Tudor Women Queens & Commoners
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Margaret Beaufort: ‘My lady the King’s Mother’ (National Portrait Gallery)
Elizabeth of York, by an unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery)
Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, c. 1520; an unauthenticated portrait attributed to Jean Perréal (National Portrait Gallery)
Mary Tudor, Queen of France (courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
Catherine of Aragon in middle age; portrait by an unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery)
Anne Boleyn (National Portrait Gallery)
Jane Seymour, the mother of the heir; a portrait by Holbein (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
Anne of Cleves, the rejected wife; painted by Holbein (Musée du Louvre)
Katherine Howard (reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen. Royal Collection, Windsor)
Katherine Parr; attributed to William Scrots (National Portrait Gallery)
Mary Tudor as a young girl; sketched by Holbein (reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen. Royal Collection, Windsor)
Lady Jane Grey, an unauthenticated portrait (National Portrait Gallery)
Queen Elizabeth I (National Maritime Museum)
Mary Queen of Scots; portrait by an unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery)
Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, with her second husband Adrian Stokes in 1559; painted by Hans Eworth (private collection)
The Countess of Shrewsbury, the formidable Bess of Hardwick (National Trust. Photo: Courtauld Institute)
The blue-stocking Mildred Cooke, who became William Cecil’s second wife (reproduced by courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury. Photo: National Portrait Gallery)
GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE TUDOR FAMILY
A NOTE ON SOURCES
There's an enormous mass of published material on virtually every aspect of the Tudor century and for anyone wanting to embark on a detailed study, the OUP Bibliography of British History - Tudor Period, edited by Conyers Read, 1959, is an essential tool. Another, more portable but still very useful bibliography is Tudor England, edited by Mortimer Levine and published by the CUP for the Conference on British Studies in 1968.
The list which follows is obviously brief and is intended as no more than a guide to those printed sources and secondary works which I have found most helpful.
Two good general surveys are The Elizabethan Woman: A Panorama of English Womanhood, 1540-1640 by Carroll Camden, 1952, and Elizabethans at Home, Lu E. Pearson, Stanford, 1957, both of which contain good bibliographies. A Relation ... of the Island of England, C. A. Sneyd, Camden Society, old series, XXXVII, 1847, and England as Seen by Foreigners, W. B. Rye, 1865, are interesting for an outside view of the English scene. For the educational revolution see Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, ed. Foster Watson, 1912. Vols. IV and V of John Leland's De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea (not all in Latin, despite its title) ed. Thomas Hearne, Oxford, 1715, give details of Lady Margaret Beaufort's ordinances and also a description of Margaret Tudor's betrothal. For a life of Lady Margaret herself, see Lady Margaret, Mother of Henry VII, E. M. G. Routh, 1925, and for her daughter-in-law The Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York with a Memoir, N. H. Nicolas, 1830 (reissued in a limited facsimile edition in 1972).
There are antiquated but still perfectly useful biographies of the Princesses Margaret and Mary in The Lives of the Princesses of England, M. A. E. Green, 6 vols., 1849-55. A modern account is The Sisters of Henry VIII, Hester Chapman 1969.
Most of Henry VIII's wives have attracted the attention of biographers and Catherine of Aragon, Garrett Mattingly, 1942, is an outstanding example of everything a biography should be. Paul Friedmann's Anne Boleyn - A Chapter of English History, 2 vols., 1884, is still the classic work on Anne, but there have been two recent lives, Anne Boleyn by Marie Louise Bruce, 1972, and Anne Boleyn, Hester Chapman, 1974. There are no full-length modern lives of Jane Seymour or Anne of Cleves, but there's a section on Jane in Ordeal by Ambition, a general account of the Seymour family under the Tudors by William Seymour, 1972. For Katherine Howard see A Tudor Tragedy, Lacey Baldwin Smith, 1961, and for Katherine Parr, Queen Katherine Parr, Anthony Martienssen, 1973. There are biographies of all the queens in Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, 8 vols., 1851. These are old-fashioned and not always entirely reliable but still well worth reading.
The Chronicle of Queen Jane, J. G. Nichols, Camden Society, XLVIII, 1850, is a marvellous contemporary source and also contains a description of Mary's wedding to Philip of Spain. There are lives of Jane and her sisters in The Lives of the Tudor Princesses, Agnes Strickland, 1868. For a modern biography of Jane, see Lady Jane Grey, Hester Chapman, 1962, and for Katherine Grey, Two Tudor Portraits, Hester Chapman, 1960.
The most illuminating source material for Mary's life and reign are the despatches of Eustace Chapuys and Simon Renard in the Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 13 vols., 1862-1954. Of the handful of modern lives, Mary Tudor by H. F. M. Prescott, revised edition, 1952, is first-rate and contains a helpful note on sources as well as a full bibliography.
Much of the material on the first twenty-five years of Elizabeth's life is printed in handy form in The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth, F. A. Mumby, 1909. Queen Elizabeth I, J. E. Neale's classic biography first published in 1934 and reprinted many times since, remains the best modern life, but Elizabeth I: A study in power and intellect, Paul Johnson, 1974, is excellent on the political side and Elizabeth the Great by Elizabeth Jenkins, 1958, probably the best of the more 'personal' accounts. For modern studies of the Queen's relationship with Robert Dudley, see Elizabeth and Leicester, Milton Waldman, 1944, and Elizabeth and Leicester, Elizabeth Jenkins, 1961. Other sources which give personal glimpses of the Queen are, among many, The Progresses...of Queen Elizabeth, J. Nichols, 3 vols., 1823; Nugae Antiquae by John Harington, ed. Thomas Park, 1804, and Andre de Maisse's Journal, trans. G. B. Harrison, 1931.
A Tudor Tapestry, Derek Wilson, 1972, gives an interesting account of Anne Askew and My Lady of Suffolk: A Portrait of Catherine Willoughby, E. Read, New York, 1963, and the Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, D. M. Meads, 1930, are both valuable for insights into religious life.