How many of you spotted Cardinal Wolsey’s travelling sundial this week?
Museum of the History of Science
This delightful object was created by the German mathematician Nicolaus Kratzer in 1522. He came to England in about 1518 and was astronomer to King Henry VIII. The base has Wolsey’s coat of arms on one side, the arms of York Minster – he was it’s archbishop form 1514 onwards- on the other and on the two smaller sides there’s a cardinal’s hat.
The sundial is polyhedral – basically it tells the time in a number of different ways depending on which side you’re using. And yes it is completely covered in gold. Aside from being a very busy man who needed to get to his meetings on time Wolsey was also demonstrating that he was a cultured and learned chap. Or put another way he liked beautiful and complicated things and if you were really lucky you might be invited to take a closer look if you visited him – so a conversation piece as well.
Holbein depicted Kratzer holding a sundial and there’s a polyhedral sundial in his picture of the Ambassadors which can be seen in the National Gallery.
For a happy half hour finding out more about the importance of mathematical objects including sundials visit the National Gallery page below to explore the Ambassadors by Hans Holbein.
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-the-ambassadors
The 5th earl carried the Coronation sword at Richard III’s coronation but grew up in Henry VII’s court as part of the group of young men who were schooled alongside Princes Arthur and Henry. In the first instance it helped remind the 4th earl where his loyalties lay and in the second place it kept the Percy power base under control. He was at Arthur’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon and was part of the train that took Princess Margaret to Scotland to be married to James IV. He had a reputation for being magnificently dressed and travelling in the manner befitting an earl. As such it would be easy to assume that he had royal favour but it is clear that becoming warden of the border marches was something of an issue once he attained his majority. Nor for that matter did he acquire any important national roles. The stumbling block would appear to be the “ravishment” of Elizabeth Hastings – which sounds unpleasant. In reality Elizabeth was the daughter of Sir John Hastings of Yorkshire. She was a ward of the Crown and Percy had arranged her marriage. The language of ravishment and abduction is the language of property being removed from Henry VII’s grasping fingers rather than an account depicting the earl’s predatory nature. Initially he was fined £10,000 but this was later reduced by half. Part of the problem for Percy was that the Tudors had learned important lessons about over mighty subjects. Consequentially Henry VII took a dim view of anyone standing on his prerogatives and he didn’t trust the Percy clan in any event because of their landholding and wealth – not to mention prior form. It was Henry VIII who cancelled the debt once he became king. The question is was Percy unsuited for power or did Henry VII use the case of Elizabeth Hastings to financially kneecap a man known for his lavish lifestyle?
The 7th earl was Thomas’s oldest son, also called Tomas – a pleasant change from all those Henrys. To all intents and purposes his father’s death as a traitor should have debarred him from the earldom but when he came of age in 1549 he was restored to some of his lands and his loyalty to Mary Tudor in 1557 saw him restored to the earldom. The Percys had never stopped being Catholic. Unfortunately it all went to his head – quite literally- as he took part in the Northern Rising of 1569. I have posted about the 7th earl before. If you would like to read more 
We tend to think of Thomas Cromwell as the man who did for England’s monasteries but before he became Henry VIII’s Vicar General, Cardinal Wolsey had already demonstrated various ways and means of milking the cloisters.
Sir Francis Bryan was nicknamed either by Henry VIII or Thomas Cromwell as the Vicar of Hell. Henry allegedly asked what sort of sin it was to ruin a mother and then her child where upon Bryan commented that it was the same sort of sin as eating a hen and then its chicken. Alternatively online sources suggest that Cromwell gave Bryan the name on account of his role in bringing the Boleyn faction down.
The dissolute vicar who managed to survive Henry’s reign without falling foul of the Tudor terror had one surviving sister. Her name was Elizabeth and she became Lady Carew when she was about twelve. By the time she was thirteen she was a mother, Henry VIII was purchasing mink coats for her and giving her husband Sir 
In August 1533 it fell to Francis to tell his king that the Pope had excommunicated him. By this time Francis’ cousin Anne was not only queen but heavily pregnant. By the following year though things were turning sour. Chapuys noted that the king was involved romantically with a young lady – another of Francis’ cousins but Francis was closely associated with the Boleyn’s. So perhaps it is not surprising that it was in 1534 that Francis’ got into an argument with George Boleyn (pictured right)- after all Francis had a long experience of Henry’s pattern of womanising and knew when the king’s interest had moved on. Even so in 1536 when a list of all Anne Boleyn’s relations was drawn up Francis’ name was on it and he was questioned about his cousin but unlike George was not arrested. In fact he was promoted to Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and sent off to tell Jane Seymour the good news although he managed to plot his copybooks because he appears to have been sympathetic to Mary Tudor and queried whether or not she could be returned to the rank of princess.
Margaret Douglas is an important link in the Tudor family tree and its later prospective claimants to the English throne. Unsurprisingly given that the Tudors are involved there are some dodgy family trees involved and not a little tragedy.
James V was king but an infant. There followed the usual power struggle. The key families were the Stewarts, Douglases and Hamiltons. on 6 August 1514 without consulting her council or her brother Margaret married the pro-English Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. This effectively caused the Douglas faction to advance up a large ladder in the courtly game of snakes and ladders. A civil war resulted and Margaret was replaced as regent by John Stewart Earl of Albany – who was anti-English. Margaret having been queen and regent now slid down several rungs of importance and life became very difficult not least when Margaret lost custody of the young king and of his brother called Alexander who had been born after the Battle of Flodden. Margaret, fearing for her safety and the safety of her unborn child by the earl of Angus made plans to escape Scotland.
Margaret finally married in 1544. He was a Scottish exile and his name was Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox. The pair lived at Temple Newsam near Leeds, a gift from Henry VIII to his niece upon her wedding. They had two sons – Henry Stuart Lord Darnley who would marry Mary Queen of Scots and end up murdered in an orchard in Kirk o Fields in 1567 and Charles Stuart who would fall in love with and marry Elizabeth Cavendish – Margaret Douglas’s grand-daughter was Lady Arbella Stuart. Neither Henry Stewart nor Charles nor even Arbella would have been considered a legitimate claimant to the throne by Henry VIII who excluded Margaret Lennox from the succession through his will because she made no secret of her Catholicism.
Having lost her own claims to the English crown Margaret then worked on her eldest son’s claims. Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was she claimed a contender for both the English and the Scottish crowns. Margaret was careful to send Henry to visit Mary Queen of Scots in France on several occasions. Her scheming would ultimately result in Darnley becoming Mary Queen of Scots’ second husband and effectively doubling their claim to the English throne.
Sir George Vernon was born around 1508 but his father, Richard, died in 1517 whilst he was still a child so the Vernon lands were subject to the rules about wardship- which always ran the risk of financial loss but in George’s case his guardians, who included Cardinal Wolsey, appear not to have drained his resources. In fact by the time of his death in 1565 the peerage records the fact that he had possession of thirty manors. Sir Henry Vernon, George’s grandfather pre-deceased his son by only two years.
The country here about Durham is substantially established in the abolition of the bishop of Rome and his usurped power. Would to God ye would send for the bishop of Durham and hear his advice for the utter extirpation of the said power, and how it might be extinguished for ever. I thought myself to have known a great deal and all that could be said in the matter; but when I heard his learning, and how deeply he had searched into this usurped power, I thought myself the veriest fool in England. If he would write a book upon it all the kings of Christendom would shortly follow our master’s steps, so great is his learning and reputation. In all other things concerning high judgment, Parliament matters, &c., he is not living that would advertise you more for your honor and prosperity. Expertus loquor. Your injunctions can have no effect in Durham Abbey in some things; for there was never yet woman was in the abbey further than the church, nor they (the monks) never come within the town. Newcastle, 26 Jan. – Layton
The picture behind today’s advent calendar is Henry VIII’s sister Princess Mary who was known for her beauty. Mary was betrothed to the future Charles V of Spain in December 1507 when she was thirteen prior to her marriage to the elderly King Louis of France in 1514. The marriage was delayed because of negotiations and diplomatic maneuverings and ultimately Henry saw an opportunity to ally himself with France. Mary had no say in who she would marry she was a princess after all.
The Cistercian abbey of Croxden, in the care of English Heritage, is in Staffordshire, one of approximately thirty religious houses across the county. Its story is similar to many other monasteries. It built its wealth on sheep in the twelfth century and then ran into debt as the political landscape of the countryside changed. By the late thirteenth century it was considerably poorer as a consequence of Edward I’s wars with Scotland and the loans it was forced to make to the warrior monarch. Murrain, plague and poor harvests didn’t help. It never recovered. It’s income in 1535 was given as £103 6s. 7d. which was substantially less than its early income and provided Cromwell with evidence, if he needed it, of the decline of the monasteries.
William Cavendish had been a servant of Cardinal Wolsey. He also seems to have been very efficient at taking the surrenders of abbeys. According to Bess of Hardwick’s biographer, Mary Lovell, there was a point in 1538 where he was overseeing ten surrenders a week. He’d begun by auditing the abbey at St Albans and gone on to gain a job with the Court of Augmentations when it was set up in 1536 by Cromwell specifically to oversee the transfer of Church land to the Crown. He earned twenty pounds a year in addition to the ‘profits of office.’ As Lovell observes, the Cavendishs were not alone in making their fortunes from the reformation but Cavendish seems to have been rather good at it. As for William, these days he is more famous for his third wife – Bess of Hardwick, the foundation of Chatsworth House and his role as Mary Queen of Scot’s jailer.
If Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was invalid it followed that eleven-year-old Princess Mary was illegitimate. This in turn would prohibit her from the crown and make her less valuable on the international marriage market. No doubt, this was one of the reasons that Catherine remained adamant about fighting to keep her position rather than taking herself off to a nunnery as Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio helpfully suggested prior to the Blackfriars trial where Catherine challenged the court’s authority.