the TUDOR TUTOR
Your cheeky guide to the dynastyFamous 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! ♫
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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.
Life After Tudors
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With Liz I’s death in 1603, the Tudor line ended and the Stuart line began with James I. Well, he was James VI of Scotland, but became James I of England.
Follow me, here: Scotland had had a separate monarchy since the 9th century, when it became its own country. There were five King Jameses there before Liz’s future heir became Scotland’s king. He was only 13 months old when his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was whisked away and imprisoned. She later fled to England where she spent 19 years and then became about a foot shorter.
Little James VI had adults to rule for him, of course, until he reached the age of majority, but he was technically the king of Scotland for 36 years before swinging on down to London as the new top dog. And since England had never had a King James previously, he became James I there.
Why do we sometimes see Life After Tudors spelled “Stewart” rather than ”Stuart”? It was “Stewart” originally, from way back in the 9th century, but James’ mom, Mary Q of S, actually grew up in France. There was no “w” in the French alphabet at the time, and she would have spelled it “Stuart.”
Scotland and France were BFFs during the Tudor period, and occasionally beyond that, so “Stewart” and “Stuart” were used interchangeably to describe that post-Tudor dynasty, depending on whether the Scots and the French were playing nicely. Now it is usually spelled “Stuart.” Either way, it spelled d-r-a-m-a f-r-e-e for the most part, until the Gunpowder Plot a few years later.
What’s Inside That Body? 5,000 Calories a Day + A Fatty Liver, to Start…
While flipping through the channels today, I was crushed to find I’d just missed a special on the History Channel called “Inside the Body of Henry VIII.” This special first aired last spring but I hadn’t heard of it until now.
My spirits lifted when I found clips from the special on YouTube, about his illnesses, his diet, his sporting injuries, and the Syphillis Question. I hope you enjoy them!
Something in the Heir
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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.
Was Thomas Culpepper Really Such a Violent S.O.B.??
It’s a new season of “The Tudors” on Showtime, and there are new historical figures to grab our fancy and learn about! I would say the most notable personality in question from tonight’s season premiere is Thomas Culpepper, future partner-in-adultery to Katherine Howard.
Here’s what Tudorswiki has to say about the scandal. Apparently, Thomas and his brother, Thomas (named identically like many young noble men at the time, in case one died and the family needed a back-up) were both at court at the time. The younger one was the member of Henry’s Privy Chamber and Kitty’s flirtation target. According to this source, “There is some documentary evidence that one of the Culpepper brothers raped a parkkeeper’s wife and murdered the man who came to her assistance … most historical texts seem to indicate that it was” our man from tonight’s episode. Eeeesh. (But although it looks “likely,” remember that it’s not a definite.)
(Just for fun, here’s where he lay for the final time).
Party Like It’s 1539!
This is the weekend that the new and final season of Showtime’s “The Tudors” hits the small screen in the USA (and for our friends overseas, it’s a good time to buy a plane ticket and stay a while!). Toast the final hurrah of the show that tickled Tudorphiles and won over others with its sheer eye candy and soap-opera storylines. Whether you throw an all-out throwback bash, or just gather a few close gents or ladies-in-waiting around the telly, have fun at the expense of the most luscious yet dysfunctional dynasty in history:
Dress the part. No costumes? Cleavage will do.
Serve “head-y” snacks — Roast a head of garlic, mix the paste with EVOO and salt/pepper, and spread on baguette slices. Must be a baguette because you might as well introduce something French now–Mary Queen of Scots is just around the corner! Carry on the execution theme with Boar’s Head sliced meats for a cold-cut platter. Chop up a head of lettuce for a salad, as you’ll need something from the veg group. It’s more than the court bothered to do.
Sip something tasty (perhaps a Bloody Mary?) every time:
- …the Massive Monarch bellows “I’m the king of England” or inappropriately eyes a court vixen
- …Charles Brandon seems to be experiencing an internal struggle
- …Anne of Cleves smiles pleasantly & you can see the “I’m so glad I still have a head” thought bubble above her
- …Kitty Howard looks clueless and/or giggles
- …you notice that the executioner or peasants have stumps for teeth while the royals have straight, gleaming choppers
- …twice if the executioner or peasants have straight, gleaming choppers
- …something happens and you know that ”that’s not really what happened!”
- …anyone dies
Remember to celebrate the history of this famous family and all those who were involved with it as you celebrate the series. Cheers and happy viewing!
Why It Was Almost “Divorced, Beheaded, Beheaded”
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You might think Henry was, near the end of his life, a fervent anti-Catholic after all the “Great Matter” hoopla and needing to stick it to the Pope in order to divorce Cat of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Which, by this time, was four to five wives ago. On the contrary, Henry was still strongly Catholic in his beliefs and very happy to persecute Protestant heretics.
Enter one Anne Askew. Anne, age 23, had been kicked out of her house in Lincolnshire by her husband for preaching Protestant ideas. She moved her preaching to London where she was arrested.
Poor Anne has the fine distriction of being the only woman to be tortured at the Tower and then burnt to a crisp. She was stretched and broken on the rack but wouldn’t deny her faith. They laid her, bones all askew (sorry), on the floor for two hours of further questioning. No dice. She was burned at the stake the following month.
Catherine Parr had been Wife #6 for three years at this point. She didn’t know Anne but held a certain sympathy toward her and other Protestants who were viewed as heretics (probably because Catherine herself still believed in the new faith but kept it hush-hush from the king). She was especially upset that Anne had to be carried to the stake, as she couldn’t walk on her broken legs.
Catherine’s sympathy + her spirited religious debates with her husband + Henry’s state of mind (paranoid, angry, and in pain from his oozing leg sore) = his idea to have a warrant drawn up for Catherine’s arrest when the rumor got out that she was trying to bring down the king’s faith. Though he signed it, his servant dropped it and it was found by Catherine’s servant. Whew!
The queen was hysterical at the news and was sure she’d be the next Headless Wife of Henry VIII. When he finally had a chat with her about it, she calmly and diplomatically told him that she’d only debated religion with him to distract him from his leg pain, and also to learn more about religion for herself.
Success! He bought it and spared her. She kept her mouth shut for the next six months and became the “survived” in the famous mnemonic. But it certainly was close!
Not a Teaser, Not a Clip, It’s the Whole Enchilada!
Watch the entire first episode of “The Tudors” season 4 right here right now! Special thanks to Showtime for making this available.
*Update: A swanky HD version is available here.
