I’ve been a bit remiss in not mentioning my most recent book, published by Pen and Sword. While writing it, I thought of it as Educating the Tudors. It explores how a handful of trusted families were charged with raising royal children, alongside an assortment of tutors—including a lutenist and a master-at-arms.
Henry VII’s own upbringing was very different from that of his children and grandchildren. Early on, his life followed the path of a typical aristocratic child—until he was forced to flee to Brittany with his uncle, Jasper Tudor.
His children, by contrast, benefited from the close involvement of Lady Margaret Beaufort. She ensured that her grandchildren had access to the best tutors, while maintaining traditions inherited from the Plantagenet court. Conveniently, Edward IV had created household ordinances for his heir at Ludlow, which provided a ready-made model for the new royal household. Lady Margaret also had detailed knowledge of Elizabeth Woodville’s nursery at Eltham, where some of Elizabeth of York’s younger sisters remained, along with experienced nursery staff. In many ways, it was simply a matter of replacing Plantagenet princes and princesses with Tudor ones.
Elizabeth Denton, the nurse at Eltham, cared for the children of Henry VII and later for Princess Mary during Henry VIII’s reign. In 1518, she was succeeded by Lady Margaret Bryan, who went on to care for each of Henry VIII’s legitimate children as well as his acknowledged illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. It was Lady Margaret Bryan who conducted the famous correspondence with Thomas Cromwell about the state of Elizabeth’s teeth, apparel and inappropriateness of the food she was being served following Anne Boleyn’s disgrace and subsequent execution.
Many of the women featured in the book owed their positions at court to Lady Margaret Beaufort, and the relationships among them are sometimes surprising. For example, Lady Jane Calthorpe, who cared for Princess Mary when Margaret Pole fell out of favor in 1521, was one of Anne Boleyn’s aunts. Although the information about these women is often fragmentary, it offers rich insight into the networks and connections that shaped the Tudor court—and into the sheer number of people required to raise a prince or princess.
For some, these roles meant lasting fortune. For others, like Lady Shelton (another of Anne Boleyn’s aunts), it proved to be a far more uncomfortable experience.
Preparing Tudor Kings and Princes is available on special offer at the moment at Pen and Sword as well as other sites – e.g. the one associated with a South American river! It’s also going to be available at the Talk Radio Europe bookshop following my interview with Selina Mackenzie this afternoon.
I’m still stitching my swirly dragon but have had to divert to knit several reindeer, a sleigh and Santa for the telephone box to be completed by the beginning of December – (don’t ask, it’s just best if I eventually post a picture.)
Medieval English work is principally associated with ecclesiastical embroidery but we have also looked at book covers, gloves, bags and pouches, and of course, boxes. These small personal items may have been made by professionals or in a domestic setting. I must admit to have a developing thing for 16th century sweet bags which were a development from my medieval meanderings!
I am particularly enthralled by William Huggins, Huggans or even Hogan, the Keeper of the Gardens at Hampton Court, presenting Elizabeth I with an annual New Year’s gift of sweet bags – these may have been quite small, as they could have been to contain potpurri to keep some of the less pleasant smells of court life at nose length. He began making his gifts in 1561 and continued until his death in 1588, whereupon Mrs Huggans is found listed as the annual gift giver. William also made sweet waters for Elizabeth.
Museum of London
The family originated in Norfolk. He can be found as a scholar with his brothers at Cambridge. He left without taking a degree and entered Lincoln’s Inn to train as a lawyer – rather than undertaking a horticultural course somewhere! In 1555 he was elected to parliament. It seems that his family’s patron was the 4th Duke of Norfolk (who was, coincidentally, married Thomas Audley’s only surviving daughter, Margaret).
Hogan had only the one job that has made its way into the history books – Keeper of Hampton Court Gardens, a place incidentally which Elizabeth I was very fond of. In 1564 he wrote to William Cecil. In May 1565 he received a grant of lands specifically to help pay his debts. He transferred them to Francis Barker, a Merchant Taylor. And then in 1588 he died…
There’s much more to be found out about William’s ‘brother’, John Appleyard, who was married to William’s sister, Elizabeth. It was on his behalf that William had written to Cecil in 1564 on the matter of a privateering venture. In 1567 the connection got William into a spot of bother when Appleyard agitated against the Earl of Leicester while he was staying with William at Hampton Court. At which point a light went on in my head! John Appleyard was one of Amy Robsart’s half brothers. And in 1567 he claimed that the jury, which found her death to have been accidental, had been bribed.
So, in one short step we’ve moved from embroidered bags and sweet water to bribery and murder, not to mention shadowy conspirators. Appleyard was interviewed, as indeed was William Huggans – who knew nothing. Appleyard admitted that he had slandered the Earl of Leicester (which was probably a very sensible decision under the circumstances). William was required to answer the following questions according to Cecil’s own notes:
How often did John Appleyard inform you of any offers made to him to provoke him to prosecute matter against my lord of Leicester? Where were you when Appleyard went over the Thames to speak with one that came to move him in such a purpose? Who came to fetch Appleyard? How many persons did you see on the other side of the Thames with Appleyard? Did Appleyard stand or walk whilst he communed with the party? &c., &c.
(‘Cecil Papers: 1567’, in Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House: Volume 1, 1306-1571( London, 1883), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-cecil-papers/vol1/pp342-352 [accessed 13 November 2024].)
I’m not sure how to discuss embroidered household textiles after that massive diversion. Bed hangings, cushions and table carpets aren’t going to have quite the same impact and I’m not sure that even I can wedge heraldic embroidery, including banners, ceremonial clothing, regalia, funeral palls, surcoats and horse accessories, into the tribulations of Amy Robsart’s extended family.
For further reading on medieval embroidery, rather than the matter of Amy Robsart ( Chris Skidmore, Death and the Virgin is an excellent read on the subject) other than Tanya Benham and Jan Messent, and the V and A catalogue of their Opus Anglicanum exhibition:
– A.G. Christie’s English Medieval Embroidery, was until recently, the book on the medieval methods of embroidery. It can be accessed on line, which is very handy indeed:
And last but not least, a real book rather than an online facsimile , Barbara Snook’s English Embroidery, published during the 1970s by Mills and Boon.
The Fishmonger’s Pall was made specifically for the merchant’s guild, for use at the funeral of company members as the beginning of the sixteenth century . It is made from Italian cloth of gold and the four side panels which are linen are embroidered with silver gilt and silks. Unsurprisingly the embroidery has a ‘fishy’ theme. St Peter – the fisherman, appears at the top and bottom ends of the pall and there’s a mermaid and a merman as well as dolphins and the guild’s coat of arms. It was described in 1862 by the Gentleman’s Magazine as ‘perhaps as perfect a specimen of the various processes go embroidery as could be found anywhere, and the magnificent piece of cloth of gold and velvet forming the centre should be carefully noticed.’ (Vol 213, p.38).
There is an awful lot of gold work in evidence. The couching creates density and texture while the embroidered figures composed of split stitches, satin stitches and brick stitch among others tell a story of immortality and a Christian soul on its journey to heaven -even the peacock feathers sported by the angels around St Peter speak of immortality and peacocks symbolise immortality because their feathers return better than ever each year. There are peacock feathers on the Toledo Cape as well – a reminder perhaps that just as the imogees and emoticons of today as readable there was an entire visual language of religion and belief which began to drain away with the Reformation. Perhaps just as important, the whole thing shouts abut the prestige of the Fishmonger’s Guild.
The embroiderer even used different kinds of gold thread to create the density of texture. Most gold thread was linen wrapped in sliver gilt ‘foil’ but they have also used drawn wires called ‘damask gold’ which doesn’t appear before the fourteenth century and purl thread which is a twisted coil of wire. It adds greater dimension to the coat of arms and crown. The embroideries themselves have a three dimensional look because there are padded areas that have been embroidered across. The mirror even shows a reflection because of the way that the silver thread surface of the mirror has been couched. For more information about embroidery stitches used on the pall follow http://www.zenzietinker.co.uk/opus-anglicanum/ which will open in a new tab. It also offers some excellent close up images of the pall.
The fishmongers’ pall is not the only one in existence but it is certainly the finest because of the depth of its embroideries and the finesse with which the shading has been applied – it certainly has to make you wonder what was destroyed at the time of England’s Reformation. And it also goes to show that the Reformation took something of a toll on an industry that had thrived throughout the medieval period. The embroidery on the Fishmongers’ Pall have depth and nuance that develop the earlier forms, even though the themes and images may be the same.
V and A, English Medieval Embroidery Opus Anglicanum (London and New Haven: Yale University Press)
James IV of Scotland (the Stirling Head on the left) became king when his father, James III, was killed at the Battle of Sauchieburn (by his own nobles) in 1488. At that time James IV was only 15 and the rebels who did away with his father planned to put him on the throne – with James IV’s agreement. The family relationships could only be described as strained. Our boy was a Renaissance Prince who spoke not only Scots and Gaelic but eight other languages. He’d been engaged to Cecily of York before the death of Edward IV. The proposed union was one of the factors that led to James III’s murder. It meant that when Henry Tudor approached the subject of a union with his own eldest daughter, Margaret Tudor (Stirling head far right), that James IV, was somewhat reticent in the first instant.
Eventually, after the difficulties arising from James’ support of Perkin Warbeck, Margaret’s youth, Lady Margaret Beaufort’s concerns about the Scottish king’s reputation with the ladies and problems over the size of Margaret’s dowry, Scottish envoys – headed by the Archbishop of Glasgow- finally arrived in England at the end of 1501 where they celebrated Christmas before signing the Treaty of Perpetual Peace on 24 January 1502. Margaret’s official betrothal to James took place the following day with Patrick Hepburn, 1st Earl of Bothwell acting as the king’s proxy.
On 27 June 1503, Margaret departed from Richmond Palace for her grandmother’s home at Collyweston near Stamford. From there she travelled north in the care of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and his wife Agnes. The newly weds met for the first time at Dalkeith before Margaret made her entry to Edinburgh and her new home at Holyrood. James, who was quite frankly a bit of a charmer, wooed his new wife and showed her every consideration. He understood the importance of romance but recognised also the necessity of courting his wife until she was of an age to bear his heir. After their wedding, he gifted his new bride with Kilmarnock and cut off his beard which Margaret did not much like. From Holyrood Margaret travelled to Linlithgow and Stirling.
Stirling had been James IV’s childhood home and it was he who turned the castle into a Renaissance palace. Margaret discovered now, if she hadn’t known before, that her husband’s illegitimate daughter, Margaret Stewart was housed in the royal nursery at Stirling along with her numerous half-siblings. The queen did not react well. Margaret Stewart was sent off to Edinburgh Castle with her household. Alexander Stewart, whose mother was Marion Boyd, would be sent off on a European tour to complete his education in preparation for his life in the Church. he was made Archbishop of St Andrews when he was 11-years-old. The boy would be tutored by Erasmus at Padua.
Margaret celebrated her fourteenth birthday at Linlithgow. By then the household of ladies that she had known since childhood had been largely dismissed and returned to England. The entertainments were lavish and her husband attentive but it would be more than two years until Margaret became a mother. By then James’ brother and heir, the Duke of Ross (also named James), was dead. Margaret’s son, James (quelle surprise) was born on 21 February 1507. Margaret had fulfilled her duty as a queen in providing her husband with an heir but her happiness was cut short when the baby died the following year at Stirling. She would go on to provide her husband with a daughter who died soon after her birth the same year. After that Margaret became pregnant almost every year during her marriage to James. James IV’s eventual heir, another James, was born in 1512 (Stirling Head in the middle)
Important treaties between countries were usually sealed with a marriage between the two parties. The subsequent children of the union were thought to strengthen the bond between nations. Marriage was a political transaction forging ties that would endure between nations.
Having randomly looked at Henry VII’s foreign policy with Scotland last week I thought that it would be sensible to consider why Henry’s policies in regard to his neighbours and Europe were established rather than doing what English kings did – i.e. going to war with the French and the Scottish at the first opportunity to win land, glory, possibly a pension from a foreign monarch who wanted you to go away, and to prove that God was smiling on you – oh yes, and to keep your nobility happy because they were bagging lots of loot and ransoms.
Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne which came from his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was tenuous. God, or possibly the Stanley family, smile upon him at Bosworth on 22 August 1485 when he became king by right of arms – the last of England’s kings to do so. Early modern people regarded the victory as evidence that Henry’s claim to the throne had divine approval. However, kings had come and gone throughout the fifteenth century in a series of increasingly bloody encounters so Henry, his mother and their advisors needed to strengthen Henry’s position on his new throne if there was to be a Tudor dynasty. Setting aside Shakespeare’s assessment of Henry’s reign, the first exploration of his policies was made by Francis Bacon in 1622. Most famous in the twentieth century for their analysis of Henry’s rule were GR Elton and SB Chrimes.
He dated his reign from the day before the battle. This was standard procedure and meant that anyone who didn’t sue for pardon who fought for the Yorkists could be attainted of treason and executed or imprisoned. It also meant that those nobility who were pardoned were required to be on their best behaviour.
He secured the remaining royal members of the house of York. The 15 year old Earl of Warwick, son of George Duke ofClarence, was at Sheriff Hutton when Henry became king. He was moved to London where he spent a short time in Margaret Beaufort’s custodianship before being shifted to the Tower where he remained for the rest of his life. Margaret was assigned various other noble wards including the young Duke of Buckingham (who had his own claim to the throne). These wards could be educated under Margaret’s watchful eye, she had the right to organise their weddings into families known to be loyal to the Tudors and even better she retained control over their lands until they achieved their majorities.
Hey married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, as he had promised (on Christmas Day 1483 at Rennes Cathedral) before he invaded England but he was careful to ensure that he was the rightful king rather than ruling by right of his wife. For many people, it was Elizabeth as the eldest surviving child of Edward IV who was the rightful monarch. And it also raises the question that if Elizabeth was legitimate once more, then so were her missing brothers, presumed dead in the Tower. One of the consequences of Henry’s need to look as though he was king in his own right was that Elizabeth was not crowned until 25 November 1487
He and his new bride produced an heir in short order. Prince Arthur was born on 19 September 1486 – suggesting that his parents may have preempted the marriage ceremony, which also makes sense because as king Henry needed an heir to succeed him to a) demonstrate that God was still smiling on him, b) a male heir reduced the likelihood of further rebellion because it provided stability of succession.
Henry and his advisors developed a mythology about the Tudor claim to the throne that pre-dated the Plantagenets and legitimised his rule still further. The unification of the red rose of Lancaster and white rose of York was only one element of the way the Tudors spun their claim to the throne. Later Tudors continued the policy e.g. Shakespeare’s Richard III.
He rewarded his supporters, married off the female members of the Plantagenet family into safe hands so that they wouldn’t become focal points for later rebellion or packed them off into nunneries.
He established the Yeomen of the Guard – a 200 strong force to look after him and his family.
He had to deal with Yorkist plots – there were sponsored by foreign powers including Margaret of Burgundy. Henry’s foreign policy always had to come back to potential Yorkist threats which he needed to nullify through diplomacy rather than war (the royal piggy bank was empty).
He wanted established European royal families to recognise the Tudors as monarchs – so he was very keen on marriage alliances and also on doing things that defined him as a renaissance king…just like his neighbours.
He needed to fill the treasury. Foreign wars cost money – all those troops and equipment had to be paid for so Henry and his advisor’s used diplomacy to avoid war. He also tightened the way the realm was administered to ensure that he received everything that he was due. Depending on which Historian you read the use of Tudor administrators to ensure the taxes were collected was a new development but revisionist historians, point out that Edward IV established a very similar system and that Henry developed it to ensure that regional nobility was bypassed for a more centralised approach to government. It would have to be said that Henry VII had a strong grasp of his accounts and inspected them regularly.
He needed to ensure that so-called ‘over mighty subjects’ were put in their place and unable to go to war against him. It was another reason he didn’t want any foreign wars. Henry did not have a standing army, he was reliant on his nobles putting forces in the field but while the system of ‘bastard feudalism’ survived in which it was the nobles who offered regional patronage and reward and could call on armed forces – his own stability on the throne was a bit wobbly…so no wars if it could be helped.
No war also meant that although there were seven parliaments during the course of Henry’s reign he didn’t need to call on them to provide subsidies for war – which meant that parliament didn’t have that much leverage over the king.
The need for security, the appointment of men he could trust on his council- not to mention the delights of the Court of the Star Chamber- another cunning wheeze to keep the nobility in check- meant that Henry kept his crown for 24 years until his death in 1509. The policies did not prevent Yorkist plots or make him very popular with anyone but he ensured stability within his kingdom, promoted the economy and filled his treasury. When he died, largely unlamented, he left an heir who succeeded him with very little blood being shed – Empson and Dudley, Henry VII’s tax collectors were executed to show that a new reign had begun and that the repressive elements of the first Tudor’s rule were a thing of the past.
Henry VIII was tall, handsome and not quite 18…and what is a king to do with a full treasury to show that God is indeed smiling upon him…of course…start a war!
Margaret Tudor – ‘Stirling Head’ panel. She’s holding a greyhound which was one of the Tudors’ heraldic symbols, originally belonging to the Beaufort family.
There’s no escape from the Tudors if you’re a teenager with an interest in history. The AQA A level syllabus begins in 1485 with Henry Tudor settling in to the newly vacated throne. This is what students are expected to know about him:
Henry Tudor’s consolidation of power: character and aims; establishing the Tudor dynasty
Government: councils, parliament, justice, royal finance, domestic policies
Relationships with Scotland and other foreign powers; securing the succession; marriage alliances
Society: churchmen, nobles and commoners; regional division; social discontent and rebellions
Economic development: trade, exploration, prosperity and depression
Religion; humanism; arts and learning
I’m willing to bet that regular readers of the History Jar could make a good answer to most aspects of the syllabus and are probably quite relieved that I don’t have the Wars of the Roses on my mind. Today however, Scotland and Henry VII – mainly because no one is permitted to photograph the Stone of Destiny which is currently held in Perth Museum and Scone Palace is a Victorian edifice.
Even during the Wars of the Roses the old hostilities between the English and their Scottish neighbours had continued. In 1480, by which time the Yorkists looked secure on the throne, Edward IV even invaded Scotland and intermittent border raids had continued unabated. In 1485, Henry VII’s claim to the throne was tenuous and his cashbox was empty. He needed to secure his borders and make treaties that were beneficial to the Tudor dynasty as well as to the economic prosperity of his new realm. Most of all, he needed his royal house, the Tudors, to be recognised as England’s rightful kings by Europe’s other rulers.
The Treaty of Perpetual Peace was signed between England and Scotland on 31 October 1502 at Westminster by Henry VII and at Glasgow Cathedral by James IV on 10 December. It was the first attempt in about 170 years to bring warfare between the two countries to an end. The treaty was sealed with a marriage between James IV of Scotland, aged 30 years, and Henry VII’s eldest daughter, Margaret Tudor, aged 12 years.
The two monarchs did not start out on quite such good terms. When James IV, aged 15 years, was crowned king of Scotland 1488, Henry continued to face revolts from Yorkist claimants to the English throne, including Perkin Warbeck. King James used this instability to his advantage, invading England in 1496 and 1497. Margaret of Burgundy (a.k.a. the aunt of the missing Yorkist Edward V and his brother Richard) sent envoys to Scotland in 1488 to ensure good relations with the new Scottish king and perhaps ferment trouble for the new English monarch. Henry was required to play a long term strategic game. In November 1492 the Treaty of Etaples agreed among other things, that the French would no longer offer support to the pretender.
In November of 1495, Perkin Warbeck, who Margaret of Burgundy, recognised as the younger of her two nephews, arrived in Scotland. The king who was a similar age to Warbeck (and this is not the post to consider whether he was the missing prince or a pretender) welcomed him to court. He went so far as to have taxes collected to pay Warbeck an allowance of £1,200 per year and in January of 1496, Warbeck married Lady Katherine Gordon, a daughter of the Earl of Huntly who was related to the king by marriage. None of this went down particularly well in England and it’s impossible to know whether James truly believed Warbeck to be the prince or not. Warbeck was certainly at home in the royal court suggesting that his grasp of manners was either instilled from birth or the son of a boatman had been given some very thorough lessons. What is certain is that James intended to use his guest as a pawn in his attempt to regain the town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed which was in English hands as well as gain an advantage over his English neighbour.
James and Warbeck came to an agreement that if the Scots backed an invasion and Warbeck won the crown that Berwick would become Scottish once more, the loan for men and equipment would be paid back and there would be a healthy interest to be paid. Plus, of course, Perkin would owe the Scots for his Crown. Unfortunately when the Scots crossed the border in September 1496 there wasn’t an outpouring of popular Yorkist support and the Scottish king returned home. Furthermore, Margaret of Burgundy was no longer able to offer overt support for the Yorkist cause as the Intercursus Magnus of February 1496 provided for improved economic relations between Burgundy and England. Even worse it turned out that Henry VII wasn’t quite the push over that James might have supposed. The English king gave orders to the Earl of Surrey to raise an army to confront the Scots. The matter was brought to an end with the Treaty of Ayton in 1497 which saw Henry agreeing to marry his eldest daughter to the Scottish king. Henry did not want war, he wanted a peaceful settlement and security. Wars cost money which he preferred not to spend. In addition, he was busily disarming his aristocracy. He didn’t want to have to permit northern lords to continue with their bad old habits of retaining men and crenelating their walls – even if it was to keep the Scots out. It meant that, in Scotland, James maintained his country’s Auld Alliance with France at the same time as entering negotiations with the English. Henry might always be outflanked if he ended up going to war with either of the two kingdoms.
In September 1497 Warbeck sailed to Cornwall with his wife in a ship provided by James in an attempt to gather more support for his claim. For James it meant the opportunity to wash his hands of an increasingly unwelcome guest and to begin fresh negotiations with Henry VII. In all fairness he had not yielded to pressure to hand Warbeck to the English in return for payment. Nor for that matter was James IV totally convinced he wanted to marry Margaret who was still only a child (think of the importance of an heir to the Scottish throne). Not that it mattered so long as the Treaty of Ayton held while there were negotiations between the two realms.
James IV had a perfectly nice mistress, thank you very much. He was in love with Margaret Drummond, the eldest daughter of John, Lord Drummond – though don’t go running away with the idea he was a one man woman. By 1496 Margaret, who gave the king a daughter, had her own apartment in Stirling Castle and while his council were talking about the benefits of an Anglo-Scottish alliance, James was thinking marrying Margaret who came from a relatively unimportant family. There were even rumours of a secret marriage having taken place.
In 1501 Margaret, who was at her family home at Drummond Castle in Perthshire, became unwell, as did two of her sisters, Euphemia and Sybella, following their breakfast. The three of them died. Suspicion pointed at Euphemia’s widower, John Fleming, 2nd Lord Fleming but whether they were poisoned so that the way was cleared for the Anglo-Scottish marriage to go ahead or wether it was a case of accidentally food poisoning is another matter.
The way was clear for a proxy marriage between Margaret and James to take place at Richmond in January 1503 by which time Margaret’s brother Arthur was dead – Elizabeth of York would die the following month. All that stood between the Scottish king and the English throne was Prince Henry. The Tudor dynasty wasn’t looking quite so secure as it had once done. But the marriage was a success for Henry VII – as well as lessening the chance of invasion from the north it reflected that the Tudor family was recognised by its neighbour as a royal one – especially as the Stewarts were long established royalty. One of the conditions of the marriage agreement was that Margaret should not travel north until she was 13 years old. In 1498 while negotiations were still under way, Henry had indicated that his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and wife, Elizabeth of York, did not think it right that so young a girl should be risked to the dangers of child birth at a tender age. In addition to which the pair had probably heard that James IV was some something of womaniser.
Margaret stayed in England, referred to as the Scottish queen while preparations for her journey north got underway. She would travel to Scotland, taking a whole month to arrive, when she was 13 years-old. The only fly in the ointment were the finances. Henry wanted to know what Margaret’s ladies-in-waiting would be paid. There was the new queen’s dower to be settled and also the dowry to be paid – Henry agreed to 30,000 nobles to be paid across three years – which to be fair, he paid promptly. It was unfortunate that James paid more than half of that for the pageantry surrounding his bride’s arrival in Edinburgh. The fact that she did not have a child until 1507 suggests that James respected his mother-in-law and Lady Margaret Beaufort’s concerns for his wife’s physical well being. Chivalry and pageantry was the glue that held the treaty together in the meantime and James intended to assert Scottish dominance on proceedings.
And just in case you’re thinking – how lovely – a happy ending…think again, In 1508, Henry VII began to renovate the fortifications at Berwick and in 1513, Margaret’s brother, by then Henry VIII, won the Battle of Flodden which also saw the death of James IV – so much for perpetual peace.
Incidentally, a past exam question states: Henry VII’s foreign policy with Scotland was most successful. How far do you agree?
Our story starts with Thomas Chaloner the Elder who was born in 1521. Thomas’s father, Roger, was an usher in the privy chamber of Henry VIII. Thomas was well educated and was sent off in 1540 as secretary to Sir Henry Knyvett to the court of Charles V and from there he was sent to Scotland where he was knighted after the Battle of Pinkie in 1547. He continued to serve Mary I in a diplomatic capacity before becoming Elizabeth I’s ambassador to Philip II at Brussels, although it is known that he was in England during 1560 and 1561. By then he was wealthy enough to build himself a house in Clerkenwell and he also had properties in Guisborough, St Bees and Steeple Clayton, a property in Buckinghamshire that he had been granted by Queen Mary.
From there he journeyed to Paris where he met Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the English Ambassador to France. Unfortunately he arrived just as war broke out between the authorities and the French Huguenots. Chaloner, who despite his good relations with Mary was Protestant, was promptly arrested. When he was released, having met with Catherine de Medici and the Huguenot leaders, he made his way to Madrid, where he continued to serve Queen Elizabeth despite the fact that he hated the weather, the cost of living and the extremes of Catholic faith that he encountered. Nor did the fact that he was unmarried help with the management of his estates in England.
He had hoped to marry Elizabeth Sands who was one of the queen’s ladies but in his absence she married someone else. In 1563 he received a visit from Audrey Frodsham from Cheshire. She was 33 years old when she travelled to Spain. By the time she returned to England she was expecting Chaloner’s child. Chaloner’s brother Francis, who might reasonably have expected to inherit his brother’s wealth, would describe the boy as illegitimate. The problem was that the pair wished to marry as Protestants rather than in a Catholic Church but Chaloner was delayed by his duties, trying to negotiate the release of some English sailors, so it appears that the marriage took place after the birth of Chaoloner’s heir, which took place at the end of 1564.
Chaloner the elder’s health was not good, it seems that he may have had malaria, and he died in 1565 having made a new will ensuring that his belonging went to his son. In order to prevent his brother Francis Chaloner from contesting the will, Chaloner arranged for a group of his friends, including William Cecil, to become trustees of his estate having made provision for Audrey. he also arranged that Thomas Chaloner the Younger should be educated by Cecil.
Thomas Chaloner the Younger was tutor and friend to Robert Dudley the explorer. Like his young friend, Chaloner travelled extensively and after Dudley’s flight to Tuscany with his mistress in 1605 did his best to retrieve Dudley’s fortunes for him. He was well placed to do so, having gained a place in Queen Anne’s household. This happy circumstance derived from him having been an acknowledged part of the Earl of Essex’s circle. It was his task to manage the queen’s private estates. The king also appoint him governor of Prince Henry’s household at Oatlands. Chaloner’s reputation as a chemist and his interest in natural history were the ideal qualities in a man responsible for educating a renaissance prince. Chaloner was married twice and had eighteen children. In 1610, Chaloner became Henry’s chamberlain at St James’ Palace. As well as being a scholar, Chaloner like his father was also well informed on military and diplomatic matters.
He also identified the value of his Guisborough estates for its alum, having learned the process of its manufacture during his travels to Italy. Unfortunately his plans were ruined when the king seized the mines for the Crown. The seizure was one of the reasons that Chaloner was appointed to the role of Prince Henry’s governor – it was a sweetener for the loss of a fortune. Realistically Chaloner may have thought that his family would benefit more by their association and education alongside Henry. Unfortunately the prince died in 1612 – leaving the Chaloners out in the cold.
Two of Chaloner’s sons, James and yet another Thomas, would become regicides when, in 1649, they served on the commission that tried Charles I. James did not sign the death warrant but Thomas did. This meant that in 1660 Thomas, along with the other men who signed the document, was excluded from the act that pardoned other parliamentarians. James who was prominent in Yorkshire under the patronage of General Fairfax was arrested in 1655 for suspicion of involvement with the Sealed Knot and died prior to the Restoration. Thomas, the regicide, fled to the Low Countries, under the alias of George Saunders, where he died in 1661.
Chaloner the regicide had always had a difficult relationship with the Crown. The loss of the alum mines did not help matters, especially as Charles gave them to a syndicate of favoured courtiers. However, his religious beliefs, which were opposed to all formalised religions, and the publication of a treatise led to his arrest and subsequent flight from England in 1637. He returned home by 1644 and witnessed Laud’s trial. Nor was he a fan of the Scottish army in England during the First Civil War and he espoused the view that the king was bound by the laws created by Parliament – he was one step away from declaring the sovereignty of Parliament. He would be known for his opposition to the king and it was perhaps because of this that he retained his parliamentary seat (the Borough of Richmond) after Pride’s Purge. He was instrumental in the creation of the Commonwealth and was a key figure in the development of its trade and foreign policies. As a complete aside, the Chaloners were related by marriage to Oliver Cromwell. Thomas’s nephew Edward, was married to Anne Ingoldsby – who was one of the Protector’s cousins. Richard Ingoldsby, Chaloner’s brother-in-law, for those of you who might be interested, was another regicide but because he claimed that he was forced to sign the death warrant and because he supported General Monck, he was pardoned where other regicides were not.
Chaloner’s eldest brother William become Baronet of Guisborough in 1620. However, like his father and grandfather before him, William was well travelled and his died in Turkey the following year – meaning that the baronetcy was extinct almost before it began.
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Prior to the Conquest Wollaton was known as Olaveston – medieval spelling and pronunciation resulted in the change of name. The manor was in the hands of Alfa the Saxon who paid Danegeld for about 180 acres of land. After 1066 the manor was granted to William Peverell and continued in his family until Henry II confiscated it and the land became Crown property. In 1174, Henry II gave it to his youngest son John. The land was held throughout by a tenant who paid a Knight’s fee in order to hold the manor.
During the thirteenth century a wool merchant named Ralph Bugge purchased lands in Willoughby-on-the-Wolds. Across the next hundred years the family, who changed their name to Willoughby, accrued more wealth, made judicious marriage alliances and ended up with the Wollaton estate on the outskirts of modern Nottingham. They also acquired Cossal and the following century added the estate of Middleton in Warwickshire to their portfolio. As they made good marriages and acquired land they became part of the gentry and served in various administrative capacities. In 1427, Hugh Willoughby served as one of Nottinghamshire’s MPs before becoming Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. It helped that some of the Willoughbys’ land was sitting on coal seams. Sir Henry Willoughby, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century was regarded as a very wealthy man, who invested his income in land and through making judicious marriages for his children.
Sir Henry Willoughby looked to Lord Hastings as his patron and as a consequence fought for the Tudors at Bosworth in 1485. He was also on the field at Blackheath in 1497 and won favour from Henry VII. Not that Sir Henry was without blemish, in 1485 he abducted Jane Sacheverell who was both a widow and an heiress and forced her to marry his brother, Richard. The following year Jane was granted a divorce and married William Zouche, who she had been contracted to prior to her kidnap.
And now we come to Sir Francis Willoughby – who built Wollaton Hall. His father, (another Henry) married Anne Grey, the sister of the Duke of Suffolk. The Willoughbys were closely tied by marriage to the Greys several times over. When Francis was two, his father died. He and his brother became wards of their uncle. In 1554 Francis’ cousin Lady Jane Grey, was executed as was the duke. In 1559, Francis’ elder brother died and Francis became heir to his father’s estates.
Francis married Elizabeth Lyttleton when they were both in their teens. It was not a happy relationship. Eventually the Earl of Leicester adjudicated between the couple and they went their separate ways, although Francis was required to pay Elizabeth £200 per year.
Sir Francis initially tried to sell Bess of Hardwick land at Willoughby to try and raise funds to begin building Wollaton Hall. She told him his asking price was too mach and declined the offer. Instead, she leant him the money on the understanding that the land would be security for the debt. He began to build his hall with Ancaster stone from Lincolnshire, in 1580 and finished it in 1588. He died less than a decade after its completion and still in debt from the construction of the hall. It is thought that the building cost about £8,000. It did not help that he had six daughters who all required dowries.
In Derbyshire, Bess of Hardwick, watched the building take shape with keen interest, she even visited it when it was nearing completion on a journey home from London. In 1591 she signed Willoughby’s mason, John Roses, to complete the stonework on her own grand design at Hardwick which was designed, as was Wollaton, by Robert Smythson. Situated on a hill, with large windows covering the walls it has been described as a ‘lantern house’ which seems an appropriate description of both Wollaton and Hardwick.
Willoughby did not forget to emblazon his coat of arms above the front entrance but it was a nineteenth century extension designed by Jeffrey Wyatville, (real name Wyatt) who remodelled the interior of the hall, adding a large hall with a hammer-beam ceiling and rather gothic corbels and grotesques.
Francis had no sons so the estate passed to his eldest daughter and her husband – who also happened to be a cousin, named Sir Percival Willoughby.
There was a fire in 1641 which caused extensive damage, so the house was unoccupied for the better part of fifty years. When the Willoughbys returned, Cassandra Willoughby, Duchess of Chandos, ordered that the house should be changed on its exterior to reflect a more Italianate style with the addition of statues from Italy. Cassandra’s efforts to resurrect her family home included cataloguing the family papers.
In 1801 there was yet another fire which allowed Wyatville’s extensive remodelling.
Nottingham crept ever closer to the hall and its fourteenth century deer park. In 1881 the Willoughby family sold Wollaton to the Nottingham Corporation who turned it into a natural history museum.
Strauss, Sheila M., Wollaton and Wollaton Hall, A Short History (Nottingham: Nottingham City Council Leisure Department, 1989)
And it turns out that you can even buy a vintage travel poster for Wollaton Hall – just goes to show how popular visiting stately stacks and natural history museums can be!
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Reformation, taxation and enclosure were causes of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. During the reign of Henry VII rebellions including the Lovell/Stafford rising, the rebellion in favour of Lambert Simnel and the Perkins Warbeck rebellion were all related to the dynastic upheavals of the fifteenth century. it wasn’t really just about bloodlines by that time, it was also about power and influence at court – who would help the king to govern. But even they had more than one cause.
Taxation and enclosure: this could be a localised problem as with the Yorkshire rebellion of 1489 that saw the murder of the Earl of Northumberland. The same was true of the Cornish Rebellion of 1497 that was then followed up by the Cornish commons joining with the Perkin Warbeck Revolt. The most well known of the rebellions associated with enclosure was Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk in 1549 during the reign of Edward VI. Local taxation, rent rises and enclosure of common land led to risings based on social and economic need – but they weren’t necessarily a major threat to the Tudors because they were regional rather than national. Where the rising was contained in one area it was easier to put down.
Religion: The Pilgrimage of Grace is the most obvious example, but in 1554 when Mary Tudor, a.k.a. Bloody Mary, was on the throne Wyatt’s Rebellion aimed to place Elizabeth on the throne because she was protestant.
The Tudors always feared rebellion but they centralised government, used propaganda and had a secret service. The real problem with any rebellion was if it was backed by a foreign power like the French, Spanish or the papacy. One of the reasons Henry VIII was so alarmed by the Pilgrimage of Grace was because there was a potential threat from Catholic nobles who wanted Princess Mary restored to her rightful place in the succession. Taken together with the support of the gentry (not always given willingly) and the clergy it was perhaps the biggest challenge to Tudor authority. The Pilgrimage of Grace is something studied at school because it was the biggest rebellion that expressed anti-Reformation beliefs.
Henry VIII and Thomas Wolsey continued with their programme of closing the monasteries but it was only during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I that opinions completely polarised. Reformers became gradually more radical, while Catholics wanted to keep to their traditional values. It was one of the reasons that the presence of Mary Queen of Scots in England was difficult for Elizabeth. The Scottish queen was recognised by many catholics as England’s legitimate monarch and it led to prolonged plotting against Elizabeth.
Religious contention would lead, in 1605, during the Stuart era, to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 which aimed to kill James I and his heir, destroy the Protestant parliament and leave the way clear for a Catholic restoration. The plotters intended to place James’ daughter Elizabeth Stuart on the throne, convert her to catholicism and ensure that she was married to a Catholic husband. In 1701 the Act of Settlement finally drew the matter of the religion of the succession to a conclusion – the monarch had to be Protestant or Parliament wouldn’t recognise their right to rule. Ultimately in 1714 George I became King of England because he was the nearest in line to the throne from among the potential claimants who was a Protestant. Of course, that didn’t stop the Catholic heirs of James II (who had been deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – his son James (the Old Pretender) and his grandson Charles (Bonnie Prince Charlie, a.k.a. the Young Pretender) attempting to regain the throne for the Catholic branch of the Stuart family in the Jacobite rebellions of the eighteenth century.
And of course, in between the times – the seventeenth century saw the English Civil Wars, which is where we will be going next.
The pilgrims of 1536 demonstrated that religion could be an alternative authority to the Crown. Rituals and symbolism were important throughout the rebellion. The image here shows monks and a bishop heading the procession of pilgrims- they carry a cross and a banner showing the five wounds of Christ which was the pilgrim badge. One of the things that this did was to create a sense of unity among the thousands of pilgrims who came from many layers of society with diverse social and economic backgrounds.
The Five Wounds of Christ depict the injuries Christ sustained during his crucifixion. They were a powerful reminder of the rebels’ catholic beliefs and their opposition to Henry VIII’s reform of the Church. The imagery was an easy way for ordinary people to understand what the protest was about – that the rebels objected to the break with Rome and the closure of the monasteries. Men who might not have rebelled against the king would protest because they believed that their spiritual life – and eternity – were being damaged by the Crown.
The rebels took an oath of allegiance to the Pilgrimage of Grace, took part in masses and mass processions and had churches return to the old way of conducting services. As well as showing their devotion to God, these were an act of defiance against the authority of the king.
