Edward Stafford the third Duke of Buckingham really should have known about the dangers of irritating monarchs. His father the second duke was executed by Richard III and Edward a mere child of five was forced to flee into hiding having been dressed by his mother Katherine Woodville as a girl.
The problem was that Edward was descended thrice over from Edward III despite the fact that his mother was Katherine Woodville. The Stafford family had been around for centuries whereas the Tudors were Johnny-Come-Late-lies. This was so much the case that after the death of Prince Arthur in 1502 it was suggested in some quarters that the Duke of Buckingham might make an appropriate monarch. Not only was Edward a Plantagenet with clear and legitimate lines of descent but he had also benefitted from a royal upbringing having been made a ward of Margaret Beaufort.
Seven years later when Edward discovered that his sister had become the king’s mistress he was absolutely furious. He believed that his family was far to important for Anne to be the mistress of a mere Tudor, a marked contrast to the Duke of Norfolk who would spend most of his political career from the 1520s onwards dangling Howard girls under Henry’s nose.
Buckingham knew how the court worked under Henry VII – a man not admired for his lack of mistresses and had failed to notice that whilst the Plantagenets were first amongst equals – in a country where rulers appointed men to effectively rule their own regions that the Tudors centralised and appointed administrators – that they were absolute rulers for want of a better description.
Henry VII sought to use Edward’s Plantagenet blood in the marriage market when he suggested a marriage with Anne of Brittany but avarice won out when the Earl Northumberland offered the king £4000 for Edward to marry his daughter Eleanor. By 1509 Edward Stafford had claimed the hereditary right of being Lord High Constable and was on Henry VIII’s newly appointed council having performed in a series of diplomatic and high status court roles.
Buckingham’s sense of self worth was probably reinforced when he received a licence to crenelate, i.e. to fortify a property. He was treading the path of the fifteenth century over mighty subject who ruled his own domain. He had failed to spot that his second cousin Henry VIII granted favours to his friends but woe betide them if they didn’t play by his rules.
Thus when Edward heard from Anne’s sister Elizabeth that Anne was conducting an affair with the king he thought that there would be no repercussions when he summoned his brother-in-law and removed Anne to a nunnery some sixty miles from court. Even worse the affair became common knowledge. Queen Katherine who was pregnant became very upset and Henry was embarrassed. Anne would return to court and the affair probably continued for another few years if Henry’s New Year’s gift list is anything to go by. However, the damage was done – Henry knew how to carry a grudge.
In 1520 Buckingham was suspected of treason. It had become clear that Katherine of Aragon was not as fertile as her mother. A child, Mary, had been born the pervious year but it was unthinkable that a girl might inherit – the Tudors were in danger of dying out. Edward Stafford was the man, so he said, to take up the Crown – Henry personally interviewed the witnesses. In April 1521 he was packed off to the Tower for imagining the death of the king and executed on the 17th May. The evidence was flimsy.
Jane Parker or Mrs George Boleyn has gone down in history as the woman who accused her husband and sister-in-law of incest. She was also the woman who connived to allow Katherine Howard to meet her lover Thomas Culpepper- resulting in Katherine being executed and Henry VIII changing the law to allow for the execution of the insane so that Jane could share the same fate on the 13th February 1542.
Anne was the fifth daughter of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV, born in 1475 had her father not died in April 1483 she would have found herself married to Philip of Burgundy. However, Edward IV died unexpectedly and the treaty with Burgundy was never ratified. Had she married Philip she would have gone to live in the court of her aunt Margaret of Burgundy.
Meanwhile Anne married Thomas junior on 3rd February 1495. She was never the Duchess of Norfolk Anne died in 1510 or 11 depending on the source. It was only in 1514 that the Earl of Surrey was allowed to inherit his father’s title which had been made forfeit by his attainder following Bosworth.
As for Anne’s widower depicted above -Thomas junior- he would remarry Lady Elizabeth Stafford but would go down in history as the rather brutal third Duke of Norfolk, uncle of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard and arch-Tudor politician. Anne had a son who died young but the Howard heirs came from the third duke’s marriage to Elizabeth Stafford (the eldest daughter of the Duke of Buckingham who revolted against Richard III and Eleanor Percy the eldest daughter of the Duke of Northumberland – and thus having more sound Lancastrian credentials.)
Yesterday I found myself in the garderobe, sliding into a small space, ducking my head to avoid a low beam and then straightening to find myself in a priest hole. Fortunately for me no one was going to slam the lid back into place and leave me in total darkness until it was safe for me to emerge or I was discovered and dragged off to the Tower. I was enjoying a sunny afternoon at Oxborough Hall.
Have you noticed the way that wives simply don’t count in the historical record unless they bring oodles of cash or have heirs and spares? Sometimes it really does look like “his story.” There certainly aren’t any pictures of Margaret or her daughters so this post will have to make do with William Cavendish. Margaret was William’s first wife.
England had been Protestant since the death of Mary Tudor in 1558. The majority of the population had quietly got on with the change from Protestantism under Edward VI to Catholicism under Mary and then back to Protestantism with the ascent of Elizabeth.
So – let us get on to the turtle dove who is after all supposed to be the centre of this post. In Tudor times the turtle dove represented fidelity. If Elizabeth is the phoenix who then is the dove? Robert Devereux the 2nd earl of Essex remains a popular choice. The idea gained popularity in the 1960s with the analysis of William Matchett. Although, quite frankly, how rushing off to fight the Spanish in 1586 without permission, getting married without Elizabeth’s approval, referencing the queen’s “crooked carcass,” arriving back from Ireland uninvited, unannounced and bursting into the royal bedchamber before finally revolting and getting oneself beheaded could be described as fidelity is another matter entirely. One view is that the phoenix and the turtle dove have burned out their love for one another. It is then argued that Shakespeare was not writing a straight forward poem at all. He was doing something very dangerous – he was writing a pro Essex poem which basically turns the earl into a hero in the aftermath of his failed rising and subsequent execution on 26th February 1601.
Where do I begin? I suppose considering James’ view would be as good a starting point as any. James was king of England, Scotland and Ireland. They were three separate kingdoms – i.e. they had parliaments and laws of their own. The union within the person of James as monarch was an imperfect one, unlike Wales (and I apologise in advance – I’m stating James’ point of view not mine) which was a perfect union because it had no parliament. Its laws were those of England – Edward I and Henry IV had seen to that. James also began with the view that Ireland was just like his other two kingdoms in that he believed that it had a hierarchical system that worked on a pyramid principle with the king at the top, then the nobility. He was of the view that the nobility were essential for the sound governance of the regions – the only thing was that the Irish hierarchy didn’t work in quite the same way as the English and Scottish systems (more on that shortly).
In many ways the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 can be seen as the apex of Elizabeth’s reign – the Armada Portrait shows that God was definitely on her side and that in addition to reigning over England Elizabeth also ruled the waves and other parts of the globe – the latter can be seen from her proprietorial grip on a globe whilst the former is manifested in the carving of a mermaid on her chair – admittedly the artist had to do some reworking as the traditional symbolism of a mermaid was the opposite to that which usually depicted the Virgin Queen’s qualities.