the TUDOR TUTOR
Your cheeky guide to the dynastyArchive for Edward VI
After You, Who?
Here’s a stellar 5:40 bit from Showtime on life after Henry VIII . He was a tough act to follow, for sure, but someone had to do it! Take a gander at how the succession went for the remainder of the Tudor period.
Something in the Heir
It’s April and the leaves are emerging, the days are longer, and the robins are out (so is the pollen, but I digress). New beginnings are all around us now, but April 1552 signaled the beginning of the end for young Eddie VI, Henry VIII’s only legitimate son and intended savior of the post-Henry dynasty. He was smacked down by measles, and although his illness was a short one, it may have contributed to possible his death by tuberculosis (the most common theory, though not proven beyond a doubt).
The spotty sickness is thought to suppress the body’s natural immunity to TB, and he would have only needed to be exposed to the pulmonary disease briefly after having had measles. His swift downward spiral came at the start of 1553 and gained momentum with each passing month. Scattered fevers and fits of coughing gave way to a major drop in weight and some amazing technicolor vomit: yellow, green, black, and pink.
By late May, the boy-king’s demise was a done deal. Eddie had grown up draped in the most gorgeous fabrics and in the most sumptuous settings, but now all vanity took a back seat. He was coughing up a black carbon-like substance that stunk to the high heavens and sank when placed in a basin of water. His hair and nails were falling out, and his skin was turning blue. He was wasting away and yet blown up like a balloon. The “medicine” he was given was a concoction of raisins, dates, turnips, celery, pork, fennel, and spearmint syrup. If I were given that, I’d be producing something worse than heavy carbon mucus, that’s for sure.
He whispered his last prayer on the evening of 6 July 1553, while a major thunderstorm raged outside his windows and red hailstones pelted the earth. By six o’clock he was dead and the Lady Jane Grey saga began. When Eddie’s docs did an autopsy, they found huge black pits in his lungs, smelly with decay. The findings are consistent with death from TB, though at the time many thought (from his skin color and swellings) that he was actually poisoned. Tuberculosis is the likely cause, but it’s never been determined exactly what was in that long-awaited, celebrated heir.
Ye Olde Christmas Workout
It’s about time for another Tudor Christmas factoid and I couldn’t resist this one: The boy king, Edward VI, passed a law back in 1551 declaring that everyone had to walk to church for Christmas services. Easy for him to say, as he probably just woke up Christmas morning and padded down the warm hall in his comfy slippers to attend Mass at that palace’s in-house chapel. Fortunately for his subjects, he didn’t live long enough to create too many more inane laws, as he died two years later.
The kicker? This law is still in effect today. Wonder how many still heed it?
Dying for a son?
In Henry’s quest for a bouncing baby boy who wasn’t a bastard (he’d already fathered a boy with mistress Bessie Blount but he didn’t count), he was fortunate to marry Wife #3, Jane Seymour. Jane was not so fortunate. Although she was able to give the king his male heir, she died two weeks later from what is usually credited as puerperal fever.
What is puerperal fever? In short, it’s an infection of the uterus which causes a fever above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I should know: I had it right after each of my kids was born. As this is the 21st century, I simply was given antibiotics through an IV drip for a few days, and was soon changing diapers and getting no sleep whatsoever. But I disgress. The point is, puerperal infection does still happen for new moms in this day and age, especially when that new mom has had a C-section (which I did).
But in Jane’s day, and through the 19th century, it was very common for new moms to bite the dust in this way. For one thing, there were no antibiotics to treat the infection. And it was much easier to become infected in the first place because “All employees must wash hands before delivering each baby” signs were not hanging up where doctors were working back then. The docs didn’t wash their instruments off either, let alone sterilize them.
It’s a wonder any new mothers survived at all, if you think about it. It’s even more amazing to think of those who survived childbirth multiple times prior to the advent of antibiotics and good hygenie practices. Queen Charlotte, wife of George III (the one who lost the American colonies), had 15 children back in the 18th century. About a hundred years before that, Queen Anne gave birth at least a dozen times (some babies were born alive, some not). The medieval queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I, had 16 children in the 13th century.
Some people are just lucky, I guess. Jane Seymour wasn’t one of them.
Eddie Downer
Henry VIII waited and waited (and divorced and beheaded) for a son, and in 1537 he finally got one, thanks to Wife #3, Jane Seymour. This kid ended up dying at age 15, from what many historians believe was tuberculosis. His father was a tough act to follow, but what do we know about the boy-king? In brief …
When he ascended the throne, Edward VI was only nine years old. He wasn’t making any decisions at this time; rather, a man called a “protector” did it for him, since he wasn’t yet of age. As the only male heir, he was very overprotected from birth. Of course he only had the best educational training, and proved to be quite the King Artie McSmartie.
No ADHD candidate, Eddie was very patient for his age (or anyone’s age, for that matter) and loved to listen to long sermons in church. He was also fussy and rather full of himself, and could be a bit of a buzzkill. When his sister Mary was enjoying her 20s and dancing the day away, he told that saucy minx that all that frivolous dancing would damage her reputation. What a fun guy to be around.
He didn’t exactly have the “powerful” image down-pat, as his father did. All the robes and feathers and codpieces in the world would not have changed the fact that Eddie was a skinny, scrawny, scrap o’nothing. Perhaps to overcompensate for that, he painted himself as one you don’t mess with. Take, for instance, the rumor that he’d flipped out on a poor falcon, plucking it alive and then tearing it up into four pieces. Again, not someone I’d friend on Facebook (He’d want me burned, anyway, since I’m Catholic).
Although England was still officially Catholic when he was born, the young king became a fanatical Protestant with the help of his protectors and teachers. He would yap on and on to others about Catholic heretics and fire and brimstone, and was probably quite a bore except that he was the king and wouldn’t mind hosting your own personal barbeque if you outwardly challenged his views on the Pope.
High on himself and quite the downer, young Eddie only ruled for six years anyway. Who knows what would have come from more Edward VI time? I much prefer the soap opera that began after his death, though, as Mary I, Jane, and Elizabeth I rounded out the Tudor time on the throne.
A Grey Area in the Succession, part 1
It’s 1553. Henry VIII’s long-awaited son, who became Edward VI, is only 15 and has been reduced to a nearly-bald, coughing, vomiting, bloated mass of ulcers. (Tuberculosis is not pretty.) Who’ll take over when the sole male heir of the Tudor dynasty kicks the bucket? It gets complicated, so let’s have a look at the family tree, moving up a bit to Henry VII.
Henry VII, who swept in from Wales and won the crown from Richard III back in 1485 (thus starting the famous Tudor dynasty), had four children. From oldest to youngest, they were:
1) Arthur — He’d been married to Catherine of Aragon for a short time and died before they could have any children. She moved on to the next son in line…
2) Henry VIII — He changed England’s history forever by breaking with Rome all to try to have a son … and that kid was now on his deathbed. Looks like those daughters might finally come in handy. Elizabeth, a Protestant, had been declared illegitimate when his marriage to that temptress Anne Boleyn was conveniently wiped off the books so that he could marry wife #3, Jane Seymour (sickly Edward’s mom). Who’s left? Mary, a Catholic. Not ideal, but let’s see what the other choices are …
3) Margaret – She’d been sent up to Scotland to marry James IV. Their granddaughter is Mary, Queen of Scots. She’s a Catholic, and not a direct threat right now since Henry VIII’s Catholic daughter Mary is closer in the line of succession. (But she will be important when (a) Elizabeth becomes queen and has to insure she has no other threats to her crown, and (b) after Elizabeth dies with no heirs. That’s some time away, though.)
4) Mary — She married Charles Brandon and had a daughter, Frances, who married a Mr. Henry Grey. Together they had a little girl named Jane.
That’s where Lady Jane Grey comes in: She’s the only legitimate Protestant in the line of succession, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII.
A Grey Area in the Succession, part 2
Did Lady Jane Grey sweep in like her great-grandfather had and claim the throne for herself? Not at all. The adult who’d been steering young Edward, the Duke of Northumberland, convinced the gasping and sputtering teenaged boy to accept Jane as his heir, since Eddie clearly did not have much time left. Only then would the country remain Protestant. Young Ed was a fanatical Protestant so he was cool with this. Not that he had much energy left to argue.
The Duke of Northumberland then made sure that Jane married his own son, to keep his own nose in the royal family business, and planted Jane on the throne as soon as Eddie was no more. When the fifteen-year-old girl learned that she was queen, she felt “stupified and troubled,” in her own words, and fainted straightaway. She came to momentarily and realized that the others in the room had stood around like bumps on a log and didn’t even help her, and then she began to cry right there on the floor!
When she’d finally gotten herself together, she snapped to the others “The crown is not my right and pleaseth me not. The Lady Mary [Henry VIII's Catholic daughter] is the rightful heir.” Well, that settles that, right?
Not even close. Northumberland and her parents let her know that she was embarrassing her family and that she had a duty to them. She would have to live her life as they wanted her to, for her family and for the country, which they wanted to remain Protestant. She still didn’t love the idea, but she gathered herself together and took on her new role as professionally as could be expected.
For nine days, anyway. During that time, Mary showed up with a vengeance and planned to take the crown back for herself. Jane was imprisoned and, seven months later, found herself kneeling before the chopping block. Turned out she’d had her work cut out for her, after all.
