Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2017 Book ElizabethOfYorkAndHerSixDaught PDF
2017 Book ElizabethOfYorkAndHerSixDaught PDF
2017 Book ElizabethOfYorkAndHerSixDaught PDF
Retha M. Warnicke
Queenship and Power
Series editors
Charles Beem
University of North Carolina, Pembroke
Pembroke, USA
Carole Levin
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, USA
This series focuses on works specializing in gender analysis, women’s
studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional,
and diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the
strategies that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female
regents—pursued in order to wield political power within the structures
of male-dominant societies. The works describe queenship in Europe as
well as many other parts of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan
Africa, and Islamic civilization.
Elizabeth of
York and Her Six
Daughters-in-Law
Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547
Retha M. Warnicke
SHPRS, Arizona State University
Tempe
AZ, USA
v
Acknowledgements
vii
viii Acknowledgements
1 Introduction 1
8 Conclusion 241
Index
269
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
This book will delineate queenship in these areas, but before going
into more details about their reigns, this chapter will first examine some
of the issues with which they and their husbands dealt. Since many
authors have published books and articles about the Tudor consorts
whom modern media have also made famous, only the biographical data
needed to define their reigns is included in this study, which will defi-
nitely not provide another set of complete biographies. Instead, it fash-
ions Tudor queenship and provides a comparative analysis of the royal
accomplishments of Elizabeth of York and her six daughters-in-law.
Until the first Yorkist monarch, Edward IV, married Elizabeth Grey,
whose father, Richard Woodville, first Earl Rivers, and deceased hus-
band, Sir John Grey, had supported the Lancastrian cause, reigning
English kings had since the Norman conquest selected foreign-born
wives. Henry VII followed Edward IV’s example by also marrying
an Englishwoman. After Richard III seized the throne of his neph-
ews, Edward V and Richard, duke of York and Norfolk, their mother,
Elizabeth, agreed to negotiate a marriage alliance with Margaret, coun-
tess of Richmond, the mother of Henry Tudor. As the best Lancastrian
claimant in England, Lady Richmond sought arrangements for her son
to marry the dowager’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who was
viewed by some contemporaries as the best Yorkist claimant since her
brothers’ whereabouts remained unknown. When and if Henry suc-
ceeded in conquering Richard, the crown would pass on to the victor,
who had sworn an oath to marry Elizabeth of York.
After winning at Bosworth Field in 1485 with some Yorkist sup-
port, Henry kept his promise to wed her. Indeed, even without his
oath and their mothers’ alliance, Henry would have chosen her as his
bride because he could not have permitted her to wed any other man
who might try to use her royal claim and challenge him for the throne.
He married her publicly in January 1486 at Westminster Abbey, but no
official festivities accompanied the wedding. Subsequently, Henry and
Elizabeth had three children who lived to adulthood, only one of whom
was a son, the future Henry VIII. His older brother, Arthur, prince of
Wales, had died in 1502 at the age of fifteen.
Of his six wives, religious and political circumstances led Henry VIII
to marry only two foreign-born consorts, Katherine of Aragon and Anne
of Cleves. The weddings to them followed slightly different arrange-
ments than those for the more private unions with his English subjects,
Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Katherine Howard, and Katherine Parr.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
When they selected foreign wives, kings often had to manage family
relationships that complicated diplomatic matters. Rulers such as
Ferdinand II of Aragon expected their daughters to urge their husbands
to favor their native land above all others. Indeed, the new queen of
England in 1509 at first acted as her father’s ambassador. Furthermore,
these foreigners often brought ladies with them to their new home,
expecting to marry them to wealthy noblemen. Occasionally monarchs
expelled some of these attendants from their kingdoms, hoping thereby
to decrease the expenses of their wives’ household, and also perhaps to
avoid the attendants’ continuing influence on their brides, as well as limit
the number of strangers at court who might act as spies for their home-
land.
In The Education of a Christian Prince, printed in 1516, which was
written as an instructional tool for Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor,
and for Ferdinand I, his brother and successor to the Imperial throne,
Erasmus denounced marriage alliances between realms. Not only did
they usually fail to result in long-lasting peaceful relations between the
two principals involved, but they also placed the women in vulnerable
positions in their new kingdoms, far from their families and friends.2
Thus, they had to acclimate themselves to a somewhat different culture
and, in the case of England, to learn a new language as they became
acquainted with their husband, his family, and courtiers.
Even so, both Katherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves, while react-
ing differently to their annulment proceedings from Henry VIII
escaped with their lives, perhaps partly because of diplomatic considera-
tions. Although they lost their queenship, they possessed supporters in
England and abroad who could protest any physical abuse of them. It
was also true that while Katherine’s decision not to quietly accept an
annulment outraged Henry, he did not blame her for failing to present
him with surviving sons or Anne of Cleves for his impotence. Instead,
he blamed his marriage to his brother’s widow and the previous marital
contract between Anne of Cleves and Francis, heir of Antoine I, duke of
Lorraine, for the denial to him of that longed-for male heir.
His English consorts actually faced greater dangers than the foreign-
ers. In choosing four of his subjects, he seems at first to have looked for
virgins to ensure their sexual purity, as childbirth loomed large as their
foremost duty. Crown officials later, of course, accused two of the wives,
Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, of adultery. An attack on a con-
sort’s honor, like theirs, resulted in negative and divisive reverberations
1 INTRODUCTION 5
concerning the Tudor monarchy, not only at court but also across
England and even Christendom.
Henry’s personal decisions, when he decided to end his marriages
and then choose new fiancées who awaited the end of his marital dis-
putes, also led to political complications. Unlike the Stuart king, Charles
II, who foisted his mistresses on Catherine of Braganza, Henry decided
to remove from court his future wives, three of them the female attend-
ants of his soon-to-be discarded consort. Their presence on the court’s
fringes, especially in the case of Henry’s lengthy struggle with Clement
VII to win an annulment from Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne
Boleyn, could and did disrupt the usual patterns of royal life. Some
advantages did accompany his decision to marry his subjects, as he
thereby increased the number of his loyal relatives without enlarging
the pool of royal claimants.3 Thus, members of the Boleyn, Seymour,
Howard, and Parr families, all descendants of Edward I, added aristo-
cratic family support for his rule. Politically ambitious aristocratic fami-
lies worked to obtain close relationships with their kings, their major
ministers, and their queens. Although the Howards had remained sup-
portive of Henry during the executions of their female relatives, Anne
Boleyn and Katherine, Henry turned against them at the end of his reign
over issues concerning the appointment of a council to rule for his heir,
Edward, the son of Jane Seymour. Henry believed that he could trust
Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford (future duke of Somerset) to protect
the kingship of Edward, who was the son of his sister, Jane Seymour.
Thus, Hertford, unlike Richard III, had no personal claim to his neph-
ew’s throne. The succession of Richard still echoed as a warning to the
royal family.
Their subjects expected their kings to select wives of high social sta-
tus first and foremost for the purpose of siring sons and continuing their
dynasty’s control of their realm.4 The candidates chosen held great sig-
nificance since contemporaries assumed that the worthiness of their line-
age would enhance the crown’s status not only in England but also in
Christendom. The queens would also provide an additional elite ances-
try for the children and bequeath that status to them. A new dynasty
headed by Henry VII, whose hereditary claim to the throne was some-
what weak, needed and sought this added public honor for its heirs.
The consorts, it was expected, would hold at least two other noble
familial positions: as daughters of rulers, if not kings, and as moth-
ers of the dynasty’s heir. Some might possess other familial roles,
6 R.M. WARNICKE
such as their status as siblings and perhaps as widows. Among the Tudor
consorts, only Elizabeth of York, as the daughter of Edward IV and the
mother of Henry VIII, met the two expected qualifications. As is well
known, Henry VIII’s first consort, Katherine of Aragon, failed to give
birth to a surviving son, and the four Englishwomen he wed entered the
world as daughters of gentlemen, although all had distant royal ances-
try. Ultimately, two wives, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr, survived
him, but only Katherine gained recognition as his dowager queen.
English royal dowagers like her usually lived on their dower or jointure
estates, exercising only the authority arising from their possession of that
property.5
The coronation ceremony, a religious and political ritual signifying
the blessings of the church upon the dynasty, offered the most important
way for demonstrating the queens’ sovereignty publicly. Only three of the
Tudor queens gained this recognition: Elizabeth of York, already mother
of Arthur, Katherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn. As noted, Katherine
shared Henry’s coronation ceremony. At her service, Anne Boleyn was
visibly pregnant with a fetus that Henry futilely hoped was male.
The custom of consecrating queens had emerged on the continent
by the eighth century and had spread to England in the tenth century,
although it is not certain that all subsequent Anglo-Saxon queens had
coronations since the documentation is rather limited.6 As to the ring
traditionally given to the queen in the ceremony, Pauline Stafford has
observed that it was not a marital one. It actually “paralleled her hus-
band’s in the symbolism of the protection of her people, in her case espe-
cially of their Christian faith.”7 Kings gained praise and recognition as
God’s lieutenants on earth. In 1610, John Guillem expressed this view:
they represented “visible images” of the “King of Heaven” and “all
degrees of nobility” as “many beams” issued from the royal majesty.8
When favoring their consorts with this ritual, kings did not intend to ele-
vate them to a par with themselves. Although recognizing the queens’
dependence, the ceremony still clearly celebrated their deep religious
significance and could be viewed as associating them with the queen of
heaven, the Virgin Mary. Indeed, by the twelfth century, medieval con-
sorts had begun acting as intercessors for individuals, some of whom the
crown had accused of felonies and treason, making it possible for their
husbands to offer largess or pardons without appearing politically weak
or indecisive.9 At that time, queens viewed intercession “as a means to
sustain perceptions of their influence.”10 In the Tudor period, these seem
1 INTRODUCTION 7
to have become staged events, and the queens themselves might not
have initiated the process.11
At the top of the aristocratic hierarchy, monarchs and their wives
reigned as the first family over families of lesser social status. The sump-
tuary laws, which sought to dictate the clothing appropriate to the vari-
ous ranks of society, privileged kings and their immediate family. For
example, only they could wear cloth of gold and purple silk. The stat-
utes allowed peers, knights of the Garter, and the children of peers above
the rank of earl to wear crimson, scarlet, or blue velvet. Maria Hayward
determined that some “flouting” of the legislation occurred, but not
“expressly” among the nobility and upper gentry.12 Kings expected their
wives to dress in the royal style, providing them access to crown jewels
as well as expensive clothing. The first couple’s dominance gained both
a public and domestic visibility. In queenship and kingship, the public
and domestic realms naturally flowed into each other. When progressing
at court, the queens’ aristocratic ladies trailed behind them, whether at
special public functions or in more private settings.
Their queens’ domestic and public duties, as noted, focused on the
birth of the family heirs. Since some of their subjects feared that their
kings might repudiate barren consorts, successful childbirth served to
stabilize the queens’ cultural and social position, increasing the political
importance of their reign by holding out the promise of the dynasty’s
survival. If the children were boys, especially a firstborn prince, their
births called for joyous celebrations. The queens’ personal duty of writ-
ing letters announcing the successful delivery of their infants symbol-
ized the importance of the proof of their fertility. As John Carmi Parsons
emphasized, “Queens’ bodies were thus invested with immense signifi-
cance; society projected onto them hopes and anxieties that were sex-
ual as well as political.”13 Because of the need for heirs, physicians and
apothecaries took special care for the state of their health.
After the children’s birth, like other aristocratic infants, their parents
placed them with wet nurses and housed them in separate nurseries until
they reached the age appropriate for court residence. The children’s
absence did not signal the parents’ disinterest in their health and educa-
tion. Elizabeth of York, Katherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn contin-
ued to be involved in their offspring’s lives, if often only at a distance.
Their children traveled to court at holiday times, and their parents also
journeyed to see them in their separate nurseries, remaining deeply
concerned about their well-being.
8 R.M. WARNICKE
Notes
1. János Bak, “Queens as Scapegoats in Medieval Hungary,” Queens and
Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference Held at King’s
College, London, April 1995, ed. Anne Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 1997), pp. 232–233.
2. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, trans. Lester
Born (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), pp. 42, 240–243.
3. Michael Bush, “The Tudors and the Royal Race,” History, new series,
55(1970), 48.
4. Many publications on queenship are available. See, for example, Joseph
O’Callaghan, “The Many Roles of the Medieval Queen: Some Examples
from Castile,” Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early
Modern Spain, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005),
pp. 21–32. See also the references in other endnotes.
5. Margaret Labarge, Women in Medieval Life: A Small Sound of the Trumpet
(London: Hamilton, 1986), p. 48.
6. Janet Nelson, “Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making and the Shaping
of Medieval Queenship,” Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe,
p. 302; Lois Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval
Queenship (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 35–39.
14 R.M. WARNICKE
See Fiona Kisby, “Kingship and the Royal Intinerary: A Study of the
Peripatetic Household of the Early Tudor Kings, 1485–1547,” The Court
Historian, 4 (1998), 29–39.
20. Chris Given-Wilson, “The Merger of Edward III’s and Queen Philippa’s
Household, 1360–1369,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research,
51(2978), 183–187.
21. A.R. Myers, “The Household of Queen Margaret of Anjou,” Bulletin of
the John Rylands Library, 40 (1952–1958), 82–85.
22. Clare McManus, “Introduction,” Women and Culture at the Courts of the
Stuart Queens, ed. C. McManus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003),
p. 4.
23. Anne Crawford, “The Piety of Late Medieval English Queens,” The
Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F.R.H. Du Boulay,
ed. Caroline Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 1985), p. 48.
24. Sybil Jack, “In Praise of Queens: The Public Presentation of the
Virtuous Consort in Seventeenth-Century Britain,” Identities, Women,
and Communities in Early Modern Europe, ed. Susan Broomhall and
Stephanie Tarbin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 218.
25. Joanna Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
26. Retha M. Warnicke “Queenship: Politics and Gender in Tudor England,”
History Compass, 4 (2006), 203–227. (www.history-compass.com). See
also Warnicke, “Margaret Tudor, Countess of Richmond, and Elizabeth
of York: Dynastic Competitors or Royal Allies?” Unexpected Heirs and
Heiresses in Early Modern Europe: Potential Kings and Queens, ed. Valerie
Schutte (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
27. For another study of these marriages, see Retha M. Warnicke, “The Tudor
Consorts The Politics of Royal Matchmaking, 1483–1543,” Queens
Matter in Early Modern Studies. Ed. Anne Riehl Bertolet (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
CHAPTER 2
Marriages and Coronations
court she lived from 1514 to 1521, he could not have anticipated that
he would still be legally wed to Katherine in 1533. If he had wished to
look abroad after obtaining the annulment of his first marriage, he would
have had the difficult task of persuading royal fathers to send their young
daughters to a foreign land to marry a man who had discarded his long-
time, faithful wife. As he later discovered when he settled for Anne of
Cleves, marrying into the most important royal families remained an elu-
sive goal because they were all interrelated and Roman Catholic, mean-
ing that their relatives had to obtain papal dispensations for any of their
daughters to wed Henry. This proved to be an impossible goal in 1538,
when Clement VII refused to provide a dispensation for the union of
Henry with Christina, dowager duchess of Milan, a niece of Emperor
Charles V.
All his English queens could trace their ancestry back to Edward I.
Anne’s mother was the daughter of Thomas Howard, second duke of
Norfolk, and her paternal great-grandfather was also a nobleman,
Thomas Butler, earl of Ormond, whose daughter, Lady Margaret, mar-
ried Sir William Boleyn. Jane Seymour’s mother, Margery Wentworth,
was a descendant of Edward III. Katherine Howard’s father, Edmund,
was a son of the second duke of Norfolk, and Katherine Parr descended
through the Beaufort line of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster.
Many facts about Anne Boleyn remain under dispute, including her
age. William Camden, Clarenceux king of arms, a principal officer of
the College of Arms, claimed she was born in 1507 and noted also that
she was 16 years younger than Henry.31 Later, Edward, Lord Herbert
of Cherbury, stated that she was about 20 when she became a maiden
of honor to Katherine of Aragon.32 This information would seem to
place her return to court in 1527, the year of the first record of her pres-
ence there, after her earlier rustication because of the courtship of Lord
Henry Percy, future fifth earl of Northumberland. Nineteen or twenty
was a somewhat advanced age for a girl to gain appointment as a maiden.
Often, in England, girls reached their midteens when selected for this
honorable position, which they and their parents anticipated would pro-
vide them with opportunities to make a favorable marriage.33
Describing Anne as a femme fatale, some writers have charged her
with setting out to destroy Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon
by refusing to become his mistress, as her sister, Mary, had done.34 Had
Katherine’s sons lived, Henry would never have rejected her for a sec-
ond wife. Clearly he sought to wed a young, chaste woman, hoping that
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 25
God would favor him with a live, healthy son. In 1527, when Katherine
was 42 years old and had not conceived for 9 years, he decided that his
dynasty’s survival required him to seek a new wife.
On May 5, 1527, he danced with Anne in Katherine’s apartments
while his 11-year-old daughter, Mary, whom he was considering mar-
rying into the French royal family, danced with Francis Turre, Viscount
Turènne, the French ambassador.35 Henry later ordered his lord chan-
cellor, Thomas Wolsey, cardinal archbishop of York, to obtain an annul-
ment of his union with Katherine. After she appealed to Clement VII
for an official inquiry, the pope delayed making a decision, hop-
ing to avoid an estrangement with Henry but also unwilling to anger
Katherine’s nephew, Charles V, whose troops had sacked Rome. To pres-
sure Clement, Henry began attacking the independence of the church
in England. One of the first victims was Cardinal Wolsey. Another victim
was his successor as lord chancellor, Sir Thomas More. The major acts of
the Reformation Parliament (1529–1536), which resulted in England’s
withdrawal from the Roman confession, cannot be addressed in detail
here. During its sessions, Sir Thomas Cromwell emerged as Henry’s
principal minister, ultimately gaining the offices of secretary and then
lord privy seal.
Meanwhile, in 1527, Clement agreed to permit Henry (if his marriage
to Katherine were annulled) to marry the sister of a former mistress and
also a woman who had entered into a contract of marriage that remained
unconsummated. During the next 5 years, Henry favored Anne and
sent to her still-extant love letters, especially when she suffered from the
sweating sickness (probably a flu virus) in 1528. By that year, he had
transferred her from Katherine’s household to Durham Place, with her
mother, Lady Elizabeth, serving as her chaperone. In 1531, he went on
his summer progress, leaving behind Katherine, whom he later ordered
removed to The More, Wolsey’s old home.
On September 1, 1532, Henry granted Anne lands worth about £1000
annually and ennobled her as the marchioness of Pembroke in an elabo-
rate ceremony, during which she wore splendid clothing and jewels. In
October, he escorted her and her ladies to Calais to visit with Francis I.
Upon their return home, the two surely exchanged private vows and con-
summated their union, perhaps on November 14, well before the begin-
ning of Advent, when marriage and sexual intercourse were forbidden by
church decree. It is possible that their confidence that the new archbishop
of Canterbury would annul the king’s first marriage led them to this step.36
26 R.M. WARNICKE
meant that he had decided by then that she was to become his new wife
as soon as he was divorced from Anne of Cleves.52 As to the beginning
of his interest in her, Lady Norfolk claimed that he had been attracted
to her from the first moment he saw her, some weeks before the arrival
of Anne of Cleves in England. In late June 1540, he returned Katherine,
who had kept her premarital sexual liaisons a secret, to Lady Norfolk’s
Lambeth home while rusticating Anne at Richmond. At least twice
Henry visited Katherine in late June at Lambeth. They were married
on July 28 at Oatlands, like his other weddings to his subjects, without
public festivities. On August 8 at Hampton Court Henry introduced her
as queen, and on August 15 he had morning prayers said in the churches
for him, Katherine, and Prince Edward.
The attendance at court of Katherine Parr is even less well docu-
mented than Jane’s, since the earliest evidence for her presence is in a
letter dated June 20, 1543, which John Dudley, Viscount Lisle (future
duke of Northumberland), sent to her brother, William, Lord Parr
(future marquess of Northampton), revealing the presence of Katherine
and her married sister, Anne Herbert, at Greenwich with the king’s
daughters.53 In her biography of Katherine, Susan James alleged that a
paid tailor’s bill for clothing purchased for her unnamed daughter rep-
resents a money gift from Henry to Katherine, who was still the wife of
John Neville, Lord Latimer, for clothes she had purchased for Princess
Mary. It was dated February 16, some two weeks before the March 2
funeral of Latimer, her ailing second husband. David Starkey has cor-
rectly noted that after becoming queen, Katherine belatedly paid the
clothing bill for her stepdaughter, Lady Margaret Neville. Sir Thomas
Arundell, her chancellor as queen, authorized the payment.54 No surviv-
ing evidence proves that in February she flirted with Henry at court or
had any association with her future stepdaughter, Mary.
Another controversy concerns Katherine’s relationship to Sir Thomas
Seymour, whom she married after Henry’s death. She wrote to Seymour
in the spring 1547 that she did not want him “to think that this hon-
est goodwill” to him “proceeds of any sudden motion or passion;…
my mind was fully bent, the other time I was at liberty, to marry” him
“before any man I know. Howbeit, God withstood my will therein most
vehemently for a time,” finally causing her to denounce her “own will”
and “follow his will.”55 Scholars have apparently ignored two salient facts
in her statement. First, she explained that when she was last “at liberty”
to marry, she selected Seymour above all others. The modern allegation
32 R.M. WARNICKE
that she considered marrying two different men, Henry and Seymour,
before her husband’s death in 1543 greatly dishonors her. Second, she
wished to inform Seymour that her interest in him was not “sudden”
since those feelings had developed earlier. By these words, she seems to
have implied that she had not revealed to him her earlier “goodwill.”
Why else would she have felt the need to inform him in 1547 of those
feelings?
In 1543, she probably decided to visit her sister, Anne, and her hus-
band, William Herbert, (future earl of Pembroke), a gentleman of the
king’s privy chamber at court, then at St. James Palace, during the cel-
ebrations after Easter, which fell on March 25. The Herberts had surely
joined her in mourning the death of Latimer, whose funeral took place
at St. Paul’s Cathedral on March 2 and could have extended an invita-
tion for her to accompany them to court, a convenient destination for
Katherine, as she then resided in a London townhouse. The new widow,
perhaps eager to remain in court society, found Seymour attractive, per-
haps because of his looks and demeanor, but perhaps also because of his
kinship to the future Edward VI. As Katherine belonged to a politically
ambitious family, she must have thought it would be opportune for her
and her relatives if she wed the future king’s uncle. By her testimony,
God forced her instead to marry the future king’s father.
She must have previously met Henry, although no record of it sur-
vives. The nobility formed a small community, the members with whom
Henry was mostly acquainted. After Latimer’s return to favor, after his
participation in the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, he attended the House
of Lords in 1539, 1540, and 1542. At those times as in 1542, he prob-
ably escorted his wife to their London townhouse and possibly to some
social functions. She might also have achieved a kind of celebrity status
because some rebels in January 1537 had held her and her two stepchil-
dren as hostages. Henry’s desire to marry her, if they only met sometime
after March 2, 1543, would seem hurried, but scholars have defamed the
character of this pious woman when they claim that she flirted with two
men at court while at home her husband lay dying.56
In early June 1543, the king left for Harwich while she prepared
for their wedding. On June 20, as noted, she attended the court at
Greenwich, which Henry had reached the previous day. Like his earlier
marriages to his other subjects, theirs was a private affair. On July 10,
Cranmer dispensed with the banns, and 2 days later, in the queen’s privy
chamber at Hampton Court, Gardiner officiated, utilizing the Sarum
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 33
the bride at her home. Henry next waived the dowry of 100,000 gold
florins (25,000 English marks), recognizing Cleves’s impoverished treas-
ury. On November 26, Anne began an overland journey. On December
11, she reached Calais, where storms stranded her until December 27.
Once in England, a number of aristocratic greeters welcomed her, as was
the usual procedure. They escorted her north and arrived on New Year’s
Eve at the Bishop’s Palace in Rochester, where Henry made his now
famous incognito visit. This was an expected event since before their
public meetings with their foreign spouses whom they had not yet met,
early modern kings first sought private meetings with them. Louis XIV
was the last ruler to perform this ceremony.
Despite his unfavorable initial impression of Anne, Henry proceeded
with her scheduled reception at Greenwich, the only public demonstra-
tion, as Anne arrived during the holy days of Epiphany. Twelfth Night
was one of the religious holidays for which written royal procedures
specified the rituals to be followed for the drinking of wassail and for the
eating of spices.66 The waived dowry and the shortness of time for prepa-
rations before her expected arrival might also have influenced this deci-
sion. Attended by his councilors and other royal officials, the king, along
with numerous representatives of the English aristocracy, rode their
horses onto Blackheath Common to welcome their queen in an impres-
sive ceremony.
Henry briefly delayed the wedding after discovering that the Cleves
ambassadors had failed to bring a copy of Anne’s marriage contract with
Lorraine’s heir for his churchmen’s determination of her marital status.
Finally, worried about a possible Franco-Imperial crusade against him,
Henry requested that Cranmer, who must have issued a license dispens-
ing with the prohibition of marriage and sexual intercourse on holy
days, married them in the king’s closet at Greenwich on Epiphany. She
wore a dress of cloth of gold, and a coronel of gold and precious stones
entwined with a garland of rosemary, a Cleves addition, symbolizing
remembrance and constancy. After mass, they returned to their separate
quarters before feasting at the usual wedding dinner. Anne then attended
evensong, as no afternoon functions were scheduled. At the evening sup-
per, a masque formed part of the entertainment. Usually elaborate public
celebrations for diplomatic marriages occurred over several days.
Both of these Tudor kings failed to follow the traditional diplomatic
marriage practices that were embodied in treaties and accompanied by
public rituals and celebrations. Henry VII needed to wed Elizabeth to
36 R.M. WARNICKE
gain the support of her Yorkist allies and hoped thereby to end the civil
wars. Henry VIII’s motivation for marrying his English consorts derived
in great part from personal preference, but after he had his union with
Katherine of Aragon annulled, marriage with the daughters of prestig-
ious royal dynasties that remained Roman Catholic proved impossible to
arrange. Because after Arthur’s death Katherine had stayed in England,
Henry decided to wed her in a ceremony without the usual pomp and
circumstance of diplomatic unions. Whether the primary motive was the
size of her dowry, his father’s last wishes, his own private preferences,
or his desire to build an alliance against the French remains uncertain.
Perhaps all these issues combined to form his decision. Finally, his mar-
riage to Anne of Cleves, partly because she brought no dowry and per-
haps also because she arrived during the Christmas holy days, led him to
provide her with an official greeting but no further public celebrations.
Only three Tudor consorts gained the honor of a coronation cer-
emony. Often monarchs scheduled them near the beginning of their
public recognitions as queens, as were Katherine of Aragon’s and Anne
Boleyn’s. The differences in the three rituals, beginning with Elizabeth
of York’s, will be discussed, but first an examination of monarchs’ coro-
nations provides a context for their consorts’ rituals. According to tradi-
tion, for a man already reigning as monarch to assume his royal status
in the most complete sense and to receive God’s grace to perform his
kingship, he had to be inaugurated into his position by legal and eccle-
siastical rites.67 These signified the continuity of ancient ceremonies and
represented the received version of them. As public demonstrations that
embodied dimensions both legal and religious, the latter making them
reminiscent of bishops’ consecrations, the coronations offered opportu-
nities for kings to appear not only publicly as God’s favored ones but also
as reflections or images of divinity.68
These ceremonies furthermore publicly confirmed the monarchs’ rela-
tionship to their subjects through the royal oath and their nobles’ posi-
tive acclamations to their accessions. Thus, they effectively bonded the
royal dynasty hierarchically to their nobility. Through their participation,
noblemen could emphasize the honorable and ancient heritage of their
families and their places in the social hierarchy. Their strong desire to
participate led kings to establish claims courts that confirmed the tradi-
tional rights of their male subjects to perform various coronation func-
tions. This service proved also to be lucrative. The barons of the Cinque
Ports, for example, who bore the canopy over the head of the monarch
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 37
to Westminster Abbey, could claim as their fee the canopy itself. London
merchants likewise profited from these occasions because of the crown’s
need to purchase expensive items, including jewelry and clothing, and
because they usually included royal entries into their city.69 In addition,
the rites provided entertainment for the masses and rewards for some
of them, as the royal almoner distributed to the poor a part of the ray
(striped) cloth on which the royal procession marched from Westminster
Palace to the abbey. Finally, the pageantry could impress foreign powers
with the realm’s wealth and magnificence.
By contrast, the queens’ coronations demonstrated divine approval of
their marriages and celebrated their status as the kings’ wives, but not
as authority figures. The anointing and crowning of queens seems to
have arisen because of the emergence of the hereditary royal succession.
The coronation publicly not only designated her as his legitimate wife
but also as the possible mother of his future heirs. Laynesmith has con-
vincingly argued that the coronation may be seen “as the construction
of the queen as a part of the king’s public body, both its presentation of
a series of ideals through which her role might complement his, and the
ritual by which she shared in the emblems of his divinely ordained posi-
tion.”70 They presented the women as exemplars of female chastity and
conferred a “sanctity of character” on them as the mistresses of the royal
households.71 Surviving written instructions describe how the king and
his councillors should greet a foreign queen. Her English escort’s duty
was to meet her at the seashore and lead her to the king, who awaited
her for his public greeting at the place where the wedding was to occur.
With that ceremony accomplished, she was then to proceed to her coro-
nation. Thus, these instructions, although without stating the reasons for
the coronation to take place shortly after the marriage, would seem to
confirm Laynesmith’s explanation.72
Queens’ coronations also called for the participation of representa-
tives of the entire population since ladies as well as gentlemen held roles
in them.73 While claims courts confirmed noblemen’s traditional func-
tions on these special days, the queens still required the assistance of
noblewomen and the ladies of their household. Despite the importance
of the coronations to the queens, at various stages in the process, some
of the rituals clearly indicated their subordination to their husbands.
Unlike kings, they neither swore a traditional oath defining their author-
ity nor participated in a kind of election process when the archbishop
of Canterbury requested a “formal acclamation” of the new king’s reign
38 R.M. WARNICKE
by the noblemen present. During their anointing with holy oil, remi-
niscent of Old Testament usage and representing the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, the archbishop touched queens with the sign of the cross only
in two places, the brow or forehead and breast, but he touched kings
on the head, breast, shoulders, hands, and elbows. The monarchs’ rit-
ual included more ornaments and clothing than their consorts’. These
had been housed at Westminster Abbey since the twelfth century, when
Prior Osbert of Clare had gained the right by citing a forged document
for the monks to keep and protect the regalia, said to have belonged to
St. Edward the Confessor.74
By tradition coronations were held on saints’ feast days or Sundays,
but in practice kings usually chose feast days, although Henry VIII
and Anne chose a Sunday, Whitsunday, second only to Easter as a holy
day.75 Earlier in 1487, Henry VII scheduled Elizabeth’s coronation for
November 25, the feast day of St. Catherine, who was venerated as a
patron of virginity and purity and also of philosophers and universities.
On November 7, the common council of London voted her a gift of
1000 marks and began preparations for her arrival for the coronation.76
The ceremonies began with a new tradition: she was the first queen to
journey before her coronation by barge from Greenwich to the Tower of
London. Accompanied by the king’s mother and other ladies and lords,
Elizabeth wore royal apparel. The lord mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, and
members of the London crafts welcomed her party in barges decorated
with banners and streamers adorned with insignia identifying their crafts.
On one huge barge, the Bachelors’ Barge, a red dragon, an allusion
to the Welsh red dragon, spit flames into the river. Some other barges
presented unspecified “pageants” for her entertainment. Trumpeters
and minstrels accompanied the procession and announced her arrival at
Tower Wharf, where Henry greeted her.77
The next day, following the tradition since 1399, Henry created
knights of the bath, his numbering 14. On Saturday, November 24, the
queen left the Tower, attired in white cloth of gold damask with her sis-
ter, Lady Cecily Plantagenet, carrying her train and with a bejeweled cir-
clet of gold on her head. With her blonde hair hanging down her back,
as was customary, as it symbolized her future fertility, she rode in a lit-
ter under a canopy of cloth of gold. All other participants wore splendid
and ornate clothing representing their social status. This and other tradi-
tional ceremonies presented the royal family amid numerous other peo-
ple who could be identified by their dress. As R. Malcolm Smuts pointed
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 39
out: “Few things expressed the majesty of kinship more vividly than the
sight of hundreds of brilliantly dressed men and women, walking or rid-
ing with solemn dignity around an even more resplendent monarch.”78
The leaders of Elizabeth’s train included the knights of the bath and
other knights and esquires, the Garter king of arms, heralds, and pur-
suivants, some noblemen, esquires of honor, the mayor of London, the
marshal, the constable (Thomas Stanley, earl of Derby, the king’s step-
father), the great chamberlain, and the high steward, (Jasper Tudor,
duke of Bedford). Sir Roger Cotton, master of her horse, followed her
litter, leading a riderless horse of estate on which was placed a sidesad-
dle of red cloth of gold. After him came six henchmen and the queen’s
ladies. Along the newly cleansed streets, they encountered members of
the crafts dressed in their liveries and singing children costumed either
as angels or virgins. At the conduit in Cornhill and in Cheapside, red
and white wine flowed.79 Finally, after arriving at the palace, she enjoyed
a void, a drink of wine accompanied by spices or comfits, and retired to
her chamber.
The coronation on the 25th seems to have followed the Liber
Regalis, a text of the fourth recension of the coronation ordo, written
in 1308.80 It began with the procession to the abbey from the palace;
Elizabeth wore purple velvet clothing with a train borne by her sister,
Lady Cecily, and with a circlet of gold with pearls and precious stones
on her head. Each queen possessed her own personal circlet, a gift from
her husband, which did not form a part of the royal regalia in the jewel
house, as did the crown later placed on her head by the archbishop of
Canterbury.81 Various members of the aristocracy led the procession:
esquires, knights, and knights of the bath, noblemen, and churchmen,
including abbots and the monks of Westminster Abbey. One of the 15
bishops present carried St. Edward’s chalice and another his paten for
the offertory. Following them came the archbishop of York, the Garter
king of arms, the mayor of London, the constable, and the earl marshal.
Two noblemen carried the queen’s ivory rod with a gold dove on the
top, recalling the pastoral duties of a shepherd’s crook, and the silver-gilt
scepter, a symbol of royal authority, with a dove representing the Holy
Spirit. That the scepter was made of silver gilt indicated her “inferiority”
in rank to the king, whose scepter was made of gold, the more precious
metal.82 Next came the great chamberlain and the high steward, who
carried the crown for the coronation.83 The queen’s crown, according to
inventories, would have been a closed imperial crown, set with sapphires,
40 R.M. WARNICKE
between the altar and the pulpit, stood a stage covered with cloth of
arras. On it sat the king, his mother, and other ladies and gentlemen.
Since kings had the highest social status, they usually did not participate
in the rituals of their relatives, even the funerals of family members, for
example, since chief mourners of the same sex as the deceased performed
the prominent roles in that final ritual, as directed by heralds. This was
also true of the behavior of the aristocracy generally.
The queen returned to the palace in procession and left for her cham-
ber. Later she entered Westminster Hall, where the high steward, whose
horse’s trapping was decorated with a red rose and red dragons, the earl
Marshal, and the constable rode on horseback to keep order amid the
press of people. The participants sat at nine tables for the customary
feast. After washing her hands, the queen sat at the center table, Morton
to her right, and her aunt, Katherine Woodville Tudor, duchess of
Bedford, and Lady Cecily to her left. Two countesses knelt on either side
of the queen, holding a red kerchief before her as she ate dishes from the
two courses. During the celebration, on a stage set in a window on the
left side of the hall and decorated with arras, the king and his mother
observed the feasting. Also witnessing the festivities, the Garter king of
arms, other heralds, and pursuivants sat on a stage on the left side of the
hall. At the end of the two courses, they descended, made their obei-
sance, and then proclaimed her as the queen three times in five places in
the hall. During this saluting, the minstrels played music. Afterward, she
dined on fruit and wafers; then she again washed her hands and went to
the void. The mayor of London served her with ipocras and spices before
she departed for her chamber.
Normally kings held tournaments to celebrate coronations, and
Henry had issued an imprest of 100 marks in October for the prepara-
tion of jousts for hers, but as Parliament was still in session, he seems to
have postponed them. The immediate celebrations included only a grand
feast for the ladies on the 26th. First, the king, queen, and the king’s
mother attended mass in St. Stephen’s Chapel, accompanied by 80 noble
and gentle ladies. Afterward, these ladies dined in the parliament cham-
ber with the queen. The king’s mother sat on her right and Katherine,
Lady Bedford, on her left. At two side tables sat the noble and gentle
ladies. After dining, the ladies danced. The next day the queen returned
to Greenwich.87
The joint ceremony of Henry and Katherine of Aragon, scheduled for
June 24, 1509, Midsummer’s Day, was also the Feast of the Nativity of
42 R.M. WARNICKE
St. John the Baptist. Before the shared coronation, the London com-
mons voted to present the king with £1000, two-thirds of it for him and
the other third, or some £333, for the queen.88 In contrast, Elizabeth
had received 1000 marks (£666), and Anne Boleyn received the same
amount.89 On June 22, according to Hall’s chronicle, Katherine accom-
panied the king, who traveled on land across London Bridge to the
Tower of London. As no previous king had participated in a river entry
into London for his coronation, he must have decided to continue that
tradition. On June 22, Henry created 24 knights of the bath, and the
next day the royal couple processed to the palace. For the ceremonies,
Henry relied on a device especially prepared for him, as did his father
before him, that was based on the Liber Regalis.90
Unlike Elizabeth, Katherine was obviously not the featured figure at
this shared coronation; most of the attention seems to have focused on
Henry. Edward Hall’s chronicle notes that on their route to the palace
they saw virgins, but he did not mention angels. He added that priests
and clerks, dressed in rich copes and holding crosses and censers, censed
the royal couple as they rode by them. Although Hall provided far less
information about Katherine and her attendants than the king and his
retinue, the chronicler did relate that she, who was “beautiful and goodly
to behold,” wore embroidered white satin, that her hair hung down to
her shoulders, and that she wore on her head “a coronel with rich jew-
els.”91
In their procession from the palace to the abbey, noblemen preceded
her, carrying her crown, as well as an ivory rod topped by a gold dove
and a gold scepter topped by a gold dove from St. Edward’s regalia.92
Following tradition, the king and queen, both dressed in crimson, pro-
cessed to the platform, where her throne sat to his left, a step or two
lower than his. At their coronations, kings always wore a red parliament
robe of silk and ermines that reached to their feet, while the queens, who
were crowned alone, usually wore the customary purple outfit. When he
descended for his anointing, she sat on a stool on the left side of the high
altar. As he prostrated before the high altar, she knelt in prayer. After
his crowning, he returned to the scaffold, and William Warham, arch-
bishop of Canterbury, then anointed her with holy olive oil only and
crowned her. Apparently the chrism could only be used once during the
ceremony. Before rejoining Henry on the scaffold, she “made a mod-
est inclination before the king’s majesty” in a gesture of reverence. Later
she descended with him for the celebration of mass, then crossed over
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 43
with him to St. Edward’s shrine, where Warham removed her crown and
placed it on the altar. After she had changed her clothes for a purple out-
fit in a curtained-off area, Warham presented her with her coronel, and
the royal couple and their attendants returned to the palace.93
At the banquet for Henry and Katherine, Edward Stafford, duke of
Buckingham, held the position of high steward. The participants sat at
the usual nine tables, the king’s on the right hand and the queen’s on
the left. Near the end of the feast, the mayor of London offered ipocras
only to the king. After the void, as usual, the royal couple retired to their
chambers.94
The next day, before the customary jousts and tournaments took
place at Westminster Palace, the king and queen entered a specially con-
structed pavilion adorned with rich cloth and tapestry. The palace also
contained a fountain over which stood a castle topped by a closed impe-
rial crown gilded with roses for Henry and pomegranates for Katherine.
A gentlewoman acting as Lady Pallas came forward in a pageant car with
a castle to offer eight “scholars” to the king for the purpose of defending
against all challengers. Shortly thereafter, eight knights led by gentleman
on horseback approached the queen, requesting that she permit them to
do feats of arms for the ladies and fight the scholars of Lady Pallas. The
jousts then took place.95
The next day, the pageantry continued, with the knights of Lady
Pallas appearing armed for battle. The challengers, now claiming to be
servants of Diana, brought in a pageant car on which stood a park com-
prising artificial trees and shrubs. It had gates that were opened, letting
some deer escape. Greyhounds then chased and killed the deer, which
the knights presented to the queen and her ladies. Afterward, Katherine
and her ladies requested that Henry decide whether the knights should
once again compete against each other. He granted their request. The
jousts were to commence, but first the servants of Diana asked that if
Lady Pallas’s knights won, they could claim the deer and the greyhounds
that killed them, and if Diana’s knights won, they could claim the swords
of the vanquished only. When Katherine and her ladies sent this request
to the king, he disliked the suggestion. After the jousts ended, each man
instead gained the prizes he deserved.96
That Hall’s account of Anne’s coronation in 1533 is more detailed
than his narrative of the shared coronation of Katherine and Henry
was partly because of the chronicler’s age. Born in 1497, he was still a
child in 1509 and had to rely only on others’ sources for his comments.
44 R.M. WARNICKE
Although his chronicle on the later parts of Henry’s reign also reflects
the use of documents, Hall was most likely a witness to Anne’s coro-
nation, which occurred some 24 years after Katherine’s shared one. It
clearly celebrated her queenship more elaborately than that of either of
her two Tudor predecessors.97
On May 29, 1533, in response to the king’s command, the London
crafts prepared a river welcome for Anne that included many more
barges than at the entry of 1487, some 50 in all, and more elaborate
entertainment. Anne, dressed in cloth of gold and accompanied by
many ladies and gentlemen, including her father, Thomas Boleyn, earl
of Wiltshire, set out for London from Greenwich. Another eyewit-
ness account claimed the whole river was filled with boats. The “great
dragon,” color unspecified, remained a part of the entry, but he threw
his fire from a foist, an armed barge, rather than the Bachelors’ Barge.
Another foist carried a mount on which stood a falcon crowned with “a
root of gold environed with white roses and red,” the queen’s device. As
usual, the king waited at the Tower for her arrival. The next day, he initi-
ated the ceremonies that resulted in the knighting of 18 knights of the
bath.98
On May 31, dressed in white cloth of tissue with her hair hanging
down and wearing a circlet with rich jewels, Anne rode in a litter carried
by 16 knights from the Tower to Westminster Hall on streets the citi-
zens had prepared with gravel and with colorful tapestries and streamers.
That some participants in her entry differed from those of her predeces-
sors had political and diplomatic repercussions. Leading the procession
were 12 Frenchmen representing the ambassador, Jean de sieur de Polizi,
bailly of Troyes, who processed with Carlo Capello, the Venetian ambas-
sador. Also marching in her procession were two squires representing
the duchies of Normandy and Guyenne (Aquitaine), heretofore present
only at a king’s or shared coronation; perhaps their presence reempha-
sized England’s imperial claims as expressed in the recently passed Act in
Restraint of Appeals statute.99
At 12 sites along the way, Hall gave detailed information about the
pageants and entertainment.100 Only a few will be addressed, and it
should be noted that their magnificence did not meet the standards of
the London entry for Katherine in 1501, which will be described here
in Chap. 6, when she arrived to marry Arthur. In 1533, children at
Fenchurch, dressed as merchants, recited verses to Anne in French and
in English. At the Steelyard, the Hanseatic League presented a pageant
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 45
with Mount Pernassus and with the Helicon fountain, from which four
streams of wine met together in a little cup above it. This and several
other sites had running wine in their pageants. The Leaden Hall pageant
featured red and white roses and a falcon on which an angel placed a
closed imperial crown of gold. This same pageant also featured St. Anne,
the patroness of women in labor, and her issue. One of three children
gave an oration on the fertility of the saint, who, of course, gave birth
to the Virgin Mary, and trusted that Queen Anne, who was pregnant,
would bear fruit; presumably her unborn child was expected to be a
“type of saviour.” As Richard Osburg has noted, while some of the pag-
eants did have classical motifs, this pageant at Leaden Hall, the one at
Paul’s Gate, and the one at Fleet Street appropriated a medieval theme
signified by Anne’s badge (the crowned falcon); St. Anne, the veni amica
coronoberis (Come my love, thou shalt be crowned) pageant, and the
Tower, the cardinal virtues, respectively. These produced the theme of
the queen “as the ‘virga Jesse,’” providing a religious type for her.101
Finally, her procession reached Westminster Hall, where after receiving
the void of spices and ipocras, which she shared with her ladies and lords,
she left for Whitehall.
On June 1, Whitsunday, Anne arrived at Westminster Hall clad in
purple velvet with a circlet on her head. Only those events that differed
from the previous Tudor queens’ coronations are addressed here. At the
beginning of the procession, after the knights and esquires, marched the
London aldermen. Of London citizens, usually only the lord mayor, who
had preceded the officers of arms, participated in this event. Immediately
before the queen went two noblemen carrying an ivory rod with the
dove and a scepter, as in Katherine’s procession specified as gold. Instead
of the high steward, Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk (the king’s
brother-in-law), carrying the queen’s crown, John de Vere, fifteenth Earl
of Oxford and the great chamberlain, gained that honor.
Inside the abbey, the ritual proceeded as usual until the crown-
ing, when Cranmer placed the crown of St. Edward on Anne’s head.
Traditionally archbishops crowned only kings with St. Edward’s crown.
After the choir sang Te Deum, Cranmer removed the crown, which
weighed about five pounds, from Anne’s head and replaced it with
another crown.102 Normally when the Agnus Dei began, the queen pros-
trated herself before the high altar for a second time. Hall noted only
that she knelt before the altar to receive the holy sacrament. After mass
ended, she went to St. Edward’s shrine, perhaps by way of the high altar
46 R.M. WARNICKE
as usual, and gave an offering there. She next retired “to a little place…
on the one side of the choir.” She did not exchange her clothes there, as
did Katherine of Aragon, or her crown, as did both her predecessors.
In the hall, Anne, like Elizabeth, sat at the middle table with the
archbishop to her right. Anne de Vere, dowager countess of Oxford,
was one of two ladies who held a cloth before her as she ate. Unlike at
Elizabeth’s dinner, between the archbishop and the countess stood the
earl of Oxford, with a white staff. The servers delivered three courses,
one course more than at Elizabeth’s feast. Before the third course, the
Garter king of arms cried “Largess” for the queen. On the right side of
the hall, out of the cloister of St. Stephen, was a little closet in which
the king with two ambassadors, rather than relatives, stood to watch the
feasting.103 Only the high steward and the marshal rode about the hall.
The crowds acted in a more orderly fashion than they had at Elizabeth’s
feast because Hall described them as “cheering” the participants. After
the third course, those dining had wafers and ipocras and washed, after
which they rose and stood in their places. When the queen had con-
sumed her wafers and ipocras, she washed and then walked into the
middle of the hall, where a nobleman brought a void of spice. The lord
mayor of London provided her with a refreshment in a cup of gold, from
which she drank and then returned the cup to him as a gift to thank him
for his and his brethren’s troubles. Then she departed to her chamber.
Most of the changes at Anne’s feast were probably meant to heighten
the seriousness of the ceremony and to legitimize the hereditary position
of her and her unborn child.104 This process had begun in earnest with
the pageants in the procession from the Tower to Westminster Hall, in
which she was saluted as the “virga Jesse.” For the triumphant queen,
who had been consort-in-waiting for almost 6 years, the unprecedented
command for all to rise and stand in their place as she ate and washed
represented their personal acceptance of her as their king’s consort.
The ceremonies had the overall effect, in association with convoca-
tion and parliamentary actions, of validating Henry VIII’s supremacy
over the English church and his kingdom as an empire, as expressed
in the Act in Restraint of Appeals. They also embodied a salute to his
European allies and the London citizens. Nowhere was the king’s reli-
gious dominance more expressly stated than by the deliberate decision
to have the archbishop place on her head St. Edward’s crown, the sec-
ond most sacred ornament of the regalia after his chalice at Westminster
Abbey. This event honored Anne, of course, by utilizing a king’s crown,
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 47
but it also demonstrated Henry’s power over the English church when
he instructed the abbot to alter the usage of the traditional regalia, going
back to the twelfth century, which the monks had otherwise jealously
controlled. Henry’s imperial stance was also reiterated by the unprec-
edented appearance at a queen’s coronation of squires representing
the duchies of Normandy and Aquitaine, territories once controlled by
the king’s predecessors. The participation of the French and Venetian
ambassadors in the London procession and at the feast identified them
as his allies and showed their support for his queen. Like Elizabeth
and Katherine, Anne possessed European allies. He also honored the
London citizens, who, with his officials’ help, presented a magnificent
display of pageantry during her procession through their city. They
had, in fact, only about a fortnight to design and produce these events.
Consequently, the aldermen, for the first time, as well as the mayor,
marched in the procession to the abbey and enjoyed the feast. Finally, to
honor London’s citizens, Anne returned the cup of gold to the mayor as
a gift to the city after she had drunk from it at the end of the feast.105
The next day, Henry invited the major and aldermen to watch the
jousts at the tilt before the king’s gate. Hall claimed that very few spears
were broken because the horses would not go near the tilt. This seems
to be the only extant discussion of the activities following the corona-
tion, which apparently were not as impressive as those held after the
shared coronation in 1509, except that the chronicler also pointed out
that the king met with the mayor and his “brethren” at Westminster on
Wednesday to thank them again for their contributions.106
On June 9, just days after Anne’s coronation, Sir Edward Baynton,
her vice chamberlain, wrote to her brother, George, Lord Rochford,
who was away in France, about the reaction of the queen’s ladies to
that event. This letter has been cited as evidence for associating Anne
and her attendants with courtly love. Baynton actually wrote, “As for
pastime in the Queen’s chamber was never more. If any of you that be
now departed have any ladies that they thought favored you, and some-
what would mourn at parting of their servants, I can no whit perceive
the same by their dancing and pastime they do use here.” This letter
indicates the rejoicing of the queen’s ladies, who did not mourn because
they had been left behind. Lord Rochford was, of course, a married
man, and the queen was then 6 months pregnant. While admitting they
were dancing, the vice chamberlain did not claim that the queen was a
participant or that the ladies’ partners were men; women often danced
48 R.M. WARNICKE
Notes
1. Michael Jones and Malcolm Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady
Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 63.
2. W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2012), p. 122.
3. Joanna Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship
1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 57, specu-
lated that he meant “to strengthen the loyalty of the Lancastrians”
but does not believe it was a “major motivating factor.” See also A.J.
Pollard, “Elizabeth Woodville and her Historians,” Traditions and
Transformations in Late Medieval England, ed. Douglas Biggs, Sharon
Michalove, and A. Compton Reeves (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 145–158.
For a defense of the marriage, see Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs,
“A Most Benevolent Queen: Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s Reputation,
Her Piety and Her Books,” The Ricardian, The Journal of the Richard
III Society, X(1995), 214–145.
4. Lucia Diaz Pascual, “Jaquetta of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford and
Lady Rivers (c.1416–1472),” The Ricardian: The Journal of the Richard
III Society, XXI(2011), 67–91.
5. Michael Jones, “Edward IV and the Beaufort Family: Conciliation in
Early Yorkist Politics,” The Ricardian: Journal of the Richard III Society,
VI(1983), 258–265.
6. Pascual, “Jaquetta,” p. 81; David Baldwin, Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of
the Princes in the Tower (Thrupp: Sutton Publishing, 2002), p. 1.
7. Fiona Downie, “Queenship in Late Medieval Scotland,” Scottish
Kingship, 1306–1542: Essays in Honour of Norman MacDougall, ed.
Michael Brown and Roland Tanner (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2008),
p. 233.
8. Arlene Okerlund, Elizabeth Wydeville: The Slandered Queen (Stroud:
Tempus, 2005), pp. 31–32, 38, noted Burgundy’s importance but blamed
Edward’s decision on his need to control events, on his admiration for
Elizabeth, and perhaps the warmth of her large number of s iblings.
9. Pascual, “Jaquetta,” p. 70; E. Carlton Williams, My Lord of Bedford:
Being a Life of John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, Brother of Henry
V and Regent of France (London: Longman, 1963), pp. 223–224.
50 R.M. WARNICKE
only anointed the king with the chrism but in a queen’s sole coronation,
the chrism was to be used.
86. Leland, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV. 224; “Articles,” pp. 123–124,
also indicated that she was to be anointed on the back.
87. Leland, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, IV, 228–229; earlier tournaments for
Henry’s own coronation were postponed. See Anglo, “Tudor Dynasty,”
p. 10. For the imprest, see W.R. Streitberger, Court Revels, 1485–1559
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), p. 239.
88. Reginald Sharpe, London and the Kingdom: A Study Derived Mainly
from the Archives at Guildhall, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green &
co., 1894), I, 344.
89. Ibid., p. 389.
90. BL. Cotton Tiberius E viii, fn. 90. See also LP, I, 81–82. For Henry
VIII’s coronation, see Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval
Ceremony in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), pp. 12–39.
91. Hall, Henry VIII, I, 4–7.
92. Blair, Crown Jewels, I, 304–306.
93. Ibid., I, 149–150 l. Loach, “Function of Ceremonial,” 43–68.
94. Hall, Henry VIII, I, 8–10.
95. Ibid., I, 10–13.
96. Ibid., I, 13.
97. Peter Herman, “Edward Hall (1497–1547), lawyer and chronicler,”
ODNB. www.dnboxforddictionary.com (accessed June 3, 2016),
98. LP, VI, 584; Hall, Henry VIII, II, 229–32.
99. Hall, Henry VIII, II, 232–236, for the procession to the hall. See
also Gordon Kipling, “‘He That Saw It Would Not Believe It:’ Anne
Boleyn’s Royal Entry into London,” Civic Ritual and Drama, ed.
Alexandra Johnston and Wim Húsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), pp.
39–79.
100. For the speeches, see “Leland’s and Udall’s Verses Before the
Coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn,” Ballads from Manuscripts ed.
Frederick J. Furnivall, 2 vols. (London: Ballad Society, 1868–1873), I,
364–412.
101. Hunt, Drama, p. 59; Richard Osburg, “Humanist Allusions and
Medieval Themes: The ‘Receyving of Queen Anne, London, 1533,”
Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honor of Leslie J. Workman,
ed. Richard Utz and Tom Shippey (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998),
pp. 27–41.
102. Blair, Crown Jewels, II, 283, 306.
103. Ibid., II, 241. The banquet is on pp. 239–242.
104. For the role of ceremony, see Hunt, Drama of Coronation, pp. 39–52.
2 MARRIAGES AND CORONATIONS 57
Income and Expenditures
cooks should prepare good meats and dress them well, and that the
gentleman ushers should keep daily records of the bread, ale, and wine
consumed.21
In the king’s absence, his queen’s household remained intact and
independent, enabling her to schedule activities of interest to her, such
as visiting relatives. In addition, as noted, the queens possessed Baynard’s
Castle, their official London residence, which the kings rarely visited.
The consorts also held other houses in the London area: Katherine Parr,
for example, owned Chelsea, Hanworth, and Ditton, the latter two of
which Anne Boleyn had earlier possessed.22 Despite access to private resi-
dences and living in separate lodgings at the palaces, the queens’ officials
were not entirely distinct from the monarchs’; a fluidity existed for sev-
eral reasons. The kings often referred to their relatives’ officials as their
servants. In 1486, a grant on the Patent Rolls noted that Henry VII
had provided an annuity for his “servant, Nicholas Gaynesford, esquire,
usher of the chamber of the king’s consort,” and in 1490, he offered
an annuity to his “servant, Richard Howell, marshal of the household of
Arthur.” In 1515, when Henry VIII named Mountjoy as the governor of
Tournai, the king identified him as his councilor and the lord chamber-
lain of Katherine of Aragon.23
Furthermore, many of the chamber appointees worked three-month
shifts, thereby increasing the number of those who held royal office
without adding to costs. These part-time positions gave them the flex-
ibility to seek other offices. In 1503, Henry VII appointed his “servant
Thomas Holden, yeoman of the chamber” of his queen, as keeper of the
royal household at Westminster Palace. Even those without this flexibil-
ity could amass several positions. Wymond Carew, for example, began
his career as a receiver general for Henry VIII’s duchy of Cornwall; he
kept this position and hired a deputy to do the work while serving as
receiver general to both Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr and also
holding the position of treasurer of first fruits and tenths.24 An indi-
vidual could utilize his office in the queen’s household to gain advance-
ment to the king’s. For example, Sir Roger Cotton began his career as
master of the horse to Elizabeth of York, ultimately becoming a knight
for the king’s body, and in 1546, Laurence Lee, a gentleman usher of
Katherine Parr, won appointment as one of his sergeants at arms.25 Some
men could attend both the queen and the king in similar capacities. In
1546, for example, Anthony Bourchier served as auditor for Henry VIII
and Katherine Parr.26 In January 1545, Henry even sent his last queen’s
66 R.M. WARNICKE
was called on to settle her debts. In June 1545, Stephen Vaughan, the
crown’s chief financial agent in the Low Countries, corresponded with
Paget, then one of the king’s two secretaries of state and a privy coun-
cillor, asking his assistance in obtaining the money that Katherine Parr
owed him for the work of his wife, a silk woman, who died in September
1544. Vaughan requested Paget to seek aid from Carew, the queen’s
receiver general, but his pleas for help continued. In his last surviving
letter to Paget about this matter in January 1546, Vaughan admitted the
queen’s council had abated some of funds due him, but he complained,
“Yet still I remain unpaid.” Whether he received the full amount remains
unknown.34
The king appointed the members of his consort’s council, which tra-
dition has somewhat erroneously claimed had the same membership as
the council of the duchy of Lancaster, although with the stipulation that
the queens’ accounts remained separate from those of the duchy. Many
members of the consorts’ councils and household are identifiable, but
the number of them also serving in the duchy’s council appears small. At
one time or another, a few members of the duchy’s council also served
three of the queens. In 1505, after Elizabeth of York’s death, Sir Richard
Empson held the chancellor’s position, the most important of the duchy,
but from 1485 he also served as the duchy’s attorney general. He did
not sit on Elizabeth’s council but did act as a justice of eyre for her for-
ests. By 1499, Sir Thomas Lovell, Henry VII’s and Elizabeth’s treasurer
of the chamber, gained appointment as apprentice-at-law for the duchy.
It is likely that the clerk of the duchy’s council, William Heydon, was
hers and Katherine of Aragon’s clerk of their councils.35 On Katherine’s
council also sat John Baker, who became an apprentice-at-law for the
duchy in 1526 and who later in 1535, during the queenship of Anne
Boleyn, served as the duchy’s attorney general. Finally, Paget, who held
the position of secretary for Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard,
gained the chancellorship of the duchy in 1547, after Henry VIII’s
death. Of the central offices, Elizabeth of York’s officials and the duchy’s
shared more membership than did those of her successors.36 Many mem-
bers of their councils and households also held positions as stewards,
constables, and escheators of the various manors, honors, castles, forests,
and other properties managed by the duchy’s council.
Probably the queens met with and addressed their councils soon after
their royal marriages, although the evidence for this procedure survives
only for Anne Boleyn’s queenship in an account written by her chaplain,
68 R.M. WARNICKE
Jane Seymour’s revenue had a value of £4623 1s. 11 3/4d. Even though
the Anglo–Cleves marriage treaty promised Anne an income of 5000
marks (about £3330), her jointure assignments amounted to about 4644
marks.49 Henry probably limited her financial support because he had
waived her dowry; if the marriage had not been troubled from the onset,
he might have increased her income. It was important to his social stand-
ing and to the image of the crown in the wider European community
that his wife should have the revenue necessary to live like a queen.50
He may have foreseen this financial development, for he waited until
1541 before beginning to lease some of Jane’s lands that he had not
included in Anne of Cleves’s jointure; for reasons unknown, he decided
not to place them in Katherine Howard’s jointure either. Between 1541
and 1545, he made 15 grants of property formerly held by Jane, most
of which had belonged to the duchy of Lancaster but one had formerly
belonged to John, Lord Hussey.51
Finally, totals for Katherine Howard’s and Katherine Parr’s assigned
lands are not precise, perhaps because they no longer had to be reported
for parliamentary action. A comparison of their estates to those of their
predecessors is difficult because the amounts of the individual properties
are often not indicated. In actual numbers of estates and fees, their join-
tures seem as substantial as those of the queens who preceded Anne of
Cleves. Moreover, while it is true that the estates of Katherine of Aragon,
which were basically those of Elizabeth of York, belonged to the duchy
of Lancaster, some of the property of Henry VIII’s other wives derived
from new sources, as he took the opportunity of attainders and monas-
tic dissolutions to provide them with parcels of that newly acquired
property. Besides the duchy lands, which seem to have been the same
as those granted to his first wife, he continued Anne Boleyn’s control of
the estates assigned to her in Wales when he ennobled her as the mar-
chioness of Pembroke, as well as two manors she had gained before that
ennoblement. Jane Seymour’s jointure included possessions of former
monastic lands in Essex, Surrey, and Middlesex, as well as those of Lord
Hussey. Rumors spread by people unacquainted with her claimed that
she opposed the dissolution of the monasteries, and it is true that she
did attempt unsuccessfully to save the Priory of Catesby, about which
the dissolution commissioners had earlier written a favorable report
on May 12, 1536. However, it is also true that the people who knew
her personally, including Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, Sir
Thomas Warley, a servant of Lord Lisle, and even the king, believed that
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 71
from time to time. The lists identifying the actual resident women of
Elizabeth of York in 1503 and Katherine of Aragon in 1509 do not dis-
tinguish, except for the maidens and the chamberers, their specific court
positions. In a document of 1519 concerning the queen’s ladies, how-
ever, references can be found to 2 ladies of the privy chamber and 7
ladies and gentlewomen.55 A list dated in 1526 also refers to members of
Katherine of Aragon’s privy chamber. By Katherine Howard’s queenship,
the records identify the women more specifically as ladies of the privy
chamber (four), gentlewomen of the privy chamber (four), ladies and
gentlewomen attendant (nine), maidens of honor (five) and chamberers
(four). This list names only five maidens, but often the queens appointed
six or seven. Dakota Hamilton has determined that in all, 45 women
staffed Katherine Parr’s chamber in 1547, and each of them in turn had
servants.56
Although Katherine of Aragon possessed Spanish attendants and did
not become queen until more than 6 years after Elizabeth of York’s
death, evidence suggests that as many as eight ladies and gentlewomen
of her mother-in-law might also have served Katherine. The above-
cited list for Katherine does not include the names of the maidens, but
other records indicate that Anne Stanhope (future countess of Hertford)
served her in that position.57 However, only one of Anne Boleyn’s
maidens, the future Queen Jane, seems to have also been a maiden of
Katherine of Aragon. Dame Maud Parr and Dame Elizabeth Boleyn, the
mothers of two of Henry VIII’s future queens, as well as Anne Boleyn
(later married name, Shelton), an aunt of the namesake queen, func-
tioned as Katherine of Aragon’s gentlewomen. Sometimes it proved a
disadvantage to employ gentlewomen because they might act as spies.
In 1536, Anne’s attendant, named Margery Horsman, gave evidence
against her mistress but continued on at court to serve Jane; Eleanor
Manners, countess of Rutland, held positions in the privy chambers of
Jane, Anne of Cleves, and Katherine Howard. The latter had the mis-
fortune also to be served in her privy chamber by Jane, Viscountess
Rochford, who played a pivotal role in her fall from grace.58 Both Jane’s
and Anne of Cleves’s privy chamber included Mary Radcliffe, countess of
Sussex. Widowed in 1542, Lady Sussex married Henry Fitzalan, earl of
Arundel, and served in Katherine Parr’s household. Two of Jane’s cham-
berers managed to keep their positions with Anne of Cleves. In addition,
the English-born queens often provided their female relatives and associ-
ates opportunities to serve in their households.59
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 73
some of the women might be “too weak” to serve her, but they could
“pass the time with her at play.”61
Gentlewomen of their native lands often accompanied foreign-born
queens to their new kingdoms with the expectation of marrying wealthy,
noble husbands. At the funeral of Henry VII, the clerk noted that
Katherine, princess of Wales, had two ladies, Dame Agnes Vanegas and
Dame Maria de Gavara, four gentlewomen, including Maria de Salinas,
and two chamberers, Kateryn de Garvara and Isabel de Venegas.62 Two
of them, Maria de Salinas and Dane Agnes Vanegas, subsequently mar-
ried English noblemen, William, Lord Willoughby de Eresby and Lord
Mountjoy, respectively. By contrast, Henry sent the German attend-
ants of Anne of Cleves back to their homeland a few weeks before he
obtained the annulment of his marriage to her.63
Because the English maidens also gained their positions with the hope
of successful matchmaking, the queens surely became involved in their
betrothal negotiations, but the king’s influence must never be dismissed
even in those affairs. In 1524, for example, Sir Thomas More informed
Wolsey that an unidentified Mr. Broke had promised not to marry with-
out Henry’s advice, as he was intended for one of the queen’s maidens.
Whether the king intervened at the bequest of Katherine of Aragon or
on his own volition is not clear by the letter’s contents. Henry had a per-
sonal interest in his consorts’ maidens since he probably married three of
them, fathered an illegitimate child, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond
and Somerset, with another, Elizabeth Blount, in 1519, and, as already
noted, appointed English maidens to the household of Anne of Cleves.64
Since except perhaps at high holiday times the only never-married
women at court were the queens’ youthful maidens, special attention
focused on their behavior. William Latimer, Anne Boleyn’s chaplain, also
recalled that after meeting with her council, she summoned the maidens
and her mother of the maids, Mrs. Marshall, “to move them to mod-
esty and chastity,” to charge them to read the English Bible that sat on
a desk in her chamber, and to refrain from reading or writing “wanton”
poetry. Upon discovering that her maiden, Mary Shelton, had written
“idle poems” in her prayer book, the queen “rebuked” her and ordered
Mrs. Marshall to keep “a more vigilant eye to her charge.”65 Anne also
defied Sir Francis Weston in 1536 when he entered her lodgings looking
for Mary Shelton. After Anne’s later arrest for adultery with five men,
including Weston, she related that encounter to Sir William Kingston,
constable of the Tower of London.66
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 75
Daubeney, the king’s lord chamberlain, his country manor, not yet the
splendid structure Wolsey later built, had become a regular destination
of the royal family during the rebuilding of Sheen as Richmond Palace
and remained a popular country retreat. The entire amount spent on
escorting the queen to royal palaces and this manor on the Thames River
during these last months of her life amounted to £13, 1s. 4d., break-
ing down to about £2 for each occasion. Entries also indicate the need
to keep the barge in good order; they include dressing the bottom with
tallow, outfitting it with new ropes, and decorating it with 272 yards of
coarse material, which was dyed with blue and heraldry red, possibly for
banners. 74
Several entries note the upkeep and repair of Baynard’s Castle and the
purchase of various household furnishing for places unspecified. Security
seems to have been an ongoing concern at the castle, since she ordered
bolts and locks placed on hall doors, a garden door, a stairway door, and
other doors unidentified. In addition, a few entries refer to reparations,
utilizing sand and brick at the castle, as well as the reinforcement of its
windows. For unspecified places, Elizabeth also required the purchase of
various items, such as rolls of wax, materials for a chair, a curtain for a
portable bed, and the making of a bedstead.75
Whether by horse on the summer progresses or by barge the remain-
der of the year, the movements of the queen, her ladies, and gentle-
women around the kingdom required complicated arrangements.
Indeed, the high social status of the traveler meant that her chosen route
had to be planned well in advance, and those appointed to assist her had
to be well prepared for the trip.
As for the queen’s jewels she entrusted them to two grooms of her
chamber, who guarded them on her travels. Obviously their tasks
became more difficult during the summer progresses, when, for exam-
ple, over a six-day period, they moved from Richmond through various
places, including Woodstock, to Langley. For packing her possessions,
her servants obtained a stole (a large packing chest for clothes and other
items), carts, and chariots (a larger cart drawn by strong horses) to haul
her necessities. She occasionally even required guides for her journeys.
Two entries also refer to the need to obtain food for the horse of Agnes
Dean, her laundress. The queen’s summer progresses made it especially
necessary to see to the good management of her stable, and she regularly
granted sums for its upkeep and the care of her horses. Records indi-
cate in addition that the men responsible for the stable obtained tapets
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 79
or clothes for a sumpter horse and hired a man to tame or break in one
of her horses.76
Besides granting extra funds to servants for performing special duties,
such as delivering messages, the queen singled out some of them for
rewards. Among them: William Paston, of the wardship of her beds,
enjoyed a grant from her for his wedding clothes; Nicholas Grey, clerk
of the works at Richmond, obtained funds for his losses when his house
burned down; Nicholas Matthew, yeoman of her chamber, received an
award toward his charges because of an injury to him by a servant of
Sir William Sandes; and when Anne Say, one of her ladies, became ill in
September, the queen paid for the cost of boarding her for six weeks at
Woodstock and later at Abingdon. She supplied several of her attend-
ants with clothing, giving no explanation as to why she favored them. At
various times, the footmen received doublets, linen cloth for shirts, and
other apparel. She paid three women each, probably her gentlewomen,
for one of the following: the hemming of a kirtle, the lining of a gown,
and the mending of two gowns. Finally, she saw to the needs of William,
her fool: she granted William Worthy, his keeper, 2s. per month for his
board, and in July, when he became ill, she provided funds for his diet
and other necessaries. At various times, she purchased items of clothing
for him. Later queens—Anne Boleyn and Katherine Parr, for example—
also provided clothing for male and female fools. Not only members of
the royal family but other important individuals also possessed fools,
including Richard Foxe, lord privy seal and bishop of Winchester. These
fools were sometimes hunchbacks or dwarfs. In addition, they were often
associated with fertility and had deep roots in saturnalian festivities.77
For Elizabeth’s personal needs, as might be expected, she lavished
funds on clothing, jewels, silver, and gold. This chapter will later cover
these topics also for her six daughers-in-law generally, not specifically
just for Elizabeth. Also interesting for insights into her reign are the
entertainments for which she paid and the loans she requested from her
acquaintances. At wages of £3, 6s. 8d., annually, she employed three
minstrels, Richard Denouse, Jayn Marcazin, and Marques Loryden.
Members of the royal family seem to have shared each other’s minstrels
since she rewarded those of the king and her two eldest surviving chil-
dren.78 Evidence of this royal sharing seems to be supported by entries
in the accounts of John Heron, Henry VII’s treasurer of the chamber. In
them are several references to the king’s rewarding the queen’s minstrels
and fiddlers in amounts ranging from 10s. to 40s. He also rewarded the
80 R.M. WARNICKE
dispersed funds at her commandment. She signed each folio with “Anne
the Queen.” Basically it refers to rewards and payments from January to
May, and thus has many fewer entries than Elizabeth’s accounts. Like
the first Tudor queen, Anne of Cleves received gifts: a hind, a grey-
hound, a trout, a parrot, sweet water, apples, a leek from a Welshman,
chickens, salmon, and, on May 8, some unspecified animal flesh from
Agnes, dowager duchess of Norfolk. It is not known whether either
Lady Norfolk or the queen was aware that two weeks earlier Henry had
granted Katherine Howard, his future fifth wife and the duchess’s step-
granddaughter, the goods and chattels of two felons.83 Anne of Cleves
also lost money at gambling: 9s. for playing cards, 9s. for playing dice,
and another 37s. 4d. for playing dice, all in April. On May 8 she again
lost 9d. for playing cards. Among other amusements, she rewarded a
tumbler who performed for her. She must also have enjoyed listening to
Prince Edward’s minstrels, whom she rewarded three times; the second
of the three entries, on April 8, noted that the minstrels played before
the “king’s grace danced and your grace.” The ambiguous wording
might have meant that only the king danced. Little information survives
about her household, but she did financially assist two of her servants’
marriages. In April, she granted for the costs of their weddings: £7, 2s.
6d. to a footman and £15 to her maiden, Katherine Carey, daughter of
Anne Boleyn’s sister, Mary, who wed Robert Knollys. Finally, Anne gave
rewards to several persons described as poor.84
Another source of the consorts’ revenue was Queen’s Gold, a tradi-
tional payment of 10% to them, for example, from voluntary licenses for
the alienations of lands or from voluntary pardons for enclosures. In the
thirteenth century, Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I, actually col-
lected £4875 worth of Queen’s Gold, an amount larger than her dower,
but over time, more and more resistance to paying these fees developed.
In 1466–1467, Elizabeth Woodville’s revenue from them amounted only
to £37, and it later dwindled to about £7. No exact amounts are avail-
able for the Tudor queens.85
In addition to money sent directly to the queens for their use, the
kings disbursed some income to them through their privy purses,
the records of which exist for Henry VII from 1491 to 1505 and for
Henry VIII from 1529 to 1532. An important issue for Henry VII was
Elizabeth of York’s debts. In 1493, they cost him £1314, 1s. 6d. In sub-
sequent years, he loaned her money for her debts: £100 in 1494, £2000
(“to be repaid,” it was noted) in 1497, and £500 in 1502. In 1495,
82 R.M. WARNICKE
he also paid £66, 13s. 4d., for gold that was delivered to her. Smaller
sums of money went for various items—for example, over £40 for cloth-
ing. One interesting record in 1497 is a payment to her of £10 to cover
the cost of the items she used to adorn his salad or helmet.86
The records of Henry VIII’s privy purse expenditures exist in more
detail than those of Henry VII. The years from 1491 to 1505 cover
only about 130 pages, while the years 1529 to 1532 extend to almost
300 pages. Because of the short period of time covered in Henry VIII’s
reign, the dates will mostly be omitted. Another difference between
the two documents is that Anne Boleyn, the queen-in-waiting, received
many gifts, while the consort at that time, Katherine of Aragon, is almost
missing from these records. A third difference, perhaps because he was
courting Anne, is considerable references relating to entertainment and
sports. Henry spent 45s. 4d. on bows and arrows for her, paid £29 for
the cost of her greyhound’s participation in the killing of a cow, and
delivered £5, 40s., to her for playing cards in two different grants. After
they traveled to Calais in 1532, many references can be found to the
king’s losing money to her playing cards, sometimes only to her but also
often to gentlemen of his privy chamber. At Calais, Henry lost 15s. to
her and then £4, 13s. 4d., to her and Sir Francis Bryan. Back home at
Greenwich that autumn, they continued playing cards, with the king los-
ing various sums of money to her, Bryan, and Sir Francis Weston.87
No debts of hers are mentioned, but he did provide her with a New
Year’s gift of £100 and another gift of £110 and various kinds of cloth
costing about £26. He also granted her £217, 9s. 8d., for items called
“stuff,” and he paid £4d. 18s. to garnish her desk with gold. These
grants are representative of the almost forty that she received from his
privy purse during this period.88 At the same time, since he was attempt-
ing to end his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, only three references
can be found to her. He gave “by way of reward” 40s. to her pages in
December 1529 and 1530. In December 1531, when she was no longer
at court, he paid a reward of 20s. to a servant of hers.89
Other grants provided more revenue and other items to the queens or
members of their household. Sometimes confusion existed about what
source of income should be used. In 1519, for example, the king pro-
vided Lady Margaret Bryan with an annuity of £50 and a tun of Gascon
wine for her services to him and the queen, to be paid by the clerk of the
hanaper, an office in chancery. Subsequently, Wolsey, the lord chancellor,
amended the bill to order it paid from the exchequer instead.90 Other
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 83
Notes
1. Rulers could take a few of their officials with them and leave most of the
court behind, as Henry VIII did in 1540 when he met Anne of Cleves
at Rochester.
2. Frederick Dietz, English Public Finance: 1485–1641 (London: Barnes
and Noble, 1964), p. 89; C.M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late
Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 5–6.
3. Simon Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and
Court Life, 1460–1547 (New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon
Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1993), p. 34.
4. Thurley, Royal Palaces, pp. 1, 27, 50–51; Edward Hall, Henry VIII, ed.
Charles Whibley, 2 vols. (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1904), II, 183.
5. Retha M. Warnicke, “The Court,” A Companion to Tudor Britain, ed.
Robert Tittler and Norman Jones (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004),
pp. 63–65; David Loades, The Tudor Court (London: Batsford, 1986),
pp. 41–61.
6. Thurley, Royal Palaces, pp. 70–72; For progresses and the reasons the
Tudor kings went on them, see Neil Samman, “The Progresses of
Henry VIII,” The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety, ed.
Diarmaid MacCulloch (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 59–73.
7. Scottish Record Society. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the
Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie,
21 vols. in 35 and Addenda (London: HMSO, 1862–1932). V,
Treasurer of the Chamber’s Accounts, 1528, XVI, 804 (Hereafter, LP).
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 87
50. Statutes of the Realm, III, 28 Henry VIII, c. 45; LP XVI, 503, XVIII-ii,
231, XIX-i, 141(133).
51. LP, XVI, 878(56), XVIII-i, 100 (25), 226 (3, 15, 52, 94), 346 (23, 35,
41, 43), 476 (7, 24, 74, 82); XX-i, 465 (77).
52. The editors of LP, X, 383, misplaced a letter referring to the queen’s
support for Catesby in March but the commissioners’ May report to
which it referred had not then been written. Mortimer Levine explained
this discrepancy in “The Place of Women in Tudor Government,”
Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G.R. Elton from His American
Friends, ed. Delloyd Guth and John McKenna (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), pp. 120–121. See also for Jane and the dissolu-
tion, LP, XI, 13, 230, 860, XII-ii, 34.
53. LP, XV, 21, XVI, 503(25), XVIII-ii, 23, XIX-i, 141 (133). LP Addenda,
1494, notes Katherine Howard’s jointure as £3352 19s. 1 1/4d.,
which must have been a preliminary figure. This amount was broken
down among lands granted under the seal of the duchy of Lancaster,
the Great Seal, and that of Augmentations. The amount from Lancaster
appears inadequate at £208 8s. 1 1/4d. The editors inserted a date of
January 14, 1541 on the document probably because the official grants
to Katherine took place on January 14 and 15, 1541. See LP, XVI. 454
(25, 26). It is most unlikely that her jointure was as inadequate as the
one of Anne of Cleves, especially as many contemporaries believed he
doted on his fifth queen; for Katherine Parr, see LP, XX-i, 3(99); T.N.A
E 315/479 (7).
54. LP, IV, 4449; V, 330; Hamilton, “Katherine Parr,” pp. 154–155.
55. LP, III, 491.
56. Ibid.; LP, IV, 1939 (7), XV, 21. Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr had
seven. See BL Add. MS. 45,716A, f. 16; Hamilton, “Katherine Parr,”
p. 88.
57. T.N.A. SP 10/1, ff. 134–135v.
58. Byrne, Lisle Letters, II, pp. 331–332; LP, I, 474, III, Miscellaneous,
1519, wages from 20 February to 4 March, 491, IV, 882, VI, 1634,
X, 873, 1165, XV, 21. For the evidence against Anne Boleyn, see Retha
M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the
Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
p. 214 and for Katherine Howard, see Warnicke, Wicked Women of
Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012), pp. 68–76.
59. LP, III, 491, VI, 636, XV, 21; Pamela Stanton, “Arundell, Mary
[married names Mary Radcliffe, countess of Sussex; Mary Fitzalan;
countess of Arundell] (d. 1557) ODNB www.oxforddnb.com (accessed
March 16, 2009).
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 91
60. Warnicke, Wicked Women, pp. 30, 50, 58–60, 87; Byrne, Lisle Letters,
IV, p. 191; for the list of Anne of Cleves’s maidens, see T.N.A. E
101/422/15 under Easter Wages 1540; For Mrs. Stonor and Anne
Boleyn, see LP, X, 793, 797. For a chart indicating which ladies, gen-
tlewomen, and maidens served between 1537 and 1547, see Hamilton,
“Katherine Parr,” pp. 124–126. For the order about not molesting the
king, see LP, XVI, 127.
61. LP, XIX-ii, 201.
62. LP, I, 20.
63. Warnicke, Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 173.
64. LP, IV, 882, V, 1548 also suggests a Mr. Elderton for Mr. Seymour’s
daughter. This could have been Jane Seymour; LP, I, 474, cites the let-
ter of the Spanish ambassador, Luis Peroz, about rumors at court that
Henry VIII was interested in the married sister of Edward Stafford,
duke of Buckingham, named Elizabeth, who was a gentlewoman of
the queen and also the first wife of Robert Radcliffe, future first Earl of
Sussex.
65. Dowling, “Latymer’s Chronickille,” pp. 62–63; T.N.A. E 101 421/13,
f. 3v. for Mrs. Marshall; for the Sheltons, see Francis Blomefield, An
Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, second
edition, 11 vols. (London: W. Miller, 1827), V, 266–268.
66. LP, X, 793. Incredibly, this episode has been cited as evidence of her acting
out a courtly-love scene. See Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn:
‘The Most Happy’ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 335–336, 340, 346.
67. Byrne, Lisle, IV, no. 887.
68. LP, I, 474, IV, 4442, VI, 923 (1, 10, 12, 13), 924. G.W. Bernard, “The
Rise of Sir William Compton, Early Tudor Courtier,” English Historical
Review, 96(1981), 754–777, claimed that Henry wanted to have sexual
relations with both sisters. Bernard also cited two documents from late
July 1533, which have responses obtained by some royal commission-
ers, including Sir John Daunce, who interrogated the wife of Robert
Amadas, former master of the jewel house. In the first one, they noted
Mrs. Amadas claimed to own a book of prophesies, admitted that
Daunce had arranged for the king and her to have sexual relations at
Compton’s London house, argued that there was no good married
woman in England, except for Katherine of Aragon, Elizabeth, duchess
of Norfolk, and herself, and denounced Anne Boleyn as a harlot. The
second document detailed the questioning by those commissioners of
her husband about the more than £1000 in plate and jewelry that he
owed the king. Obviously, Mrs. Amadas was not a credible witness. The
king actually had used Compton’s London home for a meeting with
his sister, Margaret, queen of Scotland, in 1516. Perhaps, this incident
92 R.M. WARNICKE
led to rumors about what he was doing there. Later, in “Compton, Sir
William (1482–1528), courtier, ODNB www.oxforddnb.com (accessed
June 7, 2015), Bernard said about the Hastings’ business only that
Wolsey had cited Compton for adultery.
69. Rosalind Marshall, “Douglas, Lady Margaret, Countess of Lennox,
noblewoman,” ODNB www.oxforddnb.com (accessed June 29, 2015);
T.N.A. SP 1/167, fs. 153, 157–159; Susan James, “William Parr, mar-
quess of Northampton (1513–1571), nobleman and courtier,” ODNB
www.oxforddnb.com (accessed May 18, 2015); LP, XX–ii, 900.
70. LP, IV, 6121.
71. For studies clothing, see, for example, Susan Vincent, Dressing the
Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (New York: Berg, 2003); Maria
Hayward, Rich Apparel, Clothing, and the Law in Henry VIII’s England
(Farnham, Ashgate, 2009); Maria Hayward and Philip Ward, eds. The
Inventory of King Henry VIII: Volume II, Textile and Dress (London:
Harvey Miller Publishers for The Society of Antiquaries, 2013); Kate
Mertes, The English Noble Household: 1250–1600: Good Governance and
Politic Rule (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 103.
72. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 2, 4, 5, 10, 18, 23, 29–30, 36–37,
43, 45–48, 51–54, 63–64, 74, 81, 85, 87, 89; see also Historical
Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of
Rutland, Fourteenth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical
Manuscripts, Appendix 1 [C. 7476]; [Cd. 2606]) 4 vols. (London:
HMSO, 1888–1905), IV, 265, 269, 272; Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos,
The Culture of Giving: Informal Support and Gift-Exchange in Early
Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),
pp. 4–5; see also, Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift Exchange in
Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); LP
Addenda, 467 for Katherine of Aragon’s “merry” acceptance of a ring
in 1525.
73. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 15, 37–38, 45–46, 48, 78–79, 84.
74. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 7, 15, 60, 80, 94–95, 176; www.hrp.
org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/HamptonCourtsorigin (accessed May
25, 2015).
75. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 16, 20, 25–26, 51, 56.
76. Ibid., pp. 14, 18, 29–30, 40, 44–47, 53, 59, 62, 64, 79, 93, 97, 104,
262–264; Norbert Ohler, The Medieval Traveller, trans. Caroline Hillier
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 29–30.
77. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 4–6, 10–11, 13–14, 18, 23, 26, 38,
46, 52, 61, 75, 80–81, 91; LP, X, 913, XXI-I, 645, 1165; T.N.A. E
101/422/15; the last one at court was during the reign of George II.
See E.J. Wood, Giants and Dwarfs (London: Richard Bentley, 1868),
p. 328.
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 93
78. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 2, 41, 44, 78, 86, 91, 100.
79. Sydney Anglo, “The Court Festivals of Henry VII, A Study Based Upon
the Account Books of John Heron, treasurer of the chamber,” Bulletin
of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 43(1960), 28, 30, 31, 32, 34,
38, 4l. The queen’s minstrels were not disbanded after her death, as the
king continued to reward their playing. For Anne Boleyn, see LP, X,
793 and MS. 1070 at the Royal College of Music, London; Lisa Ann
Urkevich, “Anne Boleyn, A Music Book, and the Northern Renaissance
Courts: Music Manuscript 1070 of the Royal College of Music,
London,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1997. Urkevich
successfully challenged Edward Lowinsky’s claim in “A Music Book for
Anne Boleyn,” Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K.
Ferguson, eds. J.G. Rowe and W.H. Stockdale (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1971), 160–235, that the manuscript was created espe-
cially for Anne. In 1989, I earlier questioned his characterization of
drawings in it, supposedly made by Mark Smeaton, as representative of
Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. See Warnicke, Anne Boleyn, pp.
248–251.
80. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 31, 33, 36, 52–53, 58, 88–89; LP,
XIX-ii, 688, for example, for Katherine Parr’s greyhounds and crossbow
and T.N.A. E 101/422/15, for Anne of Cleves. See also for lap dogs,
LP, IX, 99, X, 1193.
81. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 8, 12(4), 13, 18, 57, 77, 92.
82. Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, pp. 28–29; LP, II, 1652, 3487, 3489,
XII-1, 483, 494, XIX-ii, 688.
83. T.N.A. E 101/422/15; LP, XV, 613(12).
84. T.N.A. E 101/422/15; for playing cards, see Laura Smoller, “Playing
Cards and Popular Culture in Sixteenth-Century Nurenberg,” Sixteenth
Century Journal, XVII (1986), 183–214.
85. William Prynne, Aurum Reginae (London: Thomas Ratcliffe, 1668),
pp. 4–7, 120–122; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parliament in
Fifteenth Century England, ed. Cecil Clough (London: Hambledon
Press, 1985), p. 255; Crawford, “King’s Burden,” p. 52; T. F. Tout,
Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: The
Wardrobe, The Chamber, and The Small Seals, 6 vols. (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1920–1933), V, 263–267. It is possible
that the reference to payment of queen’s silver for lands that an anony-
mous purchaser obtained in 1534 (amount not named) was actually for
queen’s Gold. See LP, VII, 1672.
86. Samuel Bentley, ed., Extracts from the Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry
the Seventh from December 7, 1491 to March 20, 1505 (London: William
Pickering, 1827), pp. 95–97, 111–112.
94 R.M. WARNICKE
87. Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Eighth
from November MDXXIX to December MDXXXII (London: William
Pickering, 1827), pp. 48, 50, 98, 131, 267, 275.
88. Ibid., pp. 4, 13, 72, 97, 101, 123, 130.
89. Ibid., pp. 14, 101, 183.
90. LP, III, 361.
91. LP, II, the King’s Book of Payments, p. 1441, LP, V, Treasurer of the
Chamber Accounts, 1528.
92. CPR, II, 585; LP, I, 683, 1602, 3226.
93. LP, IX, 779; Thurley, Royal Palaces, pp. 78, 81.
94. Maria Hayward, ed. The Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry VII and
Henry VIII (London: London Record Society, Boydell and Brewer
Press, 2012), pp. 9–10, 18, 28–29, 38–39 45–46, 195, 242. The
accounts are published for Henry VII from 1498–1499 and for Henry
VIII from 1510–1511. In addition, Hayward included particulars of
the accounts of Sir Ralph Sadler in 1543 and 1544. For Warbeck, see
Scottish Record Office, Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers
Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain Preserved in
the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere, ed. G.A. Bergenroth, P. De
Gayangos, G. Mattingly, M.A.S. Hume, and R. Taylor, 13 vols, 2 sup-
plements (London: Longman, 1862–1954), I, 184; see also Wendy
Moorhen, “Four Weddings and a Conspiracy: The Life, Times and
Loves of Lady Katherine Gordon.” Part I and Part II, The Ricardian:
Journal of the Richard III Society. XII (2002), 394–424 and 446–477.
95. Hayward, Great Wardrobe, pp. 111–112, 223, 240, 251.
96. Ibid., pp. 205, 247, 253–254.
97. Dietz, Government Finance, pp. 78–85.
98. LP, VI, 6, 340, X, 699, XI, 501; Great Britain, Record Commission,
State Papers of Henry VIII, 11 vols. (London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan,
1830–1852), I, 459; CPR, I, 109: W.C. Richardson, Tudor Chamber
Administration, 1485–1547 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1952), pp. 93–95; Philippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and
Early Stuart England: A Social History and Catalogue of the National
Collection, 1480–1600 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1990),
pp. 14, 19–20, 24, 31. For Holbein’s cup, see David Starkey, ed., Henry
VIII: A European Court in England (London: Collins & Brown, 1991),
p. 127. See also, David Starkey, ed., The Inventory of King Henry VIII:
Society of Antiquaries MS 129 and British Library MS Harley 1419, 2
vols. (London: Harvey Miller for the Society of Antiquaries of London,
1998), I, 8.
99. Diana Scarisbrick, Tudor and Jacobean Jewelry, (London: Tate, 2995). p. 9.
100. Ibid, pp. 9–12.
3 INCOME AND EXPENDITURES 95
and had the power to heal scrofula, a tubercular infection of the lymph
glands, and to cure epilepsy with the cramp rings that they blessed on
Good Friday.
In setting godly examples for their subjects, monarchs heard mass
some two or three times daily, performed other devotional duties,
including attendance at evensong and honoring religious festivals, gave
alms to the poor, supported the church financially, and attempted to
banish blasphemers and other sinners from their courts. Rulers revealed
the regularity of their religious routines for several reasons. Their per-
sonal commitment to the tenets of Christianity must never be dismissed,
but they did assume that their respect for and obedience to divine laws
would lead God to reward them with a prosperous and thriving realm.
They believed also that their subjects would more readily obey royal
edicts if their rulers appeared to comply with God’s will. People who
attended their local churches regularly might prove less likely to revolt
against governmental authority if they knew of the religious behavior and
Christian rituals at court.1
Personal and public reasons for monarchs to seek God’s favor
included their need to marry devout wives who could successfully give
birth to their heirs. Their subjects viewed their queen as the “handmaid
of God, and the king’s second self, and in his grace, the beauty of a king-
dom” and honored her not only as the “chief of women” but also as
the possessor of the light of the “moon” and thus dimmer than the light
of the “sun,” the king. Finally, they characterized her as the “joy of the
court” and the “comfort of the king” because the “wealth of the king-
dom” lay in the “fruit of her love.”2 Giving birth to a healthy heir to
continue the dynasty ranked first in her responsibilities as God’s hand-
maiden. Religion and childbirth remained deeply interconnected in the
early modern period.
Thus, the monarchs established chapels royal at their courts, which
they attended mostly on ceremonial days. Although the numbers var-
ied, one source indicates twenty-six chaplains and gentlemen clerks, and
eight children with their master had the responsibility for organizing reli-
gious ceremonies and festivals at court. When kings and queens left their
private quarters for religious purposes, they moved in procession to the
chapels royal to make their religious devotions both visible and accessi-
ble to their courtiers, but the ruling family also had daily access to other
chapels. On their separate sides of the court, English kings and queens
maintained rooms, called closets that functioned as private chapels.
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 99
Forrest, who served as a chaplain for her daughter, Queen Mary, pre-
sented her in manuscript form a long metrical account of Katherine’s life,
which he entitled The History of Grisild the Second. Forrest’s publication,
Matthew Hansen discovered, was only one of several in the sixteenth
century to present her as Patient Griselda. In his History, Forrest recalled
that she regularly sent agents into the towns in which she stopped on
her progresses to discover the identity of needy folks so that she could
aid them. Later, Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, com-
plained after her rustication from court in 1531 that the king ordered
his officials to prevent the poor from approaching her for fear she would
attempt to buy their love with her alms. Her daughter’s household
accounts also prove that her almoner followed the practice specifically
of her mother as well as that of Elizabeth of York and Anne Boleyn. In
1522, the eight-year-old princess’s almoner gave funds to the poor when
she traveled between Richmond and Ditton. Like Elizabeth of York,
Katherine of Aragon went on pilgrimages, for example, to the Lady of
Walsingham. She was probably the only wife of Henry VIII to do so,
since Latimer recalled Anne’s opposition to pilgrimages, and of course in
1536 and 1538 Henry did begin to prohibit them, as well as relic vener-
ation and offerings to images. Anne of Cleves’s surviving accounts indi-
cate several offerings of alms to the poor even in her short reign. Finally,
little evidence survives about Katherine Parr’s almsgiving at towns she
passed through on her journeys, but one document indicates that she
provided alms to poor householders in Greenwich at the funeral of her
stepdaughter, Margaret Neville.7
It must be assumed that Jane and Katherine Howard acted similarly,
as they too employed almoners, whose responsibilities involved distrib-
uting money to the poor on behalf of their mistresses. Indeed, Hilda
Johnstone reported that royal and noble almsgiving was “so systematic
that it deserves a prominent place in the history of charitable origins.”
Almsgiving certainly extended beyond the royal family, for Kate Mertes
asserted that in her research on households, she could not find a member
of the aristocracy who failed to give alms or support a chantry.8
All the Tudor queens owned books of devotion, many of which James
Carley reported were described as “little” and thus may have been “gir-
dle books,” which hung from a girdle or belt at the waist and which
seem to have been admired mostly because of their elaborate bindings.
More specifically, the Books of Hours, which were composed of prayers
to be read at designated times, collections of biblical material, and saints’
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 101
lives, proved to be the most popular of these in the late medieval period;
many printers also issued copies of them in the sixteenth century. Not
only Elizabeth of York but also Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr
owned Books of Hours. This seventh Tudor consort is better known,
however, for her possession of the New Testament in English, and espe-
cially for her publications, which will be discussed in Chap. 5. Katherine
Howard also owned the New Testament in English and French as well
as a mass book, and she possessed several volumes in Latin. Having lived
for many years at French-speaking courts, Anne Boleyn purchased books
in French as well as English, among them the New Testament and some
prayers, psalms, and a primer. Little is known about the collections of
Jane Seymour or Anne of Cleves, but the former queen seems to have
possessed a Book of Hours that her successor obtained.9
The celebrations of the annual church festivals at the chapel royal
signaled the court’s devotional routines. For example, the king and
queen offered oblations on Candlemas Day, which honored, accord-
ing to church tradition, the purification of the Virgin Mary some forty
days after the birth of Jesus Christ. In 1497, the king’s Great Wardrobe
provided purple velvet to decorate the tapers of Henry VII’s queen
and his mother, and in 1511, it provided purple velvet to decorate the
tapers of Henry VIII and his queen and crimson velvet for the tapers
of their short-lived infant son, Henry, as well as the king’s sister, Mary
then espoused to Charles, prince of Castile, the future emperor. Court
“Articles” further stipulated that the chamberlain, a baron, or an earl,
walking on the king’s right side, should bear the royal taper; presum-
ably this procedure extended to the queen as well. The carrying of
these lighted candles, which celebrated the purity of the Virgin Mary’s
body, resulted in references to the ritual as the “festival of lights,” mak-
ing it, according to Fiona Kisby, “one of the most distinctive proces-
sions of the liturgical year.” Another well-documented day of special
worship occurred on Palm Sunday which recalled the entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem on the Sunday before Easter. The court moved in proces-
sion to the chapel royal, its members carrying their palms wrapped in
the appropriate colors, purple or crimson velvet, for the royal family. In
1523, the Great Wardrobe also distributed crimson velvet for the palms
of Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey, who joined the procession. Records of the
distribution of velvet for the palms exist mostly for Henry VIII’s reign;
one entry only survives for Henry VII on March 31, 1499, which lacks
reference to his queen.10 It is possible that because Elizabeth of York
102 R.M. WARNICKE
gave birth to their son, Edmund, on February 21, she had not yet been
purified and therefore could not participate in the festival.
The Palm Sunday service in addition to the Thursday maundy feet
washing, which involved entirely different social hierarchies, set the tone
for a godly court honoring the holy days of Easter. On their sides of the
court, kings and queens participated in their personal maundy services
that imitated Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper
before his crucifixion and then resurrection on Easter Sunday. The name
of the service, which Edward III initiated for the crown in 1363, derived
from the word maund, a wicker basket that held the alms. Much infor-
mation has survived in the Great Wardrobe accounts concerning the
numerous maundy services that the first two Tudor kings regularly held.
After the foot washing, the almoner doled out money from the maund
to the poor participants, always of the same sex as the royal foot washer.
The number of the poor people in attendance supposedly matched the
age of the king or queen in charge. Therefore, on March 24, 1502, when
at the age of thirty-six Elizabeth of York, born on February 11, 1466,
performed her last maundy, she should have washed the feet of thirty-six
women. Instead, Richard Decons noted in her privy purse accounts that
he delivered 114s. 1d. to her almoner, Richard Payne, for the dispensing
of 3s. 1d. to each of thirty-seven poor women. Thus, this record indi-
cates that the number of the poor present depended on the queen’s age
at her future birthday and not on the last one, perhaps a strategy devel-
oped to make it possible to give more alms.11
The most detailed evidence concerning the Tudor queens’ maundy
survives from Katherine Parr’s reign. Susan James speculated that she
was born in August 1512, but in 1544 her maundy account indicates
that thirty-one poor women participated. These accounts are headed
with the regnal dates 14 July 35 Henry VIII to 21 March 36 Henry
VIII (or from 1543 to 1545). Since April 5 was Easter Sunday in 1545,
the service had to have occurred in 1544, her first opportunity to hold
a royal maundy. In that year, Easter Sunday fell on April 13; thus, she
participated in her maundy on April 10. Obviously a discrepancy exists
between the number of the poor women and the previously accepted
age of the queen. Katherine must have been born after April 10, 1513,
and the number used as the deciding factor was her age at her future
birthday in 1544. This record also details items purchased for the service,
including linen cloth for the women, canvas for the sheets to be used,
and linen cloth for the apron of the queen.12
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 103
expect her almoner, Sir Henry Malet, to have pressed her to do so, but
no evidence of her attention to religious rituals, other than her marriage
and attendance at mass, has survived. The extant accounts of the maundy
lack details about these queens’ specific activities; they washed the wom-
en’s feet only after others had cleansed them at least twice.15
It is necessary to reemphasize the belief of kings that they should sire
male heirs, especially in England, with no record of a queen regnant
since the Norman conquest or even a royal woman vying to become
monarch since the twelfth century. Royal fathers anticipated that their
sons, once reaching their majorities, could preserve the continuation
of the dynasty and prevent rivals, such as Lord Thomas Howard, from
attempting to usurp their kingdom through marriages to royal women,
like Henry VIII’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas. Unfortunately for their
aspirations, late medieval and early modern people had extremely limited
knowledge about human sexuality and reproduction. Physicians mostly
still accepted Galen’s theory that women and men emitted seeds that
merged together in wombs to create fetuses. It was not until 1827 that
Karl Ernst von Baer discovered the ovum. Ancient humoral beliefs thus
guided explanations of sexual dysfunction and miscarriages. Ironically,
individuals first identified women, whose bodies, they explained, were
dominated by colder and wetter humors than men’s, as the objects of
male temptation, then condemned their sex for being the cause of male
concupiscence. Traditionally, to restore the balance of the supposed four
bodily humors, surgeons bled women as soon as their pregnancy was
known.16
To aid their attempts to sire male children, despite their physi-
cians’ reliance on ancient theories, premodern Europeans turned to
Christianity for explanations that resulted in a rather odd social construc-
tion of human sexuality. Many forbidden practices in Christian peniten-
tial books focused on and forbade illegal activities in marital intercourse.
They warned husbands not to play the adulterers with their wives
because excessive emitting of their seeds would cause great harm to their
male bodies. When in 1543 Charles V planned to wed Maria Manuela of
Portugal, for example, his physicians informed him to avoid sexual indul-
gences.17 Religious edicts forbade Christians to marry or to have sex-
ual intercourse on special holy days and during fasting seasons, such as
Advent, and to refrain from doing so during their wives’ menstrual peri-
ods. Thus, viewing sexuality, like all “functions of life,” through a sacred
lens, church leaders attempted to assist their parishioners in preventing
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 105
the birth of malformed fetuses since they and their contemporaries inter-
preted these deformities not only as personal tragedies but also as God’s
judgments on both their parents and their society; indeed, they viewed
them as predictors of “ominous social” events.18
In May 1510, some months after the birth of her stillborn daughter,
Katherine of Aragon acknowledged in a letter to her father her unsuc-
cessful reliance on God’s help for her delivery. When in labor, she con-
fessed, she had made a vow to donate a rich headdress to St. Peter the
Martyr of the Franciscan Observant Order in Spain. After recovering
from childbirth, she sent the headdress to a niece of her father’s treasurer
who had planned to become a nun in that order. Since the treasurer, a
man named Morales, had kept both Katherine’s letter and the headdress,
the queen asked Ferdinand to reprimand him.19 In England, if not in
Spain, at that time, parents actually had the prerogative to control their
children’s correspondence.20
In addition to ancient medical theories and Christian doctrine, people
also relied on traditional folklore concerning childbirth. They believed
conception could only occur if both partners found pleasure in the sexual
bonding; that if a pregnant woman glanced at a hairy animal, her fetus
would exhibit excessive hair; and that if she received a fright or traveled
too great a distance, she might miscarry. During his reign, Henry VIII
expressed some acceptance of these beliefs. In 1518, while on his sum-
mer progress, he sent a message to Wolsey explaining that as he thought
Katherine of Aragon was pregnant, he believed that it was too dangerous
a time for him to have her removed the great distance to London. Later,
during his summer progress in 1537, the king wrote Thomas Howard,
third duke of Norfolk, that he gave “humble thanks to Almighty God”
for the quickening of Jane’s child. He and his council had decided that
he would not travel away from her more than sixty miles because of con-
cerns that she “might take a fright at some sudden displeasant rumors
and bruits.” Folklore also claimed that boys came from the seed of the
right testicle and that if the right breast of the mother was larger than
the left one, the fetus she carried was male. A sickly pregnancy and a
larger left breast supposedly indicated a female fetus.21
Many associated certain foods with love that might have a positive
effect on pregnancy and childbirth. Eggs, birds, and artichokes figured
large in the folklore. In 1537, for example, Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount
Lisle and lord deputy of Calais, sent a dozen quail to a delighted king
and queen, who ordered them roasted, half for dinner and the other
106 R.M. WARNICKE
half for supper. They also requested more quail but somewhat fatter
ones. Furthermore, in sixteenth-century England, the eating of arti-
chokes became popular because some people believed that this vegeta-
ble strengthened the husband’s stomach, making it more likely that he
would sire male children. With this popularity in mind, it is noteworthy
that in July 1534, Sir Edward Ryngeley, high marshal of Calais, wrote to
Lord Lisle about his recent discussion with the king concerning a pos-
sible royal visit to Calais. Ryngeley advised Lisle to order his officials to
keep “all the artichokes they had there for the king’s Grace. This is his
special commandment.” This entire mixture of ancient medical knowl-
edge, godly belief, and traditional folklore formed the basis of their
understanding of human reproduction.22
It is difficult to determine when early modern English kings and
queens might have set aside time for sexual intimacy, since they occupied
private lodgings apart from each other and since evidence about their
daily schedules remains incomplete. Few personal records exist for Henry
VII’s reign. The information that can be gleaned from surviving records,
mostly state and diplomatic records, refers almost completely to official
business. In March 1499, a Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro de Ayala,
made the first extant diplomatic statement about Elizabeth of York and
childbirth when he noted her recent delivery of a son who was chris-
tened, but he did not name the child. He had also heard that it was an
easier birth than expected. No other speculation about her possible preg-
nancies can be found in these dispatches until her death in 1503, when a
Venetian document called “News from England” indicates that she died
after childbirth. It is not even known, as stated in Chap. 2, when Henry
and Elizabeth began to live together as husband and wife. As Arthur
was born on September 19, 1486, it is likely that they had sworn pri-
vate vows and had been cohabiting since at least December 10, 1485,
when Parliament requested that the king marry her, but as noted, a
problem with dating the conception in December exists, since the church
forbade marriage or sexual intercourse during Advent, which began on
November 29 in 1485. However, as king, Henry could have obtained a
license from Archbishop Bourchier or his chancellor to waive those pro-
hibitions. If that were the case, then dating their conception at the time
of their private marriage in November or December would mean that
Arthur’s birth was not early, as is usually assumed.23
Diplomatic documents and courtiers’ comments, which are much more
plentiful for his son’s reign, do indicate some daily routines. In 1540,
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 107
Even a small weight gain could lead to the circulation of rumors about a
pregnancy. In late 1511, for example, Wolsey wrote Richard Foxe, bishop
of Winchester, that Katherine of Aragon was thought to be with child,
but no record of a birth exists. Indeed, reproduction can and could be a
difficult process since at least one-third of all conceptions spontaneously
terminate. Because of the length of Katherine of Aragon’s reign, records
about whether or not she was pregnant are more plentiful than those
of Henry VIII’s other queens. Two documents allude to the size of her
stomach in 1518, the first pregnancy after the birth of Mary and her last
confinement. In April, Richard Pace, when informing Wolsey that he had
heard rumors that she was with child, said that he prayed to God that it
would be a prince. Later, Pace at Woodstock reported to Wolsey that she
had arrived there with a “big belly” and that the Te Deum would be sung
at St. Paul’s in London. Ultimately, she gave birth to a stillborn daugh-
ter. Although Anne Boleyn’s reign was much shorter than Katherine’s, in
April 1534, her receiver general, George Taylor, informed Lord Lisle that
she had a “goodly belly” and he prayed to God that it would be a prince,
but no record of a birth can be found. When in June 1537 the king and
his officials learned about the quickening of Jane’s child, priests sang Te
Deum at churches in York, London, and probably in other towns. No
rumors about the possible pregnancies of the last three Tudor queens
exist.31
According to Henry VII’s “Articles,” a chamber for the birth of the
royal children should be selected and prepared. Normally the expect-
ant queen entered it some four to six weeks before her expected deliv-
ery date. Usually the queen and king chose a chamber at one of the
royal palaces, but in 1486, Elizabeth of York and Henry VII decided to
establish her lying-in room at St. Swithun’s Priory, Winchester, a city
traditionally associated with legendary King Arthur, and of course they
named their heir after that famous individual. Usually this legend has
been linked to the Tudor line, since Henry, through his father, Edmund
Tudor, earl of Richmond, descended from Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon,
the supposed last British king, and in 1485, he marched through Wales
to Bosworth Field under the red dragon banner of Cadwaladr. A less
well publicized fact is that Elizabeth also descended from Cadwaladr
through the marriage of Richard, earl of Cambridge, to Anne Mortimer,
daughter of Roger, earl of March and earl of Ulster, the parents of
her father, Richard Plantagenet, duke of York. Like the Tudors, the
Mortimers claimed they could trace their ancestry back to Cadwaladr.
110 R.M. WARNICKE
Thus, Henry’s and Elizabeth’s marriage united not only the Yorkist and
Lancastrian descendants of Edward III but also those of Cadwaladr.32
The place of birth is not always known for Elizabeth’s other children,
but she did choose Westminster Palace for Margaret, her second child, in
1489 and Greenwich Palace for Henry, her third child, in 1491. Where
she delivered Mary in 1496 is unknown. The third child, who reigned
as Henry VIII, married three women who had children that lived long
enough to be christened in a church ceremony. Katherine of Aragon
delivered her first son, Henry, who died a few weeks after his christening,
at Richmond in 1511, and her only surviving child, Mary, at Greenwich
Palace in 1516. Anne established her chamber at Greenwich, where she
gave birth to Elizabeth in 1533, and Jane delivered her son, Edward, at
Hampton Court Palace in 1537.
The “Articles” required the queen’s officials to hang rich cloth of
arras on the roof and the sides of the selected chamber, as well as on all
the windows, except one that should be decorated so that light could be
let into the room if the queen so desired. Her officials also covered the
chamber’s floor with carpeting and furnished the room with a cupboard
for plates and supplies, a royal bed, and a pallet bed. Each bed had to be
dressed in fine linen and possess a number of pillows. A pane (bedspread)
of ermine embroidered with rich cloth covered the royal bed and like-
wise the pallet, and a traverse of damask separated the two beds. Since
the “Articles” mentioned no birthing chair, perhaps the queen delivered
her child on the pallet bed. Certainly it would ordinarily be the one on
which she slept. The bed of estate was reserved for receiving visitors after
her delivery. Only women who had borne children could perform the
office of midwifery, and if the child did not live, they would have to give
testimony as to the cause of its death.33
Before retiring to her chamber, the queen, attended by selected lords
and ladies, went to the chapel royal to receive the Eucharist and then
to the great chamber where, sitting under her cloth of estate, she con-
sumed some spice and wine. Specific evidence does exist about Elizabeth
of York’s entering her chamber at Westminster in 1489: she dismissed
her male escort with a request for “their good prayers”; then her lord
chamberlain drew the traverse, shutting them out. Special prayers for
childbirth also existed. Later, Henry Bull wrote in a prayer that God’s
almighty power “was most evident” in the “conceiving, forming, and
bringing forth of man.” Recalling the “intolerable pains” of childbirth,
he begged God to ease them so that the woman might “safely bring
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 111
forth that which by thy goodness she hath conceived.” Bull continued,
“Give her strength, and make perfect that which thou hast so graciously
begun” so that she might “praise thy blessed name forever.” Normally
only the ladies appointed to see to her needs and to accept from officials
at the chamber door items necessary for her comfort remained with the
queen, but in 1489, a breach in this protocol occurred when her mater-
nal cousin, the French ambassador, Francis de Luxembourg, Viscount
Martiques, and three of his attendants, having just arrived in England,
momentarily gained access to her chamber to greet her. For all her deliv-
eries, Elizabeth had the assistance of the same midwife, Alice Massy, who
earned £10 annually. In 1504, a record in the Patent Rolls indicates that
Henry VII gave an annuity of £5 to her as the midwife of his late con-
sort. During their deliveries, at least one of the Tudor queens, Elizabeth
of York, wore “Our Lady’s girdle,” a relic housed at Westminster Abbey
as late as 1505. Finally, the “Articles” state that the king should station
the selected godparents nearby for the christening. Probably he should
provide for their attendance in case an infant believed too sickly to live
long needed immediate christening.34
After successful childbirth, three royal rituals took place. First, the
new mothers sent out letters announcing the birth and sex of their
children. For example, on October 12, 1537, Edward’s birthday, his
mother, Jane, wrote a letter to the council, informing them of his birth
and pointing out that he was lawfully conceived.35 Then the christenings
occurred, mostly within two to three days. The “Articles” specify a noble
hierarchy for the procession to the chapel or church without the parents,
who did not attend the ritual. A duchess should carry the child to the
newly decorated church, and a second duchess should bear the chrisom
cloth on her shoulder. Two hundred servants with torches should pre-
cede the child, who was to be dressed in a rich mantle of cloth of gold
furred with ermine. The “Articles” do not specify that the godparents
(two men and a woman for a prince and two women and a man for a
princess) should name the child at the church door, but at least by the
birth of Mary in 1516, this had become the custom. Usually the god-
parents selected the child’s name, as did Mary, queen dowager of France,
acting as her niece’s godmother in 1516, thereby causing difficulties for
generations of students and movie makers in distinguishing between the
two Mary Tudors, who were both queens. In the earlier case of Arthur,
however, the king and queen probably overrode the traditional right
of godparents. After a bishop completed the christening ceremony and
112 R.M. WARNICKE
servants lit the torches, a godparent took the infant to the high altar to
be confirmed by another godparent. Then the godparents and the other
witnesses consumed spice and wine. Next the godparents offered their
gifts to their godchild, which various lords and knights bore before the
child as he was returned to the birthing chamber. If the baby was a prin-
cess, ladies carried the gifts.36
The christening details of all the infants cannot be addressed here
because of space and some duplication of information. Arthur’s receives
special attention since several accounts of his ritual at Winchester
Cathedral have survived. Basically the plans, as set out in the “Articles,”
were followed, except more personal details can be found in these
accounts. For example, they add information about the Winchester ritual:
church officials prepared a “solemn font” of silver and gilt for the sacra-
ment and a special step or stand for the officiating priest, John Alcock,
bishop of Worcester, who hallowed the font. In the procession to the
cathedral, Lady Anne Plantagenet, the queen’s sister, carried the chrism
cloth, which she pinned to her breast. It was a white robe, the color signi-
fying the child’s innocence, with a hood to protect the chrism anointment
on his head. Behind her, Lady Cecily Plantagenet, the queen’s eldest sis-
ter, bore the prince, who was wrapped in a mantle of crimson cloth of
gold. At the church’s porch, Alcock received the child and named him.
Arthur’s grandmother and godmother, Elizabeth, awaited them in the
cathedral. Thomas Stanley, earl of Derby, his paternal grandmother’s hus-
band, and Thomas Fitzalan, Lord Mautravers (future earl of Arundel),
served as his godfathers. After his attendants dressed Arthur in the chrism
robe, Alcock christened him, and the dowager queen took him to the
high altar, where John de Vere, thirteenth earl of Oxford, whose belated
arrival had delayed the beginning of the christening, held him while
Peter Courtenay, bishop of Exeter, confirmed him. Then the gift ritual
occurred: the dowager queen offered a rich cup of gold; Oxford gave a
pair of gilt basins; Derby presented a rich salt of gild; and Mautravers gave
a coffer of gold. Finally, Lady Cecily returned the child, dressed again
in his original rich garments, to his parents at St. Swithun’s Priory. His
grateful mother later founded a chantry at Winchester Cathedral, which
she dedicated to the Virgin Mary in thankfulness for her safe delivery.37
One of the striking differences between the accounts of the rituals of
Henry VIII’s infants and this narrative of Arthur’s christening include
the attendance of London representatives at Elizabeth’s and Edward’s
ceremonies in 1533 and 1537, respectively. After the christening, in
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 113
Elizabeth’s case at least, the king sent word in his name to the Londoners,
thanking them for their participation.38
When the infant was returned to court after the christening, according
to the “Articles,” he was removed to his nursery, the servants of which
included a lady governess, nurses, four chamberers, called rockers, and
a chamberlain, who required them to swear oaths of allegiance and to
supervise the food provided for the infant. A great cradle of estate, meas-
uring five and a half feet long and two feet wide and covered with crim-
son cloth of gold, stood in the nursery for the infant. The “Articles” also
refer to a “swaddling band” and “swathe-bands,” which concerned the
custom of swaddling infants. Traditionally their attendants used a roll of
cloth, two inches wide, to swaddle the babies’ bodies, binding down the
stomach, arms, and legs, until they could not move. Their heads were also
encased in the cloth, leaving only a small circle of the face visible. The
servants usually removed the swaddling cloth only once a day, although
this practice might vary for a royal infant, to provide the children with
a few minutes of exercise. By four months, they had freed the infants’
arms, and between the eighth and twelfth month, they freed the children
entirely. Not only did the swaddling make it easier to carry the babies, but
also, in cold weather, it helped to keep the children warm.39
For childhood deaths, modern demographers have offered a context.
A study of the British ducal families by Thomas Hollingsworth indicates
that between 1480 and 1679, approximately 31.5% of children under
the age of sixteen died. Roger Schofield’s figures, which are for children
generally, indicate that in late Tudor and early Stuart England, 34.4% of
those under the age of ten died, as compared to 2.4% in the twentieth
century. According to Ralph Houlbrooke, the first year of life was the
most deadly, as one of five to six children died before their first birthday.
These figures are for larger populations than royal families, which had a
greater fatality rate, at least among the Tudors. Elizabeth and Henry lost
five of their eight children, including Arthur, who died in 1502, before
the age of sixteen. The number of Katherine of Aragon’s pregnancies has
been estimated at six or seven, but Mary, born in 1516, alone lived to
adulthood. Anne Boleyn was pregnant at least twice, and perhaps three
times, and only Elizabeth was born alive in 1533. Jane became preg-
nant once and was delivered of a healthy boy whose death, like Arthur’s,
occurred before he reached his sixteenth birthday in 1553.40
Schofield also estimated maternal deaths after childbirth. He found
that ten mothers per 1000 births died in the late sixteenth century but
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normally received the Eucharist. If the infant died before the mother’s
churching, the child was buried in the chrism. No description of the
Tudor queens’ churchings, all of which were probably private, has sur-
vived, except for short references to Elizabeth of York’s in 1486.42
Of the seven queens, only Elizabeth of York, Katherine of Aragon,
and briefly Anne Boleyn had an opportunity to have input into their
children’s lives. It is not evident just how influential Anne Boleyn was
in determining Henry VIII’s attitudes toward his daughter and her
stepdaughter, Mary, although Eustace Chapuys blamed the new queen
almost entirely for Mary’s mistreatment and placement in Elizabeth’s
household. The king’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr, clearly took seriously
her role as stepmother of his three children. As she had already served
as stepmother to John (b. 1520) and Margaret (b. 1525), the children
of her second husband, John Neville, Lord Latimer, who died in early
1542, she had the experience to serve in this capacity.43
An educational division existed in early modern families. Fathers
mostly concerned themselves with the training of their sons and expected
their wives to see to that of their daughters. Indeed, of Henry VII’s
daughters, only Margaret’s name appears, and then only once, in his
Patent Rolls. In March 1502, he ordered the sheriffs of England to issue
proclamations concerning the peace with Scotland and the future mar-
riage of his daughter, Margaret, to James IV. A Book of Hours has sur-
vived, however, with his comment to Margaret: “Remember your kind
and loving father in your good prayers.” While royal mothers supervised
their daughters’ education, their husbands must have been consulted
about some of the major changes in their lives. In October 1535, for
example, Lady Margaret Bryan and other officials of Elizabeth’s house-
hold asked the king whether his two-year-old child should be weaned.
The decision-making process remained unexplained; thus, whether he
consulted with Anne Boleyn is unknown, but ultimately Sir William
Paulet (future marquess of Winchester) related to Cromwell that the
king had determined that she should be weaned. Finally, most queens
did not have much input into their children’s marriages. These decisions
were usually worked out in diplomatic exchanges under their fathers’
directions and will be discussed in Chap. 5.44
Kings established households for their male heirs and often housed
the younger children together in a nursery. In 1487, Arthur, for exam-
ple, lived in his household at Farnham, Surrey. Until boys reached their
sixth birthday, they wore the same clothing as girls, and their immediate
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spending money to Margaret, purchased a lute for her, and sent a reward
to her minstrels.48
Their brothers’ education differed greatly from the sisters and seems
to have been supervised by their father. Both learned Latin as well as
French by reading classical and Renaissance authors, and Henry later
displayed an understanding of Italian and some Spanish. The princes
had distinguished tutors: Arthur studied first with John Rede, formerly
headmaster of Winchester College, then with Bernard André and finally
Thomas Linacre, while Henry read with John Skelton. Both learned to
dance and to play some instruments, at least the lute and the virginals.49
In addition, even at an early age, they obtained important governmen-
tal positions with deputies actually performing the chores for them. This
was an effort in part to avoid giving the posts to somewhat threatening
great noblemen. Henry VII bestowed on Arthur, his heir, the titles of
prince of Wales, duke of Cornwall, and earl of Chester. The king’s Patent
Rolls have many references to Arthur, from services provided for him to
other offices bestowed on him. From at least 1493, when he was about
7 years old, he possessed the duty to appoint justices of oyer and ter-
miner in some counties, and he also held memberships on many commis-
sions of the peace.50
It was not just because Arthur was his heir that Henry VII began to
grant him titles and offices; he adopted these tactics for his younger son
as well. As the king’s second son, Henry was first ennobled as the duke
of York and gained several offices while Arthur was still alive: warden
general of the Marches of England, lieutenant of Ireland, constable of
Dover Castle, and warden of the Cinque Ports. It is interesting that to
this point no tradition existed for the second son to be named duke of
York, the only exception having been Edward IV’s second son. Henry
VII chose to honor his wife’s family by granting that title to his name-
sake second son, thus beginning a tradition that lasted through the sev-
enteenth century and that was resumed intermittently later. About a year
after Arthur’s death, the king installed the duke of York as the prince of
Wales.51
The major difference between the two Tudor generations appeared
in the girls’ academic education. Katherine of Aragon had benefited
from her classical training in Latin as a child, and when her daughter
was old enough to begin learning Latin, the humanist Thomas Linacre,
who had served as the royal physician since 1509, may have tutored
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not “been so much bound to the mother,” he would not have engaged
in the present vestiarian enforcement, as he did not care about surplices
and other vestments. Henry VIII, however, must be credited for seeing
that Elizabeth gained an impressive education, for Jane, Anne of Cleves,
and Katherine Howard paid little or no attention to her, as still only a
child under the age of nine in early 1542.54
Although Henry provided his children with various stepmothers, only
two of them had some impact or influence on their well-being. Eustace
Chapuys believed that when Mary was forced to move into Elizabeth’s
household at Hatfield in 1534, her life was placed in danger because of
the influence of the governess of the household, Anne Boleyn’s paternal
aunt, Anne Shelton née Boleyn. Clearly the new queen did want her own
daughter to be maintained as Henry’s successor, but surely her politi-
cal ambitions alone did not lead to Mary’s ill treatment. The king, who
had prevented his elder daughter from visiting her mother since 1531,
demanded that she recognize the illegality of her parents’ marriage and
her own illegitimate status, and confirm his headship of the church in
England. After Anne Boleyn’s execution in May 1536, Henry required
Cromwell to pressure Mary into accepting, albeit begrudgingly, those
concessions, which her most recent biographer, John Edwards, has said
“would haunt her for the rest of her life.”55
The other stepmother, Katherine Parr, had a positive influence over her
stepchildren, at least as long as she remained the reigning queen. When
regent, during Henry’s absence in France in 1544, she momentarily
brought them all together at court. Mary was then twenty-eight, while
her younger half-siblings, Elizabeth and Edward, were almost 11 and 7
years of age. For the most part thereafter, only the eldest stepchild, Mary,
was often at court, and it was Katherine who requested that she translate
into English the Paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John in The First Tome
or Volume of the Paraphrases of Erasmus on the New Testament. It was first
written in Latin by Erasmus. Although Mary did not complete the trans-
lation, which her chaplain, Dr. Francis Malett, finished, it was largely her
product that appeared in the final publication. In his dedication to these
translations, Nicholas Udall praised Mary’s scholarship. Aysha Pollnitz has
recently evaluated Mary’s effort, claiming that it is a literal translation by
an “enthusiastic if inexperienced grammarian” with “greater rhetorical
sophistication” than she is sometimes credited.56
Katherine also encouraged the language studies of Elizabeth and
Edward, her two younger stepchildren. It was then customary to give
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presents for New Year’s Day rather than for Christmas. In 1544 and
1545, Elizabeth completed the translations into English of Marguerite
de Navarre’s Le Mirror de l’ame Pécheresse (The glass of the sinful soul)
and Chap. 1 of John Calvin’s Institution de la Religion Chrestienne
(How we ought to know God) for New Year’s gifts to Katherine Parr.
In 1545, she also translated the queen’s Prayers and Meditations,
which will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 5, into Latin, French,
and Italian for her father. She had bound the front and back covers of
these three volumes in fabric that she had embroidered with the initials
HR and KP in gold and silver threads, with “chain-stitching” around
the covers’ edges, and with pansy flowers on the four corners. As is well
known, Elizabeth’s Greek and Latin tutors included William Grindal
and later Roger Ascham.57 Katherine also encouraged Edward to com-
pose to her letters in Latin, some of which have survived. He enjoyed as
his tutors the Cambridge scholars Richard Coxe, Sir John Cheke, and
Sir Anthony Cooke. Along with Elizabeth, he also had a French master,
Jean Belmain.58
All the queens had relatives who benefited from their royal alli-
ances, but in the case of the sisters of Elizabeth of York, Henry VII
controlled their marriages. Although he received proposals for them to
marry into prestigious foreign families, because of concerns that their
husbands might try to use their wives’ Yorkist claims to the throne to
challenge him for the kingship, he arranged for three of them to marry
Englishmen. The eldest, Lady Cecily, wed John Welles, Viscount Welles,
the half-brother of his mother, Lady Richmond. Welles, some 20 years
older than she, did sire two girls with her, who died unmarried. After the
viscount’s death in 1499, Cecily angered Henry by secretly wedding a
Lincolnshire gentleman, Thomas Kyme. In retaliation, Henry seized the
Welles’s estates, but Lady Richmond was finally able to settle the dispute.
Another sister, Lady Anne, married Lord Thomas Howard, the future
third duke of Norfolk, a step in that family’s rehabilitation, since his
father and grandfather had supported Richard III. Annually, Elizabeth
of York paid Lord Howard ₤120 for her sister’s expenses. Before her
death in 1511, she gave birth to four children, all of whom died young.
Elizabeth’s third sister, Lady Katherine Plantagenet, suffered more
than her other siblings. She married Sir William Courtenay, the heir of
Edward, earl of Devon, who lived until 1509. In the meantime, Henry
VII had William imprisoned, suspecting him of aiding a Yorkist claimant,
Edmund de la Pole, duke of Suffolk and the son of Edward IV’s sister,
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 121
earl of Hertford, and in his will, the king placed Hertford, later enno-
bled as duke of Somerset, on the ruling council of his royal successor.
In 1543, well after Jane’s death, Wymond Carew, formerly Queen Jane’s
general receiver, explained to his brother-in-law, Sir Anthony Denny, a
member of the privy council, that they should seek the office of gentle-
man waiter to Prince Edward for a Mr. Croftes, whose mother was a sis-
ter of Jane’s father, Sir John Seymour. Carew reminded Denny that Jane
had favored Croftes.60
As Dakota Hamilton has noted, with reference to the Parr family, at
first Katherine’s brother, Sir William, won titles and grants, becoming by
a new creation earl of Essex in 1543, but despite these early favors, he
failed “to rise in power and influence in the fashion” of Seymour. This
example indicates that the king at first rewarded his new wives’ rela-
tives but failed to continue doing so if their abilities proved inadequate
for his needs. The husband of Katherine Parr’s sister, Anne, was William
Herbert, a member of the privy council and the recipient of some favora-
ble royal grants, although he had to wait until the reign of Edward VI
for his ennoblement as the earl of Pembroke. The least favor went to the
family of Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, whose brothers, Charles
and George, and half-sister, Isabel Leigh Baynton, the wife of her vice
chamberlain, obtained no new titles or offices but only some financial
support. This diminished favor did not quash the royal ambitions of
Charles, who courted Margaret Douglas—an affair, as noted earlier, that
led to their arrests.61 Henry finally resolved his immediate difficulties with
his niece by arranging her marriage to Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox,
whose son, Henry, Lord Darnley, later complicated diplomatic matters
for Elizabeth I by becoming the husband of Mary, queen of Scots.
As already noted here, two of the queens, Elizabeth of York and
Katherine of Aragon, lost their heirs. Fortunately for Elizabeth, she had
given birth to another son in 1491, but even so, evidence survives of the
great grief that both she and Katherine felt at their personal losses. On
April 2, 1502, when the fifteen-year-old Arthur died in Wales, his council
sent information about it to the king’s council at Greenwich. The coun-
cilors dispatched one of his royal chaplains to inform Henry, who imme-
diately sent for Elizabeth so they could share their sorrow. She tried to
comfort him with reminders that he had the duty, after remembering
God, of thinking of his own personal well-being and the “comfort of the
realm and of her.” God had left him a fair prince and two fair princesses,
and they were both young enough for him to send them another son.
4 RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 123
After Henry thanked her for the comfort, she returned to her chamber,
where the “natural and motherly remembrance of this great loss” caused
her ladies to beseech the king to comfort her. He came to her chamber
“in great haste” and spoke with her, reminding her of her previous advice
to him and of the need to thank God for their remaining son.62
Almost nine years later, according to Hall’s chronicle, after Henry
VIII’s and Katherine’s infant son died in February 1511, the king
attempted to comfort her by not showing his “great mourning.”
Katherine, however, “like a natural woman” greatly lamented the loss
of her son, but by the king’s “great persuasion,” her “sorrow was miti-
gated,” but not quickly. In his biography of the queen, Garrett Mattingly
pointed out that Henry’s grief was actually so great that the ambassadors
“dared not even offer condolences.”63 It would take another 16 years
without any sons before he would display his anguish at lacking a male
heir by establishing a national church so that he could dissolve this mar-
riage and try to sire another son with a new wife.
This chapter has investigated the intersection of religion and child-
birth and has examined the various religious rituals at court that set
godly examples for the kingdom. Besides highlighting the medical,
religious, and folklore views of Tudor society concerning childbirth, it
described the various rituals and ceremonies concerning the birth and
death of royal children and the childbirth deaths of Elizabeth of York
and Jane Seymour. It also discussed the involvement—or lack of involve-
ment—of Elizabeth of York and her six daughters-in-law in the lives and
education of the royal children and how the education of the sons and
daughters differed. Finally, it investigated the assistance they gave to
their relatives, then ended with examples of the grief that royal parents
felt when they lost their children, especially their male heirs.
Notes
1. Tigurimus Chelidonius, A Most Excellent Hystorie of the Institution and
First Beginning of Christian Princes, and the Originall of Kingdomes, trans.
James Chillester (London: H. Bynneman, 1571), pp. 6–85; Paul Monad,
The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1589–1715 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 3–40, and C.A.J. Armstrong,
“The Piety of Cecily, Duchess of York: A Study in Late Medieval
Culture,” For Hilaire Belloc: Essays in Honour of his 72nd Birthday, ed.
Douglas Woodruff (London: Sheed & Ward, 1942), pp. 73–94. See also,
124 R.M. WARNICKE
The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English
Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 1.
8. Kate Mertes, The English Noble Household, 1250–1600: Good Governance
and Politic Rule (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 50, and Mertes, “The
Household as a Religious Community,” People, Politics and Community
in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 128; Hilda Johnstone, “Poor Relief
in the Royal Households of Thirteenth-Century England,” Speculum: A
Journal of Mediaeval Studies, 4 (1929), 149.
9. Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers, 1240–
1570 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 4–6, 51–2; James
Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and his Wives (London: The British
Library, 2004), pp. 108, 110, 120, 124–125, 134–136, 138; Suzanne
Hull, Chaste. Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640
(San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982), pp. 221–222.
10. LP, I, 678; Maria Hayward, ed. The Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry
VII and Henry VIII (London: London Record Society, Boydell Press,
2012), pp. 109, 203, 205, 223, 224; Society of Antiquaries,“Articles
Ordained by King Henry VII For the Regulation of his Household,”A
Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal
Household, Made in Divers Reigns from King Edward III to King William
and Queen Mary (London: John Nichols for the Society of Antiquaries,
1790), pp. 116, 125; Kay Staniland, “Royal Entry into the World,”
England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton
Society, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), p. 299,
discovered that the “Articles” have been incorrectly misdated as 1494
and that the countess of Richmond, did not write them. For more infor-
mation about them, see Chap. 6. See also Fiona Kisby, “Kingship and the
Royal Itinerary: A Study of the Peripatetic Household of the Early Tudor
Kings,” Court Historian, 4 (1998), 29–39 and “‘When the King Goeth
in Procession,”’ p. 60.
11. Hayward, Great Wardrobe, pp. 36, 234, 284, for example. Nicolas,
Privy Purse Elizabeth, p. 1; For the origins of the maundy and a discus-
sion of the participation in this service of Henry Algernon Percy, fifth
earl of Northumberland, and his family, see William Charlton, “Maundy
Thursday Observances and the Royal Maundy Money,” Lancashire and
Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 34 (1916), 201–220, in which he specifies
that the number of poor was to equal the age of the washer at his/her
next birthday.
12. T.N.A. E 101/423/12, f. 6d; James, Kateryn, p. 14, footnote 15, dis-
puted this reading of the number of women. She denied that Dakota
126 R.M. WARNICKE
54. William Loke, “An Account of Materials Furnished for the Use of Queen
Anne Boleyn and the Princess Elizabeth,” ed. J.B. Heath, Miscellanies
of the Philobiblon Society, VIII(1862–1863), 1–22; John Bruce and
Thomas Perowne, ed., Correspondence of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury, Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1853), pp. 59, 70, 391.
55. John Edwards, Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2011), p. 49.
56. Aysha Pollnitz, “Religion and Translation at the Court of Henry VIII:
Princess Mary, Katherine Parr, and the Paraphrases of Erasmus,” Mary
Tudor: Old and New Perspectives, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas Freeman
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 123–137.
57. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodell, eds., Elizabeth I: Translations, 1544–
1589 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 2–3, 40–287;
Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (London: Edward Arnold, 1991), p. 6.
58. Janel Mueller, ed., Katherine Parr: Complete Works & Correspondence
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 121–122, 125–126,
424 n. 4.
59. Rosemary Horrox, “Cecily, viscountess Welles (1469–1507), prin-
cess, ODNB www.oxforddnb.com (accessed August 4, 2015); Michael
A.R. Graves, “Anne Lady Howard (1475–1511), princess,” ODNB
www.oxforddnb.com (accessed August 4, 2015); Margaret. Westcott,
“Katherine, countess of Devon (1479–1527), princess,” ODNB www.
oxforddnb.com (accessed August 4, 2015). There are many entries to
the Courtenays in Nicolas, Privy Purse Elizabeth, for example, pp. 32,
63, 69–70, 75–76, 99 concerning the purchase of clothes for them, the
purchase of horse meat, the payment of servants and other expenses.
For Bridget, see pp. 29, 50, 99; R. S. Thomas, “Tudor, Jasper [Jasper of
Hatfield], duke of Bedford ©. 1431–1495,” ODNB www.oxforddnb.com
(accessed August 4, 2015).
60. LP, Addenda, 746, 1593; Warnicke, Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, pp. 82,
148.
61. Hamilton, “Household of Katherine Parr,” p. 128; Retha M. Warnicke,
Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 64–65, 73, Narasingham Sil,
“Herbert, William, first earl of Pembroke (1506/1507–1570), soldier
and magnate,” ODNB, www.oxforddnb.com (accessed August 4, 2015).
62. Leland, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii, V, 373–374.
63. Edward Hall, Henry VIII, intro. Charles Whibley, 2 vols. (London:
T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1904), I, 27; Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon
(Boston: Little, Brown Co., 1941), 142–143.
CHAPTER 5
Governance and Patronage
they greeted at an “unexpected hour” only the queen and her 32 com-
panions of “angelical appearance.”11
Nevertheless, many historians have validated the negative com-
ments made about Elizabeth’s relationship to her mother-in-law by
three Spanish diplomats: Don Pedro de Ayala, resident to Scotland
who moved to England in 1496 to negotiate the youthful Margaret
Tudor’s marriage to James IV; and two ad hoc ambassadors, Johannes
de Matienson, subprior of Santa Cruz, and Sancho de Londoño, who
remained in London only 13 days, from July 2 to 15, 1498. It is impor-
tant to note in interpreting their subsequent written statements that the
Spanish resident to Scotland and the two ad hoc diplomats failed to note
that they had ever had the opportunity personally to meet with either
the queen or her mother-in-law. On July 18, after departing for home,
the two ad hoc ambassadors sent a letter to Ferdinand of Aragon and
Isabella of Castile in which they identified the persons who had the
most influence over the king, including, among others, his mother and
John Morton, cardinal archbishop of Canterbury. In Matienson’s sepa-
rate message to them written that same day, he explained that the king’s
mother kept Elizabeth, who was otherwise much “beloved,” in subjec-
tion. He recommended that their majesties write to her and “show her a
little love.” In the two ad hoc diplomat’s earlier combined dispatch, cited
above, they credited Ayala for assisting them with completing their nego-
tiations and with learning about Scottish and English affairs. On July 25,
7 days later, Ayala himself informed their majesties that Elizabeth was
“beloved” because she was “powerless,” that the king’s mother had great
influence over the king, and that his wife, “as is generally the case, does
not like it.” Other important Englishmen he named were the bishop of
Durham, the lord privy seal, and the lord chamberlain, but he omitted
Cardinal Morton. That Ayala obviously seemed unaware that Richard
Foxe held both the positions of bishop of Durham (1494–1501) and
lord privy seal (1487–1516) casts grave doubts on his intimate knowl-
edge of the church and court. Finally, he reported that Henry kept the
people in “subjection, as never happened before.”12
Since these three Spanish diplomats recorded a hostile relationship
between the king’s mother and wife, it is useful to review Elizabeth’s
diplomatic activities. In December 1489, after winning at Baca, Granada,
Ferdinand sent a message to her about his victory over the Moors, per-
haps because of the recent ratification of the marriage treaty between
their children, Katherine and Arthur. Pleased about that treaty and their
5 GOVERNANCE AND PATRONAGE 137
three or four times because of mistakes that she found in them. Finally,
between May 8 and June 16, 1500, when Henry and Elizabeth, unac-
companied by his mother, resided at Calais to escape the plague in
England, Puebla heard that they had met there with Philip, archduke
of Austria and husband of Juana, future queen of Castile. He revealed
also that he had earlier learned from Henry and Elizabeth that they
wished that the ladies, who might be chosen to accompany the princess
to England, would be of gentle birth and beautiful, or at least not ugly.
Apparently their ladies’ appearance seems to have been an important
standard for judging early modern courts. In 1520, for example, after Sir
Richard Wingfield, the resident in France, informed Henry VIII that in
preparing for their attendance at the Field of Cloth of Gold the French
had searched for their fairest ladies, he said that he hoped his own queen
would “bring such in her land that the visage of England, which hath
always had the prize, be not lost.”14
Perhaps the traditional expectation of inevitable tensions between
mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law helped to shape Ayala’s opin-
ion about the relationship of the king’s wife and mother that he surely
passed on to the ad hoc ambassadors. They in turn, when reporting on
their findings, praised Ayala and criticized Puebla, even repeating an old
rumor that the queen and her mother, who had died in 1492, had ridi-
culed him for dining at court so frequently. Ayala himself seems to have
been envious of the royal couple’s attentions to Puebla and learned of
their attempts to aid him. Some comments in his dispatches question
whether Puebla, who often complained about his countryman’s failure
to return on his mission to Scotland, actually worked for their Spanish
majesties or for Henry.15
Since Ferdinand expected Ayala to advance the Anglo-Scottish mar-
riage, the diplomat reacted with disbelief when learning from Henry that
his wife and his mother believed that at the age of nine Margaret was
too young to be betrothed and dispatched to Scotland, because James IV
might prematurely “injure her and endanger her health.” Some facts that
Henry had emphasized, perhaps information about his mother’s mar-
riage to Edmund, earl of Richmond, in 1455, when she was about 12,
and the birth of him, their son, in January 1457 before her fourteenth
birthday in May, might have convinced the ambassador that she played a
more forceful role than Elizabeth in opposing an immediate wedding for
her youthful grandchild, who was also her godchild. Ayala remained in
England for four more years, until 1502, but never again referred to the
5 GOVERNANCE AND PATRONAGE 139
relationship of the king’s wife and his mother, perhaps because Henry
and James continued to discuss seriously the marriage treaty.16
The dispatches of the Imperial and French agents concerning Anne
Boleyn’s misfortunes in 1536 are almost as contradictory as are the let-
ters of the Spanish diplomats about Elizabeth of York’s queenship.
In 1972, E. W. Ives, relying on the dispatches of Chapuys, an avowed
enemy of Anne, claimed that Cromwell deserted her reformed fac-
tion and took charge of a conservative faction against her because she
opposed his diplomatic policies.17 In his 2004 biography, Ives added that
Cromwell also moved against her because of her negative views about
the dissolution of the monasteries.18
Meanwhile, in articles published in the 1990s, G. W. Bernard, who
expressed concerns that the factional theory had denied Henry mastery
of his court, concluded that Anne had committed adultery with the five
accused men who subsequently suffered execution. Bernard further won-
dered why Cromwell had confided only in Chapuys and no other ambas-
sador.19 Later, in his 2009 book, Bernard cited a poem by Lancelot de
Carle, secretary to the French resident, Antoine de Castelnau, bishop of
Tarbes. Having just arrived in England that spring, Carle had little time
to unearth sensitive information about the court. Indeed, in the poem,
completed in June 1536, Carle admitted only that he had versified the
rumors circulating about Anne and her alleged lovers. In his book,
Bernard amended his earlier assessments about the men’s guilt, claiming
the poet was right about Mark Smeaton, Henry Norris, and Sir Francis
Weston but incorrect about Anne’s brother, George, Viscount Rochford,
and William Brereton.20
A more scholarly approach to discussing these events is to acknowl-
edge that the poet lacked inside information about the court and that
Henry’s councilors, especially Cromwell, deliberately fed falsehoods to
Chapuys. In fact, almost nothing in Chapuys’s 1536 dispatches written
before April can be corroborated except that Jane Seymour attracted
Henry’s attention at Greenwich and that Anne miscarried there. In
modern accounts, scholars have not adopted a consistent methodology
for interpreting Chapuys’ gossipy statements, partly because corrobora-
tive evidence concerning the events at court is not extant. His report,
for example, that Anne’s miscarriage possibly resulted from her having
heard about the heavy fall of both the king and his horse while jousting
on January 24, a day of the month that is usually identified as the eve
of the third anniversary of their royal marriage, has not won widespread
140 R.M. Warnicke
acceptance, perhaps because Chapuys also asserted that she did not
deliver the fetus until 5 days later, on January 29. Most experts also do
not, unlike early modern people, believe that a clear link exists between
frights and miscarriages. The king himself, however, validated this folk-
lore, when, as noted in Chap. 4, he worried that the pregnant Jane
might miscarry if she took “a fright at some sudden displeasant rumors
and bruits.”21
Even so, it is also interesting that modern studies almost unani-
mously credit the rumor that the 44-year-old king fell while compet-
ing in a tournament even though none of his contemporaries reported
having witnessed a Greenwich competition in January 1536. Charles
Wriothesley, the Windsor herald, who resided in London, referred to the
fall in a vague way: “It was said she took a fright, for the king ran that
time at the ring and had a fall from his horse, but he had no hurt; and
she took such a fright withal that it caused her to fall in travail.” He also
dated the miscarriage the third day before the feast of Candlemas Day,
surely January 30. That he introduced the incident as “it was said” and
gave no specific date for it means that he did not witness the fall; he also
provided somewhat different details than those that Chapuys had heard
at his London embassy. As noted above, Chapuys claimed that both
the king and his horse took a heavy fall; indicated a different war game,
jousting; and placed her miscarriage on January 29, a date revealed to
him by Cromwell. It is interesting, given the importance of coinciding
dates in early modern Europe, that the days Chapuys gave for the king’s
fall and her miscarriage placed his accident on the eve of their likely third
wedding anniversary and her tragedy on the day of Katherine’s funeral.22
Equally interesting is the information in Edward Hall’s chronicle,
which Peter Herman determined was to a large extent based on other
written sources. In fact, from the mid-1530s, Hall left only notes and
documents that his printer, Richard Grafton, drew together to complete
his narrative, and to which the printer might have added some mate-
rial. The chronicle not only dates Anne’s miscarriage in early February
but it also lacks information about the king’s fall. The last competition
in which it reports that Henry performed occurred on March 5, 1527,
when he was 35 years old. Nine years later, in January 1536, the chroni-
cle identifies no war game, either jousting or running at the ring. Since
both Hall, a member of the Reformation Parliament, and Grafton lived
in London, it seems odd that they would not have heard any rumors
about the king’s accident. It also seems improbable that Henry could
5 GOVERNANCE AND PATRONAGE 141
have taken such a heavy fall without someone like an agent of Arthur
Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, who nosed around the court at Greenwich,
mentioning it. After May 1540, Henry appeared to have lost inter-
est even in observing the competitions, perhaps because of his age and
health. Indeed, as early as April 1532, he had begun to consider his
aging status. At that time, he informed Parliament, “For I am… 41 years
old, at which age the lust of man is not so quick, as in lusty youth.”
As will be explained in Chap. 7, many early modern individuals believed
that sometime in their forties, they had reached old age.23 It is therefore
unlikely that the king participated in a tournament in 1536. If so, what
other falsehoods might scholars someday find in Chapuys’ dispatches?
Cromwell probably revealed a plot against Anne to Chapuys because
he wished to discover what he knew about the miscarriage. Almost daily,
Chapuys corresponded with Mary, who lived in the household of her
half-sister, Elizabeth, whose governess was Anne Shelton, the queen’s
paternal aunt. Before February 17, Mary, who corresponded with him
frequently, was probably the informant who alerted him that her gov-
erness and her relatives had interrogated one of Mary’s most “familiar”
maids as to what she knew about the miscarriage.24 It is also important
to note that while Chapuys seems to have validated Cromwell’s claim of
having political differences with Anne, the ambassador still believed that
she was guilty, calling her a putain (whore) as well as a concubine, and
blaming her, not the king, for Katherine’s marital troubles.25
That she miscarried a deformed fetus cannot be proved by extant
documentation, as Henry would have had the vital evidence suppressed.
Later, Cromwell informed Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, that
the information obtained about her had been so abominable that “a
great part” of it was “never given in evidence but clearly kept secret.”
Indeed, he or other councilors probably deliberately destroyed it. The
statements of the female witnesses who were present in Anne’s privy
chamber when she miscarried, unlike those of Katherine Howard’s serv-
ants, who testified about her premarital sexual experiences, are not now
available.26
Later, Matthew Parker, Anne’s chaplain, claimed that she was innocent.
When serving as her daughter Elizabeth’s archbishop of Canterbury, he
noted that Anne’s soul rested in “blessed felicity with God.”27 The most
obvious way Henry could have believed her guilty while she repeatedly
denied the charges was that she had miscarried a deformed fetus. Why else
would Parker believe her soul resided in heaven?
142 R.M. Warnicke
letter, which contained sensitive material, but that Henry had sent the
same information to him in plain writing. He begged her to discuss
with Henry the importance of ciphering those messages. Her father also
noted that he had received her letters of October 12, November 4, and
November 5, as well as the treaties that she had enclosed with them, and
that the new resident was en route to England.31
Even after Caroz’s arrival, Ferdinand continued to rely on her sup-
port. In June 1510, he ordered his resident to request her to persuade
Henry, if he decided against undertaking their planned venture against
France, to change his mind. If she refused her assistance, then Caroz
should ask her confessor, Friar Fernandez, to convince her to speak
with her husband about this issue. Two years later, Ferdinand notified
his daughter that he had sent Martin de Muxica with a message that
he, along with Caroz, should deliver to the king and to her. She con-
tinued to further her father’s causes, personally informing Muxica and
Caroz of her recommendation to Henry and his council that they send
aid to Ferdinand for his French war. Her ability to assist her father ended
because of Ferdinand’s and Henry’s disagreement over French diplo-
matic matters in 1513. The next year, in October, Henry’s sister, Mary,
wed Louis XII rather than Katherine’s nephew, the future emperor,
Charles, prince of Castile, to whom she had been betrothed since
1507. Katherine’s diplomatic standing began to improve in 1516, how-
ever, after the birth of her daughter, Mary, and the death of Ferdinand,
whose successor as king of Aragon was his grandson, Charles of Castile.
Messages for Katherine’s assistance began again to arrive. In August,
Charles asked her to aid one of his subjects, whom an English pirate had
robbed. After his election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, he notified
her that he had sent an agent with information for her, and in 1520, he
thanked her for promoting his recent meeting with Henry. Two years
later, when an ambassador of Charles’s brother, Ferdinand, the infante
and future emperor, met with Katherine to request that she persuade
Henry to aid his ruler against the Turks, she replied that she knew of
and agreed with her husband’s opinion that he could not employ his
resources in both French and Turkish warfare. The next year, in 1523,
Pope Adrian VI asked her to induce her husband to press for peace
among the Christian monarchs so that they could combine together to
defeat the Turks who had taken Rhodes. This evidence indicates that not
only did Henry discuss diplomatic matters with her but that foreign rul-
ers also believed that he exchanged views about European politics with
144 R.M. Warnicke
how I can keep my promise sending you for your banners a king’s coat.”
She ended her letter with “praying God to send you home shortly, for
without this no joy can here be accomplished and for the same I pray
and now go to Our Lady of Walsingham that I promised so long ago
to see.” She signed off as “his humble wife and true servant.” The news
that she had sent Henry a king in exchange for a duke circulated in the
diplomatic rumor mill.46
Other important matters occurred during her regency, but this chap-
ter now turns to that of Katherine Parr. Concerning Scotland, she and
her council had to negotiate the results of successful raids on the borders
and its changing politics. During their raids, the English forces seized
so many Scottish prisoners that their jails could not hold them all. By
exchanges of letters with Henry and his council, Katherine and her coun-
cil decided who should remain in prison at the king’s expense and who
should be released.47
Internal Scottish politics became more complicated when Matthew
Stewart, earl of Lennox, a resident in France since 1532, returned home
in 1543 as the French ambassador. There Lennox competed for power
with James Hamilton, earl of Arran; each claimed that as a descendant of
James II, he was the legitimate successor to Mary, queen of Scots, whose
father, James V, had died in 1542, when she was 6 days old. Her regent,
Arran, and her mother, Mary of Guise, favored a French alliance. Soon
realizing that he could not supplant Arran, Lennox fled to England in
July 1544 and married Margaret, daughter of Margaret Tudor by her
second husband, Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus, in the presence of
Henry and Katherine. Later in July, the king sent Lennox to the west
of Scotland on what turned out to be a futile expedition, and then in
August appointed him lieutenant of the north of England and the south
of Scotland. The letters of the queen and her council contain much news
about Lennox’s activities. They had, for example, to prevent certain
Scotsmen from returning home before he arrived there on his expedi-
tion.48 His subsequent actions move beyond this regency and form a part
of what has been termed “rough wooings,” the attempts to capture the
young queen and raise her in England as the future bride of Henry’s son,
Edward.49
Meanwhile, Arran and the dowager queen had sent several ships with
both Frenchmen and Scotsmen carrying dispatches for members of the
French court. In July, English fishermen at Rye seized one of the ships
off the Scottish coast. On the 31st, Katherine informed Henry about
5 GOVERNANCE AND PATRONAGE 151
its apprehension and sent him the letters that the fishermen had found.
Almost 1 month later, her council informed Lennox that a Scottish ship
had been seized off Scarborough with an ambassador from the dowager
queen to Francis, and that Katherine had forwarded his confiscated dis-
patches to Henry.50
The regent and her council also supplied Henry at Boulogne with
money, men, and armaments. The urgent need for reinforcements,
after Charles and Francis signed the Treaty of Crépy in September, led
Wriothesley to respond to messages for the king’s needs on the 25th
without waiting for advice from the queen and her other councilors,
who had been in residence at Woking at least since September 1. Until
September 24, he had himself been with the queen there and may well
have traveled to Eltham to prepare the palace for her arrival, since she
had reached it by the 28th. He forwarded to her at Woking the let-
ters that he had received, along with a message about the arrangements
he had made for the delivery of ships, money, and men to Boulogne.
Finally, he begged the queen’s pardon, for in this emergency he did
not wish to send a message to her and then “tarry” for her answer.51
No record of the queen’s reaction has survived, but the incident high-
lights how easily a member of a formal council could ignore obtaining
the regent’s advice than it would have been for one of the advisers of
Katherine of Aragon. As it turned out, this was a false alarm, and the
king returned safely home a few days later.
In her dispatches, Katherine Parr commented on the king’s health as
well as her love for him. At least seven letters from her to him and his
council have survived.52 It will be recalled from Chap. 2 of this book that
in 1547 she revealed to Thomas Lord, Seymour of Sudeley, her future
husband, her desire in 1543 to wed him instead of the king. Given that
information, it is interesting that on July 31, 1544, about 1 year after her
royal wedding, she wrote extremely affectionately to Henry. In her let-
ter, she admitted that although the days of his absence had not been long
(actually about three weeks), since she “so much beloved and desired” his
presence, “the time, therefore, seemed” to her “very long” and her “love
and affection compelled” her “to desire” his presence. Her love made her
“set apart” her “own commodity and pleasure” and “to embrace most
joyfully his will and pleasure whom” she “loved…. God, the knower of
secrets,” could “judge that these words” were not “written only with ink,
but most truly impressed on the heart.” She ended by “committing” him
“to the governance of the Lord with long and prosperous life here, and
152 R.M. Warnicke
after this life to enjoy the kingdom of the elect.”53 Perhaps in 1547, after
the king’s death, she had wanted to reassure Seymour of her deep love
for him by revealing her earlier wish to marry him, or perhaps she wanted
to rescue her reputation as a dowager queen from the blame of falling so
quickly in love with a mere baron. It is difficult to interpret the drastic
changes in her feelings toward Henry that her separate letters reveal during
that 1-year period from 1543 to 1544.
Her letters prove interesting for other reasons. First, they are unlike
those that Katherine of Aragon wrote to Henry when she served as
regent. The first regent’s messages, of course, were friendly, and in one
she admitted that she longed for his presence, but she failed to empha-
size her love for him, as did Katherine Parr. Perhaps their two writing
styles arose from the differences in their lineage and early education. A
second interesting issue is that the letter filled with words of love for
Henry seems to have been the only one this second regent wrote in
which she failed to assure the king and his council of the good health
of the prince and his other children, who lived under her care and pro-
tection. In July 1544, Katherine, Edward, Mary, and her council had
moved to Hampton Court Palace, with Elizabeth joining them in early
August. At the end of her regency, the two younger children returned to
Edward’s household, for only Mary was old enough to remain at court.54
Another way a queen could have an impact on royal decisions was by
performing the traditional intercessory role, which had emerged in the
early medieval period and which gained renewed prominence after the
marriage in 1236 of Henry III to Eleanor of Provence. The ceremony,
which developed from the earthly queen’s desire to imitate the interces-
sory role of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, recognized the king’s
power but allowed him gracefully to change his mind in response to his
consort’s plea for mercy. In fact, although it provided him an opportunity
for modifying his original judgment without appearing weak, it is likely
that before the concession, he and his councilors had already decided on
granting mercy. The intercession could well be interpreted as a tool for
supporting the concept of patriarchal supremacy and the queen’s subor-
dination, but it did allow her to appear to have some influence over him
and perhaps to convey to him some governmental criticisms.55
Only evidence for one Tudor intercessory ceremony, that of Katherine
of Aragon, has survived. The evil May Day riots occurred in 1517; these
involved numerous apprentices, vagabonds, and sanctuary men attacking
London’s foreign sections, ransacking shops, setting some houses on fire,
5 GOVERNANCE AND PATRONAGE 153
their sisters’ and daughters’ royal marriages, had already held impor-
tant court or military positions. Moreover, as noted in Chap. 4, that
Katherine Parr’s brother and brother-in-law did not obtain the politi-
cal power of, for instance, Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford, future
duke of Somerset, and that Katherine Howard’s brothers, who like her
descended from the dukes of Norfolk, did not reap great rewards beyond
some extra funds, proved the need even for the queens’ immediate rela-
tives to display political talents to achieve significant advancement. This
chapter now discusses evidence about Katherine of Aragon’s, Anne
Boleyn’s, and Katherine Parr’s patronage of scholars and of the men
selected to be bishops, or “state prelates,” as Cédric Michon referred to
them. He pointed out that during Henry VIII’s reign, the “laicisation”
of the king’s council meant that the episcopal participants declined from
40 to 20% of the total number. Still, this episcopal membership remained
significant. In 1513 and 1544, the king appointed two ecclesiastics as his
regents’ councilors.59
The religious actions and beliefs of Katherine of Aragon make it pos-
sible to view her as a transitional Christian queen, standing between the
late medieval piety of Elizabeth of York and the reformed views of Anne
Boleyn. Like Elizabeth, Katherine went on pilgrimages and enjoyed the
support of numerous chantries, the founders of which funded priests to
say prayers for the queens’ and kings’ souls, as well as for themselves and
others. Because of her heritage, Katherine also enjoyed support in Spain,
receiving in 1514 all the benefits of the Monastery of St. Jerome in the
diocese of Toledo from its prior. Furthermore, as a member of the third
order of the Franciscan Observant friars, she wore its robes under her
gowns.60
In addition to her adherence to the church’s emphasis on the afterlife,
which the prayers for the souls of the dead represented, Katherine also
displayed an interest in Christian humanism, an intellectual movement
that called for the values of Christianity to be melded with those of clas-
sical literature, both Latin and Greek. The Christian humanists proposed
that a combined classical and Christian education would lead people, at
first only men, to reform society, for example to alleviate poverty and to
abolish warfare. Later, because of Sir Thomas More’s leadership, girls,
like his daughter, Margaret Roper, could also obtain this advanced edu-
cation, making it possible for them to become better wives by conversing
about philosophical matters with their husbands, and to become better
mothers by providing their daughters with educations similar to theirs.
5 GOVERNANCE AND PATRONAGE 155
These humanists also called for discovering the most accurate, ancient
texts of the Bible and for it to be translated into vernacular tongues.61
As early as 1514, Erasmus, who denounced monastic and pilgrimage
abuses, informed a friend that during his time in England, Katherine of
Aragon had tried to gain “his service as her tutor.” He later referred to
her as “astonishingly well read,” claimed she was “as admired for piety…
as for learning,” informed his friend, Juan Luis Vives, that she greatly
appreciated the Spaniard’s work on free will, and related that he had
dedicated to her in 1526 his Institutio Christiani Matrimonii, which her
lord chamberlain, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, his patron, had asked
him to write for her.62 As earlier noted, she relied on Vives for instruc-
tional books for her daughter Mary’s education.
In England, Wolsey, also a patron of humanists, drew up plans to con-
struct Cardinal College at Oxford. In January 1525, Henry led John
Longland, bishop of Lincoln, into Katherine’s chamber to explain those
plans for the college, which included daily lectures in Greek and Latin
and philosophy, as well as provisions for the exposition of the Bible.
That the college curriculum included both classical learning and bibli-
cal studies greatly pleased the queen, even though to fund it Wolsey had
dissolved the Priory of St. Frideswide, on the land of which the college
was built, and several other priories. As noted in Chap. 4, later, William
Forrest, who served as a chaplain for her daughter, Queen Mary, recalled
in his account of Katherine’s life, which he entitled The History of Grisild
the Second, how much she loved to read the scriptures and saints’ lives.63
The search for the bishops that she might have patronized begins
with the identification of the three attending her in 1520 at the Field
of Cloth of Gold. They included Bishop Fisher, Charles Booth, bishop
of Hereford, and Jorge de Athequa, bishop of Llandaff. As Wolsey had
asked Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, for the number of men and
women who planned to accompany his wife, Mary, the widowed French
queen, to this meeting, it would seem reasonable to assume that the car-
dinal also consulted with the English queen about attendants. If not, it
is ironic that either Wolsey or the king chose three bishops who favored
her, or who at least wanted to favor her struggle against the dissolu-
tion of her royal marriage. Two circumstances might have led her to
select Fisher. First, when he held the position of councilor during her
regency, the two could have developed a good relationship, for later in
1529, he served as a member of her legal team at the Blackfriars trial,
which investigated the validity of her royal marriage. After that hearing
156 R.M. Warnicke
deeds condemn us not, at the last day, when every man will be rewarded
according to his doings.” Mueller has compared her beliefs to those of
some early Reformation clerics and said her work was “an affirmation of
a role for human cooperation in the dynamic of salvation.”78
Because of Katherine Parr’s strong religious beliefs, according to the
story first related by John Foxe in 1570, the king agreed to have her
arrested for heresy. She had begun debating religious issues with Henry,
praising him for “banishing that monstrous idol of Rome” but noting
that “great superstition” remained in the church. As his health deteri-
orated, he became less and less tolerant of her assertiveness. She must
have been less diplomatic in her tone than Anne Boleyn had earlier been.
According to Foxe, it was Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, who,
after overhearing one of Katherine’s exchanges with Henry, later success-
fully asked the king to authorize him to write up a bill of articles to have
her arrested for heresy. Briefly concerning a somewhat detailed story, she
discovered the existence of the bill of articles and fearfully went to bed.
The king found her there, and when he asked what was wrong, she asked
to see him the next day. At that time, she explained that she had not
only spoken about religious matters to distract him from his illness but
also because she hoped to learn from his wise responses to her. As an
inferior woman, she had the duty to obey him as her lord and master.
Pleased by her explanation, Henry declared that they were perfect friends
again. Obviously it was less her beliefs than it was his suspicion that she
was attempting to teach him, the head of the Church of England, about
religious matters that offended him. When on the next day Wriothesley,
not Bishop Gardiner, arrived to arrest Katherine, Henry rudely dismissed
him.79
Thomas Freeman has argued persuasively that Foxe’s story was based
on information that one of her attendants provided to his researcher.
Many of his details dovetail with known facts, such as the names of her
doctor and her female attendants. Freeman dated the episode between
March and August 1546, when the court was at Whitehall, which was
where Foxe placed the dispute. He also believed that Gardiner, Foxe’s
“usual suspect” in attacks on heretics, could have overhead the conversa-
tion that led the king to order her arrest, but that he was not involved in
the conspiracy against her. The king seems otherwise to have supported
Wriothesley’s moves against heretics, including Anne Askew in July
1546. Freeman noted that the episode with Katherine showed an “ele-
ment of calculation” on the king’s part and identified it as a “product
5 GOVERNANCE AND PATRONAGE 163
of” his “style of ruling and the tensions at his court.”80 It is actually pos-
sible that some tension already existed in the relationship of Katherine
and Wriothesley, since as noted above, he responded to Henry’s needs at
Boulogne without previously consulting her as the king’s regent.
Despite her general support of reform, she approved only of reading
religious works, especially the Bible. When in February 1546 Cambridge
University officials requested that she plead with the king not to dissolve
their colleges, she responded that they should not have written to her in
Latin but should have asked her “familiarly in our vulgar tongue aptly
for my intelligence.” Furthermore, she warned them against emphasizing
the “profane learning” of the “Greeks at Athens.” Instead, they should
prefer “the most Sacred doctrine” rather than the “natural or moral at
Athens.” After these admonitions, she informed them that the king had
promised not to dissolve their colleges.81
Of the episcopal leaders with whom Katherine was associated during
her queenship, only Cranmer and perhaps Thomas Thirlby, bishop of
Westminster since 1540, can be defined as two who wanted to reform
the church beyond separating from Rome and dissolving monaster-
ies and chantries. Cranmer did, of course, serve on her regency coun-
cil and might have had some influence on her beliefs. The other bishop
on her regency council was Thirlby. After 1544, he had little contact
with the queen, spending the last years of Henry’s reign as resident at
the Imperial court. Although he seems to have been an evangelical early
in his career, after the accession of Edward VI, he opposed many of the
religious changes, but he chose to obey the Statute of Uniformity of
1549, for example, when Parliament enacted it. Thereafter, he held vari-
ous governmental positions and then supported Mary after her accession,
winning from her the bishopric of Ely.82
Bishop Day, who served as Katherine’s almoner from 1545, had
contacts with Bishop Fisher and belonged to the humanist circle at St.
John’s. Besides accepting the Statute of Supremacy, he had membership
on commissions to survey the chantries in three counties. In the reign
of Edward VI, however, he disagreed about further changes in church
ritual. Because he refused to replace the altars with tables in the churches
in his diocese, the government deprived him of his bishopric in 1551.83
It is ironic that although Katherine’s female attendants included reform-
ers, such as Katherine Brandon, duchess of Suffolk, and Anne Seymour,
countess of Hertford, who gave money to the heretic, Anne Askew, she
seems to have relied on only one evangelical chaplain, John Parkhurst, a
164 R.M. Warnicke
Notes
1. Donald Queller, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 94–140, 146; Scottish Record Office,
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S.
Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie, 21 vol. in 35 (London: HMSO, 1862–
1932), I, 474, 2131 (hereafter LP). For studies of diplomats and spies, see the
essays in Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox, eds., Diplomacy and Early Modern
Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
2. Jocelyne Russell, Peacemaking in the Renaissance (London: Duckworth,
1986), p. 69.
3. Karen Newman, Cultural Capitals: Early Modern London and Paris
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 151.
4. Robert Shephard,“Sexual Rumours in English Politics: The Cases of
Elizabeth I and James I,” Desire and Sexuality in the Premodern West,
ed. Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1996), p. 102.
5. Scottish Record Office, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts,
Existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan. Published by the
Authority of the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury Under
the Direction of the Master of the Rolls (London: HMSO, 1912), 463
(hereafter CSP Milan); LP, III, 118; Scottish Record Office, Calendar of
Letters, Despatches, and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations Between
England and Spain Preserved in the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere,
ed. G.A. Bergenroth, P. De Gayangos, G. Mattingly, M.A.S. Hume,
and R. Taylor, 13 vol. 2 supplements (London: Longman, 1862–1954),
VI-i, 295, 306, 309, VI-ii, 94 (hereafter CSP Span); Jean Kaulek, ed.,
Correspondance Politique de MM. De Castillon et Marillac: Ambassadeurs
de France en Angleterre, 1537–1542 (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1885), pp. 218,
223, 228, 314. Later, after her arrest, Marillac momentarily thought the
king might take Anne back. See p. 371.
6. Leonard Howard, A Collection of Letters from the Original Manuscripts
of Many Princes, Personages, and Statesmen (London, 1753, Eighteenth
Century Collections Online http://www.galenet.galegroup (accessed
6/29/2006), p. 307. See also LP, II, 2967, 3120, III, 2770.
7. Great Britain, Record Commission, State Papers of Henry VIII, 11 vols.
(London: HMSO, 1830–1842), VIII, 191 (hereafter State Papers);
Joseph Bain, Grant Simpson, and James Galbraith, eds., Calendar
of Documents Relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots, 13 vols.
(Edinburgh: H.M. General Register Office, 1989–1969), VIII, 247.
8. Richard Edward Lundell, “The Mask of Dissimulation: Eustace Chapuys
and Early Modern Diplomatic Technique, 1536–1545,” Ph.D. dissertation,
166 R.M. Warnicke
51. LP, XIX-I, 981, 1020, XIX-ii, 136, 167 187, 195, 292, 324, XIX-I, 1020.
52. T.N.A. (LP, XIX-I, 979); T.N.A. SP 1/190/156 (LP, XIX-I, 980); T.N.A
SP 1/190/220 (LP, XIX-I,1019); BL Lansdowne MS 1236, art. 7, fo.
9v (LP, XIX-I, 1029); T.N.A. SP 1/191/53 (LP, XIX-ii, 39); BL Add.
MS 27402, fs. 39v-40r (LP, XIX-ii, 58); T.N.A. SP 1/191/166 (LP,
XIX-ii, 136).
53. BL Lansdowne MS 1236, art. 7, f. 9v; LP, XIX-I, 1029.
54. T.N.A. SP 1/190/155r (LP, XIX-I, 979); T.N.A. SP1/190/156 (LP, XIX-
I, 980), T.N.A. SP 1/190/220 (LP, XIX-I, 980); T.N.A. SP 1/190/220
(LP, XIX-I,1019); BL Lansdowne MS 1236, art. 7, fo. 9v (LP, XIX-I,
1029); T.N.A. SP 1/191/53 (LP, XIX-ii, 39); BL Add. MS 27402, fs.
39v-40r (LP, XIX-ii, 58); T.N.A. SP 1/191/166 (LP, XIX-ii, 136).
55. For further information, see John Carmi Parsons, “The Queen’s
Intercession in Thirteeth-Century England,” Power of the Weak: Studies
on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean
(Urbana, University of Illinois, 1995), pp. 147–177; Paul Strohm,
Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth Century Texts
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 95–104.
56. LP, II, 3204; CSP Ven, II, 887. For the ballad, see Agnes Sttrickland,
Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest, 12 vols.
(London: H. Colburn, 1840–1848), IV, 108–109; In 1537, joining
those who hoped that Jane would support the Catholic faith, Chapuys
wrote that she had knelt before the king requesting him to restore the
abbeys. Since (see Chap. 3), her jointure had income from some dis-
solved monasteries, this statement of Chapuys, like so many others, sim-
ply repeated unverifiable rumors. See LP, XI, 860.
57. LP, IV, 3105.
58. LP, XVI, 660, 678, 1391(18), XX-ii, 909(15), 1067(40). For the dry
stamp, see David Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and
Politics (London: George Philip, 1985), p. 136.
59. Cédric Michon, “Pomp and Circumstances: State Prelates under Francis
I and Henry VIII,” “The Contending Kingdoms” France and England:
1420–1700, ed. Glenn Richardson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp.
79–84; Francis Lambert,. The Sum of Christianity Gathered out Almost
All Places of Scripture, trans. Tristram Revel (London: Robert Redman,
1536). Jane Seymour’s almoner was Robert Aldrich, whom Henry ele-
vated to the bishopric of Carlisle probably in 1536. As Henry had long
been his patron, it seems unlikely that Jane had much influence, if any, on
his elevation. See Angelo Louisa, “Aldrich, Robert (1488/1489–1556),
bishop of Carlisle,” ODNB, www.oxforddnb.com (accessed May 13,
2016).
60. LP, I, 2944, II, 1511, 3018, III, 967, IV, 652.
170 R.M. Warnicke
Revels and Celebrations
This chapter examines the roles of Tudor queens at royal revels and cel-
ebrations with mainly secular festivities, including those occurring on
religious holidays. Before turning to them, it first provides information
about the “Articles Ordained by King Henry VII for the Regulation of
His Household.” It then presents a few traditional welcoming ceremo-
nies, called entries, produced by lord mayors and aldermen for royal
and noble personages on their visits to their towns and cities, especially
London, and highlights the greeting by that city’s leaders of Katherine of
Aragon as princess of Wales. Chapter 2 has already described the entries
of Elizabeth of York and Anne Boleyn through the city because they
formed essential parts of the coronation tradition, even for Katherine
of Aragon’s shared one in 1509, although Londoners had previously
welcomed her as the princess of Wales. The present chapter next pro-
vides information about the queens’ roles at special tournaments and
war games and at the banquets that often accompanied them, including
analyses of the feast day of St. George and the festivities of May Day. It
further discusses the queens’ presence at the rituals, revels, and entertain-
ments customarily produced at court during religious holidays, especially
the 12 days of Christmas, including the New Year’s gift giving and the
Epiphany or Twelfth Night traditions. Finally, this chapter briefly turns
to two occasions when the queen’s interaction with diplomats and guests
had international ramifications. The examination of these topics involves
only a few significant examples because covering each of them com-
pletely would require separate book-length studies.
began on Sunday, they privately entered the cathedral to view the cer-
emony from a secret latticed closet high in the cathedral’s vault. The
king’s mother and some other dignitaries joined them there. The royal
couple’s high royal status prevented them from officially appearing at
the wedding ritual and banquet, in which the prince and princess held
first place. Henry, but not Elizabeth, accompanied Arthur when he went
to be bedded down with Katherine. The following day, Monday, the
king’s mother hosted a dinner for the princess’s Spanish attendants at her
Coldharbour House.9
On Tuesday, November 16, Arthur and Katherine moved to
Baynard’s Castle. There, Elizabeth of York, who selected some of her
ladies to attend the princess, accompanied her new daughter-in-law to
Westminster in the queen’s barge, which followed after the king’s barge
in which Henry and Arthur traveled. Until November 26, they remained
at Westminster, observing various tournaments as well as Burgundian-
like entertainments with disguised performers appearing on pageant cars.
Often the king’s mother and the royal children, Henry and Margaret,
joined them at these events. Five-year-old Mary attended only the first
tournament, called the wedding tournament.10 On the 26th, the same
royal party, except for the king’s daughters, rode on barges to Richmond
Palace, where the Spanish visitors and other gentlemen enjoyed deer
hunting at its park. Finally, on Monday, November 29, the princess’s
Spanish attendants took leave of her and the prince, the king, queen, and
the king’s mother. They carried letters and messages to Ferdinand only
from Henry, Elizabeth, and the newlyweds.11
The several days in which the royal family celebrated the wedding
of Arthur and Katherine that included her entry, three disguisings, the
martial competitions, and the relaxed atmosphere at the magnificent
Burgundian-like palace of Richmond provided the celebrants and their
guests with the traditional activities that usually accompanied the mar-
riage of a prince or king to a foreign-born bride.12 As related in Chap.
2, no Tudor queen consort, even Anne of Cleves, received the reception
and honor offered the princess when she arrived to marry the prince.
Entries into cities and towns did not always form parts of grander cel-
ebrations. Evidence has survived of Londoners welcoming Jane Seymour,
Anne of Cleves, and Katherine Howard as they passed in barges on the
Thames toward London Bridge on their way to Westminster. Normally
first entries occurred in processions on land through towns and cities,
but when members of the royal family stayed at Greenwich Palace and
178 R.M. Warnicke
went to Westminster Palace in their barges for the first time, Londoners
welcomed them as they moved toward London Bridge. On June 7,
1536, herald and chronicler Charles Wriothesley noted that Henry and
Jane rode in a great barge from Greenwich to Westminster, following
his lords, who traveled in barges that went before them. As they passed
by the ships in the Thames, each one shot off its guns. Next, Eustace
Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, stationed in a tent on shore and
obviously delighted that the queen whom he had called a concubine no
longer reigned, sent toward the king’s barge two boats with musicians
who played for the royal couple as they passed by. When they reached
the Tower of London, gunmen shot off 400 pieces of ordinance, and
on the Tower walls toward the water side hung great streamers and ban-
ners. Wriothesley described the event as a “goodly sight to behold.” Six
months later, on December 22, because the Thames had frozen over,
Wriothesley again observed Henry and Jane, as well as Mary, the king’s
daughter, in procession, this time riding horseback from Westminster
Palace, accompanied by a great many lords, ladies, and gentlemen,
through London to Greenwich; the lord mayor with all the aldermen in
their order rode before the royal train. The streets, graveled from Temple
Bar to the footbridge in Southwark, contained decorations of rich gold
and arras. In Fleet Street stood the four orders of friars wearing copes
of gold and holding crosses, candlesticks, and censers to cense the king
and queen. John Stokesley, bishop of London, the abbot of Waltham,
the abbot of the Crutched Friars of Tower Hill, and all of St. Paul’s choir
waited at the west door of the cathedral in rich copes, intending also to
cense the king and queen, and from the north door of St. Paul’s church-
yard to the foot bridge stood two priests from every parish church in
London holding their best crosses, candlesticks, and censers. Moreover,
all the city craftsmen in their best liveries with hoods on their shoulders
watched the procession that Wriothesley again described as a “goodly
sight to behold.”13
In February 1540, the chronicler later observed Henry’s and Anne of
Cleves’s water entry into Westminster from Greenwich. First, Henry’s
household went in barges before him, with his guard following him in
another barge. Next came the queen in her barge, with her ladies and her
household servants following her in other barges. The lord mayor and
aldermen of London met them in one barge, followed by the chief crafts-
men of the city in their barges, which were all richly hung with escutch-
eons and banners of every occupation—the mercer’s, for example, with
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 179
rich cloth of gold. From Greenwich to the Tower, all the ships in the
Thames shot guns as the king and queen passed by. And when the royal
procession reached the Tower, there were shot within it more than 1,000
chambers of ordinance that resounded like thunder. Afterward, the royal
couple passed under London Bridge to Westminster, the mayor and
craftsmen following them until they saw their barges docked. Later, the
French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, who reported that the ships
and craftsmen of London had triumphantly met Henry and Anne as they
went to Westminster, described the entry as more honorable than the
king’s initial Greenwich greeting of her.14
Despite Marillac’s opinion that Anne of Cleves’s river entry was more
honorable than her initial reception, clearly the Londoners’ welcome
of both Jane and Anne of Cleves seems to have been far less lavish, at
least based on Wriothesley’s and the ambassador’s comments, than the
river entries associated with the coronations of Elizabeth of York and
Anne Boleyn. In 1541, Wriothesley later also described the river entry
of Katherine Howard to Westminster, which did not greatly differ from
that of Anne of Cleves. This chapter will now turn to another entry of
Henry’s fifth queen, which follows the more usual procedure on land.15
On Henry’s and Katherine’s procession north, hoping to greet his
nephew, James V, at York, Marillac, who accompanied them, reported on
August 12, 1541, that at the king’s first visit to a town, its inhabitants,
dressed in ordinary clothes and riding on little geldings, preceded the
royal company onto their main street, which they had previously grave-
led. Notable English lords led the royal train: the king astride a great
horse; the queen; his daughter, Mary; and some female attendants. Sixty
or eighty archers with drawn bows brought up the rear. The royal train
then moved to the lodgings prepared for them. Marillac claimed his
description reflected the entry at Stamford, the one three days before at
Lincoln, and would the next one at York on the 25th.16
Actually, an English account indicates somewhat more elaborate activi-
ties. On August 9, when Lincoln’s inhabitants learned that the king and
his court had stopped to dine at Temple Brewer, some seven miles from
their city, the lord mayor, burgesses, and commoners, along with the
gentlemen and yeomen of Lynsey, which lay near the king’s dining tent,
made preparations for the upcoming royal entry into Lincoln while the
archdeacon, dean, and clergy of its cathedral rode out to greet the king.
After giving a Latin oration and presenting him with a gift of victual, the
churchmen then returned to the cathedral. In preparation for their entry,
180 R.M. Warnicke
the king and queen rode to their private tent near Lincoln and changed
their apparel from green and crimson velvet to cloth of gold and silver.
Behind their tent lay one for the ladies, and some distance off, a station
where the six children of honor, dressed in cloth of gold and crimson vel-
vet, and the horses of estate waited for the procession to begin. When
the king and queen appeared on horseback, the herald, the gentlemen
pensioners, and other gentlemen led the train up to Lincoln according
to the traditional order; after them came George, Lord Hastings, bearing
the sword, the king, his horse led by his master of the horse, the chil-
dren of honor on great coursers, Thomas Manners, earl of Rutland, the
queen’s chamberlain, the queen, her horse of estate, all the ladies, the
captain of the guard, and the guard and the commoners. They found
waiting for them at the outskirts of Lincoln the city’s recorder with coun-
try gentlemen on horseback and the lord mayor and his brethren on foot,
who knelt and cried twice, “Jesus save your grace.” Next, the recorder
read and offered to the king an oration in English, which he handed to
Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, and a gift of victual. The lord
mayor presented the sword and mace and marched beside Clarenceux,
king of arms, while his civic brethren and the burgesses, followed by the
gentlemen of the country and knights on horseback, led the royal train
into Lincoln. All the church bells rang out as the procession passed by.
At the cathedral’s entrance, the mayor and brethren drew apart, as John
Longland, bishop of Lincoln, and the choir with the cross awaited the
royal couple inside the cathedral. The king and queen dismounted at its
west end, where a carpet and stools and cushions of cloth of gold, with
crucifixes on them, had been placed for their use. When Henry knelt
down, the bishop emerged wearing his miter, gave the crucifix to the king
and queen to kiss, and censed them. Afterward, they entered the church
and moved under the canopy to the sacrament, saying their prayers while
the choir sang Te Deum. Finally, all retired to their lodgings for the night
and departed for Gainsborough the next day.17
Now, returning to the marriage celebrations of Arthur and Katherine
of Aragon in 1501, this chapter next describes the first of three disguis-
ings that William Cornish of the chapel royal produced and presented
at Westminster Hall, and then addresses its significance. In the first dis-
guising, three pageant cars formed the basic structures for its unfolding
entertainment. Four animals—a silver lion, a golden lion, a hart with
gilt horns, and an ibex—led a pageant car with a castle atop it into the
hall. Two men enclosed in each of the four animals, one in the front and
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 181
one in the back, and showing only their legs that had been decorated to
conform to the looks of their artificial hosts, pulled it close to the king
and queen, who sat under their cloths of estate. Eight disguised ladies
looked out the castle’s windows, and children, appareled like maidens,
sang in its four turrets. Next arrived a second pageant car with a ship that
the master and mariners, dressed in Spanish clothing, anchored beside
the castle. From it descended Hope and Desire, the ambassadors of the
knights of the Mount of Love, who sought the ladies’ permission for the
knights to woo them. When the ladies refused the offer, the ambassadors
warned that the knights would respond to their rebuke with an assault
on their castle. At that moment, a third pageant car entered the hall, car-
rying a Mount of Love from which emerged eight knights, who attacked
the castle, causing the ladies, four dressed in the Spanish style and four in
the English style, to surrender and agree to dance with their assaulters.
After the departure of the pageant cars, the prince danced with his aunt,
Lady Cecily, Katherine with one of her Spanish ladies, and Henry, duke
of York, with his sister, Lady Margaret.18
Sydney Anglo has pointed out that this disguising deserves recogni-
tion as an innovation in English entertainment. While some elements
of it might be found earlier, this was the first royal entertainment that
included a combination of music, castles, and other structures on pag-
eant cars or “mobile stages,” dialogue in the form of a “dramatic argu-
ment,” mock combat, and a well-orchestrated final dance scene. All
available evidence, furthermore, suggests that this was the first appear-
ance of a street pageant car in a banquet hall. Anglo claimed that this
English disguising, which Continental rulers had already presented in
their courts, was Henry VII’s attempt to update his court entertain-
ment. Whatever political implications the disguising might have had for
the court, according to Anglo, it was more significant that its splendid
actions and dialogue offered an opportunity for “a prestige of display”
to the newest member of the family and to her Spanish attendants. It
also provided, perhaps more importantly than any other motive, excel-
lent entertainment for the king’s guests. The entertainment at Henry
VIII’s coronation discussed in Chap. 2, had contained some of these ear-
lier Burgundian elements.19
As to the tournaments that also occurred at Katherine of Aragon’s
wedding celebrations in 1501 and 1509, Henry VIII subsequently
showed great enjoyment in competing in war games while his father had
remained more comfortable sitting in the stands as an observer. At least
182 R.M. Warnicke
four kinds of war games existed in Tudor England: the jousts in which
two horsemen, holding lances with blunted tips, rode at high speed
toward each other down the tilt, a barrier adopted in the fifteenth cen-
tury to prevent the horses from careening into each other; the tourneys
that involved groups of mounted knights, armed with rebated swords
and other weapons, fighting with each other in a confined area; run-
ning at the ring, which required a structure with a crosspiece from which
hung a ring that a horseman attempted to pierce with his lance while
riding at full speed. As to the fourth kind, fighting at the barriers, on
May 29, 1510, the Spanish ambassador, Luis Caroz, informed Ferdinand
that almost every day of the week, the young Henry VIII amused him-
self with jousts, tournaments on foot, and running at the ring. Caroz
explained about the barriers that the two competitors on foot wore
breastplates and a particular kind of helmet. They first threw lances with
blunt iron points at each other, then fought with two-handed swords,
each of them dealing twelve strokes. A barrier as high as their waists sep-
arated them to prevent their seizing one another and wrestling.20
The role of queens at tournaments was basically that of specta-
tor, although they could be called on to deliver the prizes. Over time,
women’s attendance, especially at the major tournaments, had led to the
introduction of pageantry, music, and disguises in imitation of romance
literature, but the war games basically showcased the valor and athleti-
cism of the competitors. The king’s participation also offered him an
opportunity to use the event to display the monarch as the liege lord
and the source of political power.21 Only a sampling of the many tourna-
ments can be offered here.
In 1511, Henry decided to hold jousts on February 12 and 13 to
honor Katherine of Aragon, who had just been churched, as the mother
of their newly born but short-lived heir, also named Henry. Four knights
participating as chevaliers with French names—Henry VIII as Coeur
Loyall (Heart Loyal), Sir Edward Neville as Valliaunt Desyre (Valiant
Desire), William Courtenay, earl of Devon, as Bone Valoyr (Good Valor),
and Sir Thomas Knyvet as Bone Espoier (Good Hope)—challenged all
comers to the jousts.22 Before they began, Henry ordered entertain-
ment for the queen at Westminster Palace. Into the chamber appeared a
pageant car, carrying a forest with many trees, flowers, and other plants
made of green velvet. In it stood six foresters wearing coats and hoods of
green velvet by whom lay many spears. Before a gold castle in the mid-
dle of this forest sat a gentleman making a garland of roses. Two great
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 183
Anglo claimed, should be given to the reasons for Henry VIII’s use of
the new revel. Perhaps, like Henry VII’s disguising of 1501, the second
Tudor king wanted his court to keep up with European styles and wished
also for himself to be viewed as “fashionable.”28
Many of the male performers in the court’s various aristocratic
entertainments longed for membership in the prestigious Order of the
Garter, inaugurated by Edward III in 1348, which usually met annually
at Windsor on April 23, the feast day of St. George, England’s patron
saint. The Order, which was an attempt by Edward to revive Arthur’s
Round Table, consisted of him and twenty-five knight of his choosing;
membership in it “was an exceptional honour, making the recipient the
companion of kings.” Upon a vacancy, the knight companions nomi-
nated candidates for the king’s final selection. The Garter chapter did-
not always take place at Windsor on the saint’s feast day. In May 1510,
for example, Henry VIII ordered it held at Greenwich and in 1540 at
Westminster. He, like his father, also did not faithfully attend the cer-
emony, occasionally sending deputies in his place.29
In 1358, Edward III first selected some female members, among
them Queen Philippa, but they had only an associate role without full
membership, since they lacked the power to nominate other women to
the Order and did not attend separate female chapters. Indeed, no rule
ordained that a definite number of women should be selected or that a
replacement should be chosen when one of them died. Instead of wear-
ing purple robes like the knights companion, they dressed in special scar-
let gowns with trains and wore the garter on their left arms rather than
on their legs like the men. They and some other women, mostly wives or
relatives of the knight companions, attended the chapel, where a splen-
did pew was constructed for the queen for the divine services when the
men’s feast and chapter had ended.30
After Edward III’s reign, from time to time, other kings also selected
female members. Edward IV, for example, chose several ladies, among
them in 1477 three relatives named Elizabeth: his consort; his daugh-
ter; and his sister, Elizabeth de la Pole, duchess of Suffolk. In the Tudor
period, the women’s appearance at these ceremonies declined. In 1488,
when Henry VII appointed to the Order his mother, as Margaret,
Lady Richmond, he granted both her and his queen the robes of the
Order. His mother subsequently honored her membership by found-
ing a chantry for four chaplains to celebrate mass in Windsor’s chapel.
This is apparently the only Garter service in Henry VII’s reign that the
186 R.M. Warnicke
cloth), with hoods on their heads, and hosen of the same.” They car-
ried bows and arrows and a sword and a buckler “like outlaws or Robin
Hood’s men.” The queen and her ladies were “abashed” at the “strange
sight” as well as for the suddenness of their arrival. After some dancing
and other pastimes, the men, one of whom wore a Maid Marian cos-
tume, departed. It seems odd that Henry, a king, would take on the role
of an outlaw, but he appeared both as an outlaw and a nobleman.33
The next time, according to Hall’s chronicle, that the king dressed in
green was the following May at a tournament, but the chronicler did not
specifically identify him as Robin Hood since the three challengers who
joined him also dressed in green. By mid-1510, this legendary outlaw
seems to have become associated with May Day tournaments and cel-
ebrations at court. As at most war games, the queen had a somewhat
passive role in 1510. It is not known if she watched any of the competi-
tions, but at the end of the third day at Westminster, she invited the king
and all who had jousted to a great banquet. Afterward, she gave the chief
prize to Henry and the lesser prizes to three of the defenders. Finally, the
heralds cried, my lords, for your noble feats in arms, God send you the
“ladies love” that you most desire.34
On May Day 1515, a different scenario occurred, as the king, again
dressed in green, including even his shoes, went out early to Shooter’s
Hill, where he found 200 tall yeomen, clothed in green with green hoods
and bows and arrows, awaiting him. Meanwhile, the queen, dressed
richly in the Spanish style, accompanied by twenty-five ladies and three
Italian ambassadors, rode to meet the king and the yeomen. When one
of them, who called himself Robin Hood, asked the king if he wished
to see the bowmen shoot, Henry responded affirmatively. They oblig-
ingly shot their arrows twice, creating a “strange and great” noise that
pleased those in the royal train mightily. These archers actually belonged
to the king’s guard and had put on clothes “to make solace to the king.”
Afterward, Robin Hood “desired the king and queen to enter the green
wood, and to see how they lived.” The king turned to her and her ladies
and asked if they wished to enter the wood with so many outlaws. She
responded to his question that “if it pleased him, she was content.” In
the woods under Shooter’s Hill stood an arbor with a hall, a great cham-
ber, and an inner chamber, “covered with flowers and sweet herbs, which
the king praised.” Robin Hood explained that the outlaws breakfasted on
venison, and the guests “must be content with such fare.” After eating,
the king and his company departed. On their way, they met two ladies
188 R.M. Warnicke
“in a rich chariot drawn with five horses,” each of which “had his name
on his head” and on which “sat a lady with her name written.” In the
chair sat “lady May, accompanied with lady Flora,” who sang songs for
the king and led him to back to Greenwich, where the men competed
in war games and then attended a banquet. Neither the ambassadors nor
Hall specified whether the queen and the ladies met the “rich chariot,”
observed the later competition, or attended the banquet.35
Unfortunately, except for the celebrations of Arthur’s marriage to
Katherine of Aragon, few sources survive about other festivities, such as
the twelve days of the Christmas season and other feast days in Henry
VII’s reign. In his edition of the accounts of the king’s treasurer, John
Heron, Sydney Anglo found evidence of a lord of misrule’s antics in
1489, but Anglo concluded that in the early Tudor period, he was only
one of several revelers at Christmas. Several other payments can be found
in these royal accounts to a lord of misrule. References are also there to
Christmas plays performed by both the royal players and outside groups,
disguisings with pageant cars, and singing by the gentleman of the chapel
royal. Actually, in June and December 1502, Queen Elizabeth paid from
her privy purse sums toward providing clothing, mainly for the minstrels,
who performed in the disguisings. W. R. Streitberger, an expert on court
revels, has indicated that Elizabeth’s expenditures remain the only evi-
dence that a member of the royal family became personally involved in
the production of revels for a major feast. “She kept an extraordinary
court,” he explained. Of course, an elaborate banquet also formed part
of the Christmas entertainment.36
Much planning for the Christmas season must have taken place in
both the Tudor kings’ reigns. A letter to Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey, dated
in late November 1525 concerning these preparations for Mary, recently
recognized as princess of Wales, has survived. Written by John Vesey,
bishop of Exeter and president of the Council of Wales, along with five
other councilors, the letter requests information about how to plan for
the 9 year-old princess’s festivities. The letter seeks the cardinal’s “pleas-
ure” about the number of strangers to be allowed in her household for
the Christmas season and about acquiring an alms dish and spice plates
suitable for her high estate. It then turns to the entertainment, request-
ing whether trumpets and a rebeck (a kind of violin) should be obtained
for her amusement, whether a lord of misrule should be appointed,
whether disguisings or plays for the Christmas feast should be pro-
duced, and whether a banquet on Epiphany or Twelfth Night should be
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 189
prepared. It then inquires if she should send New Year’s gifts to the king,
the queen, to Wolsey and her aunt, Mary, the French queen, and if so,
what their value should be.37
This letter reflects the kind of Christmas festivities that occurred at
Henry VIII’s court. W. R. Streitberger has discovered, for example, evi-
dence of the appointment of lords of misrule between 1509 and 1521 and
again in 1534. In addition, tournaments often accompanied the annual
religious feasts. After 1512, the pageantry surrounding them changed
somewhat. The pageant cars and attacks on fortresses with ladies began to
disappear, although disguisings were still sometimes produced. During the
Christmas season in 1524–1525, the Windsor herald entered Katherine
of Aragon’s chamber, where the king was present, to present a chal-
lenge concerning a castle of loyalty controlled by a captain, who raised a
mount on which stood a unicorn with four shields, three signaling differ-
ent competitions (the tilt, tourney, and barriers), with the fourth revealing
the weapons of the captain and his company, who planned to defend the
castle against all comers. In the tilt yard, when some days later six men
emerged from the castle, which the assaulters had failed to take, two ladies
on palfreys, leading two ancient men with silver beards, delivered to the
queen and her ladies a bill in which the men requested permission to per-
form feats of honor. The queen and her ladies, who praised the old men’s
courage, agreed to their request, only to discover that they were the king
and Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. At the end of the subsequent tilt-
ing competition, the men went to supper and then joined the queen and
ladies in her chamber for dancing. Later, sixteen men, including the king
and the duke, arrived in masks to dance with the ladies. The queen, in this
instance, as in some others, seems not to have joined in the dancing.38
The annual festival gift giving in the early modern period occurred
on New Year’s Day rather than Christmas Day. John Husee, an agent of
Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, lord deputy of Calais, wrote about
his encounter with Henry VIII on January 3, 1538. In it, he stated that
when he entered the presence chamber at Westminster Palace, he saw
the king standing and leaning against the cupboard where the gifts to
him were collected. At the end of the cupboard sat Sir Brian Tuke, treas-
urer of the chamber, recording the presents and the names of who gave
them. Henry VII’s “Articles” also specify that in the morning, the queen
should send a messenger to him with her gift and indicate, according
to his status, the amount of the fee due to him for this service.39 The
queens followed a similar practice in receiving their gifts, according to
190 R.M. Warnicke
Husee. Three years earlier, he had informed Honor, Lady Lisle, that he
had delivered her gift, which was not described, for Anne Boleyn into
the hands of, by his advice, her receiver general, George Taylor, in the
place where her presents “were appointing,” presumably her presence
chamber. The “Articles” specify that the fees given for this service should
“not be so great and large as the King’s.” While Husee was there, the
queen entered and spoke with him about Lady Lisle and asked how she
liked Calais. Taylor presently informed Husee that the queen would send
Lady Lisle a gift, which was a pair of gold beads, weighing, with their
tassels, 5 ounces.40
Lists have survived of the king’s presents of plate, the ounces of
which depended on the status of the gift receiver. For instance, in 1513,
Henry VIII gave the following individuals, among others, a plate that
was described, including its ounces: William Warsham, archbishop of
Canterbury, obtained a cup with a gilt cover, weighing 34 ounces; Sir
Edward Poynings, comptroller of the household, the same but only
22 1/4 ounces; Dame Elizabeth Boleyn (mother of his queen, Anne
Boleyn), the same, but only 16 1/2 ounces; Katherine of Aragon
received a pair of great pots gilt of 575 ounces. In 1546, as his New
Year’s gift to his last queen, he arranged for ₤666, 13 s. 4d., to be
delivered to her from the Court of Augmentations, which handled the
accounts for the dissolution of the monasteries. Perhaps this amount, if
inflation is taken into consideration, might be the equivalent of the gift
for his first wife. 41
Another list in 1534 indicates that the king, who expected gifts of
gold in return, received from Anne Boleyn a goodly gilt basin, which had
a rail or board of gold in the middle of the brim, garnished with rubies
and pearls in which stood a fountain, also with a rail of gold about it,
garnished with diamonds; out of it flowed water from the teats of three
naked women, standing at the foot of that fountain. No ounces or val-
ues were mentioned in the description. In 1546, Prince Edward thanked
Katherine Parr for her New Year’s gift containing the king’s portrait and
hers together.42
Visitors often could be found at court on feast days but especially on
the days following New Year’s, when Henry held open house, welcom-
ing ambassadors and other dignitaries, including his fourth queen and
adopted sister, Anne of Cleves, in 1541. After she had sent to Henry
two horses with violet trappings for his New Year’s gift, she traveled to
Hampton Court Palace on January 3 with Lord William Howard (future
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 191
gold braid, and cloth of gold on and in the temporary palaces and their
chambers that the two kings had constructed at their headquarters, the
meeting came to be known as the Field of Cloth of Gold. In the Tudor
palace, a set of three chambers, hung with magnificent tapestry, was each
set aside for Katherine; for her sister-in-law, Mary, the dowager French
queen; and for Cardinal Wolsey, who had arranged the meeting as well as
having earlier presided over the negotiations for the Treaty of London.
The grander effect of the expensive and lavish meeting, described as a
royal display of “self-fashioning” by Glenn Richardson, was “to present
the power of monarchy in a dynamic and compelling way.” It thus indi-
cated to the rest of Europe that English money spent lavishly on tour-
naments and banquets could also be spent on armies and battleships.
As Janette Dillon indicated, “cultural and political power were deeply
bound up together.”46
Between Ardres and Guines stood a tournament field, erected on a
high ground, which lay halfway between the two royal headquarters.
There most of the action would occur: joustings, tourneys, and barriers
On June 9, Henry and Francis, who had met in a previous encounter,
went to the field to place their royal shields on its “Tree of Honour,”
indicating the basic chivalric character of their interactions, a “classic
expression of romantic challenge and combat.” Henry’s was placed on
the tree to the left and Francis’s to the right on the same level. Below
them were placed the shields of fourteen other challengers. 47
On Sunday, June 10, Henry visited with Queen Claude at Ardres
while the French king went to Guisnes Castle to dine with Katherine
and her sister-in-law, the dowager queen of France. There the cardinal,
Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, the duke of Suffolk, and vari-
ous other noblemen, together with a large number of ladies and gentle-
men all richly dressed in cloth of gold, velvet, and silks, greeted Francis,
who was also magnificently appareled in tissue cloth set with precious
stones and pearls. After dinner, the dancing began, but before he joined
the other dancers, Francis moved about the room, carrying his hat in his
hand and kissing all the ladies, except for four or five whom he consid-
ered too old and ugly. Perhaps this insulting gesture formed part of the
Anglo-French’s ongoing competition with each other to which earlier,
for example, Sir Richard Wingfield, the English resident in France, had
referred when he revealed the French organizers’ attempts to find their
fairest ladies to attend this grand occasion. Meanwhile, after returning
to Katherine and conversing with her for a few minutes, Francis then
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 193
chose a young lady as his dancing partner. Although Katherine had been
opposed to this summit meeting, she arose to this royal occasion and
others with great style.48
On June 11, the jousting began. The two queens, Claude and
Katherine, who had not previously met, attended with their train of
ladies. Richly dressed in jewels, they had arrived in many chariots, litters,
and hackneys, which were covered in cloth of gold and silver and embla-
zoned with their coats of arms. As they sat together in a glazed gallery,
decorated with rich tapestry, they discussed the tournament. After the
competitors first did reverence to the queens, the men rode about the tilt
and began jousting.49
During the next days, jousting continued, but the weather was so
rainy, cold, and windy that it impeded the competitions and caused them
to be suspended on June 18. When the queens were present, as they were
the first week, on the 14th through the 16th, those jousting always did
reverence to them before beginning the war games. On Sunday, the 17th,
Hall noted that Francis, accompanied by his mother, Louise of Savoy,
returned again to Guisnes Castle to dine with Katherine. Afterward,
Francis participated as one of the maskers in an entertainment. In the
meantime, Henry and his sister, Mary, visited Queen Claude. During the
second week, from the 20th to the 22nd, the queens observed the final
tilts and on the last 2 days the tourneys and then the barriers.50
One of the most important events occurred on June 23, the eve of
the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. A platform with a chapel and an altar
was constructed opposite the stage from which the jousts were viewed.
Various religious dignitaries as well as members of the two royal trains,
according to their status, took their seats on the platform. Wolsey, with
the highest clerical position, sang the mass of the Trinity. There were two
separate enclosures: in one sat the queens, including Mary, the dowager
queen, and in the second one sat the kings. As the service continued,
first at the Gospel and then at the Agnus Dei the pax was taken to the
kings and then to the queens. The royal women kissed the Gospel, but
then each refused to be the first to kiss the pax, finally embracing each
other instead. Afterward, the queens dined in a chamber separate from
the kings; according to Hall’s chronicle, they had already eaten at their
own palaces and simply conversed during the banquet, enjoying the
company.51
On Sunday, the 24th, Francis, wearing a mask, had dinner with
Katherine while Henry, also masked, dined with Claude. On this final day
194 R.M. Warnicke
of the summit, the queens exchanged gifts with each other, Katherine for-
warding to Claude several hobbies and palfreys, “well trapped,” and Claude
giving to Katherine a litter of cloth of gold, mules, and pages. Katherine
also presented to Francis’s enfants d’honneur some bonnets, which she and
her ladies had sewn. The next day, the English royal family and its attend-
ants returned to Calais on their way back to England.52
What was the total significance of this conference? Henry and Francis
used the meeting to display to their nobility and the representatives of
other countries in attendance their magnificence and power as rulers
and as noble warriors as well as their desire for peace. Ultimately, even
though Henry also met with Charles, at the emperor’s insistence, both
before the summit with Francis and afterward, the French and Imperial
rulers could not keep the peace with each other. At first, Henry chose to
ally with Charles and discard the French marriage treaty for his daugh-
ter, Mary. Later, however, in 1526 and 1527, perhaps inspired by their
meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold, according to Richardson, Francis
and Henry were able to reestablish amicable relations that lasted into the
late 1530s. The ongoing struggle, including warfare, between Francis
and Charles distracted the emperor from forceful diplomatic measures
against Henry when the latter decided to challenge papal authority in
his attempt to obtain the dissolution of his marriage to Katherine, the
emperor’s aunt. The summit also highlighted in a magnificent and pow-
erful way the cultural veneer of chivalry that still required female observ-
ers when their gentlemen performed feats of honor not just to prove
their own athleticism but ostensibly to display it as a tribute to their
ladies.53
In 1544, Henry VIII made it clear that when he did not wish to
entertain foreign guests, he did not spend much time with them.
After finishing a campaign in Flanders, Don Manriquez de Lara,
third duke of Najera, decided to stop off in England on the way back
to Spain. He was a distinguished military commander, and the year
after he met with Henry and Katherine, he was elected to the Golden
Fleece at the chapter held at Utrecht. He had departed from the
Netherlands for Spain on December 29, and after stopping in several
towns along the way, he reached Calais on February 2, 1544. His pas-
sage to Dover took a whole day, which his secretary, Pedro de Gante,
who wrote an account of his travels, described as “tedious and dan-
gerous.” Traveling northward, on February 11, Najera and his train
reached the city of London, where they dined with Stacio Depucho, a
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 195
native of Savoy and ambassador to England. The king, who had heard
of his arrival, decided that before meeting with the visitor, he had to
go to Greenwich to view some of his ships there. He did send Henry
Howard, earl of Surrey, to greet Najera, whose secretary assumed the
king needed the time to summon noblemen so that he could welcome
the duke with “greater authority.”54
Henry had also delayed giving an audience to Eustace Chapuys for
the same reason. On Sunday morning, February 17, Chapuys arrived at
court, was admitted to the king’s privy chamber, and discussed his busi-
ness for some time with Henry. Meanwhile, after William Parr, earl of
Essex, the queen’s brother, and the earl of Surrey had dined with Najera,
they accompanied him to the presence chamber. Gante noted that the
noblemen, knights, and gentlemen gathered there all paid respect to the
king’s chair of estate as though he were seated in it, every one stand-
ing on one foot, with his cap in his hand. After about fifteen minutes,
Najera and two of his noblemen, who attended him, received a summons
to enter the privy chamber, where Chapuys also awaited them. No one
else was permitted to enter, and Gante complained that neither he nor
the duke’s other attendants were allowed even to see the king. Chapuys
noted only that the duke had done reverence to Henry and was benignly
received by him.55
After about a 30 minute audience with the king, Chapuys and Najera
went to the queen’s privy chamber, where they found various ladies with
her, including the king’s daughter, Mary, and his Scottish niece, Lady
Margaret Douglas. Gante noted that the duke kissed the hand of the
queen, who received him in an “animated manner.” They then moved
to the presence chamber, where the queen sat in her chair of estate.
Unfortunately, she entered with them so that Gante could not notice
whether her attendants gave the same respect to her chair of estate as did
her husband’s attendants to his chair. He described the queen in enthusi-
astic terms:
The queen has a lively and pleasing appearance, and is praised as a virtu-
ous woman. She was dressed in a robe of cloth of gold, and a petticoat
of brocade with sleeves lined with crimson satin, and trimmed with three-
piled crimson velvet: her train was more than two yards long. Suspended
from her neck were two crosses, and a jewel of very rich diamonds, and in
her head-dress were many and beautiful ones. Her girdle was of gold, with
very large pendants.
196 R.M. Warnicke
Gante also claimed that Princess Mary had a “pleasing countenance” and
that she was “greatly beloved.”56
For the duke’s entertainment, violinists from Venice played music for
them to dance. The queen danced first with her brother “very grace-
fully”; then Mary, Margaret, and many other ladies danced with the
other gentlemen there. Finally, a professional dancer from Venice did
the gallardas—so well, according to Gante, that he seemed to have
“wings on his feet.” During the several hours of dancing, at some point
the queen seems to have departed and to have asked one of the noble-
men who spoke Spanish to give presents, which Gante did not describe,
to the duke in her name. She reentered the chamber, and Najera again
kissed her hand and requested the same favor of Mary, but she insisted
on offering her lips to him instead. The duke saluted her lips and those
of the other ladies. Gante’s description of the activities seems to suggest
that he did not realize, as Chapuys noted in his dispatch home, that the
queen was a little indisposed but still wished to dance for the honor of
the occasion. The Imperial ambassador failed to report whether he him-
self had joined in the dancing.57
Obviously, when queens hosted events in the kings’ absence, they
became more actively involved in directing the entertainment. In the
disguising, the masking, and the tournament celebrations, the consorts
seemed to have taken on the role of acting as leading members of an
appreciative audience. Even in the entry entertainments, the queens had
little interaction with the performers and musicians except to walk or
ride by them, showing their royal appreciation. Even so, their presence
was considered absolutely essential for the success of court business, fes-
tivals, and amusements. As Edward Hall lamented about the December
season in 1531 after Henry had rusticated Katherine of Aragon, “This
year the king kept his Christmas at Greenwich with great solemnity, but
all men said that there was no mirth in that Christmas because the queen
and the ladies were absent.”58
Notes
1.
Society of Antiquaries, “Articles Ordained by Henry VII For the
Regulation of his Household,” A Collection of Ordinances and
Regulations For the Government of the Royal Household, Made in Divers
Reigns From King Edward III to King William and Queen Mary
(London: John Nichols, 1790), pp. 109–133.
6 REVELS AND CELEBRATIONS 197
2. Kay Staniland, “Royal Entry into the World,” England in the Fifteenth
Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel
Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 297–313.
3. Arlene Okerlund, Elizabeth of York (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2009), p. 90.
4. “Articles,” pp. 111–115.
5. Gordon Kipling, ed., The Receyt of the Ladie Katherine, Early English
Text Society, No. 296 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 7–9;
Letters and Papers, Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry
VII, ed. James Gairdner, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman,
Roberts and Green, 1863), I, vii (pp. 404–417).
6. Frederick Fairholt, ed. Lord Mayors Pageants: Being a Collection Towards
a History of their Annual Celebrations, 2 vols. (London: Percy Society,
1843–1844), I, 2; Robert Withington, “The Early Royal Entry,”
Publication of the Modern Language Association, 32(1917), 616–623.
7. R. Malcolm Smuts, ‘Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma: The English
Royal Entry in London, 1485–1642,” The First Modern Society: Essays
in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. A.L. Beier, David Cannendine, and
James Rosenheim (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp.
74–76; see also, Sydney Anglo, “The Imperial Alliance and the Entry of
the Emperor Charles V into London, June, 1522,” Guildhall Miscellany,
II(1962), 131–154.
8. Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the
Elizabethan Renaissance (Leiden: For the Sir Thomas Browne Institute
by Leiden University Press, 1977), pp. 72–74, 93; Kipling, Enter the
King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 209–214. See also Sydney Anglo,
Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy, second edition (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997), p. viii, who cautions that the role of “scriptural
and exegetical sources” in the pageant dialogue needs more attention.
9. Praising the Receyt of the Ladie Katherine, pp. iii–xiv, Kipling claimed that
“no other contemporary source preserves such a full and vivid account of
the social history, visual arts, and drama of England in the sixteenth cen-
tury. “Page 43 of the Receyt reports only that the king and queen entered
the secret closet to view the wedding, but The Great Chronicle of London,
ed. A.H. Thomas and I.D. Thornley (London: Alan Sutton, 1983),
p. 310, added the king’s mother and other nobles to the closet. See also
the Receyt, pp. 39–47 for coverage of the wedding.
10. Kipling, Receyt, pp. 49–66; Letters and Papers, Henry VII, I, vii
(p. 412).
11. Kipling, Receyt, pp. 68–77.
12. Kipling, Triumph of Honour, p. 4.
198 R.M. Warnicke
29. Helen Miller, Henry VIII and the English Nobility (New York: Blackwell,
1986), p. 87; LP, I, 37, VII, 682, XV, 560; John Anstis, ed.,The Register
of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. 2 vols. (London: printed by John
Barber, 1724), I, 264–265, for example; for Henry VII, see also Grace
Holmes, The Order of the Garter: Its Knights and Stall Plates (Windsor:
Oxley, 1984).
30. Elias Ashmole, The History of the Most Noble Order of the Garter: Wherein
is Set Forth an Account of the Town, Castle, Chappel, and College of
Windsor;… To Which is Prefix’d, a Discourse of Knighthood in General
(London: printed for A. Bell, W. Taylor, and J. Baker, and A. Collins,
1715), pp. 86, 169–172; James Gillespie, “Ladies of the Fraternity of
Saint George and of the Society of the Garter,” Albion, 17(1985), 260,
265–267; Steve Brindle, “The First St. George’s Chapel,” St. George’s
Chapel, Windsor: History and Heritage, ed. Nigel Saul and Tim Tatton-
Brown (Stanbridge: Dovecote, 2010), 36–44.
31. Edmund Fellowes, ed., The Knights of the Garter, 1348–1939, with a
Complete List of the Stall-Plates in St. George’s Chapel (London: S.P.C.K.,
1939), p. 109; Gillespie, “Ladies of the Fraternity,” pp. 274–275; Anstis,
Register of the Garter, I, 235. Elizabeth de la Pole, duchess of Suffolk,
the sister of Edward IV, who attended a chapter meeting in 1476 was still
alive in 1488, for example.
32. Gillespie, “Ladies of the Fraternity,” pp. 275; Rosemary Horrox,
“Richard, duke of York and duke of Norfolk (1473–1475), prince,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.dnboxforddictionary.com
(accessed April 26, 2016).
33. Hall, Henry, I, 15.
34. Ibid., 29. In 1511, foresters dressed in green performed in the entertain-
ment honoring Katherine for her successful childbirth.
35. Ibid., pp. 146–147; LP, II, 409–411. See also, Victor Sherb, “I’de have a
shooting: Catherine of Aragon’s Receptions of Robin Hood,” Research
Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 42(2003), 124–146.
36. Sydney Anglo, ‘The Court Festivals of Henry VII,’ Bulletin of the John
Rylands Library, 43–1 (1960), 12–45; W. R. Streitberger, Court Revels,
1485–1559 (Toronto: University of Toronto Psress, 1994), pp. 41, 249;
Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed., The Privy Purse Expenditures of Elizabeth of
York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth (New York: A Facsimile
edition published by Barnes & Noble, 1972), pp. 21, 78.
37. LP, IV, 1785. Henry Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History,
3 vols., series one (London: Triphook and Lepard, 1824), 1, 271.
38. Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 110–115; Hall, Henry, II, 24–26; Streitberger,
Court, p. 8.
39. The Lisle Letters, ed. Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 6 vols (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981), V, 1086; “Articles,” p. 120.
200 R.M. Warnicke
place” on any side of the cloth of estate but limited this restriction to the
parliament chamber. See Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the
Law in Henry VIII’s England (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), p. 46.
57. LP, XIX-1, 118; Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin
at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp.
78–80.
58. Hall, Henry, II, 202.
CHAPTER 7
Death and Burial
somewhere in the forties, to 65 years as “green old age” and then from
somewhere in the sixties to seventies as “decrepit old age.”1
Despite their easy access to plentiful food and adequate housing, only
two of the seven consorts, including for this particular sample Margaret,
dowager queen of Scotland, and Mary, dowager queen of France, but
not counting the two executed Tudor queens, reached, according to
modern calculations, the age of life expectancy at their birth: Katherine
of Aragon died at age fifty and Margaret at fifty-one. Two others died
of natural causes at earlier ages: Mary at thirty-seven and Anne of Cleves
(divorced) at forty-one. The three who died after childbirth included
Jane Seymour, at about 28 years, Katherine Parr (dowager queen), at
about 35 years, and Elizabeth of York, at 37 years. Their husbands or
fathers, Henry VII and Henry VIII, died when fifty-two and fifty-five,
respectively.2
A primary cause of early death resulted from the state of medi-
cal knowledge in the premodern period. Physicians still mostly used
Greco-Roman humoral methods, attempting to alleviate symptoms with
bleeding, laxative, and vomiting prescriptions. Others, without the uni-
versity training of physicians, also offered medical assistance: surgeons let
blood and dressed wounds, among other practices; midwives delivered
infants; and wise women (sometimes called white witches) used herbal
recipes. Wives generally also grew herbs in their gardens to ease symp-
toms. Taught that only divine intervention could cure their illnesses, the
members of the wealthy classes, especially the royal family, attempted to
appease God by attending religious services frequently, by praying and
reading religious treatises, and by charitable activities, regularly giving
alms to the poor and to various religious orders, and going on pilgrim-
ages. They also took advantage of their ability to flee from areas where
disease prevailed and to prevent attendance at their residences of those
individuals who had some contact with ill persons, whether suffering
from the sweating sickness, from the plague, or from other infectious
diseases. Historians have especially noted Henry VIII’s fear of contagious
illnesses that greatly influenced his itinerary, but other members of the
royal family left evidence of similar concerns. While serving as his regent
in September 1544, Katherine Parr issued a proclamation concerning
the plague that “reigned” in London and Westminster. She prohibited
the attendance at court of all persons who lived in infected houses, who
had “resorted to” people with the plague, or who had been in places
infected by diseases. The proclamation listed the penalty for disobedience
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 205
after signing off on their testaments, individuals might recover, but many
sick persons actually hired scribes to draft their final wishes only days or
perhaps weeks before their death.6
When the sick seemed close to death, with or without a will, their
relatives had the duty of summoning a priest to bring the sacrament to
them and see to their final spiritual needs. Christians believed that the
events occurring in the last moments of life had critical consequences
for their souls’ ultimate destination. The souls of unrepentant individu-
als had no possible destination but hell—most certainly not heaven or
even purgatory, the usual, temporary place for the souls of believers,
who awaited there for the saying of enough prayers that would enable
their ascent into paradise. After arriving at the dying peoples’ homes, the
priest, preceded by his clerk with candle and bell, began with the Ordo
Visitandi, which involved his holding the crucifix before the patients, a
gesture that proved to the individuals the presence of Christ and that was
intended to drive away the many demons that were thought to appear
at peoples’ dying moments for the purpose of preventing their repent-
ance and thereby sending their souls to hell. Next, the priest asked seven
questions of his parishioners with the object of confirming their belief in
the articles of the church and the Holy Scriptures, of obtaining their sor-
rowful confessions that they had offended God, of eliciting their forgive-
ness of their enemies, and of gaining their acknowledgment that Christ
had died for their sins. When they had answered these questions to the
priest’s satisfaction, he pronounced absolution and anointed their bodies
on the forehead and other places with oil. Afterward, the priest put the
body of Christ in the repentant persons’ mouths to eat. When observers
believed that the souls seemed to be departing, the sounds of the bell
reminded the faithful to pray for the deceased.7
Afterward, skilled servants stripped, washed, and embalmed the body,
around which they wrapped sheets of waxed linen, and then placed it on
a table. Next, relatives and friends kept vigils. About three days later, in
the afternoon, mourners, dressed in black, took the shrouded corpse,
placed in a coffin, in a grand procession amid the tolling of bells to the
local church and situated it on a table before the altar. After the read-
ing of the office of Placebo, vigils over the bodies were kept overnight.
The next morning, the priest recited the Dirge and celebrated the req-
uiem mass for the deceased. For wealthier parishioners, this mass might
be preceded by a mass of Our Lady and a mass of Trinity. Church bells
rang out as the time of burial approached. After the priest sprinkled and
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 207
censed the body, mourners carried the coffin to the grave, where the
priest might make some brief statements; then they lifted the shrouded
body from the coffin and placed it in the grave that the priest had some-
time earlier sprinkled with holy water. After pronouncing words of abso-
lution, the priest again sprinkled the body with holy water and censed it.
As he commended the soul to God, the mourners shoveled earth into
the grave. Finally, they feasted in the churchyard.8
As to the more elaborate final rites of the royal family, those of the
kings have gained greater scholarly attention than their consorts primar-
ily because their deaths signaled publicly the transference of monarchical
power to the next generation, but queens’ final ceremonies also deserve
investigation because they embodied cultural, biological, and political
significance. Although the consorts’ rites did not signal the transmission
of governance, they did present the women as symbols of sovereignty.
Equally importantly, as John Carmi Parsons has argued, their death rituals
conveyed acceptable images of queenship to their successors, which they
themselves had adapted from the rites of their predecessors. While con-
sorts’ final rituals effectively honored both their royal husbands and their
dynasties, they also confirmed biological continuity, publicly establishing
through funeral and burial insignia the familial links between theirs and
future generations. The elaborate death ceremonies granted by kings to
their consorts confirmed that they had provided significant and crucial
diplomatic, political, and moral necessities and support for them and their
descendants.9 This chapter now evaluates and contrasts the funerals of the
Tudor consorts, only two of whom still reigned as queens at their deaths.
Both of the consorts who died when still successfully married to a
Tudor king succumbed in childbirth: Elizabeth of York in 1503 and Jane
Seymour in 1537. As heralds controlled all aristocratic funerals, not just
those of the royal family, a principal aristocratic mourner of the same sex,
but of lesser social status than the deceased, performed the prominent
role at the funeral. This protocol meant, as at the christening of their
infants or at the coronation of their consorts, that Henry VII and Henry
VIII could not participate in the ceremonies because they held superior
ranks to their relatives whom the rites honored. Kings could only par-
ticipate in other kings’ funerals.10 As will be seen below, the religious
core of royal funerals basically mirrored those of commoners’ but on a
grander scale, with heraldic oversight and in the context of much more
splendid garments and caskets, many more participants, longer vigils, and
more religious services.
208 R.M. Warnicke
the lords and ladies dined while the queen’s casket rode to the abbey on
a bier, a movable stand covered with black velvet and a cross of cloth
of gold, pulled by six matched horses. On each corner of the bier hung
white banners, signaling that she had died in childbirth.
On top of the coffin lay the queen’s effigy, clothed in a robe of estate
made of nine yards of crimson satin bordered with black velvet and gar-
nished with rich jewels. In her right hand she held a scepter. Only the
effigy’s wooden head, carved by Lawrence Emler, with a crown and a
carefully painted face, is still housed at Westminster Abbey. Two join-
ers framed its body partly with “hoops” and partly with “a covering of
leather stuffed with hay.” Although embalming techniques had advanced
in the high medieval period, the corpse could still only be viewed openly
for five or six days. As the practice of displaying the body had led to
greater ceremonial events over a longer period, crown officials in the
fourteenth century had begun to withdraw the corpse from view and to
substitute for it an effigy, as at Elizabeth’s funeral. Her effigy also had
the effect of displaying the splendor and wealth of the royal dynasty. All
Tudor monarchs and at least two of the queens consort, along with vari-
ous members of the nobility, had effigies placed on their coffins. In the
course of the eighteenth century, improved methods of embalming led
to their disuse. In 1714, Queen Anne was the last monarch to have an
effigy displayed on her coffin, although some members of the nobility
continued to be honored with them, the last being Horatio, Admiral
Nelson, in 1806.14
In Elizabeth’s procession to Westminster Abbey in 1503, henchmen
in black gowns with mourning hoods rode on the six horses that pulled
the bier; at the head of each horse walked a man of honor in a black
robe with a hood. Following the bier, eight ladies of honor, including
the chief mourner and Lady Elizabeth Stafford, rode on eight palfreys.
Three chariots with ladies followed them: Lady Anne Plantagenet, the
queen’s sister, sat in the first one, and Lady Katherine Gordon, the
widow of Perkin Warbeck, the Yorkist pretender, rode in the third one.
Some London citizens on horseback, in addition to many of the king’s
and the lords’ servants, followed them; in all, the participants numbered
in the hundreds.
Before the queen’s bier rode Thomas Stanley, earl of Derby, consta-
ble of England and the king’s stepfather, the Garter king, the mayor of
London, and the king’s chaplains. On the left in front of them marched
children of the chapel royal, the choir of St. Paul’s, some friars, and
210 R.M. Warnicke
200 poor men carrying torches. On the right side walked numerous
noblemen, the chief judges, master of the rolls, the knights of the Garter,
various clergymen, the aldermen of London, and members of the lesser
aristocracy. Near the front of the procession marched diplomats, repre-
senting the Hanseatic League, France, Portugal, and Venice, as well as
trumpeters, minstrels, and others. On one side of the street from Mark
Lane to Temple Bar, 5000 torches blazed, and along the other side,
members of the livery guilds stood. Near them, thirty-seven virgins, rep-
resenting the queen’s age, wore white linen gowns and wreaths of green
and white, and held lighted candles. When a woman died in childbirth,
she was treated as a woman who retained her virginity, “perhaps because
she paid so high a price for losing it.” As the bier passed by the church-
yards on Cheap Street, which was garnished with new torches, priests
censed the coffin and parishioners sang and prayed. At the bridge near
Charing Cross, the abbot of Westminster and the abbot of Bermondsey
also censed the coffin and followed it to the churchyard of St. Margaret’s
where the procession was disbanded.15
Her servants carried the queen’s coffin from the bier to a hearse dec-
orated with more than 1000 lights, which stood between the abbey’s
high altar and the choir. That evening, the abbot of St. Alban’s and
nine bishops conducted the Dirge. Afterward, a number of torchbear-
ers, ladies and gentlemen, officers of arms, and yeomen watched over
the queen’s coffin. At 6:00 AM, the choir of the chapel royal sang the
Lauds and Matins, and at 7:00, William Warham, bishop of London
and soon to be archbishop of Canterbury, sang the mass of Our Lady.
At this mass, the principal mourner, accompanied by Thomas Grey, mar-
quess of Dorset, and the earl of Derby, alone gave the offering, and at
the mass of the Trinity, sung by Edmund Audley, bishop of Salisbury,
the principal mourner again gave the only offering, but at the third mass
of the requiem, sung by Bishop Symth, all present offered, including
the principal mourner and her sister, Lady Anne, as well as the noble-
men, the chief justices, knights of the Garter, aldermen of London, and
members of the lesser aristocracy. Next, the queen’s ladies, after pay-
ing obeisance to the coffin and kissing the palls (cloths of white, pur-
ple, or black velvet) lay thirty-seven of them across the queen’s effigy,
acknowledging their homage to her. The queen’s two sisters each placed
five palls; Margaret Grey, marchioness of Dorset, four palls, Elizabeth
Grey, Viscountess Lisle, Mary Bourchier, countess of Essex, and Lady
Elizabeth Stafford each three palls; and the remaining ladies one pall
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 211
Elizabeth are shown clasping their hands in prayer. Their tomb repre-
sents, as Margaret Condon has noted, “a mixture of deeply seated religi-
osity and of dynastic aftermath.” Every year, whether in her temporary
vault or in her final resting place, on February 11, at Henry VII’s order,
a special solemn service, an “occasion of secular pomp and circumstance,
as well as sacred memorial and intercession,” celebrated his queen.
Ultimately, Reformation politics caused its abandonment. The tomb
continued to inspire tourists, however. In the early seventeenth century,
Fynes Moryson, who traveled extensively, wrote his impression of it.
“Among all the sepulchers” that he had seen in Europe and in Turkey,
he explained, the one in the abbey, “erected to Henry the seventh … of
copper metal, adorned with vulgar precious stones, is the fairest, espe-
cially considering the stately chapel built over it.”19
Some similarities as well as some differences existed between the
funeral rituals of Elizabeth and Jane Seymour. As his father had for his
consort, Henry VIII ordered masses to be said in London for Jane, who
died at Hampton Court Palace about midnight on October 24, 1537,
some twelve days after the birth of their son, Edward. However, Henry
requested 1200 masses—about twice as many as were sung for his
mother. After appointing Thomas, third duke of Norfolk, the high mar-
shal, and Sir William Paulet (future marquess of Winchester) treasurer of
his household, to oversee the heraldic funeral preparations, the king, like
his father, also retired to a solitary place. Norfolk and Paulet studied the
funeral arrangements for Elizabeth to discover what precedents needed
to be adopted and determined that seven marquesses and earls, sixteen
barons, sixty knights, forty squires, and the ordinary of the king’s house
had participated in her rituals. They informed Cromwell that they had
not been able to summon that many men for Jane’s funeral and burial,
and sent him some additional names. They hoped that he would, after
consulting with the king, select some of them and speedily inform them
of the choices.20
Meanwhile, various officials prepared the queen’s body. As usual, they
washed and embalmed the corpse, and information has also survived of
the wax chandler’s removing her entrails, which were interred separately
in the chapel on October 26. Almost certainly officials had earlier per-
formed this procedure on Elizabeth. Normally the entrails of monarchs
and their queens received separate burial from their bodies. When the
plumber enclosed Jane’s corpse in lead and laid it in a wooden coffin
with an effigy, which no longer exists, the king’s servants took it to the
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 213
had related to Bishop Llandaff that he had found all the internal organs
as sound as possible except for a heart that had turned black and pos-
sessed a black lump. Some modern physicians have suspected that the
description indicated a secondary form of melanotic carcinoma, but
whatever the cause of her death, she almost certainly was not poisoned.
It is unclear where the embalmer buried the entrails but probably at the
castle, since they had been removed about twenty-one days before her
interment.26
Afterward, her attendants placed her corpse under a cloth of estate
in her privy chamber with four torches burning. Three of her ladies,
as well as Lady Willoughby, watched over her body. It is likely that the
belated arrival of the plumber caused the seven-day delay in the begin-
ning of her death rituals. On the 15th, after he had finished enclosing
her corpse in lead and had “chested” it with spices, attendants moved the
coffin to the chapel, where the vigils of the dead were said and on the
16th one mass only. Then, from January 16 to 22, her corpse lay again
in the privy chamber under a cloth of estate while attendants constructed
a hearse to honor her as princess of Wales. Directions have also sur-
vived for the completion of an effigy, but Julian Litton doubts that one
was constructed. If it was, it has not survived. On the 22nd, mourners
placed her body in the completed hearse, adorned by fifty-six wax can-
dles, that stood in the chapel. During the five days that followed, eight
principal mourners assisted in the masses that the priests sang: Katherine
née Willoughby, the second wife of Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk;
Elizabeth Somerset, countess of Worcester; Elizabeth de Vere, countess
of Oxford; Frances Howard, countess of Surrey; and four baronesses,
including the duchess of Suffolk’s mother, Maria, Lady Willoughby.
On Wednesday the 26th, the appropriate mourning robes for these
ladies finally arrived. After mass the next day, servants carried the cas-
ket, decorated with a cloth of gold frieze and a cross of crimson velvet,
from the chapel and placed it on a bier, drawn by six horses covered in
black cloth. In procession, the mourners journeyed nine miles to the
Cistercian abbey at Sawtry and spent the night there. The next morning,
after mass, they moved on to the Benedictine abbey at Peterborough,
the designated place of burial. After three ecclesiastics, John Longland,
bishop of Lincoln, Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely, and John Hilsey,
bishop of Rochester, as well as six abbots, including John Chambers
of Peterborough, received the coffin, their attendants placed it in the
hearse with 1000 candles in the chapel where several banners displayed
216 R.M. Warnicke
various arms, those of the emperor, England, the king’s mother, Prince
Arthur, and even of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who had mar-
ried Constanza (1354–1394), the exiled elder daughter of the murdered
Pedro I of Castile. Bishops Longland, Goodrich, and Hilsey, respec-
tively, celebrated three solemn masses that day, undoubtedly Our Lady,
the Trinity, and finally the requiem at which Bishop Athequa assisted.
Lady Eleanor, not only the younger daughter of the duke of Suffolk
and his first wife, Mary, dowager queen of France, but also the future
wife of Henry, Lord Clifford (later earl of Cumberland), held the posi-
tion of chief mourner and alone made the offering. Then Bishop Hilsey,
well known for his advocacy of the royal supremacy, preached a ser-
mon in which he denounced papal power and denied the title of queen
to Katherine, even claiming erroneously that on her deathbed she had
relinquished her queenship. Next, Eleanor and the eight original prin-
cipal mourners offered, by the hands of the heralds, three ells in three
pieces of cloth of gold that had lain upon her coffin that were to be used
to make “accoutrements” (items of apparel) for the men of the chapel,
where a service would be held annually on January 29, and then placed
palls on the coffin, the chief mourner four, the duchess three, the coun-
tesses two each, and the baronesses one each. Finally, the officials buried
the chest in the north aisle to the left of the high altar, placing a simple
black cloth over the site, leaving the hearse where it stood.27
In 1541, Henry, who had the abbey dissolved in 1539, advanced it
to the status of cathedral and elevated Chambers as the first bishop of
Peterborough. Over a century later, Simon Gunton, who visited the
cathedral, reported that some people thought that Henry had not
destroyed the building out of respect for his late queen, whose body
would have had to be removed elsewhere. Whether that rumor was true
or not, Gunton noted that the “goodly structure of the place, conveni-
ent for a new erection … might make a fair plea for its reprieve.”28 Her
tomb, which Henry had ordered constructed, seems to have been of low
stature and to have consisted of black marble with gilded letters and dec-
orations, but Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers seized the gilding in 1643, and a
dean of the cathedral used the marble for his summerhouse in the 1700s.
In the late nineteenth century, a wife of one of the cathedral’s canons,
Katharine Clayton, initiated a public appeal asking all the Katharines in
England to donate toward the installation of a replacement marble slab,
which stands there today with a golden grille identifying her as Katherine,
queen of England, thus symbolically restoring her title. The modern
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 217
her aunt and Mary Kingston, the constable’s wife, entered the room for
the trial at the Tower. When the indictments accusing her of enticing
five men to have illicit relations with her were read aloud, she remained
unnerved while hearing the lurid details and excused herself, as Charles
Wriothesley reported, “with words so clearly, as though she had never
been faulty to the same.” After the noblemen, who were individually
polled, unanimously declared her guilty, Anne reportedly said that she
regretted that innocent men had to die because of her and asked for time
to prepare her soul for death.35
Cranmer held a hearing into the legality of her royal marriage and
pronounced it invalid on May 17; the records outlining his reasons have
not survived. Scholars have identified either Henry’s affair with her sis-
ter, Mary, or Anne’s possible per verba de futuro vows with Lord Henry
Percy as the cause. Clement VII, however, had issued a dispensation
allowing Henry VIII to wed the sister of his mistress, as well as a woman
who had previously entered into a contract of marriage, as long as the
union remained unconsummated. Furthermore, Percy, then fifth earl
of Northumberland, denied the existence of a precontract with Anne.
Perhaps the king took seriously the charges for which she would die: the
luring or bewitching of men into having sexual relations with her. The
medieval church decreed that the freely given consent of the bride and
groom was essential to a valid marriage. If Henry assumed Anne had
lured him as well as her accused lovers, then he could have concluded
that he had not freely sworn the per verba de praesenti vows and could
have directed Cranmer to annul his union with her.36 This decision had
a serious dynastic result since it meant demoting Elizabeth to illegitimate
status, but it also mutely clarified that the ex-queen could not have com-
mitted adultery.
On the morning of Thursday, May 19, Alexander Alesius, a German
reformer visiting in England, later recalled that he had awakened about
2:00 AM troubled by a vision or dream in which he saw the details
of the queen’s neck after her head had been chopped off. Terrified
and unable to return to sleep, he departed from his lodgings near the
Tower of London for the first time since April 30, unaware of the events
planned for that day on Tower green. He crossed the Thames and wan-
dered toward Lambeth Palace, where he found Cranmer, who had taken
Anne’s last confession. After the archbishop asked Alesius why he was up
so early, he described his dream to him. Cranmer then raised his eyes to
heaven and said, “She who has been the Queen of England upon earth
220 R.M. Warnicke
will to-day become a Queen in heaven.” So great was his grief that he
could say nothing more to Alesius but burst into tears.37
Later that day, about 9:00 AM, Anne, dressed in a robe of black dam-
ask covered by an ermine mantle of white, entered the Tower courtyard
in the company of her attendants and Constable Kingston. They led her
to the sheriff, who escorted her to a low platform of only four or five
steps that had been newly constructed on the green. In her last speech,
which Hall’s chronicle quotes, her words reflected most of the demands
of priests, who regularly attended to the spiritual needs of the dying. She
forgave those who had brought her to this place, but the law had judged
her guilty, and therefore she “would speak nothing against it.” Thus, she
kept the traditional protocol, failing to challenge the judgment against
her but also neglecting to confess specifically that she had committed the
crimes for which she was to be executed. She next prayed God to “save
the king” and provide him with a “long reign, for a gentler nor a more
merciful prince was there never.” Vaguely defending herself, she did say
that “if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the
best.” Finally, she asked those present to pray for her and said, “O Lord
have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.” What is missing here
is that she failed to admit having offended God, but as John Skip gave
her spiritual comfort during her final hours in the Tower and Archbishop
Cranmer had taken her last confession, they would have seen to those
spiritual needs. Furthermore, as the first queen to be executed, no model
existed for her to follow except those of others with lesser social status.38
It is interesting that the crimes of which queens were most frequently
accused were adultery and witchcraft.39
She dispensed alms of £20, exchanged her headdress for a cap of
linen, thanked her ladies for their diligent service, and exhorted them
not to forget her and to serve the king faithfully. Having asked them
to say prayers for her, she knelt down, was blindfolded by one of her
attendants, and repeated “To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord
Jesus receive my soul” several times until, with a swing of his sword, the
executioner from Calais “sealed the debt that she owned unto death.”
Reportedly, she fell to the ground with both her lips and eyes moving.40
While Henry was planning to remarry, attendants buried Anne’s
remains at St. Peter ad Vincula, the chapel at the Tower. Preparing her
for interment, her ladies wrapped her head and body with a sheet, per-
haps of waxed cloth, and placed them in a chest of elm. In November
1876, as two architects, Anthony Salvin and John Taylor, began
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 221
were in heaven, for they had “made the most godly and Christian end,”
testifying to their faith in God and asking the people “to take exam-
ple of them for amendment of their ungodly lives and gladly obey the
king in all things.” They were both buried under the altar of St. Peter
ad Vincula, probably like Anne Boleyn without caskets and religious ser-
vices.54
Perhaps because the king sired no children with Katherine, he decided
not to order Cranmer to hold what would have been a painful hear-
ing for him into the validity of the marriage. Actually, the archbishop
believed that their union was probably invalid because Dereham and
Katherine had called each other husband and wife during the time that
they were engaged in sexual intercourse and were probably officially wed
per verba de futuro.55
None of the accused men took responsibility for his actions. Like their
male contemporaries, they defined women as the more sexually aggres-
sive sex. Manox, who was not punished because he had only abused her,
said Katherine loved him; Dereham insisted that she wanted to marry
him; Henry’s councilors charged her with misleading the king about
her unchaste life; Culpeper claimed she was “languishing and dying of
love for him” but contradicted himself somewhat by admitting that she
showed him “little favor.”56 In her short life, she had faced great adver-
sity because of cultural attitudes toward sexuality. Her male abusers
seemed to have assumed that her reluctance for sexual contact masked
interior consent. Their decision to take advantage of her youth and her
naivety not only led to their execution but also to hers.57
Henry VIII’s fourth and fifth wives, Katherine Parr and Anne of
Cleves, of course, survived him. Only Katherine continued to hold the
title of dowager queen since Henry, who could not consummate the
union with Anne, had successfully obtained a dissolution of their mar-
riage, although she had continued to hope after the death of Katherine
Howard that she might resume her queenship. The lives of royal wid-
ows did not usually prove to be easy or happy. The demotion in political
and social status could cause personal unhappiness at a time when they
had to struggle with the tragic loss of their husbands. Disputes could
and did arise as to the royal women’s rights to their previously granted
income and property. The possible remarriage of a queen dowager also
outraged some of their contemporaries, for many viewed her private life,
because of her previous role as queen consort, as a public issue. Hostility
to these new unions can be traced back at least to 1428, when because
226 R.M. Warnicke
later spread, the queen dowager could not obtain permission to take
Elizabeth with her to Sudeley. Instead, the princess entered the house-
hold of Sir Anthony, an ally of the lord protector.61
On June 13, although she had hoped to leave London earlier,
Katherine Parr, her husband, and Jane Grey moved to Sudeley. There,
she delivered her child, named Mary after the princess, on August 30.
Probably the victim of puerperal fever, Katherine’s health worsened; at
times she became delirious, even complaining to her attendant, Elizabeth
Tyrwhit, that Seymour had abused her with, among other slights,
“shrewd taunts.” She died on September 5, between 2:00 and 3:00 AM.
In her oral will, she left her husband, who left immediately after her
death, her power of attorney and all her possessions. Her daughter died
two years later.62
After her servants prepared her body for burial and placed the cof-
fin in her privy chamber, they decorated the chapel with black cloth and
covered the rails in black. The number and status of the subsequent
processing mourners, when compared to those of the queens’ funerals
already examined here, appears extremely limited. No member of the
secular nobility, except for Lady Jane, or bishops attended. Gentlemen
and knights, members of her household, and the Somerset herald
marched behind two conductors in black. Then six gentlemen in black
carried the corpse, on which stood two lighted escutcheons, into the
chapel and placed it inside the rails. Yeomen and others followed with
eleven staff torches; behind them walked Lady Jane, the chief mourner,
and six other female mourners. Finally, all ladies and gentlemen, yeomen,
and others in attendance entered the chapel. The service, entirely in
English, continued with the choir singing some psalms and reading three
lessons. The mourners, according to their status, placed alms in the col-
lection box. After the offering, Miles Coverdale, the dowager’s almoner,
preached a sermon in which he pointed out that the alms were not given
for the dead but for the poor, and that the lights were there to honor
the corpse and for no other purpose. Afterward, her attendants buried
the corpse on the north side of the altar, without a monument or stone,
while the choir sang Te Deum in English. The funeral over, the mourn-
ers then departed for dinner. The entire funeral rites had been completed
in one morning. No days of vigil were held; the speed with which she
was buried could explain the lack of noble attendance. Its simplicity
cannot be blamed only on its Protestant tone, however, for the funer-
als of some later reformers were much more elaborate. Perhaps Seymour
228 R.M. Warnicke
that effort and would also honor a foreign-born ex-queen, the daughter
of Cleves.71
Immediately after Anne’s death, her servants prepared her body in the
usual manner for her funeral, burying her bowels before the high altar
at Chelsea Church. From July 16 to August 2, her chaplains said masses
and dirges daily before the casket, which lacked an effigy, but which was
covered with a pall of cloth of gold and surrounded by burning tapers.
Meanwhile, at Westminster Abbey, between the high altar and the choir,
the monks constructed a splendid hearse. On August 2, a grand proces-
sion set out from the abbey to Chelsea to fetch the corpse. It included
the usual heralds, some of the queen’s councilors, many gentlemen,
the choir of St. Paul’s, John Feckenham, the abbot of Westminster
Abbey, with thirty Westminster monks, and Edmund Bonner, bishop of
London. Elizabeth Paulet, marchioness of Winchester, wife of William
Paulet, marquess of Winchester and the queen’s lord treasurer, served as
chief mourner.72
They returned to Westminster with Anne’s corpse on a chariot pulled
by four horses, each carrying a henchman wearing a black hood. At 7:00
AM on the morning of August 3, after the singing of two masses, Our
Lady and the Trinity, with the usual offerings, the mourners departed for
breakfast. When they returned, they heard the requiem mass and a ser-
mon preached by the abbot. They then departed to the great chamber in
the abbey while the abbot and bishop supervised the burial of the corpse
in the sepulcher, which was covered by a cloth of gold, on the south side
of the altar. Following traditional protocol, Anne’s officials broke their
staffs and threw them into the tomb, signifying the end of their service.
Afterward, mourners led by Lady Winchester enjoyed the usual feast.73
The hearse remained standing for a fortnight but had to be removed,
perhaps because the monks had torn off, among other items, its velvet
cloth and banners. This despoiling might have had its origins in a dis-
agreement between the monks and the heralds as to which group had
ownership rights to the hearse. Later, in Elizabeth’s reign, the heralds
won this particular dispute.74
The funeral gained great public attention for the restored abbey, but
still major differences between it and those of Elizabeth of York and
Jane Seymour existed in the social and religious status of the mourners
and in the lack of diplomatic participation. Many fewer members of the
nobility attended than in the above queens’ funerals. Besides the mar-
quess and marchioness of Winchester, the others named included only
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 231
Notes
1. E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England,
1541–1871: A Reconstruction (London: Edward Arnold, 1981), pp. 208,
216, 252; Daniel Schäfer, “Medical Representations of Old Age in the
Renaissance: The Influence of Non-Medical Texts,” Growing Old in Early
Modern Europe: Cultural Representations, ed. Erin Campbell (Burlington:
Ashgate, 2006), pp. 11–20; Aki C.L. Beam, “‘Should I as Yet Call
you Old?’ Testing the Boundaries of Female Old Age in Early Modern
England,” Growing Old, pp. 95–116.
2. In making these calculations, the month of the birth and the month of
death were taken into consideration.
3. Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family in England, 1480–
1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 19–20; Neil Samman,
“The Progresses of HenryVIII, 1509–1529,” The Reign of Henry VIII:
Politics, Policy, Piety, ed. Diarmaid MacCulloch (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1995), p. 71; Scottish Record Office, Letters and Papers, Foreign and
Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and
R.H. Brodie, 21 vols., in 35 (London: HMSO, 1862–1932), XIX-ii, 242
(hereafter LP); Janel Mueller, ed., Katherine Parr: Complete Works and
Correspondence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 71.
4. Georges Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France
Since the Middle Ages, tr. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), pp. 1–13.
5. Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1550
(London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 1, 29–32; Clare Gittings, Death, Burial,
and the Individual in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm,
1984), p. 9; Houlbrooke, Death, pp. 208–209.
6. Houlbrooke, Death, pp. 81–146.
7. Houlbrooke, Death, pp. 48–58, 147–149; Daniell, Death, pp. 32–43.
8. Daniell, Death, p. 44; Houlbrooke, Death, pp. 255–256.
9. John Carmi Parsons, “‘Never Was a Body Buried in England with Such
Solemnity and Honour: The Burials and Posthumous Commemorations
234 R.M. Warnicke
16. Grose, Repertory, p. 662, specified that the ladies placed 37 palls on the
effigy, but his lists of the ladies and the number of their palls did not
quite add up to 37.
17. Margaret Condon, “God Save the King! Piety, Propaganda, and the
Perpetual Memorial” Lady Chapel, p. 87; Samuel Bentley, ed. Excerpta
Historia or Illustrations of English History (London: Samuel Bentley,
1831), p. 130; Litton, “Funeral effigies,” p. 5; Gittings, Death, p. 19;
John Mayor, ed., The English Works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, E.
S. Vol. 27 (London: Early English Text Society, 1876), p. 306.
18. Tim Tatton-Brown, “The Building of the New Chapel: The First Phase,”
St. George’s Chapel, Windsor: History and Heritage, ed. Nigel Saul and
Tatton-Brown (Stanbridge: Dovecote Press, 2010), pp. 69–80.
19. Condon, “God Save the King!” pp. 60–69, 87; Fynes Moryson,
An Itinerary Containing His Ten Yeeres Travell Through the Twelve
Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland,
Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turky, France, England, Scotland & Ireland, 4
vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1907–1908), III, 483.
20. LP, XII-ii, 970, 1012, 1042, 1060.
21. LP, XII-ii, 1060; John Carmi Parsons, “Eleanor [Eleanor of Castile]
(1241–1290), queen of England, consort of Edward I,” Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter ODNB), www.oxforddnb.
com (accessed May 15, 2016); Litton, “Funeral Effigies,” p. 6.
22. LP, XII-ii, 1060; Barrett Beer, “Jane [née Jane Seymour] (1508/1509–
1537), Queen of England, third consort of Henry VIII,” ODNB, www.
oxforddnb.com (accessed March 20, 2005). See also, Anonymous, The
Windsor Guide; Containing a Description of the Town and Castle…an
historical account of the monuments, &c. in St. George’s Chapel, new edi-
tion, corrected and enlarged (Windsor: C. Knight, 1793); Tatton-Brown,
“Building of the New Chapel,” p. 77.
23. Lindley, ‘Singular Meditacions,’ pp. 268–269; Wilson, “The Functional
Design of Henry VII’s Chapel: A Reconstruction,” Lady Chapel, p. 187,
n. 97.
24. LP, X, 59.
25. LP, X, 28, 37, 59–60; Retha M. Warnicke, “Willoughby [née de Salinas],
Maria, Lady Willoughby de Eresby (d. 1539), noblewoman and cour-
tier,” ODNB, www.oxforddnb.com (accessed May 15, 2016).
26. LP, X, 37, 141; C.S.L. Davies and John Edwards, “Katherine [Catalina,
Catherine, Katherine of Aragon] (1485–1536), queen of England, first
consort of Henry VIII,” ODNB, www.oxforddnb.com (accessed May 15,
2016).
27. LP, X, 284. See also C.H. Hartshorne, “The Obsequies of Katherine of
Aragon,” Archaeological Journal, 11(1854), 353–367; Litton, “Funeral
Effigies,” p. 6.
236 R.M. Warnicke
42. Claire Ridgway, “Anne Boleyn’s Execution Site - The Anne Boleyn
Files,” http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/anne-boleyns-execution-site
(accessed May 26, 2016).
43. Jean Kaulek, ed., Correspondance Politique de MM. De Castillon et
Marillac: Ambassadeurs de France en Angleterre, 1537–1542 (Paris: Felix
Alcan, 1885), p. 5.
44. This information about Katherine Howard is taken from Retha M.
Warnicke, Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, and
Commoners (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 45-76.
45. Antonio de Guevara, Bishop of Guadix and Mondoûedo, The Life of a
Courtier and a Commendacion of the Life of the Labouring Man, trans. Sir
Francis Bryan (London: Richard Grafton, 1548), p. 91.
46. T.N.A. SP 1/167, fs. 157–159.
47. LP, XVI, 1323, 1334.
48. LP, XVI, 1331, 1333.
49. Historical Manuscript Commission. Calendar of the Manuscripts of the
Marquis of Bath Preserved at Longleat, Wiltshire, 3 vols. (Dublin, HMSO,
1904–1980), II, 8–10; T.N.A. SP 1/167, fs. l35–138.
50. T.N.A. SP 1/167, f. 14; see also LP, XVI, 1134; Warnicke, Wicked
Women, pp. 69–70.
51. Kaulek, Marillac, pp. 367–377.
52. T.N.A. SP 1/167, f.155; SP 1/168, fs. 10, 87–89, 9l, 97, 104, 158; LP
XVI, 1470–1471; LP XVII, 28, II, C. 21.
53. Wriothesley, Chronicle, X. 131–132; LP XVII, 28, II, C. 21; Stanford
Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1536–1547 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 144–147.
54. Wriothesley, Chronicle, X, 133–134; Hall, Henry, II, 314; Bell, Notices,
122-6; LP, XVII, 106; Kaulek, Marillac, pp. 388–389. See also, Diana
Tankard, “The Johnson Family and the Reformation,” Historical
Research, 80(2007), 469–490.
55. Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England,
3 vols. (London: A Rhanes for R. Gunne and J. Smith and W. Bruce,
1683), III, no. 72, pp. 130–131; The Remains of Thomas Cranmer, D.D.,
Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. Henry Jenkyns, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1883), I, 307-10; Warnicke, Wicked Women, pp. 54, 56.
56. T.N.A. SP 1/167, fs. 138, 158–159.
57. Warnicke, Wicked Women, pp. 75–76.
58. Joel Rosenthal, Patriarchy and Families of Privilege in Fifthteenth-Century
England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), pp. 178–
182.
59. Susan James, Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen (Aldershot: Ashgate:
1999), pp. 285–293.
238 R.M. Warnicke
60. Ibid., pp. 293–306. Although Edward Hall knew about the statute, it
had disappeared. Whether Katherine Parr or her new husband were
aware of it is uncertain, but rather than tell the Lord Protector or the
king’s council, she persuaded Seymour to obtain the king’s permission to
marry instead. For the statute and this information, see Ralph Griffiths,
“Queen Katherine of Valois and a Missing Statute of the Realm,” The
Law Quarterly Review, 93(1977), 248–258.
61. James, Kateryn, pp. 314–323; Narasingha P. Sil, “Denny, Sir Anthony
(1501–1549), courtier,”ODNB, www.oxforddnb.com (accessed May 31,
2016).
62. James, Kateryn, pp. 329–332.
63. College of Arms MS. RR 21/c, fs. 98–99; printed in Agnes Strickland,
Lives of the Queens of England From the Norman Conquest, 12 vols.
(London: Henry Coleman, 1840–1848), V, 123–124.
64. Treadway Nash, “Observations on the Time and Place of Burial of Queen
Katherine Parr,” Archaeologia, IX(1789), 1–9.
65. Gavin Stamp, “Scott, Sir George Gilbert (1811–1878), architect,” ODNB,
www.oxforddnb.com (accessed May 31, 2016); “Sudeley Castle, the Curious
Life and Death of Katherine Parr,” http://tudorhistory.org/places/sudeley
(accessed May 31, 2016); “Images for Tomb of Catherine Parr,” https://
www.google.com/search?q=tomb+of+catherine+parr (accessed May 31,
2016).
66. Warnicke, Wicked Women, pp. 91–95, for the controversy about fratricide.
67. Retha M. Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in
Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.
236–242.
68. Ibid., pp. 244–245.
69. Ibid., p. 252.
70. Bentley, Excerpta, p. 295.
71. For the letters, Anne Crawford, ed., Letters of the Queens of England,
1100-1547 (Stroud: Sutton, 1994), p. 205; T.N.A. SP 11/4; J.F.
Merritt, The Social World of Early Modern Westminster: Abbey, Court, and
Community (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 553.
72. Bentley, Excerpta, pp. 303–308.
73. Ibid., pp. 308–313.
74. A. Tindal Hart, “\Dissolution and Revival,” A House of Kings: The
Official History of Westminster Abbey, ed. Edward Carpenter (New York:
John Day Company, 1966), pp. 107–131.
75. Bentley, Excerpta, pp. 295, 306–308.
76. Theodore Haveus, “Oxford Index: A Search and Discovery Gateway,” http://
oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095924771
7 DEATH AND BURIAL 239
Conclusion
This is the first book to examine, compare, and contrast the reigns of
the Tudor consorts, rather than providing discrete biographical details
about them, as previous authors of, for example, the many works on
Henry VIII’s six wives have done. The only publication that turns to this
genre for the Tudors is my article in History Compass, which does not
include a study of his mother, Elizabeth of York.1 She belongs in this
book because as the first Tudor queen, her reign in many ways offers
a standard for evaluating those of her daughters-in-law. Following the
introductory chapter, Chap. 2 began with a discussion of the two Tudor
kings’ searches for their brides and their subsequent weddings, then
noted the lack of official celebrations honoring them, and finally ended
with the coronations of three of the queens. Because of political cir-
cumstances, the process by which these two kings chose their consorts
deviated from the methods that other late medieval and early modern
European rulers adopted in making their selections. Normally, kings
wed foreign-born ladies after protracted diplomatic negotiations with
their royal relatives, but both Henry VII and his son found that reper-
cussions from the English civil war and from international religious dis-
putes meant that only two of their seven queens actually belonged to
foreign dynasties. Henry VII, of course, wed Elizabeth, the Yorkist heir-
ess, while his son, after marrying Katherine of Aragon, turned to four
Englishwomen and a foreign duke’s daughter. As Katherine of Aragon
remained in England as the widow of Arthur, prince of Wales, and as
Anne of Cleves arrived in the realm during the Christmas holy days and
and during her brother’s reign, Elizabeth resided for about one year with
Katherine Parr and her new husband, Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley.
This chapter ended with examples of the grief that royal parents felt
when they lost their children, especially their male heirs. One of every
five or six infants did not survive its first year of life. Elizabeth of York
had better luck than her six daughters-in-law, giving birth to a son who
succeeded as king in 1509. Only Jane Seymour of Henry VIII’s wives
had a son who survived his first year and who succeeded to the throne,
but her son, as had Prince Arthur earlier, died in his teenage years.
Neither she nor Henry lived to witness what would have been a tre-
mendous tragedy for them both. Katherine of Aragon, as well as Anne
Boleyn, could not have anticipated that their daughters would one day
become queens regnant. Elizabeth of York also did not survive long
enough to know for certain that her daughters, Margaret and Mary,
would become the queens of Scotland and France, respectively.
Chapter 5 turned to the public roles of the consorts and their inter-
action with their husbands in the larger space of the court and gov-
ernment, including patronage beyond the offices they possessed in
their households and dower lands. It suggested that the queens could
have great influence with their husbands and challenged the diplomatic
reports that have formed what has survived in many modern historical
studies of the stereotypical characterizations of Elizabeth of York, who
was said to have been mistreated by Margaret, countess of Richmond,
her mother-in-law, and Anne Boleyn, who is often characterized either as
a courtly lover or as an adulteress. The consorts’ diplomatic opportuni-
ties varied but no doubt exists that those with international relatives had
more input and influence than those without family connections abroad.
Katherine of Aragon’s brief appointment as her father’s resident ambas-
sador in England had more far-reaching implications than did the usual
queens’ roles in foreign policy decision making. Because their husbands’
councilors handled negotiation for their children’s marriages, only
Katherine of Aragon’s opinion was sought about her daughter’s arrange-
ments, probably because of her status as an aunt of Emperor Charles V.
The Tudor kings and their ministers did consult with their wives, and
in Henry VII’s case also his mother, Lady Richmond, concerning the
appropriate age for their young daughters to leave home and wed kings
in foreign realms.
The consorts had other public duties. They functioned as intercessors,
although in the Tudor period this procedure seems to have become a
246 R.M. Warnicke
and Jane, both mothers of sons, indicates the importance of the final
celebration of their lives both in a religious and dynastic sense, celebrat-
ing her sovereignty. It is interesting that when planning the funeral of
Jane, Henry’s officials studied the previous arrangements for Elizabeth
of York’s ritual. Without a doubt, the latter’s treatment in this final rite,
including the double monument in the new lady chapel at Westminster
Abbey, provided her with the most splendid funeral and memorial of all
the Tudor consorts. Although in some respects Katherine of Aragon’s
funeral honored her, Bishop Hilsey’s sermon for her at Peterborough
Cathedral in the Midlands, at least a three-day ride from Westminster
or London, in which he claimed that she had voluntarily relinquished
her title as queen, negated some of the significance of her ritual. Even
her friend, Eustace Chapuys, Imperial ambassador, refused to attend a
service that honored her only as the princess of Wales. The funerals of
Elizabeth and Jane stand in great contrast to the Protestant funeral in a
private chapel at Sudeley of Katherine Parr, whose remarriage to a mere
baron, although the uncle of Edward VI, lessened the esteem of many
contemporaries toward her. Her service in a sense represented, without
the presence of members of the nobility, except for her husband’s ward
and her principal mourner, Lady Jane Grey, the dowager’s diminished
public status. Finally, Henry VIII had deserted Anne of Cleves, claiming
she was already married, and Edward VI’s government had neglected her
financially, but perhaps partly because of her foreign birth, Mary Tudor
honored her with a grand procession from Chelsea Manor, where she
died, to Westminster, and then a splendid funeral at the abbey. This first
English queen regnant also was able to celebrate the return of her king-
dom to Roman Catholicism by holding Anne’s royal funeral at the abbey
that her father had dissolved and that she had restored.
From their marriages and coronations to their various family and
public activities, the queens played significant roles. In their absence,
the court represented only half of England, since the only gentlewomen
resident at court belonged to her household. There she dispensed
money, purchased various items so that she could live like a queen, saw
to the needs especially of her daughters, and held private religious func-
tions. For the most part, the public celebrations required her attend-
ance because the chivalric notion that the men competed in war games
to honor their wives and loved ones still held sway. And for those who
were reigning queens when they died, the two Tudor monarchs pro-
vided magnificent rituals. Those who died in disgrace, Anne Boleyn and
8 CONCLUSION 249
Notes
1. Retha M. Warnicke “Queenship: Politics and Gender in Tudor England,”
History Compass, 4(2006), 203–227. (www.history-compass.com).
2. Edward Hall, Henry VIII, intro. Charles Whibley, 2 vols. (London: T.C. &
E. C. Jack, 1904) II, 202.
Further Reading
Printed Documents
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Caxton, 1491.
Anstis, John, ed. The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, 2 vols.
London: John Barber, 1724.
Ascoli, Georges, ed. La Grande-Bretagne Devant L’Opinion Française Depuis
La Guerre de Cent Ans Jusqu’a La Fin Du XVI Siècle. Paris: Librairie
Universitaire J. Gamber, 1927.
Bacon, Francis. The Historie of the Reigne of King Henrie the Seaventh. London:
W. Stanley, 1622.
Bain, Joseph, Grant Simpson, James Galbraith, eds. Calendar of Documents
Relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots, 13 vols. Edinburgh: H.M.
General Register Office, 1989–1969.
Batty, Bartholomew. The Christian Man’s Closet, Wherein Is Conteined a Large
Discourse of the Godly Training up of Children. Translated by William Loweth.
London: Thomas Dawson and Gregory Leton, 1581.
Bentley, Samuel, ed. Excerpta Historia or Illustrations of English History. London:
Samuel Bentley, 1831.
_____. Extracts from the Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Seventh from
December 7, 1491 to March 20, 1505. London: William Pickering, 1827.
Barker, William. The Nobility of Women. Edited by R. Warwick Bond. London:
Roxburgh Club, 1908.
Boaistuau, Pierre. Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature Containing a Descriptio[n]
of Sundry Strange Things, Seming Monstrous in Our Eyes and Judgement,
Hays, Denis, trans. The Anglia Historia of Polydore Vergil, A.D. 1485–1537,
Royal Historical Society, vol. 74. London: Royal Historical Society, 1950.
Hayward, Maria, ed. Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII. London: Maney,
2007.
_______. The Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. London:
London Record Society, Boydell and Brewer Press, 2012.
Hayward, Maria and Philip Ward, eds. The Inventory of King Henry VIII: Volume
II, Textile and Dress. London: Harvey Miller Publishers for The Society of
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Elizabeth Woodville’s Reputation, Her Piety and Her Books.” The Ricardian,
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268 Further Reading
Electronic Sources
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Index
and Anne Boleyn’s miscarriage, 28, midwifery, 110, 111, 114, 204
140 prayers for, 110–111
and Anne Bolyen’s treatment of pregnancy and, 104–106, 108
Mary, 115, 119 preparations for, 84
correspondence with Mary, 141 as queen’s duty, 4, 7
and Cromwell, 135, 139, 141 and religion, 97–98, 105, 110, 114,
denounces Anne Boleyn’s religious 244
beliefs, 157 royal rituals after, 111–15, 199n34
as diplomat, 134, 135 christenings, 11, 23, 80, 97, 106, 110,
and gossip and rumors, 27–28, 134– 111–13, 129n34, 207, 208, 244
35, 139, 140, 141, 169n56 and godparents, 11, 23, 111–12,
on Jane Seymour, 27–29, 169n56 244
at Jane Seymour’s funeral, 213 Christian humanism, 154, 246. . See
and Katherine of Aragon’s funeral, also humanism
217, 248 Christina of Denmark, dowager duch-
and Llandaff, Bishop of, 156 ess of Milan, 24, 34
meetings at court in 1544, 195–196 Christmas celebrations, 173, 188–89. .
on treatment of Katherine of See also Epiphany, New Year’s gift
Aragon, 100, 103 giving
visit to Brussels, 135 churching, 11, 97, 101, 114, 115, 244
visit to Katherine of Aragon in Claude, queen of France, 145,
1536, 214 169n36, 192–94, 247
welcoming Henry VIII and Jane Clayton, Katharine, 216
Seymour in 1536, 178 Clement VII, pope, 5, 24, 25, 219,
Charles I, king of England, 213 242
Charles II, king of England, 5 Clerk, John, bishop of Bath and Wells,
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 146, 156–57
(prince of Castile), 4, 24, 25, 27, Cleves, Amelia of, 34
34, 101, 103, 104, 143, 144, Cleves, Anne of. See Anne of Cleves
145, 214, 245 Cleves, John, duke of, 34
Cheke, Sir John, 120 Cleves, William, duke of, 3, 34, 229
Chelsea Manor, 30, 65, 226, 229–31, Clifford, Henry, earl of Cumberland,
248 216
childbirth, 7, 11. . See also individual Clifford, Eleanor, countess of
queens Cumberland (neé Brandon), 216
and the “Articles”, 110–112 Coffin, Sir William, 63, 87n16
and death, 30, 113–114, 123, 164, Compton, Sir William, 71, 75,
204, 207, 209, 210, 244 91–92n68
folklore about, 105, 114, 144, 244 Conway, Hugh, 17
lying-in chamber for, 84, 97, 109, Cooke, Sir Anthony, 120
208, 226, 244 Cornish, William, 180
maternal rituals of, 11 coronations, significance of, 6, 36–39
274 Index
diplomat(s), 133, 145. . See also Edward the Confessor, Saint, king of
ambassadors; individuals by name England
and bribery, 133, 134 clothing and regalia, 38, 39, 42, 45,
and diplomatic practice, 133, 145 46, 48
dispatches as evidence, 134, 139 shrine of, 40, 43, 45, 211
reports by, 135 Eleanor, queen of England, 152, 175
and retaliation by rulers, 135–35 Eliot, Sir Thomas, 28
rumors and gossip, 27–28, 134–35, Elizabeth I, queen of England, 20, 21,
139, 140, 141, 150, 169n56 122
and spying, 133, 135 attendants of, 27, 75
views of royal women, 135–36 barge, 61
Dodieu, Claude, 153 birth and christening, 110, 112–113
Dormer, Sir William, 29 books of devotion, 100–101
Douglas, Archibald, earl of Angus, 150 at court in 1536, 29
Douglas, Lady Margaret, 75–76, 104, and Denny household, 226–227
122, 150, 195 education of, 118–120, 161
duchy of Lancaster, 67, 70 with Katherine Parr, dowager
Dudley, John, duke of queen, 164
Northumberland (Viscount Lisle), with Katherine Parr as regent,
31, 229 119–120
Duwes, Giles, 118 and Lord Seymour, 245
Dymmok, Sir Robert, 63, 87n13 and Mary I, 116
at Mary’s coronation, 229
and Parker, Matthew, 118, 141
E as successor to the throne, 146–47
education, 154, 161 and tomb for Anne of Cleves, 231
of boys, 117 translations for Katherine Parr and
of girls, 8, 115, 116, 117, 118, 154 Henry VIII, 119–120
parents’ interest in, 7–8, 115–117 weaned, 115
Edward I, king of England, 5, 24, 81, Elizabeth of York, queen of England,
175 6, 7, 19
Edward II, king of England, 18 almsgiving and maundy, 99, 100,
Edward III, king of England, 18, 24, 102
102, 110, 185 and ambassador Puebla, 136–38
Edward IV, king of England, 2, 6, Arthur’s birth and christening, 22,
18–19, 21, 99, 117, 176, 185, 106, 109, 112
211, 214 Arthur’s death, 122–23
Edward V, king of England (boy in the and Arthur’s marriage and festivities,
Tower), 2, 17 175, 177
Edward VI, king of England, 5, 32, attendants, female, 72
112, 120, 122, 163, 226, 232, attendants, male, 62, 65, 66
248 barge, 77–78, 177
276 Index
heralds and kings of arms, 27, 39, Husee, John, 63, 75, 189–90
40, 41, 140, 149, 178, 180,
187, 189, 207, 208, 212, 216,
227, 230. . See also Wriothesley, I
Charles income, queens’ (dower and jointure),
Herbert, Anne, future countess of 6, 10, 66, 68, 69–71, 76, 86,
Pembroke, 31, 32, 33, 122, 161 243. . See also individual queens
Herbert, Edward, Lord Herbert of individual queens, 1, 6, 48, 65
Cherbury, 24 Innocent VIII, pope, 21–22
Herbert, William, earl of Pembroke Institutio Christiani Matrimonii, 155
(brother-in-law of Katherine Institution de la Religion Chrestienne,
Parr), 32, 33, 122 120
Heron, John, 79, 148, 188 Instruction of a Christian Woman, 118
Heydon (or Haydon), William, 62, 67 intercessory role of queens, 6, 133,
Hilsey, John, bishop of Rochester, 152–53
215–16, 232, 248 Isabella, Holy Roman Empress, 27
Holbein the Younger, Hans, 34, 84, Isabella, queen of Castile, 33, 136–37,
85, 142 145
Holden, Thomas, 65 Isabella, queen of England, 18
Hollingsworth, Thomas, 113 Ives, E. W., 139
Horsman, Margery, 72
Houlbrooke, Ralph, 113
Howard, Agnes, dowager duchess of J
Norfolk, 30–31, 76, 81, 221, 224 James II, king of Scotland, 19, 150
Howard, Anne, 120 James IV, king of Scotland, 115, 136,
Howard, Charles, 76, 122 138, 144, 149
Howard, Lord Edmund, 121, 183 James V, king of Scotland, 34, 150,
Howard, Elizabeth, dowager duchess 179, 222
of Norfolk, 231 James, Susan, 31, 102, 160
Howard, George, 122 Jane Seymour, queen of England, 2, 5,
Howard, Henry, earl of Surrey, 195 8, 29, 72, 245
Howard, Margaret, Lady Howard of almsgiving and maundy, 100, 103,
Effingham, 224, 231 169n59
Howard, Thomas, Lord, 76, 88, 104 attendants, female, 27, 72–73, 75
Howard, Thomas, second duke of attendants, male, 63
Norfolk, 24, 149, 174, 208 betrothal to Henry VIII, 30
Howard, Thomas, third duke of birth of Edward, 110
Norfolk, 30, 70, 105, 120, 180 birth year discussion, 27
Howard, William, Lord Howard of Book of Hours, 101
Effingham, 190–91, 224, 231 Corpus Christi mass, 30
Humanism, 8, 117, 155, 156, 157, council and members, 111
158, 106, 161, 163, 246 at court in 1536, 26–27, 28
Index 281
death, 30, 73, 114, 204, 207, 212 bill of attainder against, 224
education, 8 books of devotion, 100–101
funeral and burial, 212–13, 230–31, charges of adultery, 4, 224
232–33, 247–48 council and members, 62, 66
Henry VIII’s courtship of, 26–27, courtship by Henry VIII, 30–31, 81
28, 29, 139 and Culpeper, Sir Thomas, 222–223
household, 62, 63–64, 72, 73, 75, death and burial, 221, 249
84 education, 8
jointure and finances, 70 execution, 218, 224
lineage, 24 household, 62, 66, 73
patronage, 122, 169n56 intercession, 153
pregnancy and childbirth, 30, 73, jewelry, 85–86
105, 109, 113, 114, 204, 207 jointure and finances, 70, 90n53
queenship, 12 lineage, 24
religious views, 158 procession north with Henry VIII,
return of royal gift, 28 179–80
river entry to Westminster, 177–78, property, 70–71
179 river entry to Westminster, 177–79
wedding, 30 sexual abuse of, 222–23, 225
jewel house, 39, 60, 84, 85, 91n68 support for family members,
Joanne of Navarre, queen of 121–22, 154
England and dowager duchess wedding to Henry VIII, 31
of Brittany, 18 Katherine of Aragon, queen of
John the Baptist, St., Feast of the England, 2, 3, 5, 6
Nativity of, 41–42, 48, 193 almsgiving and Maundy, 99–100,
Johnson, Otwell, 224–25 103
jointure. See income, queens’ annulment, 20
Jones, Michael, 20 and Athequa, Jorge de, bishop of
Julius II, pope, 3, 33 Llandaff, 156
attendants, female, 24, 61, 72, 74,
75
K attendants, male, 61, 62–63, 65
Katherine Howard, queen of England, barge, 61
2, 10, 12, 23, 107, 119, 121 betrothal to Arthur, 136
age, 30 betrothal to future Henry VIII, 3,
almsgiving and maundy, 100, 33
103–104 birth of Henry, 110
arrest and imprisonment, 142, 224 birth and education of Mary, 110
as attendant of Anne of Cleves, 30, books, 8, 100–101
73, 247 Burgundian entry to London, 176
attendants, female, 72 at Calais, 194
attendants, male, 63–64, 67 and Cardinal College, Oxford, 155
282 Index
and annulment of Henry VIII’s first Woodville, Richard, third Earl Rivers,
marriage, 25 99
celebrating Palm Sunday, 101 Worthy, William, 79
and Compton, William, 71, 75, Wotton, Sir Henry, 134
92n68 Wotton, Nicholas, 34, 142
and Evil May Day rebels, 153 Wriothesley, Charles, 27, 140, 178,
and Field of Cloth of Gold, 192–93 179, 219
as founder of Cardinal College, Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, 149, 151,
Oxford, 155 162, 163, 223
and Katherine of Aragon’s preg- Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 153
nancy, 105, 109
and Mary’s Christmas festivities,
188–89 Y
patronage by, 155, 157 York Place, 30, 60
properties of, 25, 60, 78
Woodville, Richard, first Earl Rivers,
2, 18