the TUDOR TUTOR
Your cheeky guide to the dynastyMary Queen of Scots’ Death Mask
There Will Be Blood!
Get ready, because this is a particularly dark week in Tudor history. Today is the anniversary of Mary, Queen of Scots’ execution in 1587. It was a grisly affair, as it took more than one whack to do away with the poor girl.
On Wednesday the 10th, we have the murder anniversary of her husband (also her first cousin), Lord Darnley, in 1567. That same date marks the 1542 execution of pathetic and misunderstood Cat Howard.
Thursday the 11th marks the day Elizabeth of York died in 1503. The woman who gave birth to our tubby, turkey-leg eating womanizer fell victim to infection after having Henry’s little sister and died on her own birthday.
On Friday 12th we have the 1554 execution anniversary of poor nine-days-queen Lady Jane Grey, and her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley. And we continue the Headless Chronicles on Saturday the 13th, as we remember that day in 1542 when Kat Howard and Jane Boleyn (Anne’s sister-in-law) were sent to the chopping block.
Whew! It’s getting bloodier than a Martin Scorcese movie. Stick around if you’re not the squeamish type.
Maybe He Had Big Feet, Too?
A bit of fun for Friday: This Holbein portrait of Henry VIII suggested that Henry was a virile guy, despite his lack of sons. Can you find the hint in the portrait before scrolling down?
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Yes, it’s that obnoxious codpiece peeking out to say “I’m the king of England, damn it, and I’m as fertile as the next guy!” At the end of the day, Henry’s genes never made it past 1603. A lot of good all that artistic boasting did.
Ten Characters Lighter and I Feel Great!
Thanks to the domain mapping WordPress offers as an add-on to purchasing a domain name, it’s easier than ever to swing on over to the 16th century! Set your bookmarks to tudortutor.com and leave out the “wordpress” and that pesky dot. Voilà –I feel like drinking wheatgrass juice and doing yoga!
Gross! It Wasn’t All Banquets and Grand Clothing in Tudor England…
Gotta love this video that Showtime put together, animating the ickier reality of the time period!
*Note: The late Middle Ages were said to end around 1499 and the Tudor period began in 1485, when Henry VII became king. So although it seems the description in the video’s title is a mistake, it really isn’t.
JRM Dishes on “Martha” about Being Henry
A much-anticipated event from today, although I was only able to find the 2nd part of it. No matter, we get to see a Tudors clip and watch this sharp-dressed man lend a hand in the kitchen for some chicken, rice, and olives. Mmmmm! And the food looks lovely as well! 
Double Whammy Tudor Date!
Welcome to the 28th of January, a significant date in Tudor history for two reasons:
- On this date in 1457, Henry VII was born
- On this date in 1547, Henry VIII breathed his last
Tidy how that works out, isn’t it, with the same date, and the transposed digits in the middle?
When the founder of the Tudor legacy was born, his father had already been dead for a few months, and his mother was barely old enough to stay up late. She was only 13, but that wasn’t unusual for that time, of course. Unlike his much-married son, he wasn’t born into royalty right away, he had to go out and grab his reign by the reins.
When Henry Junior made his mark on this date, he was an even worse mess than you’d imagine. He was gray-haired, morbidly obese, and covered in nasty boils. (Good thing he wasn’t in the market for a new wife at the time!) He was often carried from place to place in velvet-covered chairs because his gout made it hard for him to walk.
His last words were “Monks! Monks! Monks!” so it seems that religion, a hot topic during his time as king, was on his mind to the very end. He was only 55; the day would have been his father’s 90th birthday.
Shhh…No One Will Notice the Bump, Nor My Mad Desire for Apples
Happy (?) Anniversary to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn! On this day in 1533, Anne became the blushing bride of the fickle monarch in a secret ceremony in his private chapel at Whitehall Palace. Only a handful of people were present but they had to promise to stay mum about the newlyweds.
Speaking of “mum,” Anne was already a few months pregnant with the future Elizabeth I at the time. What some historians (including David Starkey, and I’m not about to argue with him) have suggested may have been true: Anne and Henry were first secretly married the previous November. She’d gotten pregnant almost immediately.
Either way, their union wasn’t considered valid until Henry’s marriage to poor Catherine of Aragon was officially labeled “kaput” in May. Anne, not known for her discretion, let it be known way earlier that she was craving apples like no one’s business. And Henry got himself so drunk at a banquet that he was laughing and slurring all about his new wife. Klassy.
It turned out badly, but no one can deny that the few years these two kids were together created a soap opera worthy of TMZ or Hello Magazine. A delicious secret, for sure.
A Friday Quickie with Cat
Another quickie about Catherine Howard today, this one to establish how the dear girl got mixed up with the royal family to begin with:
Flashback to the Wars of the Roses, which were basically a military expression of a family feud between two sides of the royal family, the Yorks and the Lancasters. The Howard family was on Team York, and their guy became Richard III (the one described as a murderous hunchback by Shakespeare) in 1483. The king rewarded one of the Howard men, John, with the fancy title of Duke of Norfolk.
John was so loyal he stuck with the king as he went up against a certain Welshman named Henry Tudor in 1485. Richard III and John Howard were killed, and Mr. Tudor became Henry VII. However, Howard’s son Thomas became the 2nd Duke of Norfolk (in fact, all the Dukes of Norfolk have been descended from Richard III’s buddy).
Thomas married and had a slew of kids, including an Elizabeth and an Edmund. Elizabeth eventually had a little girl named Anne (Boleyn) and Edmund’s little girl was Catherine (Howard).
So, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were first cousins, and had the great misfortune to be close to the royals because their great-grandfather was a close friend of the defeated Yorkist king, Richard III. And you thought your family had problems!
A Quickie with Catherine Howard
How does Henry VIII’s fifth wife fit in among the rest? Catherine Howard has the reputation of having been a young and pretty hussy, and dumb as a box of rocks. But he was smitten with her right away, the old scamp, and married her in July of 1540.
There were loads of activities that summer to celebrate the new girl on the block (who seemed to have already been around the block a few times, but that’s another quickie). Every day she was lavished with sumptuous dresses and jewelry, and spent lots of time dancing around. Paris Hilton for the 16th century, if you will.
All her dancing and prancing and coquettish ways eventually did her in, as she was accused of adultery (probably true) and lost that pretty head a year and a half after all those grand wedding celebrations. But because I love to root for the underdog, I have to give Queen Vixen a break:
Although she came from a noble family, her wing of the clan fell on hard times, She grew up poor and was raised by her step-grandmother in a kind of group home for poor little noble kids. So her lack of education and refinement can be forgiven, and it wasn’t her fault that Henry zeroed in on her attractiveness and youth (did I mention she was just a teenager at the time?).
She also had a joyful disposition and was sweet to others. She felt for the prisoners her husband had locked away in the Tower of London, and even managed to get two of them released. A third prisoner, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was not so lucky, though Catherine herself paid for the elderly woman to be warmly and appropriately dressed in her damp, cold cell.
There’s more to this floozy than meets the eye, so I’ll be posting several more quickies with Catherine in the next week or so. If you have not already, please stop by the Tudor Tutor fanpage on Facebook and/or follow me on Twitter, to get the ”latest” from the Tudor period as it is posted.
