WRITER & HISTORIAN
The six wives of Henry VIII occupy a curious place in the public mind. We all know who they are; but how many of us know who they were? Unlike most of their contemporaries, it’s not oblivion they need rescuing from, it’s caricature. A new exhibition about them at London’s National Portrait Gallery is pointedly... Continue Reading →
On 7 September 1592, the Madre de Dios was brought into the harbour at Dartmouth. Seven decks high and weighing some 1,600 tonnes, it was the largest ship England had ever seen. It was also the richest. Its hold was packed with luxury goods: silk, damask, taffeta, calico; carpets, quilts, canopies; pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon;... Continue Reading →
Was there anything, aside from consanguinity, that united the Tudor dynasty as it lurched back and forth from Catholicism to Protestantism across the middle decades of the 16th century? One answer to that question, surprisingly, was a man named William Somer, Henry VIII’s last and best-loved fool. It is not simply that surviving court accounts... Continue Reading →
Just before Whitsunday in the summer of 1549, a fight broke out in the playground of a school in Bodmin. When the dust had settled and questions were asked, the authorities discovered that the children had divided into two gangs, or rather “two factions, the one whereof they called the old religion, the other the... Continue Reading →
On September 8, 1549, the 11-year-old Edward VI stood on the roof of the Palace of Westminster and looked down on ten bedraggled, weary West Country men, made to stand where he might see them. A few short weeks before they had led a rebellion that exploded out of Devon and Cornwall and threatened to... Continue Reading →
As the nine-year-old Edward VI rode through London on the way to his coronation in Westminster Abbey in February 1547, he paused for a while to watch a man perform on a tightrope strung from the steeple of St Paul’s. He might have been advised to study the man who rode ahead of him too.... Continue Reading →
On 4 August 1540, Thomas Epsam, a former monk of the Benedictine Abbey at Westminster, was brought from Newgate and made to stand before the justices. He had been a prisoner for three years, but still “he wold not aske the kynges pardon nor be sworne to be true to him”, the chronicler Edward Hall... Continue Reading →
Henry Fitzroy was born in the summer of 1519 – almost certainly in June – at the small Augustinian Priory of St Laurence at Blackmore in Essex. His mother was Elizabeth Blount, herself not yet 20, who came from minor Shropshire gentry. Elizabeth had entered service as one of Catherine of Aragon’s maids of honour... Continue Reading →
Those whose interest lies outside the Tudor era could be forgiven for exasperation at the extent to which the long sixteenth century still dominates our nation’s cultural life. But the new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery – Elizabeth I and Her People, which runs until January 5 2014 – is nevertheless good enough to... Continue Reading →
It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I approached Suzannah Lipscomb’s latest book. Was it really necessary? Did the world need another guide book to the historic buildings of England? Would she not be forced into tiresome iterations of ‘We can imagine…’ or ‘If one closes one’s eyes one can almost hear…’ and... Continue Reading →
It is impossible to know what Elizabeth I thought or felt about the fact that her father, Henry VIII, had executed her mother, Anne Boleyn, on charges of adultery with, among others, Elizabeth’s uncle and Anne’s brother. It is entirely possible, given that she was not yet three when her mother died, that she had... Continue Reading →
I was not, truth be told, expecting to write much, if at all, about the world of espionage when I first set out to research The Favourite, my recent book about the relationship between Elizabeth I and Ralegh. After all, Ralegh’s protestant credentials in the fight against imperial Spain would appear, at first sight, unimpeachable.... Continue Reading →
I don't think anyone could look at the court of Elizabeth I and the extraordinary range of political and intellectual talent it contained – not to mention the vanities and ambitions accompanying them – and feel anything but awe at her ability to assert her unwavering authority over them for over four decades. It had... Continue Reading →
Henry Fitzroy (1519–1536) I was asked on Twitter the other day (by the estimable @rocio_carvajalc) how many illegitimate children Henry VIII had. It’s an interesting question and, for obvious reasons, it's also one to which the answer isn’t altogether clear. However, I am going to write about three possible candidates. One was certainly Henry’s child; another... Continue Reading →
Ralegh waited until Elizabeth was long dead before he committed his thoughts on her father to paper. This brutal analysis of Henry VIII's moral and political shortcomings comes from the Preface to Ralegh's History of the World,written during his imprisonment in the Tower of London and published in 1614. If all the pictures and patterns... Continue Reading →
Returning from court to military service in Ireland in early 1581, Walter Ralegh wrote to Sir Francis Walsingham boasting of his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert's reputation in the province. ‘I never heard nor read of any man more feared than he is among the Irish nation,’ he said. This might seem like characteristic hyperbole, arising... Continue Reading →
London Historians have just posted online a piece I wrote for their newsletter to mark the 450th anniversary of the birth of the most notorious of Elizabethan traitors, Anthony Babington. (Update: Now available on my blog here in two parts, here and here.) However, I felt that his fate – and those of his fellow... Continue Reading →
There was politics behind the choice of East Anglia for Elizabeth’s summer progress in 1578. During the course of the summer, Elizabeth stayed twice with Philip Howard, Earl of Surrey – heir of the foolish traitor Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk – just turned 21 that June. Kenninghall, Norkolk's great palace, had been shuttered... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 