the TUDOR TUTOR
Your cheeky guide to the dynastyArchive for This-n-that
iWitness
There’s nothing like reading about history through the accounts of people who were actually there. I am truly fascinated by eyewitness accounts of the past, and have just found this lovely collection of first-hand reports on EnglishHistory.net. It includes reports on Tudor love stories, executions, speeches, etc.
Not to say that eyewitnesses aren’t biased in some way, or have injected willfull thinking into their observations, but it sure is awesome to see snippets of history in this sense. Enjoy!
Royal Name-Calling
Image via Wikipedia
We could probably think of a lot of names to call Henry VIII, if we were into that kind of thing. But, name-calling isn’t nice, for one thing. For another thing, sticks and stones would bounce right off that tubby guy (sorry, I guess that counts as name-calling?) and I doubt names would hurt him either.
No, what I’m getting at is the official title used for the head honcho of Jolly Ol’. Today, if we are lucky enough to meet with the queen, we first address her as “Your Majesty,” and then further in the conversation we switch to, simply, “Ma’am.”
So then: ”Your Majesty, it is a pleasure to join you for martinis and scones this morning,” folllowed later by, “Yes, ma’am, I would love another martini though I must graciously turn down an additional scone. But please feel free, ma’am, to ask about a third martini. You are most kind.”
“Majesty” wasn’t a common form of address for English monarchs until the 16th century. Before that, the usual terms were “Highness” or “Grace” (in Scotland it was “Grace” as well). But when Henry VIII got wind of the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor using “Majesty,” he snatched that right up and decided it should apply to him, too. And you know what happened if anyone disagreed with him! So “Majesty” it was and is still.
Incidentally, Elizabeth II is officially “Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.”
Henry VIII had a few incarnations, the last of which was “King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, and Supreme Head of the Church of England and of Ireland.”
Because England’s territories changed so much, some titles got very flowery, such as that of Mary I, who at one point was “Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland; Defender of the Faith; Princess of Spain and Sicily; Archduchess of Austria; Duchess of Milan, Burgundy, and Brabant; Countess of Habsburg, Flanders, and Tyrol.” Trying to remember all that deserves a martini in and of itself.
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
Just Who Do I Think I Am?
Image by Anirudh Koul via Flickr
I’m honored to have a place in BritFancy’s series on Anglophiles! Very sweet of her to ask me, and the story was posted today. For any of you who are wondering how a Jersey Girl got so hooked on England and its history, take a look.
Wolf Hall Author Will Chat It Up at Oxford Literary Festival, Huzzah!
Image by t0msk via Flickr
Hilary Mantel, author of quite a few novels over the past 25 years (including one quiet little recent piece about Thomas Cromwell), will be speaking at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival at 2 p.m. on Sunday, 28 March. As of this writing, tickets are not yet sold out. They’re priced from £10 to £25; seats are in the Sheldonian Theatre. More info at the festival’s official site.
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!
And You Thought YOU Were Stuffed
Image by Simon & Vicki via Flickr
Now that the holidays have come and gone, we can all loosen our belts and start thinking about how to negate all those Christmas cookies, cups of eggnog, and extra helpings of turkey with gravy. If it makes you feel any better, the rich in the Tudor period gorged themselves on a regular basis, and didn’t feel the guilt (not even the Catholic ones!).
Meat made up 75% of their diet, which might have meant roast beef, roast pork, roast tongue, peacock royal, and meat pie …and that’s just one course! They also feasted on rabbit, boar, pigeon, sparrow, badger, hedgehog, and blackbirds. They kept freshwater fish alive in ponds on their properties and crammed saltwater fish into seaweed-packed barrels. Fish was important as meat was not eaten during Lent or on Fridays for religious reasons.
Those who were part of the Tudor court downed roughly 300 barrels of ale in a year; the same for wine. (Water was considered unfit to drink, and what with the plague and other nasties going around, who wanted to take the chance?)
The rich, which of course included the royals, not only piled on the meat and bread heavily, they considered fruit, veg, and dairy to be just for the poor. This led to lots of mild scurvy about, and I would think it also meant a painful time in the loo.
As the Tudor period went on, sugar became a hot commodity. Only the loaded could afford it, and so only the loaded had those attractive rotten teeth which caused Elizabeth I so much pain and suffering in her later years. No matter, if a person couldn’t afford the sweet stuff, they might deliberately blacken their teeth to make themselves appear rich enough to actually have rotten teeth. Now isn’t that messed up!
500 Years Later, Whatcha Think?
Image via Wikipedia
It’s a subject of debate in Britain and its territories often enough: Should there still be a British monarchy? Things are way different than they were during the Tudor period of grand kings and queens, palaces, beaucoup de jewelry gifts, declarations of war, religious strife, beheadings … well, you know the grandeur I’m talking about.
Present monarchs don’t have to perform one iota of the job previous dynasties may have. Are you thinking “What’s the point?” or “Carry on”? Have your say in the poll below!
Let Heaven and Nature Sing!
Image via Wikipedia
The Tudors adored their Christmas carols, but those before and after them didn’t always feel the same. (I just find that sad!) On Forbes.com today, a neat history of the Christmas carol. Fa-la-la-la-la!
“Cheers” to a Tudor Christmas Treat!
I like a good pinot noir or tempranillo at any time of the year, let alone during the holidays, or even a lovely flute of bubbly. It is a time of celebration, after all!
The celebratory drink during the Tudor period was a spicy tipple called wassail, which was similar to punch or mulled cider but with the addition of beer. Picture this: A lovely ale with cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Not bad so far. Add a generous helping of sugar and some apples. Hmmmm. Now, heat it all up! I can imagine it was an acquired taste.
“Waes hael” is Old English for “good health,” which is where the name “wassail” came from. In a time when water was unsafe to drink and in a place where the cold, damp air permeated your home most of the year, a hit of this sauce could have been the healthiest thing at the Christmas festivities for all we know!
