Wildcard: Did Margaret Beaufort protect the virginity of a teenage Katherine?

Posted on September 16, 2016September 16, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

A #WildCard post is an opportunity to have fun by testing theories that there is no actual historical evidence for, but nonetheless are enjoyable to think about. They should be taken with more than a pinch of salt and even the authors themselves do not necessarily agree with them.

Previously I’ve written about the likelihood of Katherine of Aragon emerging from her first marriage ‘untouched by man’. Weighing up the evidence available, I concluded that when she wed Henry VIII, she did so with virginity intact.

As I drafted the piece a thought struck me. A thought backed up by absolutely no evidence, but one I think worthy of a #WildCard’.

When Prince Arthur died, there was a gap of six months before his brother Henry’s creation as Prince of Wales. Ostensibly, this was in order to be sure that Katherine was not pregnant with Arthur’s child who would have taken precedence in the succession, even if born posthumously. However, despite this formality, the powers that be seemed relatively content that the marriage had never been consummated. Indeed, it is said that Henry VII only agreed to the second marriage on that premise.

This got me thinking. Why was Henry VII so confident that his son had never fully performed his marital duties? Teenage sex was not always encouraged in Tudor times but there was a general expectation the couple would at least consummate the union. Katherine’s senior Spanish lady-in-waiting had testified to a lack of activity – but would that really have been enough for the ever paranoid and habitually suspicious Henry?

I think not.

Henry VII was paranoid by nature and his paranoia was not without a foundation in logic. The Tudor dynasty hung by a thread – or at least, it felt like it did. If the King married the widowed Katherine to his second son and the marriage was later questioned, it could place his future heirs in great jeopardy. True, there may have been Papal dispensation for the marriage regardless of the circumstances, but as later events showed, if the political climate was right, this could be done away with.

Instead it seems more likely that Henry VII would not have agreed to the marriage unless he had a cast iron guarantee that the deed was not done.

Could it be that Prince Arthur, despite his lusty brags to his friends, had never intended to consummate his marriage in his early years? Could it be that he was actually under instruction not to?

History is full of things we don’t know, but for a moment, let’s stand back and look at some of the things that we do.

Sex in this time was seen as potentially dangerous for young people. We know that Henry was paranoid about losing his heir. We also know that in domestic matters, the King listened and acted on the advice of his mother.

Lady Margaret Beaufort is famous in history for her status as a child bride. Married at 12 to a man twice her age, she gave birth to her only child when she was only just a teenager. A lack of later issue despite two further marriages suggests that this scared her physically; other evidence leads us to believe that it scared her emotionally.

When her granddaughter and namesake was pledged to be married to the Scottish King, her heart went out to her. Not naïve to the importance of political manoeuvrings and dynastic alliances, Margaret would have supported the match, but she pleaded with her son not to dispatch her north of the boarder too early, reminding him that the Scots King ‘would not wait and harm her.’

Is it possible that she intervened again? Had this woman of great compassion and maternal instinct taken pity on her future granddaughter-in-law even before she met her?

The circumstances were not the same. The marriage of both Margarets had been to much older men. Katherine and Arthur were similar in age, but nonetheless it deserves thinking about.

Margaret, I am confident, would not have broached the subject directly with Arthur. I don’t know much about their relationship, but it would have hardly been a conversation that would dignify the King’s Mother. Instead, it is more logical to suspect a conversation took place between the great matriarch, her son and Elizabeth of York. Perhaps the King himself then broached the subject with his heir-apparent and it was this conversation, and subsequent ones, that gave the King confidence that the marriage was one of legal union alone.

Let me reiterate, there is no evidence for this – but that’s part of the fun of the #WildCard posts.

Was Edward IV a usurper?

Posted on September 15, 2016September 15, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

Image result for edward iv

I stumbled across something interesting the other day. For some reason, I was checking out the Wikipedia entry on ‘usurpers of the English throne’ (we’ve all done it) and discovered that it features a list of those who had seized the crown. As you can imagine, it was an exciting moment!

But it was also a moment that triggered a surge of indignation in my usually placid personality. For while Henry IV, the first Lancastrian King had made his way onto the list, Edward IV of the House of York was strangely absent.

Before this spirals into a whole Lancaster vs York partisan thing, let me be clear: I fully accept that Henry IV deserves his place on the list. Even though his bid to seize the throne was initially fairly popular and despite propagandist claims that his cousin Richard II ‘agreed’ to the new arrangement, there can be no doubt that Henry of Bolingbroke was a usurper. Richard II was clearly forced off the throne and even if he had died or surrendered it willingly, there was arguably another with a better claim.

But excluding Edward IV, who seized the throne from the Lancastrians in 1461, really got my goat.

Although the authors of the page do not present a reason for their spurious (yes, I said it – spurious) decision, it’s not hard to guess where they’re coming from. While Henry Bolingbroke – as the eldest son of Edward III’s third son – was the heir male of his grandfather (or at least, he was after Richard II had actually died), the house of York descended in the female line from Lionel of Antwerp (Edward’s second son), making Edward IV the heir general of his namesake. Most historians now believe this gave York a superior claim to the throne. No doubt the Wikipedia entry does therefore not list the first York King as a usurper because they view it as a restoration of the true blood line.

But this doesn’t stack up.

To start with, back in 1399, when Henry IV was crowned, there was genuine confusion as to whether someone could base their claim to the throne through descent in the female line. Obviously this had become fairly meaningless by the end of the War of the Roses when even the best Lancastrian claimant (Henry Tudor) was basing his right to the crown on his mother’s lineage. But for as long as the male-line Lancastrian wing existed, they had a right which could well have been viewed as superior.

The real reason actually goes much deeper. Regardless of the ‘who had the better claim’ debate, the truth was that by 1461, the house of Lancaster was an established dynasty. The crown had passed seamlessly from the first Lancastrian King to his son who reigned so successfully that his infant boy inherited without challenge. Not only had Henry VI inherited the crown smoothly enough, he had held it for the first 40 years of his reign without anyone questioning it. When Edward IV managed to get his hands on power, Parliament had only recently re-asserted Henry’s right to it, albeit at the cost of disinheriting his son.

To take the throne, Edward IV had to seize it by force. Both law and the establishment were initially against him. In my book, this is the very definition of usurption and, to be frank, it should be in anybody’s. Perhaps the Wikipedia community could take a little look at this post and snap into edit mode.

(Editor’s note: What really makes my blood boil is that Richard III is also excluded from the list of usurpers. I’m too angry about this to even put pen to paper.)

Well geeks over to you…am I misjudging what it means to usurp? Are you a crazed Yorkist who believes that house can do no wrong? Do you have a crush on Max Hastings and are letting that cloud your view? I want to know what YOU think!

A few thoughts on Victoria 2&3

Posted on September 5, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

Last week I did very well. After the first episode of ITV’s Victoria, I managed to have a post out within half an hour.

Well, I haven’t quite managed to mimic that success and not only is this post late, it will have to cover my reflections on episodes 2 and 3.

So three episodes in, what are our thoughts? Well, from a strictly historical point of view, things are getting a little far-fetched. As I’ve said before, Victoria may have been infatuated with PM Lord Melbourne, but certainly on a conscious level, it was not a sexual thing. Last night we actually saw the young sovereign propose to the aging man! As Twitter rushed to point out, this was beyond ridiculous.

That being said there are some really lovely historical touches. Their portrayal of Prince George of Cambridge (no, not that one – Victoria’s first cousin) was rather welcome and they correctly captured his reluctance to marry the plain Queen. I also thought they managed the bed chamber crisis pretty effectively last week.

At the end of the day, this is a drama clearly billed as fiction not fact. It does bother me that many viewers will be unable to separate the truth from the invention – but that’s not actually the fault of the programme maker! Those of us who dream of a better educated public will just have to carry on blogging, tweeting and doing what we can to tell the amazing stories of our royal forbears, which I still believe are quite interesting in and of themselves without any further fabrication.

Next week the show sees a step change with the introduction of Albert. I for one will still be watching.

Review: A few thoughts on episode 1 of ‘Victoria’

Posted on August 28, 2016August 28, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

Wanted to bash out some #QuickFireThoughts on the first episode of ITV’s Victoria. Given that speed is of the essence to keep it topical, I can’t promise this will be my finest literary endeavour.

It was good.

Purists (a camp that I loosely consider myself a member of) will be quick to point out the inaccuracies, and they’re not wrong. The casting was clearly a victory of viewing figures over accuracy. Yes, Lord Melbourne was an attractive man, but the countless girls currently going crazy over Rufus Sewell on Twitter might find themselves disappointed if they stepped back in time to 1837. And of course, even as a young girl, Victoria never had the beauty of Jenna Coleman, but the thrust of the programme was good.

Here’s a few quick observations from me:

There were some really nice touches that geeks will appreciate. I don’t know if Conroy specifically tried to encourage Victoria to adopt the name of ‘Elizabeth II’ but it was certainly something discussed in Parliament.
I’m assuming – and Twitter agrees – that the ‘upstairs / downstairs’ dynamic was deliberately engineered to fill the void left by Downton Abbey last year. Does anyone know what, if anything, the ‘downstairs’ stories were based on?
The Lady Flora sub-plot was quite powerful. It is important to show how potentially spiteful the young Queen could be.
Baroness Lehzen was well cast. I liked the early acknowledgement that Victoria was totally constitutionally uneducated.

Of course the big thing that I – and other RoyalHistoryGeeks – will have struggled the most with was Victoria’s ‘attraction’ to Lord M. Yes, she may have been infatuated and yes, he was dashing, but the relationship surely more closely resembled that of father/daughter.

In summary, the first episode was good and I’ll certainly tune in next week. Was it totally historically accurate? No, of course not. Will it still aid people’s understanding of the history of the era? Yes, I think it probably will.

Who would win ‘Tudor Big Brother?’

Posted on August 28, 2016August 22, 2020 By Gareth - Editor

As I was watching the Celebrity Big Brother Final on Friday, a strange thought occurred to me. In a house full of contestants from the Tudor era who would emerge victorious? Would Thomas Cromwell calculate a winning game plan? Would Anne Boleyn see off Katherine of Aragon? Who would Catherine Howard hook up with, and how many minutes would it take her to do so? In other words ‘who would win Tudor Big Brother’?

For a #BitofFun I decided to bash out a blog post with #NoHistoricalValue to explore this very question. Here we go…

WEEK ONE
Up for eviction: Catherine Howard, Henry VII, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleaves
Evicted: Anne Boleyn

It is perhaps no great surprise that the Lady Anne becomes the first housemate to leave the Tudor Big Brother House. Having made no secret of her brazen game plan to win at any cost, she quickly earnt the disdain of her female housemates, every one of whom nominated her for eviction. While she held a ‘fascination’ for some male members of the house, her brittle manner clearly grated with the English public who have sent her to the block at their first opportunity. For many, the final straw was her guns-a-blazing row with fellow housemate Jane Seymour, which earned her a reprimand from Big Brother for ripping a locket off the ‘little wench’s’ neck.

“No one minds a girl on the make,” comments TV Vicar Rev.Thomas Cramner, “but it’s the 16th century people – we expect some subtlety!”

WEEK TWO
Up for eviction: Catherine Howard, Henry VII, Mary Tudor (The French Queen), Thomas Wolsey
Evicted: Henry VII

After two weeks and two evictions in the Tudor Big Brother House, there have still been no surprises. Despite Catherine of Aragon’s spectacular fall out with Thomas Wolsey (which saw the former punished by Big Brother for orchestrating a nominations campaign against the latter) there was never any real doubt that it was Henry VII that would incur the wrath of housemates and the public alike. While a few boundaries here and there might be helpful, the contestant’s obsessive need to impose fines on fellow housemates for the slightest misdemeanour was never likely to ingratiate him with others and once you’ve charged Charles Brandon £100 for not doing the dishes seven times, it quickly ceases to be gripping viewing.

“He spent his early years in France,” his mother, Margaret Beaufort told sister show ‘Big Brother’s Wench on the Side’, “and it’s possible he picked up one or two bad autocratic habits over there. But at the end of the day I just wish everyone saw him like I do – after all, he is my dear King and all my worldly joy!”

WEEK THREE

**DOUBLE ELIMINATION**

Nominated for eviction: Charles Brandon, Henry VIII, Catherine Howard, Thomas Wolsey
Evicted: Charles Brandon, Catherine Howard

It had all started so well for the dashing Brandon. Charming to the ladies, eloquent in the diary room and part of a bromance with fellow housemate Henry VIII which captured the imagination of the public. But then he broke the brother code. What seemed like a harmless flirtation with Mary Tudor stepped up a notch this week, earning him the jealous disinterest of female housemates and the rage of his new flame’s brother. The arguments that followed were too much for the Tudor Big Brother House and from the pile of nominations Brandon received, it’s clear the housemates sided with Henry. Tonight’s eviction shows that no traitor can ever keep the affections of the English people, however much he might be able to steal the heart of their Princess.

Catherine Howard on the other hand, has done well to survive as long as she has, having faced the public vote every week of the contest. Her girlish antics including hours at the make-up station and constantly trying to start pillow fights may have amused her male housemates, but quickly earned her the chagrin of their female counterparts.

“It’s pretty obvious why she survived the first two weeks though,” says celebrity commentator Thomas Culpepper. “She’s petite, plump and pretty – every bloke in the country’s been voting for her! With tonight’s eviction the eye-candy quota is seriously on the slide.”

WEEK FOUR

**SHOCK TWIST – Public vote to evict two contestants WITHOUT nominations from the house**

Evicted: Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wosley

Has Big Brother ever seen a bigger pair of game players? By deploying every tactic under the sun and cosying up to whoever holds the balance of power in the house, as well as keeping everyone on side by taking most of the boring chores off their hands, these two strategists had largely avoided nomination. However the public had seen what housemates had not. The secret strategy sessions, the willingness to throw others (including each other) under the bus and the sinister comments in the diary room. This week, voters finally got chance to cast their own judgement and it was ‘off with their head’ for both of them.

WEEK FIVE

**DOUBLE ELIMINATION**

Nominated for eviction: Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleaves
Evicted: Henry VIII, Mary Tudor

Just weeks ago, the stunning, learned and cultivated Henry VIII had been the bookies favourite to win but as the days went by his star slowly diminished as he faced problem after problem. First of course, was the slight irritation of other housemates when he kept stringing along Katherine of Aragon. Then there was the bust up with Brandon, but the moment the public really began to lose sympathy with the auburn haired Tudor, was his decision last week to nominate Anne of Cleaves, purely on the basis that she ‘looked like a horse.’ It wasn’t that he was saying anything that people weren’t thinking – but this is England, and there are some things you don’t say,

“The public have no idea how hard it is to keep a trim waistline inside that house,” says Edward III, winner of ‘Plantagenet Big Brother’, “but the way Henry piled on the pounds in there was something else altogether. At the end of the day, this is the Tudor era and image is everything.”

There is however, far less to say about Mary “the French Queen” Tudor’s eviction. And that’s definitely not because the author of this post has yet to read a really good biography on her and has only limited knowledge, making it difficult to think of something funny to say. Oh no. It’s not that at all.

WEEK SIX – THE FINAL

Finalists: Anne of Cleaves, Katherine of Aragon, Katherine Parr, Elizabeth of York.

It’s an all-girl final on ‘Tudor Big Brother’ – the lines are closed and the results are in.

Fourth place – Anne of Cleaves – In the first couple of weeks, no one expected the shy and reserved Lady Anna to last all the way to the final. Struggling with the language and keeping herself to herself, she wouldn’t even remove her veil for the first few days. Most worryingly, fellow housemates kept complaining about ‘offensive odours’ emanating from her direction, but suddenly things got better. Some impressive country dancing, an emerging sense of dignity and a thirst for survival managed to endear her to housemates, saving her from facing the public vote until last week. Loving nothing more than the rushing to the rescue of a wronged woman, the public chose instead to eject Henry VIII who had, quite frankly, been rather mean about poor Anna ever since week 1.

Third place – Elizabeth of York – Didn’t she do well? By instantly adopting the position of house Mum, ‘our Liz’ (as she is commonly known) was adored by the housemates who in diary room visit after diary room visit just couldn’t find a bad word to say against her. Although her constant bragging that she was ‘young enough to have more children’ started to grate with some of the other girls, her redeeming qualities saved her from being nominated even once, handing her a place in the final without even having to face the public vote.

Second place – Katherine of Aragon – At first, things didn’t look good for the house’s only Spanish contestant. Fawning over Henry VIII – who fluctuated between leading her on and callously rejecting her – and being bullied by Anne Boleyn, housemates, the public and commentators alike were wondering when this woman was going to grow a backbone and that’s exactly what she did. From her vengeful gloating at the eviction of Anne Boleyn to her fierce rowing with Wolsey, the Infanta showed us all that she was nobody’s victim and has taken the fight all the way to the final.

WINNER – Katherine Parr – Surely from now on to be known as ‘the great survivor’ this lowly knight’s daughter has delivered entertainment, enrichment and excellent game-play over an entire series. Helpful and chirpy around the house, this year’s winner was no wall flower, arguing about religion and squaring up to opponents. She knew how to survive, even when it meant backing down.

TV psychologist Katherine Willoughby says, “Any woman who can stay up most of the night reading illegal protestant books with a torch under her covers, but is also first up for morning mass the next day is going to be complex psychologically as well as pretty hard headed. I certainly wouldn’t want to take her on.”

Editor’s note: Unfortunately Jane Seymour was removed from the house in week three due to ill health.

Anyway, just some thoughts from me. But the question is geeks – who would you want to see in the Tudor Big Brother House and what do you think would happen?

Book review – Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen – by Alison Weir

Posted on August 26, 2016August 26, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

Image result for Book review – Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen – by Alison Weir

When I first held my copy of ‘Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen’ in my hands, I knew it was going to be special. Not only was it my first history book to be personally signed by author Alison Weir, but it was also the beginning of a series of historical novels about the six Queens of Henry VIII – a topic any Royal History Geek could lose themselves in for hours.

But despite my anticipation of enjoyment, I was not expecting this book to teach me an awful lot. After all, the stories of Henry VIII’s wives are amongst history’s most recounted and the factual writings of Weir, Starkey and others had already taught me much. Surely there was little more I could learn?

I was wrong.

History is of course about so much more than the digestion of facts. It involves travelling back to an era unfamiliar to us and reimagining what actually happened. In this, fiction provides a greater degree of freedom, especially when the writer possesses Weir’s rare ability to combine robust research with sensible empathy. For me, the new insights into Katherine’s relationships with Henry, her household and the ‘powers that be’ back in Spain, has shed new light on my understanding of the tempestuous and often traumatic episodes of her life.

The story begins as the young Spanish Infanta makes her bold trek to England. As a born and bred Janner, I was ecstatic to see the opening pages give a thorough description of the city (then town) of Plymouth, the first piece of English soil that Katherine descended upon. We then follow the Princess as she progresses from teenage wife to penniless widow before being redeemed by a young Henry VIII; at first her knight in shining armour before gradually growing into her tratious tormentor.

Through Weir’s vivid storytelling, Katherine’s varied circumstances and emotional reaction to them become tangible and accessible. The reader is struck by the profound paradox of a series of strong and powerful women who, despite their many qualities, are entirely dependent on the actions and decisions of men. Throughout her long life in England, Katherine’s virtuous character rarely waivers, but the actions of her father, father-in-law, husband and nephew are the real factors that shape her ever changing and often unhappy destiny.

As with all fiction from this author, the book is well researched and sticks closely to the historical facts available. However, as Weir herself has stated, fiction allows the author a degree of experimentation with thought-through theories that would be quite out of place in a history book but nonetheless can make a valid contribution to historical debate. This freedom is used credibly and effectively to explore what really happened on the night of Catherine’s controversial first marriage and at other parts in the narrative.

If book one is anything to go by, Tudor lovers have much to look forward to from the remaining five in the series. Perhaps the only thing that will frustrate fans is that there are many months to wait until book two – Anne Boleyn, a King’s Obsession – is released next May.

‘Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen’ by Alison Weir is published by Headline Review and is available on Amazon from £6.99

Was Henry VIII trying to establish Fitzroy as ‘quasi-Royalty’ with the Richmond title?

Posted on August 23, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

Lately I’ve been diving into a wealth of books about the Henry VIII era. Having got a bit trapped in the Wars of the Roses last year, it’s been good to return to the Tudors, my first love.

As I read, I keep coming across references to Henry Fitzroy, the only acknowledged illegitimate son of the second Tudor King. He’s a character that, when time and energy permit, I’d like to learn more about. For now though, I wanted to blog some #QuickFireThoughts about the thing that all super-cool people are most interested in – the titles that were bestowed on him.

Keen Tudor fans will know that having been acknowledged as Henry VIII’s son since birth, in 1525, with the King increasingly sensitive about his lack of male heir, the six year old boy was elevated to the upper reaches of the English nobility and given the titles Duke of Richmond and Duke of Somerset. Some, both at the time and subsequently, believed that Henry was keeping his options open and considering a bastard succession.

What’s interesting about these titles is that they were both intrinsically linked to the Tudor dynasty. Edmund Tudor – Henry’s grandfather – had possessed the earldom of Richmond and his young wife, Margaret Beaufort was descended from the Earls and Dukes of Somerset. The Dukedom of Somerset had also been bestowed on an ill-fated son of Henry VII.

They are also both titles of impeccable Lancastrian pedigree. John of Gaunt himself had once been Earl of Richmond and, as just stated, the Somerset title had been wielded by his Beaufort offspring.

However, it occurs to me that had Henry wanted to use them, there were more explicitly royal titles at his disposal, particularly the Dukedom of York, which he himself had once possessed. Clarence might also have been a more appropriate choice for someone of princely status. Historians talk of Richmond and Somerset as being royal titles, but it seems to me that if anything, they can be more accurately described as ‘quasi Royal’.

Edmund Tudor was the half-brother of Henry VI and son of a French Princess, but strictly speaking, he had no claim to English royalty. Similarly, the Dukes of Somerset – the Beauforts – had been born illegitimate and were of questionable status. Even though they were legitimised after the marriage of their parents, the fact that the eldest was already an adult and that his half-brother would later explicitly (albeit futilely) bar his descendants from the royal succession, meant that the taint of bastardy never truly went away. The Beauforts were at best quasi-Royal.

Could it be then that at this stage, Henry was trying to establish his son not necessarily as a potential successor but as a member of the quasi-royalty? Associations of these titles would have been well known to contemporaries and it is difficult to think that they would have escaped the notice of the King himself. Henry would later give similar status to his daughters Mary and Elizabeth once he had divorced their mothers and declared them illegitimate.

Like I say, just a few #QuickFireThoughts – but it’s amazing what gets the brain ticking.

Was Henry VIII unfaithful within a year of his first marriage?

Posted on August 20, 2016August 20, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

A few weeks ago, I blogged some #QuickFireThoughts on the extra-marital antics of the young Henry VIII. While I maintain my view that he was probably a virgin upon marriage, I’ve had cause to doubt my suggestions that he might have been faithful to Catherine of Aragon in the early years of marriage.

Although I didn’t go into detail in my previous post, my reflections were based largely on David Loades’ view that accusations of Henry getting all Marvin Gay* with Anne Hastings (nee Stafford) had been misinterpreted by some historians. This lady of high-breeding was the first woman that Henry was accused of playing away with. According to Loades, it would be wiser to interpret their affair as simply being one of courtly love – a kind of permitted flirtation involving tokens, love letters and gestures – rather than one of a sexual nature.

This seemed credible. But having had the chance to #DigALittleDeeper I’ve started to (as Celine would say) think twice.

Rumours of the King’s affair with Anne Stafford come down to us because they are preserved in a letter home by Don Luis Caroz, the Spanish Ambassador. Now pay attention – this next bit gets complicated!

The story goes that Anne’s sister, Lady Fitzwalter (when both were at court), was getting pretty anxious about the attentions being paid to her sibling by William Compton, a courtier and BFF of Henry VIII. Lady Fitz got so worked up that she had a quiet word with her brother, the Duke of Buckingham who decided to intervene directly. Now remember Tudor fans, the Stafford family were descended from Edward III through two separate lines. They were brimming with old royal blood and considered the Tudors as under-qualified upstarts. The thought of his sister carrying on with the lowly Compton would have horrified old Buckingham.

When he went to his sister to confront her, he actually found her to be in Compton’s presence, perhaps confirming his worst fear. He upbraided them both before Anne’s husband, Lord Hastings, packed her off a nunnery.

The problem is that rumours persisted that Compton had only been a stalking horse. Really, he was providing cover for an affair underway between Anne and Henry and these were rumours that the Spanish ambassador believed.

Henry guessed straight away that Lady Fitzwalter – a favourite lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon – had been the source of the exposure and banished her from court. The Queen was furious about the whole situation and struggled to conceal her wrath.

What then should we, all these years later, make of it?

On the one hand there is no evidence – just rumour – that Henry had been involved with Anne at all. Nonetheless, I believe there is every reason to think that he had been behaving less than honourably.

To start with, is the King’s reaction, which the ambassador certainly believes to be, incriminating. True, Henry might not have liked the thought of Lady Fitzwalter bad mouthing his good mate, but would this really have been enough to trigger such a reaction? Similarly we must consider the Queen’s anger. Is it likely she would have allowed it to become so widely known that she was quarreling with the King simply because of the behaviour of his friend? It is also unlikely that she would be quite so miffed if the only interactions between Anne and Henry had been those of innocent courtly love.

I think the most compelling reason to believe in Henry’s guilt is that the Spanish ambassador, a man who knew the characters involved and possibly had access to more information than we see in the letter, had reason to think Henry had strayed. At the time of writing, Catherine’s father was the effective King of Spain – the ambassador is unlikely to have reported gossip that he was not sure could be substantiated, especially when it affected his reader’s daughter so personally. That said, it is clear from internal evidence that a big reason for writing was to try and get Catherine’s Friar – who he believed had goaded the Queen into over-reacting and therefore potentially costing Spain influence – into trouble with authorities back home.

As ever, we can never be 100% sure. But at the very least, I’m happy to confess that my previous suggestion about Henry’s early faithfulness should now be discarded. For more on this subject, I suggest readers check out David Loades’ book on Henry VIII and ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII’ by Alison Weir. While researching I also came across this extremely good blog post by Susan Higginbotham, which is well worth checking out.

So geeks…over to you. Am I being too quick to judge? Am I simply being swayed by Henry’s unfair reputation as a womaniser? Or have I hit the nail on the head?

*And getting it on

How ‘experienced’ was Henry VIII before his first marriage?

Posted on March 30, 2016March 30, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

Henry VIII has gone down in history as a great womaniser. Given that he took six (almost seven) women in marriage, you can see where subsequent generations are coming from. However, a closer look at the facts suggest he may not have been as active in extra-marital activities as fans of Tudor history might assume – at least not to begin with.

We know that after a decade of marriage Henry had started to play away. His mistress, Bessie Blount, had done what Queen Katherine of Aragon had proved unable to and delivered him a healthy son. He was prepared to shout it from the roof tops. This experience perhaps, gave him the taste for adultery and he had soon moved on to Mary Boleyn before, infamously, becoming infatuated with her sister.

There is talk of dalliances before Elizabeth Blount and of course it is entirely possible that details of these are lost to us. But David Loades has recently argued that some of the early flirtations laid at Henry’s door were nothing more than the accepted pantomime of ‘courtly love,’ where aristocrats exchanged gifts, tokens and letters that conveyed affection which did not (in theory) lead to any physical interaction.

The real question though that I’ve been scratching my head over is: when Henry married Katherine, as a newly ascended 17 year old, did he do so as a virgin, as of course she famously claimed to? I’m not sure how we can ever know, but for the following reasons, I’m inclined to think he was as a pure as a winter snow flake:

He was young – Henry was still 17 when he came to the throne and married. The most obvious argument to support chastity up until this point is that he hadn’t had much time to do anything else.

He was sheltered – After losing his first son to an untimely demise, Henry VII was hyper-protective of the only remaining Tudor heir. He banned Henry junior from dangerous sports and went to great lengths to keep him safe. I have no evidence that this extended to shielding his son from the wiles of women, but it is conceivable. In Tudor times, teenage sex was often seen as dangerous to health and even married young couples were sometimes encouraged to refrain from it. Also, some believe that Prince Henry’s upbringing was largely overseen by his grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who had more than enough reason of her own to be fearful of such antics at a young age. That being said, I find it hard to believe this was a subject she would have raised directly with her grandson.

He may have been genuinely confused about Katherine’s virginity – Many considered Henry’s case for a valid divorce from his first wife to hinge around whether she was a virgin upon their marriage (she had previously been married as a teenager to Henry’s elder brother Arthur, but denied that the marriage had ever been consummated). When the King later married Anne of Cleves, he described in great detail why he, somewhat strangely, believed her to be ‘no maid’. He never had the confidence to do so with Katherine, which could be a major hint toward his inexperience with women in 1509. It is also possible that the more familiar the King became with the female form, the more he had genuinely growing doubts about his wife’s precondition and the validity of his marriage – although this is perhaps a far too sympathetic understanding of the King’s ‘great matter.’

Anyway, these are just some #QuickFireThoughts for what they’re worth. Either way, it isn’t a particularly significant question, but it does go to show that despite public perceptions of England’s most famous ruler, all is not always what it seems.

Would Katherine Parr really have had pre-marital sex with Seymour?

Posted on March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 By Gareth - Editor

I do enjoy a good Philippa Gregory novel. Not only does her poetic style really bring the historical characters to life, but she clearly makes a monumental effort to research her subjects – even if her interpretation often differs from mine.

Currently I’m having a good time wading through her epic novel on Katherine Parr, sixth and final wife of Henry VIII. It’s a great read, but within the first few pages I was already growing a tad concerned about some misunderstandings that were no doubt bound to influence people’s understanding of the great Queen Consort. For, in the very earliest part of the book, she has given herself to Thomas Seymour in body as well as heart.

Fans of Katherine Parr will know that Thomas Seymour did indeed become her husband, after the ultimate demise of Henry VIII. There was also certainly some kind of mutual attraction and discussion of marriage prior to Katherine’s elevation to Queen. But for me, the suggestion that she would have been foolish enough to have slept with him in 1543 is a bridge too far.

Here’s why:

Discovery would have risked everything – In the Tudor court people gossiped. Would Katherine really have risked this destruction of her reputation, especially if she had already got wind of the fact that the King was after her?
She was a woman of virtue – Gregory’s Katherine is a woman who is not much-bothered by religion prior to her marriage to Henry. It’s fair to say that people used to think her devout Protestantism was something that developed later, but most historians now think that her conversion had taken place before 1543. It is unlikely that she would have so easily surrendered to a man in defiance of God’s will.
She would have been scared of pregnancy – Contraception was not exactly top-notch in Tudor times. Katherine knew that if she fell pregnant it would have been game over for her place in society.
She didn’t get pregnant – “Ah-ha”, I hear some of you say in response to my point above. “Perhaps Katherine didn’t fear pregnancy because after two childless marriages she believed she couldn’t actually get pregnant.” This is possible; some contemporaries did speculate that she was infertile so it’s not impossible that she believed that herself. But she was probably realistic enough to put that down to first being married to a sickly teenager and then to a much older man. Besides, even if she had believed this, we all know that when she did eventually marry Seymour, she conceived rather quickly. The fact that she did not fall pregnant in 1543 argues against a relationship of heated sexual congress.

All this being said, I have to recognise that when it came to Seymour, Katherine did lose her often level-headed outlook. Her passion for him was such that she married him with unseemly haste after Henry VIII’s demise, and at risk to her reputation. The circumstances though were different and Katherine knew it was her last shot at happiness and I don’t think this consideration can override those I have outlined above.

Where does this leave us? Simple: read Philippa Gregory’s ‘The Taming of the Queen’ by all means, but read some historical biographies about Katherine as well. That way you can get all the entertainment necessary to storytelling, as well as being sure that you’re across the facts.

I recommend the following:

Katherine the Queen by Linda Porter

Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir