardinal Reginald Pole and Eleanor, at the risk of being obvious, was his aunt demonstrating that everyone was related to everyone else one way or another at the Tudor court. The Poles’ closeness to the crown through the link to Margaret Beaufort explains their position at court…not of course that family ties would stop Henry VIII from executing Eleanor’s sister-in-law who had far too much Plantagenet blood flowing through her veins.

 

Evidence of Eleanor’s time at court can be found in Elizabeth of York’s account book. There are details of her salary and also of occasions when she lent the queen money including three shillings to give as alms to a poor man. Her alarm and the time she spent at court reflects that service to the queen was not only a duty but also a career for many aristocratic women who would be expected for promote their family when the opportunity arose.

Eleanor married Ralph Verney of Buckinghamshire. He was Lord Mayor of London and began his rise to prominence with the ascent of the Tudors to the throne. The Verney papers suggest that Ralph, a second son, was one of the esquires at Elizabeth of York’s coronation. By 1502 Ralph had become respected enough to marry Eleanor – who was after all family to the Tudors as well as a lady-in-waiting. Eleanor demonstrates rather effectively that Ralph Verney was on the rise.

 

Eleanor died in 1528 and is buried in King’s Langley Church Hertfordshire with her spouse as shown in the image at the start of this post.

 

(1838) Letters and Papers of The Verney Family Down to the End of the Year 1639 published by the Camden Society  https://archive.org/details/verneyfamily00camduoft

Harris, Barbara Jean. (2002) English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers. Oxford: OUP

Weir, Alison (2014) Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen. London: Vintage

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton – ambassador

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thoclkmortonInevitably whilst looking at Raleigh my attention has drifted to Bess Throckmorton; Raleigh’s wife and the love of his life. From there my mind has wondered to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Bess’s father. A man who seems to have been as outspoken as Raleigh himself and regarded by the Spanish as ‘dangerously clever’ – though that doesn’t seem to have stopped him from getting into some unpleasant scrapes which ultimately ended with his disgrace.

 

Sir Nicholas served four Tudor monarchs as well as the Duke of Richmond, Henry Fizroy. Nicholas was related to Sir William Parr and at the time he was Fitzroy’s chamberlain which explains Throckmorton’s entry into such a prestigious household. Throckmorton’s mother was Catherine Vaux of Harrowden and it was through her that the relationship to the Parr family came – meaning that Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife was Throckmorton’s cousin. Throckmorton was a younger son so he needed every family connection he could find if he was to make his way in the world.

 

Sir Nicholas’s fortunes remained linked to those of the Parr family. He turned up on the Scottish Borders in the service of the Parr family just in time for the so-called Rough Wooing. He turned up in Scotland again in 1547. It was Nicholas Throckmorton who was sent south with the news that Protector Somerset had won the Battle of Pinkie.

 

Despite having gained his foothold in the rungs of the Tudor social and political ladder through his links to the Parrs and to Somerset he seems to have been unaffected by Admiral Seymour’s goings on or indeed the fall of Somerset. In short Throckmorton was one of Edward VI’s men and a good protestant to boot.

 

His name appears on the device naming Lady Jane Grey queen but equally it is supposed to have been Throckmorton who sent word of Edward VI’s death to Mary – perhaps a case of having his cake and eating it. It was only when Throckmorton began agitating about the restoration of Catholicism that he got himself into trouble with Mary suggesting that she didn’t hold his affirmation of Lady Jane Grey against him. The trouble was he wasn’t that keen on Mary’s chosen husband, Philip of Spain and became involved with the Wyatt Plot.

 

In April 1555 he was charged with treason for his part in the plot. However, when he came to trial the jury acquitted him despite the judges hostility: a fact which didn’t go down well with Mary who promptly had the jury incarcerated for nine months and heavily fined when they were eventually released.

 

Throckmorton took himself off to France rather than face the possibility of any more of Mary’s hospitality. He left his wife at home (she refused to live in France) but ultimately was allowed to return and take up government post. But by this point he was in correspondence with William Cecil and Princess Elizabeth, no doubt lining himself up to serve his fourth Tudor.  When Elizabeth came to the throne Throckmorton wrote suggesting who would be her best advisors and in 1560 when Cecil and Elizabeth were out of sorts with one another Cecil said he would depart from his role as Elizabeth’s minister if Throckmorton replaced him.

 

Nicholas returned to France as ambassador from 1559-1562. It was his job to try and dissuade Mary, Queen of Scots, from displaying the arms of England. Throckmorton was also in France when the scandal of Elizabeth I’s love for her Master of Horse Robert Dudley became laden with overtones of murder. Amy Robsart’s death at Cumnor near Abingdon caused tongues to wag (Throckmorton wrote of “her neck” being broken “with other appurtenances” and Throckmorton didn’t hesitate to describe what people were saying. He also announced that “Every hair of my head stareth!” His letters to Cecil at this time are so distinctly undiplomatic that his friends warned him to write no further on the subject. Ironically it was the same Robert Dudley now Earl of Leicester who offered a final home to Throckmorton when he was disgraced for his part in trying to marry Mary Queen of Scots to the Duke of Norfolk but more of that shortly.

 

Throckmorton was ultimately undone by his regard for Mary Queen of Scots who he’d known since she was a child in France. He was sent to Scotland to prevent Mary from marrying Lord Darnley – not one of his greatest successes, though at least Elizabeth didn’t have to send anyone to rescue him as had been the case when he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Catherine de Medici. He was also sent to negotiate for Mary’s release when she was deposed but the Scottish nobles knew he was sympathetic to Mary so weren’t terribly pleased to see him. Once Mary was imprisoned in England he plotted for her to marry the Duke of Norfolk. It appears that Throckmorton thought that if she was married and ‘respectable’ then she could be released from captivity. He regarded a marriage to Norfolk as a safe marriage. He also thought that the Duke of Norfolk’s proposal was in line with what the queen wished.

 

Unsurprisingly Throckmorton soon found himself incarcerated; this time in Windsor Castle. His actions were deemed foolish but not treasonous. He was released possibly because in the years since he’d objected to Elizabeth’s marriage to Robert Dudley he’d become one of Dudley’s political advisors. However, he’d also managed to remain on reasonably good terms with William Cecil because he wrote to Cecil begging for him to intercede with the queen.  It should be added that it is quite possible that Cecil who was fiercely anti-Mary may well have shown Elizabeth the inflammatory letters which Throckmorton wrote when he was the English Ambassador in France.

 

Throckmorton’s end was recorded by Robert Dudley;

We have lost on Monday our good friend Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, who died in my house, being there taken suddenly in great extremity on Tuesday before; his lungs were perished, but a sudden cold he had taken was the cause of his sudden death. God hath his soul, and we his friends great loss of his body.

He died in London on 12 Feb 1571 and was buried in the church of St. Catherine Cree, Aldgate. His daughter Elizabeth known as Bess was one of Elizabeth’s maids of honour and ultimately Bess would be banished from court having done her own stint in the Tower for daring to fall in love, something which her father had castigated the queen about many years earlier.

George Gascoigne – First of the Elizabethans

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georgegascoigne.jpgI’m encountering all manner of person as my exploration of Raleigh continues. George Gascoigne was one of Raleigh’s role models.  His ‘mind was a very opal’ Irwin,p.17.  His career reflects the career of many Elizabethans.  Education at Cambridge, followed by a stint at Gray’s Inn in 1555, minor posts at court and elected MP for Bedfordshire.  Thus far we have an example of Tudor respectability of the kind promoted during the reign of Henry VII.  Unfortunately he  got himself into all manner of trouble, got himself disinherited and didn’t do too well at court.  He managed to get himself into debt, not of itself unusual but he was unable to escape imprisonment for his inability to pay. In 1572 he was even accused of manslaughter and being a ‘common rhymer’.

To be an Elizabethan gentleman you needed a couple more ingredients even though a stint in prison seems positively de rigeur.  You needed to be a poet.  Gascoigne was not only a poet but also a translator of plays.  One of them was used as a source by Shakespeare for The Taming of the Shrew. Gascoigne also advertised his skills.  He wrote memoirs of his experiences as well.  Spencer admired his works and it was Gascoigne who started the trend towards seeing Elizabeth as a goddess.

The next and most important ingredient has to be a bit of swashbuckle. Once again, Gascoigne has the necessary stuff.  He fought for William of Orange in the Low Countries and was even held prisoner for some of that time. At home, together with Raleigh, Martin Frobisher (to whom he was related) and Raleigh’s half-bother Sir Humphrey Gilbert he planned daring voyages of exploration and conquest…not that he went on them because he died unexpectedly but he was part of the planning. And he did invest all his money in the Raleigh/Gilbert boys venture to discover the North West Passage.

Perhaps fortunately for Gascoigne  he had acquired a patron so did have some funds – another Tudor essential- the earl of Leicester.  In 1575 it was Gascoigne who penned the verses for the event that Leicester held at Kennilworth to impress Elizabeth.

 

He was born in 1535  and died in October 1577 after a rather varied career but, somehow, a typically Elizabethan one which inspired Sir Walter Raleigh. If you want to find out more about Gascoigne double click on the image to open a new window.

Sir John Perrot – illegitimate son of Henry VIII?

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johnperrot.jpgI’ve been reading Margaret Irwin’s book about Sir Walter Raleigh entitled The Great Lucifer. It was first published in 1960. One of the first things that made me sit up and take notice was the reference to Sir John Perrot as Elizabeth I’s illegitimate half-brother (p17) which of course has nothing to do with Raleigh but is too good a diversion to miss.

 

The Perrot family, it turns out, are Welsh and based in Pembrokeshire. Perrot’s mother Mary Berkeley married into the family. She had been a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon although the evidence is sketchy. There are two slightly different versions of events. In one Mary married Thomas Perrot and it was only when the king came visiting that he noticed Mary. This version is mentioned by Phillipa Jones. In another version, mentioned by the Royal Library of Wales, Perrot was knighted when he married Mary – make of it what you will. In any event John, when he grew up, ultimately got into a squabble with a couple of the Yeomen of the Guard and Henry gave him a promise of preferment but died before he could honour it.

 

Perrot was educated in St David’s and from there entered the household of the marquis of Winchester. He was a companion to Edward VI who seems to have paid a fair few of Perrot’s debts. Perrot, himself a stout protestant, initially suffered little when Edward’s catholic sister Mary came to the throne but then he was accused of sheltering Protestants in his home in Wales. Mary Tudor sent him to the Fleet prison for harbouring heretics. When he was let out, in itself odd given his strong protestant sympathies, he decided to travel and spent the rest of Mary’s reign in foreign climates.

 

When Elizabeth ascended the throne he carried a corner of the canopy of state at her coronation. He very swiftly became very important in South Wales and from there he was shipped to Ireland to try to establish the kind of order that Elizabeth might approve of. He was the first president of Munster for two years from 1571 to 1573; he suppressed the rebellion of the nephew of the earl of Desmond – James Fitzmaurice. He did this by hanging approximately eight hundred rebels.  He also made himself very unpopular with Elizabeth’s other representatives and gained a reputation for being rash, combative and rude.

 

The whole experience, and the suppression of the rebellion was brutal, doesn’t seem to have suited him because he returned home to Wales and busied himself with trying to extend his estates. Elizabeth gave him Carew Castle as a reward for his work in Ireland. In 1574 he became a member of the Council of the Marches of Wales and the following year was charged with stopping piracy in Pembrokeshire. He must have done a good job, although there is a suggestion that far from stamping out piracy he was involved in the whole affair. When Glamorgan and Monmouthshire required similar services to rid themselves of their pirated, as he had done in Ireland, he claimed ill-health and turned the job down. Possibly he was too busy financing piracy in New Foundland’s waters. There were also the law suits and counter accusations of piracy that seem to have been flung back and forth by those in power in Wales. Perrot does not come across as a man who won friends and influenced people.  He certainly seems to have been rather litigious.

 

In 1579 he was handed five ships and told to stop any Spanish shipping from landing off the west coast of Ireland. Not a lot happened and he managed to ground his ship which caused mirth at Court. It can’t have put him too badly out of face with the queen because she made him lord deputy of Ireland in 1584. He held the post for four years. He didn’t get on particularly well with other members of court, the Irish or even his own neighbours. It was, in short, not a very happy tenure of office but when he came home he was made a member of the Privy Council.

 

Unfortunately he’d made enemies in Ireland. Principally Adam Loftus, Bishop of Dublin. He also had enemies at home including Sir Christopher Hatton. Perrot had seduced Sir Christopher’s daughter and claimed that the only skills Hatton had was the ability to dance.

The Perrot family had also been marrying the wrong people. In 1583, Thomas, John’s son, married Dorothy Devereux who was the daughter of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex. More importantly she was the step-daughter of Elizabeth’s favourite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester and the sister of Robert Devereux also to be marked as the queen’s favourite. Politically then it should have been a good match but unfortunately Elizabeth was not terribly amused by the nuptials because a) no one had asked for her opinion on the matter; b) it looked to her as though Perrot was getting a bit above himself and c) it meant that Perrot had conspired with Leicester’s wife Lettice Knollys who also happened to be Elizabeth’s cousin and a woman that the queen absolutely hated.

 

In March 1591 he was charged with treason. He was accused of having consorted with the Spanish and offered to betray his country in return for being given Wales. Unsurprisingly, he was carted off to the Tower and tried for treason. The letters which purported to show his guilt were found to be forgeries and the forger was duly strung up. Perrot was, unexpectedly to me at any rate, found guilty of treason but died before he could be executed. Historians are of the opinion that he wasn’t guilty of treason but had said some unfortunate things about the queen in the hearing of people who wanted to discredit him. Certainly Perrot was just as surprised. He is said to have exclaimed, “God’s death! Will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered up a sacrifice to the envy of his frisking adversary.” The reference originally came from Naunton’s biography of his grandfather-in-law but the facts don’t necessarily match to what he wrote.  In any event, Sir John Perrot died in the Tower, perhaps at the point when Elizabeth was considering pardoning him. As a consequence there are dark rumours of poison, as mentioned in the Dictionary of National Biography. Whatever the truth Elizabeth returned the attainted estates to Sir John’s son.

 

So what was Perrot who seems a slightly larger than life character doing in a book about Raleigh? It turns out that Perrot’s son Thomas was once imprisoned to prevent him fighting a duel with Raleigh. As for Sir Walter, he was also sent to the Fleet to consider the error of his ways – something he apparently failed to do as Irwin goes on to list other brawls. And that appears to be the sum total of Perrot’s link with Raleigh.

 

Sir John Perrot was an interesting aside. He certainly seems to have had Henry VIII’s dodgy temper and apparently he resembled the king physically as well- in which case I’m not sure if the portrait is a very good likeness. Sir John seems to have believed the rumours especially if he really did say what he’s supposed to have said after his trial.

 

Jones, Philippa. (2011) The Other Tudors: Henry VIII’s Mistresses and Bastards. London: New Holland Publishers

Irwin, Margaret. (1960) The Great Lucifer: a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. London:Penguin

 

 

 

The death of Henry VII

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henry_deathbed_largeKing Henry VII died on 21st April 1509 at Richmond Palace. He’d not been well since the spring of 1507 when it was feared that he would die of a severe throat infection.  In fact he’d been taken ill shortly after Prince Arthur’s death in 1502 at which point there must have been real concern for the stability of the Tudor succession but he survived long enough for his remaining son to reach maturity.  In 1508 Starkey noted that Henry VII suffered from an acute rheumatic fever followed by “a loss of appetite and bouts of depression”. He was ill again at the beginning of 1509. It is thought to have been tuberculosis. His funeral effigy made from his death mask shows a man made old by illness and the burdens of kingship not to mention all those Yorkist plots and rebellions.henry7deathmask

 

On the 20th April, Henry VII summoned his confessor to administer the last rites. He died on the 21st April surrounded by clerics including his confessor Richard Fox the Bishop of Winchester, ushers and members of his household as well as three doctors who can be identified by the urine bottles that they are holding.

 

News of Henry’s death remained a secret until the 23rd of April when seventeen-year-old Henry was proclaimed King Henry VIII. The reason for the secrecy was to ensure a smooth transition of government. Whilst two de la Pole brothers were in the Tower another, Richard, was abroad plotting Yorkist plots. There was also Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham and possible claimant to the crown.

 

As Hutchinson says, for forty-four hours there was rather a lot of activity ranging from summoning councilors who then began thrashing out the format that government would take to playing hunt the old king’s treasure. £180,000 was secured and accounted for. The king who took the throne and found an empty treasury had become a very wealthy monarch indeed: not popular but wealthy.  It’s perhaps not surprising that one of the first things that Henry VIII did was to have Henry VII’s tax collectors Empson and Dudley attainted of constructive treason and executed.

 

As for the format of Henry VIII’s government, well, he was seventeen. He would come of age when he was eighteen in June. Earlier medieval monarchs had ruled from younger ages but times had changed. Margaret Beaufort, her son’s informal and constant advisor, was the chief executor of Henry VII’s will. She was also the oldest member of the royal family. If you were picky about it you could also argue that because England had no salic law prohibiting women from the crown it was she rather than her son who ought to have been crowned in the first place. Now, she set about advising her grandson on who his councilors ought to be. It would appear that Henry VIII took his grandmother’s advice. Margaret died the day after Henry came of age.

 

Meanwhile Henry VII’s ministers were still popping in for a chat with their old master, guards still stood at the door to his chamber (for rather obvious reasons), trumpets were being blown and food tasted for the monarch who was well passed the need to have his meals checked for poison. To all casual viewers it was service as normal. Whenever the new king put in an appearance he was still addressed as Prince Henry. Official business was conducted in the name of Henry VII.

 

However, someone somewhere must have looked a bit more fraught than usual because the Spanish ambassador certainly had an idea that something was afoot and he wanted to know what it would mean for Katherine of Aragon who was living a strange half life as a penniless princess whilst her father and father-in-law argued about finances and marriages. In London panicky merchants were seen out and about but when all was said and done there was a smooth swap of monarchs – the first time peaceful transition  had occurred since the Wars of the Roses began.  Being rather arbitrary about it, since May 1455 (dated to the First Battle of St Albans).

The drawing at the start of this post was made by Sir Thomas Wriothesley for his book of funerals.  It is held by the British Library.  Double click on the image to open up a new window with more information about the people in the image and about Sir Thomas.

 

Hutchinson, Robert (2012) Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

Norton, Elizabeth. (2011) Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty. Stroud: Amberley Publishing

Starkey, David. (2009)  Henry: Virtuous Prince. London: Harper Press

 

The face of Henry VII

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henry7manuscript2I’m delivering a session on Henry VII tomorrow so this is by way of a warm up for me. I thought it would be quite interesting to look at the way we perceive Henry through his portraits. The one to the left of this paragraph shows a very young man receiving the book in which he is illuminated (Henry VII’s book of astrology).  It could be any medieval  monarch- apart from the fact that his robe is embroidered with roses – I’m not sure whether its the red rose of Lancaster or the Tudor rose.  It should be noted that the Yorkists and the Lancastrians did not make as much of the roses as history and novelists would perhaps like.  It was Henry Tudor who sought to use the red and white rose unified to weld together a new royal house through its symbolism.

According to the National Portrait Gallery there are sixty-four portraits in its collection of Henry Tudor – most of these are, of course, reproductions of a few images dating from the Tudor period.

Most of us, me included, think of the arched portrait of him in middle age against a backdrop of blue, leaning out of the frame holding a rose in one hand. There are several versions. There’s the version in the National Portrait Gallery by an unknown artist from the Netherlands copied from Michael Sittow which has him holding a Tudor Rose and wearing a collar for the Order of the Golden Fleece (founded by Philip of Burgundy. Henry was elected to the order in 1491). Michael Sittow was a Flemish painter who worked, largely, for the courts of the Hapsburgs and Isabella of Castille.  In that particular version of the portrait – which was destined for abroad rather than home Henry holds the Lancaster rose.

 

henryviiSittow painted other Tudors as well as Henry VII. There is a portrait in Vienna of a demure young girl. It is usually thought of as a youthful Katherine of Aragon following the death of Prince Arthur but in recent years it has been suggested that it might be Mary Tudor. Whoever the young girl might be the reason for the portrait is relatively straightforward – betrothal and marriage. It was a usual part of the diplomatic process of international marriage for portraits to be exchanged. Fitch Lytle dates the Sittow portrait to 1505 and a commission by Margaret of Austria when there were marriage plans in the air between Margaret and Henry (p135). The negotiations came to nothing but Margaret kept the portrait. It remained in her palace at Mecelen until her death in 1540.

 

The words that spring to mind are cautious and watchful. Note also the fur-lined robe embroidered with gold thread.  It actually looks remarkably like the robe from the first illustration in that there seems to be Tudor roses embroidered into the design.  The clearest one in the picture is to the right of Henry’s fingers.  Henry wanted his prospective bride to realise the King of England wasn’t a pauper. There’s also the rose. In the Sittow portrait it’s a red rose. Henry is a Lancastrian  after all- or else perhaps he was indicating that despite the fact that he’s a monarch in his middle years he’s still a passionate man; or possibly a martyred one! – a rose can mean many things in medieval/renaissance symbolism. In other copies – this one housed at the National Portrait Gallery for example- he is holding the red and white rose unified – and is much more straight forward to interpret.

 

holbeinmural

The other portrait I immediately think of isn’t taken from life but copied from elsewhere by Hans Holbein for the Whitehall Mural which is a piece of political propaganda for Henry VIII created in 1537. Looking at the portrait of Henry VIII the viewer sees a powerful renaissance monarch. It disguises the fact that Henry had experienced a disastrous tilt yard accident the previous year that would leave his leg increasingly badly ulcerated; that his subjects in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Westmorland and Cumberland had risen up against him in the Pilgrimage of Grace (the citizens of the West Country hadn’t been frightfully well behaved either); and most importantly that he was having trouble producing a brood of healthy sons, Jane Seymour had died after giving birth to his only son. Yet if you look at the Whitehall Mural you see none of that.

 

In the mural Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor dynasty, is overshadowed by his son. Henry VII is robed as befitting a king, medieval and stately- though possibly slightly chilly as he seems to twitch the robes more closely around him, but in the shadows. His son, dressed as a renaissance prince faces the viewer squarely in a dominant stance – a daring thing in a portrait of that time. It drives home the answer to the question that the inscription on the central plinth poses: ‘If it pleases you to see the illustrious images of heroes, look on these: no picture ever bore greater. The great debate, competition and great question is whether father or son is the victor. For both, indeed, were supreme’.  The answer quite definitely (in Henry VIII’s mind at least) is that Henry VII is outshone by his son. He may have founded the Tudor dynasty but Henry is majesty personified.

 

There are however at least three other contemporary (ish) images of the king as well as Polydore Vergil’s posthumous description of the monarch. Interestingly eye-colour and hair colour as well as general demeanour aren’t always in agreement. Polydore Vergil’s description comes from knowing Henry VII and being commissioned to write the Anglia Historia  in 1501 but wanting to please Henry VIII as the official history of England wasn’t published until 1534:

His body was slender but well built and strong; his height above the average. His appearance was remarkably attractive and his face was cheerful, especially when speaking; his eyes were small and blue, his teeth few, poor and blackish; his hair was thin and white; his complexion sallow. His spirit was distinguished, wise and prudent; his mind was brave and resolute and never, even at moments of the greatest danger, deserted him. He had a most pertinacious memory. Withal he was not devoid of scholarship. In government he was shrewd and prudent, so that no one dared to get the better of him through deceit or guile. He was gracious and kind and was as attentive to his visitors as he was easy of access. His hospitality was splendidly generous; he was fond of having foreigners at his court and he freely conferred favours of them. But those of his subjects who were indebted to him and who did not pay him due honour or who were generous only with promises, he treated with harsh severity. He well knew how to maintain his royal majesty and all which appertains to kingship at every time and in every place. He was most fortunate in war, although he was constitutionally more inclined to peace than to war. He cherished justice above all things; as a result he vigorously punished violence, manslaughter and every other kind of wickedness whatsoever. Consequently he was greatly regretted on that account by all his subjects, who had been able to conduct their lives peaceably, far removed from the assaults and evil doing of scoundrels. He was the most ardent supporter of our faith, and daily participated with great piety in religious services. To those whom he considered to be worthy priests, he often secretly gave alms so that they should pray for his salvation. He was particularly fond of those Franciscan friars whom they call Observants, for whom he founded many convents, so that with his help their rule should continually flourish in his kingdom, but all these virtues were obscured latterly only by avarice, from which…he suffered. This avarice is surely a bad enough vice in a private individual, whom it forever torments; in a monarch indeed it may be considered the worst vice, since it is harmful to everyone, and distorts those qualities of trustfulness, justice and integrity by which the state must be governed.

Polydore Vergil, The Anglia Historia

 

henry7deathmaskThe three images that spring to mind are Henry VII’s death mask for his funeral effigy; his bust by Torrigiano and the effigy on top of the vault where he is entombed in Westminster Abbey. Henry died 21st April 1509. He’d suffered from gout and asthma. The death mask, which is exactly what it says it is, was made to form part of the funeral effigy which would have lain on top of Henry’s casket when it was transported to Westminster for burial. The wooden image would have been dressed, and looked exactly, as Henry looked in life. Westminster has a slightly macabre but hugely interesting collection of these effigies. Henry looks careworn and, unsurprisingly, ill.

 

henry viit

By contrast the bust by Torrigiano (the chap who once broke Michelangelo’s nose) depicts a man clad in the fur lined gown and black Tudor style hat who looks as though he probably could win a battle if push came to shove.   Like his portrait’s there is something cool (and not in a modern slang sort of way) about the subject. He looks as though he is weighing up his options. Whatever it is that he’s looking at he doesn’t seem terribly approving but then king’s weren’t supposed to look merry or approachable – though being a shade more charismatic might perhaps have been helpful especially when you were a king trying to hold a country together in order to avoid another outbreak of civil war. It is thought that Torrigiano made use of Henry’s death mask and then knocked several years off. The bust which is made from painted terracotta is in the V & A.  This image comes from their website.

The bust was probably a preliminary to the gilt bronze tomb effigy. Incidentally Torrigiano wasn’t terribly impressed with the English. He described them as ‘bears’ and ‘beasts.’

Cooper, Tarnya. (2008)  A Guide to Tudor and Jacobean Portraits. London: National Portrait Gallery

Eds. Fitch Lytle, Guy and Orge, Stephen. (1982) Patronage in the Renaissance

 

 

Arthur Plantagenet -not quite royal and not a traitor.

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200px-ArmsOfArthurPlantagenet_ViscountLisle.jpgWho would have thought that Henry VIII had a maternal uncle  whom he loved very much. He once said that Arthur had the kindest heart of anyone he knew.

Arthur Plantagenet was Elizabeth of York’s illegitimate half-brother. His mother was Elizabeth Lucie or Lucy or possibly Wayte. Thomas More describes her as a naïve girl who believed Edward IV’s blandishments. There were other mistresses and other children. History has not provided a clear list of which children belong to which mother or how long Edward’s various relationships lasted or indeed whether he was pre-contracted to any of them before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.

In any event, young Arthur was born in Calais and is mentioned in an exchequer account of 1477 – assuming that Edward didn’t have any other natural male sons kicking around Calais at that time, and then vanishes into historical mist and fog  for a time or, depending upon which source you read, is brought up in Edward IV’s court. He emerges after the difficulties of 1483-1485 in Elizabeth of York’s household. On her death he moved into Henry VII’s household. He then appears to have been inherited by his half-nephew in 1509. He became an ‘esquire of the king’s bodyguard,’ and was apparently much loved by Henry – a dangerous position to hold as poor Arthur came to recognize.

 

In 1511 he married Elizabeth Dudley the widow of Henry VII’s tax collector. The position of husband having fallen vacant because young Henry VIII had executed his father’s two foremost tax collectors in a move guaranteed to win friends and influence people. Elizabeth also happened to be the daughter of Edward Grey, Viscount Lisle (who just happened to be the younger brother of John Grey of Groby who was married to Elizabeth Woodville prior to his death at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461- making for a very complicated family tree.)   Now would probably also be a good time to mention the fact that Elizabeth Grey is Robert Dudley’s granny – which just makes things even more incestuous when you consider Elizabeth I’s interest in that young man.

 

Back to Arthur:
 he turns up in the records on 8 February 1513 having obtained protection from his creditors- he seems to have been frequently troubled by there being too much month for his money- on the proviso of going to sea with an expedition to Brittany. The ship in which he sailed had a nasty accident with a rock and he was saved from death by something close to a miracle. Understandably he took himself off on a holy pilgrimage to Walsingham to give thanks for his safe return from the sea.

His experience didn’t stop him from returning to Europe where he joined his nephew on his European military adventure culminating in the Battle of the Spurs  which was more of a skirmish than a battle whilst the real action was taking place at home on the English Scottish Border – the Battle of Flodden.

By the following year Arthur, who was in Henry’s good books, was Sheriff of Hampshire and a captain on the vice-admiral’s vessel, the Trinity Sovereign. He turns up at the Field of the Cloth of Gold and was one of the king’s carvers. He also seems to have played an important role in the life of young Henry Fitzroy, Henry VIII’s natural son by Bessie Blount. In 1524 he became a Knight of the Garter.   As is the way of these things he became a widower and remarried in 1528 to Honor Basset nee Grenville.

 

On March 24 1538 he was made Deputy of Calais and then things started to go very wrong. In addition to personal debt; there were the shifting sands of the king’s religious preferences and the faith of the locals; keeping Calais’s garrison fed and watered; keeping the local elite happy- and they frequently weren’t very happy and spent a lot of time trying to stab him in the back; keeping Cromwell informed as well as providing him with a new pet dog (no I’m not making that up – it’s all there in Arthur’s letters) and then there was keeping his wife happy and ensuring his children received an appropriate education. Ultimately things did not go well – there were simply too many plates to keep spinning. Arthur was summoned back to London in 1540 and sent to the Tower whilst his wife and daughters were kept under house arrest in Calais.

Rumour had it that it was Honor who was the traitor rather than her unfortunate spouse – whatever the case it seems to be agreed by Bishop Foxe (who didn’t like her- suspecting that she was a closet Catholic) and another chronicler that she lost her senses and never fully recovered them as a consequence of  Arthur’s arrest and imprisonment.

 

Unfortunately for Arthur  there was a plot. His chaplain, Gregory Botolph had come up with the idea of handing Calais over to the Pope in the person of Cardinal Pole, who was of course, a Plantagenet and Arthur’s cousin.  Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury styled Arthur ‘cousin’ in her correspondence a fact which Henry VIII must have been aware.  By now the Tudor monarch was ageing and vicious.  Being a Plantagenet had become exceedingly dangerous to one’s health as Margaret Pole was to discover.  Botolph managed to evade capture even though an act of attainder was passed against him. He evaded the king’s wrath, unlike his fellow conspirators – Edmund Brindholme, Clement Philpot and Adam Damplip- who presumably paid the full price for their treason – though I need to find confirmation of that.

 

There was no direct evidence against Arthur. So naturally he was released? Er, actually – no, he wasn’t. Arthur remained a prisoner in the Tower until 1542. It seems unfair that Arthur should have been rounded up as a consequence of Botolph’s misdemeanours as Arthur had spent considerable time and effort trying to get his chaplain a living, first in Lowestoft and then in Kettlebarston in Suffolk as demonstrated in his various letters.  It seems even more unfair that Arthur who had served the Tudors most loyally should have been so poorly treated. At the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign a family member could be looked upon with warmth, especially one who could never make a claim on the throne because of his illegitimacy but by 1540 Henry VIII had contemplated forwarding the claims of his own illegitimate son so the bar-sinister wasn’t the protection it had once been.  Arthur languished in the  Tower – Cromwell fell, Katherine Howard was married and discarded, her various lovers executed along with the erstwhile queen.

In March 1541 Honor Plantagenet, Lady Lisle and her daughters were released. Their jewels were returned to them and £900 made available to cover their debts and transport them wherever they wanted.  Honor ultimately returned to her home county of Cornwall where she died in 1566.

Arthur remained in the Tower, although he was allowed to walk upon the ramparts.  According to one story Arthur saw his nephew sailing along the Thames in the royal barge, shouted and waved at him reminding henry that he’d locked his uncle up and left him there.  As you might expect, this is anecdotal and not back by any concrete evidence.  Arthur must have thought that things were looking up when his collar of the Garter was restored to him. Two months later Henry VIII sent him a diamond ring via the person of his secretary Sir Thomas Wriothesley– Arthur was possibly so overwhelmed by relief “immoderate joy” was the way that Holinshed phrased it that he had a heart attack. He died in the Tower, of old age rather than a sharp pain in the neck, and was buried there, leaving his wife distraught with grief whilst he himself became a footnote in Ambassador Marillac’s letter to Francis I. “Lord Lisle, formerly deputy of Calais, being out of trouble and his Order, honour and goods restored, died a few days afterwards.” (4 March 1542)

 

Papers were seized in Lisle’s house at the time of his arrest – 3,000 of them. They were mainly letters to him and his wife, ranging in date between 1533 and 1540, from ambassadors, princes, governors of French and Flemish frontier towns: he knew them through his role of courtier, politician and Deputy of Calais. There were letters to and from friends and agents in England; including one which suggests that sending Anne Boleyn a pet monkey wasn’t one of Arthur’s better ideas. There was also letters between him and his wife during visits of one or the other to England.  Thomas Cromwell complained about Arthur’s letter writing. He said that Arthur wrote trivia that was of no political interest what-so-ever and to please get a grip on his meanderings.  Of course, so far as historians are concerned they couldn’t disagree more. The Lisle Letters are one of the most important collection of Tudor documents that we have available to us.  They can be purchased in six volumes or one abridged selection.

 

As an aside it is worth noting that Arthur’s daughter Frances was an ancestress of George Monck who famously, or infamously depending on your viewpoint, fought on both sides of the English Civil War

 

 

‘Henry VIII: March 1542, 1-10’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 17, 1542, ed. James Gairdner and R H Brodie (London, 1900), pp. 62-71 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol17/pp62-71 [accessed 18 January 2016].

Notes and Queries (1926) CLI (aug21): 129-130. doi: 10.1093/nq/CLI.aug21.129.

Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study In Colonial And Medieval Families, 2nd Edition

Henry Tudor’s other son?

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henryviiHenry VII was twenty-eight when he returned to England from Brittany in 1485 after an exile of fourteen years.   Griffiths makes the point that ‘Illicit relationships may have flourished,’ which is a very polite way of saying that penniless male Lancastrian exiles may have looked for a little local female company on occasion.

 

It turns out that Henry Tudor may have been one of the exiles who sought some company because he had, if we’re going to be accurate – may have had, an illegitimate son called Roland de Veleville.  Of course, being Henry Tudor he didn’t announce to the world at large ‘here is my son’ no title ‘Fitzroy’ was given the boy and there was certainly no flashing of the cash. So there is an academic argument about exactly who fathered Roland and sadly there isn’t a birth certificate stating the father or even a diary entry in Henry Tudor’s handwriting that would clear up the mystery. It’s a question of looking at the circumstantial evidence and deciding from there.  Alison Weir lists him as Henry VII’s natural son but other academics are less certain. De Lisle makes no mention of him, and neither does Penn, both these authors are telling the story of Tudor’s rise to power not what was happening on the sidelines.

 

Henry VII’s key twentieth century biographer Chrimes discounts the possibility that the boy was his as does Griffiths who wrote after Chrimes and was undoubtedly influenced by Chrimes’ writing. Chrimes, writing in 1967, stated that de Veleville was knighted following Bosworth and was just another of the Lancastrian victors who got his share of the spoils.  de Veleville definitely came to England with Henry Tudor, so was undoubtedly at Bosworth – it’s just that he was somewhere between eleven and fourteen years old  at the time which would have made him a very talented youth indeed if he was being rewarded with a knighthood and 40 marks per annum! He was actually knighted twelve years after Bosworth in 1497 following the Battle of Blackheath.

 

We know that Henry VII did have an illegitimate son. The Calendar of Salusbury Correspondence, 1553-c. 1700, ed. W. J. Smith (1954). p. 265,  mentions an ‘illeg. Son,’ though the letter is a secondary source written some hundred years after de Veleville’s death.  Nor do we know that the son is Roland – which is frustrating.

 

So what do we know? Henry VII kept the boy with him after he became king. He lived at the Palace of Westminster but doesn’t appear to have been a servant. He went hunting and hawking and spent time jousting.  He handled the royal falcons – these were expensive birds and were symbols of royalty…plebs were not permitted to handle them.  Whoever he was, Roland was favoured by Henry Tudor.

 

In 1509 following a role as mourner at Henry VII’s funeral de Veleville became Constable of Beaumaris Castle. Parliament tried to block the pension that went with it but failed. Henry VII had granted Roland lands in Penmynydd – which were part of the lands which had belonged to the Tudors prior to Owen Glyndower’s rebellion of 1400. When Roland died he was buried in Llanfaes Priory.

 

In between being sent to North Wales and dying in 1535 he turns up on more than one occasion at the court of Henry VIII including to mourn the death of Henry’s infant son. According to the antiwhitequeenblog https://antiwhitequeen.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/a-tudor-enigma-roland-de-veleville/

“De Veleville was imprisoned for several months in 1517 for “slandering the king’s Council.” He was released when he wrote an apology (though it seems to have taken him some time to agree to do so), but his release was contingent upon him “attending upon the king and not departing without license.” De Veleville having been ordered to stay in the household of the king until given permission to leave means that he had to stay with the king, at court, until the king released him so he could return home to Wales. It is a weird way to punish a criminal, but the crime itself is one that shows how close he was to the king. Keep in mind that he is not a peer of the realm, but his speaking out against the members of the king’s council was enough of a threat to their positions at court to warrant an arrest and imprisonment. This means that he had a close enough connection to the king to be able to influence him and damage other courtiers. This is not the kind of influence you would expect from a random knight in Wales, and shows that he had a connection to the king beyond his position as Constable.”

 

Roland was indeed imprisoned in The Fleet for slandering the King’s Council – something not to be done lightly.  However, whether Roland was Henry Tudor’s illegitimate son is not a certainty. He could, for example, just as easily have been the illegitimate son of Jasper Tudor who is known to have had an illegitimate daughter – more of her in another post; though why Jasper’s illegitimate son should have been shrouded in mystery by the Tudors is beyond me.  If Roland was Henry Tudor’s son then perhaps it was sensible for Henry not to advertise the fact given the unstable nature of the realm in 1485 when he had legitimate sons to beget with Elizabeth of York.   There is also a theory that Roland wasn’t illegitimate that Henry Tudor might have married whilst he was an exile, Roland’s mother wasn’t a serving wench- if this was the case it would have been difficult to broker a peace deal between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians with a legal son already on the scene – though you’d think Richard III would have been quick to advertise that fact unless the marriage was also shrouded in secrecy: which makes for rather a lot of skeletons rattling in various cupboards.  But it’s all speculation.   This last paragraph has moved away from history into supposition, as tends to happen with figures on the margins of history text books. Without dna testing there is no way of knowing who Roland was or, indeed, wasn’t.

 

Chrimes, S.B. (1973)  Henry VII  (Yale English Monarchs Seres)

Griffiths, R.A. (1985). The Making of a Tudor Dynasty

A Tudor Enigma: Roland de Veleville

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Owen – another Tudor

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david tudor.jpgDafydd ap Owen (in the Welsh style), David Owen or David Tudor was one of the men who accompanied Henry Tudor, Lancastrian claimant to the throne to Bosworth in August 1485.

 

King Henry VII having won the Battle of Bosworth and predated his reign to the day before the battle, did not after all have many relations so showed considerable favour to his illegitimate half-uncle by knighting him and arranging a marriage with the heiress Mary de Bohun of Midhurst. He was also one of the twelve knights who held the coronation canopy for Elizabeth of York. He acquired lands in Northamptonshire forfeited by the Yorkist William Catesby. He was the king’s carver between 1486 and 1529. Unsurprisingly he was one of Henry VII’s chief mourners in 1509.

 

David Owen made his own will in 1529. He ordered masses to be said for Henry VII, Edmund Tudor (Earl of Richmond) and Jasper Tudor (Duke of Bedford) as well as his parents and his wives. The baronet also gave orders as to what his tomb should look like and which wife should have her effigy next to his.  He had three sons with wife number one Jasper, Henry and Roger demonstrating that the Tudor difficulty of producing male heirs didn’t stem from Owen. He also had a daughter Anne who was married to Arthur Hopton. He left her a silver cup. However, it was wife number two he anticipated laying next to him for eternity in the church of the Priory of Esseborne. Anne Devereux was the sister of Lord Ferrers of Chartley. With her he’d produced two daughters . There may have been another wife but the sources are vague – if she was his wife,  Anne Blount was wife number two and Anne Devereux was number three.  There were other children including a further daughter, Barbara who is also mentioned in her father’s will– as is her illegitimate state.

 

The will went to probate in 1542 but by then saying masses for the dear departed was heavily frowned upon as Popish – so it is reasonable to assume he died before 1542 – startlingly he appears to have died seven years before the will was proved.

David’s grandson Owen – son of Anne Hopton turns up in the history books as the last custodian of Lady Katherine Grey at Cockfield Hall in Suffolk. He and his wife were responsible for keeping the increasingly ill Katherine confined and then organizing the quazi- princess’s funeral with a budget of £140 sent from London for the purpose. Owen, a Tudor cousin- albeit a distant one- when all was said and done to both Lady Katherine Grey and to Queen Elizabeth, went on to become Lieutenant of the Tower of London between 1570 and 1590 as well as being a member of parliament.

Double click on the effigy of David Owen to find out more about the church where he is buried – without an effigy of any of his wives by his side.

 

Breverton, Terry. (2014) Jasper Tudor Stroud: Amberley Publishing

de Lisle, Leanda. (2013) Tudor: the family story London: Chatto and Windus

Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas (1826) Testamenta Vetusta: Being Illustrations from Wills, of Manners ‪Customs, &c. as Well as of the Descents and Possessions of Many Distinguished Families. From the Reign of Henry the Second to the Accession of Queen Elizabeth Volume 2 London: Nichols and Son

 

A festive walk

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edward-smIn 1551 the Holy Days and Fasting Act was passed – sadly it was repealed in 1969 – I think if I’ve read correctly- or else if you were thinking of attending church on Christmas Day you would have been required to walk there whatever rank in society you might hold.  And, if the law hadn’t been repealed there would have been no question of not going to church in any event. It was a legal requirement to attend a church service on Christmas Day – a protestant one (this was the reign of Edward VI) unless you were cooking the dinner in which case you weren’t obliged to go.

And whilst you are sampling the festive delights of a glass of sherry as you prepare the trifle you might like to consider the difficulties of whether or not a law remains repealed if the law that repealed a particular act is itself repealed. This is the case with the 1969 act that repealed the 1551 act…producing the kind of argument that can probably be likened to a dog chasing its own tail.

 

On the plus side (or not -as the case may be, depending on how you feel about it), so far as I’m aware, there are currently no Tudor laws which prohibit the wearing of festive sweaters, hats, earrings or other accoutrements.