the TUDOR TUTOR
Your cheeky guide to the dynastyButtered Up by the Bard
While the Elizabethan era is all about, well, Queen Elizabeth I, we can certainly say that William Shakespeare is nearly synonymous with the time period as well. The prolific playwright from Stratford-upon-Avon showed up on the London theatre radar in the 1590s, and acted in his own plays quite often. Ironically, while we quote the man endlessly and praise him for such masterpieces as “Othello,” “Macbeth,” “The Merchant of Venice, ” and ”Romeo and Juliet,” he basically plagarized the majority of his plots and ideas from others.
Shakespeare was a not-so-subtle part of the Tudor propaganda machine (and for good reason, because to insult the queen and her gang would have meant curtains for Will). In his productions, monarchs were chosen by God, Catholics were portrayed negatively, and Liz I’s ancestors were a force to be reckoned with and respected. After the queen’s death, Will kept the beat alive with “Henry VIII.” Unfortunately, it was during a 1613 performance of this play that a special effect lit fire to the Globe Theatre and burned the whole thing down.
We often envision Richard III as an evil hunchback because the Bard painted him as such. But there is no proof he was deformed in any way. And remember that Liz’s grandpa, Henry VII, saved the day by killing the king and taking the crown for his own, something Will wove into Elizabethan theatre as well. Nothing like your enemy reduced to pathetically bleating “my kingdom for a horse!” to make your own dynasty shine like a new penny.
By the late 1500s, England was in its glory at last. Shakespeare kept the country on its newly-mounted pedestal by buttering up the queen, having fun with the language, and making fun of foreigners. England’s Golden Age and all its hoopla certainly starred the Virgin Queen above all, but was in a way brought to you by William Shakespeare.
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
Top 10 on Twitter
I’m flattered to be included on the most recent Top 10 Twitter People of the Day list from TheTopTenBlog.com. I’m in some very good company there, and the previous top 10 lists on the site have many wonderful tweeps to follow as well, so head on over and punch up your Twitter circle !
Lady Jane Grey Meets Pop Art!
I just had to share this whimsical poster of Lady Jane Grey, featured in a new show at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. The show is called “Art for All: British Posters for Transport.” As you can see, the Nine-Days Queen (and a scissors, yikes!) are promoting the Tower of London. Cheeky!
Royal Offspring, or Lack Thereof
How interesting and ironic that, save Henry VII, none of the Tudor monarchs passed on their colorful genes to a new generation of drama queens and kings. But while this fact gets lots of press for the 16th-century clan, they were hardly alone in their infertility issues.
William II (1087-1100*) was childless. He was also unmarried, probably because women weren’t his thing. Richard I “The Lionheart” (1189-1199) had no children, nor did Richard II (1377-1399).
Lancastrian superstar Henry V (1413-1422) had only one child, a boy. Lucky for the king, that kid made it to adulthood in time to rule as Henry VI (1422-1461, then 1470-1471, long story). He, too, only had a son. Sadly, that son became the only heir apparent to the English throne to be killed on the battlefield. Pre-Tudor king Richard III (1483-1485) had a single son who died as a tween.
Charles II (1660-1685) had no legitimate heirs but lent his DNA to about 12 illegimate children, via a slew of mistresses. James II (1685-1688) had 19 children with two wives, but couldn’t put any to good use as heirs because he was forced to high-tail his Catholic self into exile and make way for William and Mary (1689-1702), who also were childless. Their successor, Anne (1702-1714), endured 18 pregnancies but had only five live births. Only one lived past age two –but died nine years later.
Princess Charlotte, the only child of George IV (1820-1830), died in childbirth before she could succeed her father. George’s successor, William IV (1830-1837) kept his genetic code to himself.
On the flip side, royal rabbits include William I “The Conqueror” (1066-1087) who had 10 children, Edward I (1272-1307) with 19 children, Edward III (1327-1377) with 13 children, Edward IV (1461-1483, including a break) with 10 children, George II (1727-1760) with 10 children, and George III (1760-1820) with 15 children.
Even with “only” nine children, Victoria (1837-1901) was considered the Grandmother of Europe, once her kids started marrying into other royal families. Henry VIII would have killed for that kind of genealogical legacy. And as it turned out, that’s just what he did.
[*Dates in parentheses represent reign and not birth/death.]
Fashionably Doomed
Today marks the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s execution in 1536 and the question on everyone’s lips is the same, I’m sure: “What does one wear to such an occasion?”
Henry’s second queen was not about to just throw on any old thing for the last morning of her life. Her choices were deliberate, if deliciously fashionable as well. To start with, Anne wore a heavy black damask robe for her “small, private” audience of about a thousand people. The damask she wore would have been a thick fabric made of silk (or possibly linen or wool) embroidered with a shiny satin pattern over top.
The robe was trimmed in ermine. Ermine is that white fur (sometimes with little black spots) so often seen in frou-frou portraits of nobility. There is even a portrait of Elizabeth I called “The Ermine Portrait,” in which the little critter is sitting on her arm instead of woven into her clothing.
The ermine, a type of weasel, is a symbol of royalty. You can interpret that as you like. Heck, even the members of the House of Lords wear robes trimmed in ermine today. Anyway, Anne certainly broke out the ermine to drive home the point that she was still the queen, damn it.
Underneath the weasel-trimmed threads, Anne wore a rich red petticoat. Red symbolized martyrdom at that time, so she was making a statement about her innocence. This message would have gotten across loud and clear to everyone watching.
Some accounts describe her as wearing a gable hood, that early-to-mid 16th-century fashion I find so strange and off-putting as it looks like there is a roof on your head. Beneath this, she wore a netted coif to keep her locks from getting in the swordsman’s way, because no one wants to hit a speedbump during a beheading.
Witness say she strutted to the scaffold in a composed way, with a bit of sass, even. (Well why not, in those clothes?) After she kneeled and her ladies removed her headdress, she prayed aloud for Christ to take her soul, and was distracted by the executioner’s call for his sword. Her pretty head turned, the man whipped the weapon from its hiding place in the straw on the scaffold, and that was the last this fashion plate and strong woman knew of this life.
Here Comes The Son! (the one no one talks about)
Much of Henry VIII’s drama/appeal (depending on your view) was his insane desire for a son. He divorced Cat of Aragon, chopped off Anne Boleyn’s pretty head, finally rejoiced about the fruit of Jane Seymour’s womb, and probably just gave up with the rest of them, deep down inside.
But here’s the kicker: He’d already had a son.
A legitimate one? No, of course not. But there was no worry about whether he could produce sons, because of one lovely mistress named Elizabeth “Bessie” Blount. A gorgeous maid-of-honor to Catherine of Aragon, she carried on with the king for eight years of his first marriage, and gave birth to his first son in 1519.
His name was Henry, fittingly, and we see him referred to as Henry FitzRoy. Let’s check out the origin of that name: Fitz is from the French “fils” (pronounced FEESE), which means “son.” Roy is from the French “roi” (pronounced something like RWAH but it’s a tough one if you aren’t French), which means “king.” So the surname FitzRoy is actually “son of the king.” Well, bastard son of the king, to be exact.
The Massive Monarch did indeed acknowledge him as an illegitimate son all during the boy’s lifetime, and gave him fancy-shmany titles like Duke of Richmond and Earl of Nottingham. He died (most likely of tuberculosis) at age 17, a few months after Anne Boleyn’s execution, and is buried in the Howard family tombs at St. Michael’s in Framlingham, Suffolk.
Famous Last Words
Well, Showtime did it! They kept alive the myth that Katherine Howard ”would rather die the wife of Culpepper” just before her beheading. That is untrue, and that rumor needs to die (so to speak). Last night’s episode of “The Tudors” didn’t help matters any, but there are also scores of websites and other sources which continue to perpetuate this falsehood.
On that cold and still day, 13 February 1542, Kitty’s actual last words were that she deserved a thousand deaths for so offending the king who treated her so well. She prayed for Henry, asked the crowd to follow suit, and called upon God to take her soul. Then –whack! — with one stroke. Next up on the wet, bloody block: royal meddler Lady Rochford. Come on down, you drama-loving nitwit!
“You Just Wait Until Your Father Gets Home [from Sacking the Monasteries]!”
“Our first-born is the greatest ass, the greatest liar, the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world and we heartily wish he was out of it.”
Whew, tell us how you really feel about your son, George II! Two hundred years post-Tudor, the Hanoverians were famous for poor father-son relations, but George II’s feelings toward his son (who died before he could become George III, so it went to his own boy) were probably the most extreme. Victoria’s male successors weren’t about to win any father-son awards, either. And although Henry VIII was very proud of his intelligent and talented children, we see how he used the girls in a genetic shuffleboard when it came to the succession, and famously obsessed over the XY chromosome.
Under the crown, children were primarily potential heirs and/or devices to marry into other royal families. Most royals did not have hands-on parenting experience either, as their kids were raised by nannies, and even breastfed via a wet-nurse. No attachment parenting for them! (And I suspect no “mommy wars,” either.)
Regardless of norms in royal parenting, it’s a good weekend* to hail those women who carried and gave birth to some of the biggest names in history. Let’s have a roll call of prominent Tudor moms…
- Lady Margaret Beaufort (mom to Henry VII)
- Elizabeth of York (mom to Henry VIII)
- Catherine of Aragon (mom to Mary I)
- Anne Boleyn (mom to Elizabeth I)
- Jane Seymour (mom to Edward VI)
- Mary de Guise (mom to Mary Queen of Scots)
- Lady Francis Brandon (mom to Lady Jane Grey)
These moms may not have received macaroni necklaces made with sticky fingers, but I suppose “look at me, Mom, I’m the ruler of the whole country” had a certain caché.
(* Mother’s Day is this Sunday, 9 May, in the U.S. Mothering Sunday in the U.K. is celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent; this year that date was 14 March.)
♪ I Enjoy Be-ing A Girl! ♫
If you are watching Showtime’s history lesson, you may be getting sick of seeing Katherine Howard gush and coo over every gift and display of royal hoopla by now. She does tend to act like a six-year-old who has just been prettied up and sprinkled with glitter at Disney World’s Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, doesn’t she?
And yet, Kitty really did revel in this stuff! She was thrilled each time she was lavished with some bezaddled whoozit or whatzit, and lit up when she was treated like a pretty, pretty princess. But I can’t blame her, because the poor girl came from nothing and could have never imagined a life such as this.
Her father, Edmund, was one of 23 children in a noble family. He lost everything, but kept his hand out for, well, a hand-out. In his final years, he was reduced to an incontinent. His third wife hit him when he’d helplessly wet their bed, and humiliated him with taunts that only children did such things.
Motherless Kitty had meanwhile been growing up in the home run by her step-grandmother. She was poor, uneducated, and lost in the shuffle. So when she eventually came to live in palaces and receive horses and jewels and such ( as a teenager, no less), she could hardly believe her luck! Go easy on her; she simply reached her I-enjoy-being-a-girl stage a bit late.
