by Alison Weir
L&P.
Acts of the Privy Council.
L&P.
Ibid.; Acts of the Privy Council.
L&P.
Thurley, Royal Palaces.
CP, ed. Kaulek; L&P.
L&P.
Ibid.
Ibid.; Edward Hall.
Now in the Public Record Office; State Papers.
L&P.
Ibid.
Ibid.; CP, ed. Kaulek.
L&P.
Ibid.
Edward Hall.
State Papers.
L&P; Edward Hall.
Edward Hall.
CSP: Spanish.
Ibid.
Nicander Nucius.
L&P.
Ibid.; CP, ed. Kaulek.
Ibid.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P; CP, ed. Kaulek.
Chronica del Rey Enrico.
L&P.
Statutes of the Realm.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P; CP, ed. Kaulek.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P.
58 “A Nest of Heretics”
L&P; CSP: Spanish.
L&P.
Wyatt’s poems, and Surrey’s, were first published in 1557 in Tottel’s Miscalleny.
L&P.
After Browne’s death, she married, in about 1552, Edward, Lord Clinton, future Earl of Lincoln (d.1585), who had previously been married to Elizabeth Blount. Elizabeth died in 1590, and was buried alongside Clinton in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
Cowdray was destroyed by fire in 1793; extensive ruins remain.
L&P.
Edward Hall.
L&P; Acts of the Privy Council; B.L. Harleian MSS.
B.L. Sloane MSS.
PRO.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P.
CSP: Spanish.
A lock of her hair, taken from her coffin in the eighteenth century, is preserved at Sudeley Castle.
L&P.
Marbeck later wrote the musical setting for Edward VI’s first Book of Common Prayer. He died in about 1585. The fifteenth-century house where he lived still survives at Windsor, and is still lived in by the organist of St. George’s Chapel.
Edward Hall.
Narratives of the Reformation, ed. Nichols.
Ibid.
For the heresy purge of 1543, see L&P, John Foxe, Edward Hall, and Acts of the Privy Council.
Cited in Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII.
State Papers; L&P.
L&P; only the gatehouse survives today.
Cited in Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII.
Ibid.
Ibid.
John Foxe.
B.L. Cotton MSS.: Cleopatra.
L&P.
Statutes of the Realm.
59 “The Good Expectations of the King’s Majesty”
L&P.
Ibid.
Anne was later granted a pension by Edward VI for her good services to Katherine Parr. She served Mary I as a lady-in-waiting, and in 1554 married Walter Hungerford, a Gentleman Pensioner. She died before 1557.
Chronica del Rey Enrico.
L&P.
Ibid.
Ashdown. The Duchess fled England in 1554 to escape the Marian persecution. She returned on the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, and died in 1580.
L&P.
John Foxe.
L&P.
PRO.
B.L. Cotton MSS.: Vespasian.
Tudor Royal Proclamations.
PRO.
This is the only one of Henry’s many hunting lodges to survive today.
The King sat for Holbein in 1542. The painting was finished by less competent artists after Holbein’s death, with the result that Henry’s figure is disproportionately large, making the overall design look mediaeval. The picture is still in the possession of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
PRO.
Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary. Both portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery. That of Katherine Parr was formerly incorrectly identified as Lady Jane Grey, although it had been known as Katherine Parr since at least the eighteenth century (B.L. Additional MSS.). The incorrect identification was made on the assumption that the coronet jewel on the sitter’s breast is identical to that in a well-attested engraving of Lady Jane Grey, but the pendant at her neck is the same as that in the National Portrait Gallery portrait of Katherine Parr. As Katherine was the wife of Lady Jane’s guardian, she probably gave or bequeathed to Jane the coronet brooch. The sitter in the portrait attributed to Master John is a mature woman, and cannot have been Lady Jane, who was under ten, and notoriously undersized for her age, when it was painted.
Now in the National Portrait Gallery. The landscape background was probably added in the seventeenth century.
PRO. See the unknown man (c.1545) in the National Portrait Gallery and Sir William Cavendish (also c.1545) at Hardwick Hall. Bettes also painted William, the eldest son of Sir William Butts, in 1543. Bettes’s son, John Bettes the Younger (d.1616), was a pupil of Nicholas Hilliard and one of the foremost artists of the Elizabethan/Jacobean period. His son, Edward Bettes (d.1661), was also a painter.
She later served as gentlewoman to both Mary I and Elizabeth I, for whom she painted several miniatures. She died in 1576.
Now in the National Portrait Gallery.
CSP: Spanish.
B.L. Additional MSS.: Rawlinson MSS., Bodleian Library.
Literary Remains of Edward VI.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Now in the Public Record Office.
B.L. Additional MSS.
L&P.
The clock salt no longer exists, but Holbein’s design for it is in the British Museum.
Now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Cited in Neville Williams, Henry VIII and His Court.
60 “The Enterprise of Boulogne”
Statutes of the Realm.
L&P.
PRO; Fraser.
CSP: Spanish.
Ibid.; Archaeologia.
Ibid.
Ibid.
L&P.
John Foxe.
This was Lord Darnley, who would later become the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the father of James VI and I.
L&P. Katherine would spend much time at Chelsea and Hanworth during her widowhood. Chelsea, which was surrounded by twenty-nine gardens, was demolished around 1700.
L&P.
Ibid.; CSP: Spanish.
Ibid.
Rutland Papers.
Acts of the Privy Council.
L&P.
PRO. Leeds was alienated from the Crown in 1552. It was restored in 1822, and more extensively in the twentieth century by Lady Baillie, its late owner.
61 “The Worst Legs in the World”
The picture is still in the Royal Collection, but now hangs at Hampton Court.
Copies are in the Royal Collection, Windsor, the British Museum, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Now in the collection of Lord Weidenfeld.
L&P.
Ibid.
Stephen Gardiner, Letters.
CSP: Spanish; L&P.
Letters of Henry VIII.
John Foxe.
CSP: Spanish; L&P.
PRO; L&P.
CP, ed. Kaulek.
CSP: Spanish.
John Foxe.
CSP: Spanish. Chapuys died in 1546.
L&P.
Ibid.
CSP: Spanish.
The house was greatly enlarged in the reign of James I.
L&P.
It was badly vandalised, and perhaps totally destroyed, during Robert Kett’s rebellion of 1549. No trace remains of it today.
L&P.
Ibid.; Acts of the Privy Council.
See Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance.
CSP: Spanish.
Edward Hall.
L&P.
The dry stamp is now in the Public Record Office.
L&P.
62 “Painful Service”
“A New Year’s Gift” was edited by John Bale and published in 1549 under the title The Laborious Journey and Search of John Leland for England’s Antiquities (now in the British Library). Leland’s notes were collected and edited by Thomas Hearne in the early eighteenth century, and published at Oxford in 1710–1715.
Thomas Cranmer, Miscellaneous Writings and Letters; John Foxe.
Cited in Neville Williams, Henry VIII and His Court.
L&P; Memoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay; State Papers.
L&P.
Ibid.; CSP: Spanish.
Acts of the Privy Council.
John Foxe.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P.
John Foxe.
Cited in Neville Williams, Henry VIII and His Court.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P.
Edward Hall.
John Foxe.
PRO; Inventory.
L&P.
CSP: Spanish.
Ibid.
State Papers; L&P; Gilbert Burnet.
L&P.
CSP: Spanish.
Correspondance politique de Odet de Selve.
CSP: Spanish.
Ibid.
Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI.
John Foxe.
For the Admiral’s visit, see CSP: Spanish; Charles Wriothesley; Edward Hall.
B.L. Additional MSS.; Rawlinson MSS., Bodleian Library.
L&P.
Rawlinson MSS., Bodleian Library.
Loseley MSS.
CSP: Spanish; L&P.
L&P.
Ibid.
Acts of the Privy Council.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P.
Stephen Gardiner; Letters.
L&P.
L&P.
63 “The Rarest Man That Lived in His Time”
L&P.
Ibid.; CSP: Spanish.
State Papers; L&P.
CSP: Spanish.
L&P; State Papers.
L&P; Chronica del Rey Enrico.
L&P.
Ibid.; B.L. Stowe MSS.; B.L. Harleian MSS.; CSP: Spanish.
CSP: Spanish; Chronica del Rey Enrico.
L&P.
CSP: Spanish.
PRO.
L&P.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.; CSP: Spanish.
CPS: Spanish.
Edward Hall; John Foxe.
The original Will is in the Public Record Office, and is printed in Rymer’s Foedera. See CSP: Spanish; John Foxe; B.L. Harleian MSS.; B.L. Additional MSS.; Gilbert Burnet.
L&P.
Cf Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII; Elton; Scarisbrick; L. B. Smith, Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty.
L&P.
Ibid.
Correspondance politique de Odet de Selve.
CSP: Spanish.
Henry VIII’s Will.
State Papers.
Chronica del Rey Enrico; Charles Wriothesley; Chronicle of the Grey Friars.
L&P.
Ibid.
Correspondance politique de Odet de Selve; Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI.
Acts of the Privy Council; CSP: Spanish.
Chronica del Rey Enrico.
He was buried in Framlingham Church, where his remains were found in 1835.
CSP: Spanish.
CSP: Spanish.
William Thomas; Chronica del Rey Enrico.
CSP: Spanish.
Journals of the House of Lords.
William Thomas; Chronica del Rey Enrico; Correspondance politique de Odet de selve. Norfolk remained in the Tower throughout the six years of Edward VI’s reign, and was released and restored in blood on the accession of Mary I in 1553. He died in 1554.
John Foxe.
Ibid.
B.L. Cotton MSS.: Titus.
CSP: Spanish.
Tytler.
Strype; Tighe; Henry VIII’s Will; Charles Wriothesley.
Henry VIII’s Will.
William Thomas.
John Stow claims that 72,000 persons were executed in Henry VIII’s reign, but this is a gross exaggeration.
Henry VIII
ALISON WEIR
A Reader’s Guide
A Conversation with Alison Weir
When did you first become interested in history?
Alison Weir: In 1965, when I was fourteen, I read my first adult novel; it was a historical novel about Katherine of Aragon, and I could not put it down. When I finished it, I had to find out the true facts behind the story and if people really carried on like that in those days. So I began to read proper history books, and found that they did! It was a short step from doing research to writing my own books, and by the age of fifteen I had completed a three-volume compendium of facts on the Tudors as well as a biography of Anne Boleyn, and had begun to compile genealogical information for a dictionary of kings and queens, which would, more than two decades later, be the basis of my first published book, Britain’s Royal Families .
At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about acts, trade unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history. My teachers were unaware that I was spending all my free periods and lunch breaks researching my own history projects in the school library. I did pass my GCE exam, but was told my grade was not good enough to study history at an advanced level. This was a great disappointment, as the subject for the advanced course was the Tudors and Stuarts, something about which I already knew a great deal. I would love to think that the teachers who excluded me have seen my published work.
When did you begin to write professionally?
AW: During the early 1970s, after attending teacher training college with a view to teaching history, I spent four years researching and writing a book about Henry VIII’s wives, but this was rejected by publishers on the grounds that it was too long—something of an understatement, since it filled 1,024 manuscript pages typed on both sides and without double spacing. In 1991, a much revised and edited version of this manuscript was published as my second book, The Six Wives of Henry VIII.
In 1981, I wrote a biography of Jane Seymour, which was rejected by Weidenfeld and Nicholson as being—wait for it—too short. The publishers, however, put me in touch with my present firm of literary agents who, in the course of a conversation about which subject I should write about, rejected my suggestion of a book about Lady Diana Spencer (who became Princess of Wales that year) on the grounds that people would soon lose interest in her! Instead, it was agreed that I should write a biography of Isabella of France, wife of Edward II, but this was never finished because the births, very close together, of my children intervened in 1982 and 1984, and I had very little time for writing.
In 1987, it occurred to me that my dictionary of genealogical details of British royalty—which I had revised eight times over twenty-two years—might be of interest to others, so I rearranged the contents once more, into chronological order. Britain’s Royal Families became my first published book, in 1989, from The Bodley Head, and the rest of the story is—dare I say it?—history!
How do you go about writing your books?
AW: I research from contemporary sources as far as possible; fortunately, most of those for the periods I have written about are in print. I use secondary sources to see what views historians take on my chosen subjects, but in the end I make up my own mind, basing my conclusions as far as possible on contemporary evidence.
I transcribe my information into chronological order, under date headings, so that when I have finished my research, I have a very rough draft of the book. This method has the curious advantage of highlighting discrepancies and often new interpretations of events, chronological patterns, and unexpected facts emerge. Anyone who has read The Princes in the Tower will know how startlingly well
this method of research worked for that particular book.
How would you describe your role as a historian?
AW: I am not a revisionist historian. I do not start with a theory and then try to fit the facts around it. I draw my conclusions from the known facts. As my research progresses, I gain some idea of the viewpoint I will take, but I am always ready to alter it if need be.
You have to consider the known facts in detail and avoid supposition in order to get as near to the truth as possible. You must not only take into account what is written about someone or something, but who wrote it, since many sources are biased, prejudiced, or unreliable. Where possible, I verify my facts from reliable sources only, and if the only source is suspect, I say so.
What is your aim in writing history?
AW: I want to bring history and its characters to life by including as much personal detail as possible, by inferring new ideas from the known facts, and by researching the political and social background so thoroughly that my subjects are set in an authentic context. Many people have told me that my books read like novels. Perhaps this is because, when I write, I feel I am really there, so strong is my feeling for my subject. On occasion, I have been so moved by the events I have been describing that I have felt like crying. The old adage that truth is stranger than fiction is more than true for me, and if (as a couple of recent reviewers have complained) it is old-fashioned to recount history as a rattling good story—which in many ways it is—then I am happy to be thought outdated.
When you were researching and writing about Henry VIII, did you come to like him?
AW: Surprisingly enough, yes! Actually, I’ve liked him for a long time. I’ve always felt that he has been greatly misjudged and perceived as a caricature of his real self. Therefore, this book is a sympathetic study that looks at events from the King’s viewpoint. For example, most historians have focused on Anne Boleyn during the days leading up to her execution. I’ve focused on Henry. Few people have taken into account the fact that his only son was dying a lingering death from tuberculosis at this time.
I think, when it comes to historical characters, you have to judge them by the values of their own time, not by ours. Henry was no tyrant, as Richard III was; only in his last years did he become the fat, diseased autocrat of popular perception. In fact, I wanted to use a little-known portrait of the young Henry, painted when he was eighteen, slim and long haired, on the jacket, but my publishers felt—probably quite correctly—that no one would know who it was! Yet my aim was to present to my readers a different view of Henry: the real Henry, whom I had come to know very well through my research.
What is your opinion of screen portrayals of Henry VIII?