the TUDOR TUTOR
Your cheeky guide to the dynastyArchive for Characters at court
Well done, “Cromwell”
Now that the Emmy nominations have been announced, and Showtime’s “The Tudors” has been honored with four nomination (cinematography, art direction, costumes, and hair), we are reminded of some of the fantastic performances by the talented actors in this series.
One fan favorite is James Frain as Thomas Cromwell. Prior to “The Tudors,” I wonder how many of us really empathized with Henry’s right-hand man. However, Frain’s performance (and his uncanny ability to disappear into his roles) drove home the point that this ambitious social climber was simply doing his job. And that wasn’t an easy task, when your boss changed his mind about what was good/bad more often than he changed his doublet and hose.
Take a trip down memory lane with Frain/Cromwell, and Coldplay of course, since “Viva La Vida” is used for about 95% of these Tudor YouTube videos. Hey, it works! A bit frenetic at first, but a reminder of the executions Cromwell pulled off (out of necessity). You can surely guess how it all wraps up.
Mean Girl
Image by Migraine Chick via Flickr
Yet another prominent Anne of the Tudor era was Anne Stanhope, who became Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, when she married the comparatively mild-mannered Edward Seymour. She was ambitious and a smart cookie, but certainly rhymed with “witch” by all accounts. The Duchess of Somerset fancied herself the most powerful lady in the land when her husband became the protector of young Eddie VI. If Edward was sort-of the king, Anne figured she was sort-of the queen.
Hold on, Sally, not so fast: Turns out the lady was still outranked by former queen Catherine Parr (and also by the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, as well as Anne of Cleves). Catherine was now married to The Other Seymour Dude. Yes, about three months after Henry VIII became history, his widow married that slimy flirt, Thomas Seymour. Although she was no longer queen on paper, she was rolling in the late king’s dough and was expressedly elevated to that high former position as per his will. She was even still allowed to wear the “queen’s jewels” until Eddie should get himself a bride in the future. (That didn’t happen.)
This made Anne Seymour seethe! She was not about to lie down and let that happen, so she stamped her feet and demanded she should have them instead. It was a stalemate for a month or so, with neither lady decked out in the goods. When Catherine finally showed up at court again, she [within her rights] slyly suggested that the Duchess attend to her train. Anne said “Absolutely not!” and gave as her reason that Catherine was the lowly wife of her husband’s little brother. Nice.
Eventually, the noble fishwife convinced her husband to notify Catherine via letter that she was not to have the jewels, period, end of story. Accustomed to being treated like a doormat by the Duchess, he agreed. No surprise, then, that Catherine Parr came to refer to Anne Seymour as “that hell.” I can think of a few names that would have been more effective.
Let’s Make a Date
Do you share a birthday or anniversary with a member of the Tudor clan? (I do! Mary Queen of Scots and I were both born on 8 December.) Check the lists below to find out if you have more in common with the monarchs and their gang that you’d thought …
Tudor monarchs
- Henry VII — 28 January
- Henry VIII — 28 June
- Edward VI — 12 October
- Lady Jane Grey — sometime in October
- Mary I — 18 February
- Elizabeth I — 7 September
Other figures
- Mary Tudor (Henry VIII’s sister) — 18 March
- Margaret Tudor (Henry VIII’s sister) — 29 November
- Arthur Tudor (Henry’s older brother) – September 20
- Mary Queen of Scots — 8 December
- Catherine of Aragon — 16 December
- Anne Boleyn — birthday unknown
- Jane Seymour — birthday unknown
- Anne of Cleves — 22 September
- Katherine Howard — birthday unknown
- Catherine Parr — 11 November
- Thomas More — 7 February
- Henry Fitzroy (Henry VIII’s bastard son) – 15 June
- Thomas Cranmer — 2 July
- Phillip II – 21 May
- William Cecil, Lord Burghley — 13 September
Anniversaries
- Henry VII and Elizabeth of York — 18 January
- Arthur Tudor and Catherine of Aragon — 14 November
- Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon — 11 June
- Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn — 25 January
- Henry VIII and Jane Seymour — 30 May
- Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves — 6 January
- Henry VIII and Katherine Howard — 28 July
- Henry VIII and Catherine Parr — 12 July
- Mary Tudor and Louis VII of France — 9 October
- Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon — 13 May
- Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland — 8 August
- Mary I and Phillip II — 25 July
- Mary Queen of Scots and the Dauphin Francis of France — 24 April
- Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley — 29 July
- Lady Jane Grey and Guilford Dudley — 21 May
A Truly Colorful Courtier
Image via Wikipedia
Last night I rewatched the season three finale of “The Tudors,” as I’m counting down the days until the new and final season starts. My husband drifted into the room as Alan van Sprang and his eye patch drifted onto the screen. He watched for a few minutes and said, “Well he’s like the Han Solo of this production, isn’t he?”
Van Sprang does bring a certain charisma to the Showtime version of history. He seems as though he’s about to start swashbuckling at any moment, and then go off for a few beers with his friend D’artagnan. But who was the real Sir Francis Bryan?
Briefly, Bryan really was quite a character! He dressed sumptuously and spoke his mind. A womanizer with a questionable moral compass, he was an intellectual and poet (came in handy for the womanizing, I’m sure), as well as a translator, sailor, soldier, and political shining star. Most importantly, he was a favorite of Henry VIII.
He’d first come to court in the early 1500s but was kicked out in 1519, came back like a boomerang as a member of the Privy Chamber, and was again kicked out in 1526 along with many other Privy Chamber gents. Cardinal Wolsey was behind this reduction in force, as he wanted to limit the number of enemies he had at court.
In 1536, Bryan and Thomas Cromwell schemed together to off Anne Boleyn (Bryan’s cousin), a move that earned Bryan the nickname “The Vicar of Hell.” He later rose to the rank of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber (i.e., “important nobleman who had access to the king personally,” not to be confused with the ”groom of the stool” in the privy chamber, who had access to the king’s bottom and what came out of it). When Cromwell decided to clean house, he kicked Bryan to the curb, but the dashing rogue bounced back again and went on to a distinguished career in sailing and diplomacy.
If the real Sir Francis Bryan weren’t colorful enough, it turns out that his eye patch isn’t just a fabrication of Showtime’s costume department. He really did lose his eye while jousting at Greenwich. I would think losing your eye in a joust earned a certain level of props at a 16th century court, especially when you could still score so easily in other areas.
So yes, in Sir Francis Bryan we have a disguished man of letters, languages, politics, and ambition — but we can also cerrtainly view him as a delicious scoundrel. I’d bet, like Han Solo, he’d appreciate it.
Thomas 101
Image via Wikipedia
As you may have noticed, “Thomas” was a very common first name in the Tudor period. How to keep them all straight? Briefly, the main Thomases we come across in the dynasty are:
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (above), an incredibly smart and hard-working man driven by power, started out in Henry VII’s court as royal chaplain. He was given more and more important positions under Henry VIII, and became a cardinal in the Catholic church by 1515. This was all super when Henry was happy to be a Catholic. But when the Church wouldn’t let him divorce Catherine of Aragon, Wolsey became really inconvenient. He tried (and failed) to convince the pope that Henry and Catherine’s marriage was invalid due to a loophole, and couldn’t support an outright divorce. Henry pitched a fit and sent him to be imprisoned in London, but Wolsey died on the way.
As a side, why is “Cardinal” in the middle of a cardinal’s name, and not the prefix? This is the traditional conventional as held by the Vatican — some believe it’s because a cardinal is considered to be the liason between the pope and the people of the Church. However, some modern style books throw all that out the window and do what they want anyway.
Thomas Cromwell came from a working-class family to become a member of Parliament and then Henry VIII’s right-hand man, secretary, Lord Privy Seal, yadda yadda. He urged Henry to declare himself head of the new Church and swelled the king’s head even more than it already was. Cromwell worked tirelessly to promote the new religion and expedited the break from Anne Boleyn as well as the break from Rome. After Jane Seymour died, he quickly arranged for a union with Anne of Cleves to get the support of the Germans for the Reformation. Too quickly, apparently, since the king was mortified by Anne’s horsey appearance / insulted by Anne’s failure to fawn all over a bloated and icky monarch (depending on whom you ask). Henry had Cromwell executed, and then tortured himself with regret over the incident for the rest of his life.
Thomas More was a leader in the Humanist movement, and the author of the classic work Utopia. He had wanted to become a monk, but couldn’t commit to celibacy. He was very close to Henry VIII, who made him his secretary and held his opinions in high esteem. Until one of those opinions was that the king wasn’t the head of the Church, the pope was, and it was then that More’s head rolled onto the scaffold. He was canonized as a Catholic saint 400 years later.
Thomas Cramner was a leader during the Reformation, when the refreshing new religion hit the shores of England and hit the ground running, starting at the Tudor court. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a boon to both Henry VIII and his son Edward VI when it came to establishing and promoting C of E doctrine. As you can imagine, this did him no good when Mary I came to the throne and it was off with his head.
Thomas Howard was born into a noble family and even married Edward IV’s daughter. His nieces, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, had very pretty little heads but that didn’t matter after some time, did it? He became the 3rd Duke of Norfolk while Henry VIII was king, but years later was imprisoned for treason after the fifth-wife situation didn’t work out and it seemed to be his fault. He stuck around in prison until Mary I released him.
Thomas Culpepper had a brother at Tudor court also named Thomas Culpepper, which was not an unusual move for distinguished families at that time in case one of the identically-named children kicked the bucket. The odds were good for that, considering infant mortality, disease, lack of antibiotics, etc. Anyway, when we think of Thomas Culpepper we are thinking of the younger of the two brothers. He was a member of Henry’s Privy Chamber and was known to be smokin’ hot. Cat Howard cheated on Henry VIII with him (and God knows who else). More about this “gent” here.
Thomas Boleyn, in Showtime’s “The Tudors,” is played practically in a moustache-twirling-villain way by Nick Dunning. While I think his acting is fantastic (I really found myself hating Boleyn), we don’t know if he was quite so dastardly in real life. Close, maybe. Thomas Boleyn was the English ambassador to France who seemed to pimp his daughters out just to be close to the royal family. Although his son was beheaded (and from what I understand his one daughter came to a bad end as well), he survived Tudor court but had to leave like a disgraced dog. Fitting, I suppose.
