by Linda Porter
ELIZABETH I, QUEEN OF ENGLAND, 1533–1603. Declared illegitimate when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed, she survived the upheavals of her siblings’ reigns to become queen in 1558. Elizabeth consistently refused to marry, declining also to name a successor. She kept Mary Queen of Scots captive after her flight into England in 1568, eventually sanctioning her execution in 1587. Her reign is still viewed as a Golden Age, though it was far from tranquil.
THE YORKISTS
RICHARD III, KING OF ENGLAND, 1452–85. The youngest child of Richard, duke of York, claimant to the English throne, grew up amidst the turbulence of civil war. His elder brother, Edward, became king in 1461 when Henry VI was overthrown. An experienced soldier with strong family loyalties, Richard’s grab for the throne in 1483 was unacceptable to many, though he claimed Edward’s marriage was invalid and his heirs illegitimate. He died at Bosworth in 1485.
MARGARET OF YORK, DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY, 1446–1503. Sister of the Yorkist kings, Margaret married Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1468. Intelligent, well-educated and good-looking, she presided over a rich and cultured court, remaining in Burgundy after Charles the Bold’s death in battle in 1477. An implacable opponent of Henry VII, she supported Yorkist plots and claimed that the impostor, Perkin Warbeck, was her nephew, Richard, duke of York.
ELIZABETH WOODVILLE, QUEEN CONSORT OF EDWARD IV, c.1437–92. The attractive widow of a Lancastrian knight, Elizabeth was a member of a large and ambitious family. Her secret marriage to Edward IV stunned his politicians. Her brother-in-law, Richard, displaced her elder son as king in 1483 and both her sons – the Princes in the Tower – disappeared, presumed murdered. She supported the marriage of her daughter, Elizabeth, to Henry VII but retired from court in 1487.
ELIZABETH OF YORK, QUEEN CONSORT OF HENRY VII, 1466–1503. Elizabeth’s gilded childhood as the eldest of Edward IV’s bevy of beautiful daughters was swiftly extinguished by his sudden death and Richard III’s usurpation. She married Henry VII in 1486, uniting the houses of Lancaster and York. Only three of their eight children survived. Henry VII was greatly grieved by her death in childbirth, on her thirty-seventh birthday.
ROYAL MINISTERS AND DIPLOMATS
THOMAS WOLSEY, CARDINAL AND ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, 1470/1–1530. Henry VIII’s chief adviser, until caught up in the quagmire of the divorce from Katherine of Aragon, Wolsey was of humble East Anglian origin. Educated at Oxford, he rose rapidly to become the king’s almoner in 1509 and his principal minister six years later. Ambitious and acquisitive, he lived like a member of royalty, enjoyed the exercise of power and was a major player in European diplomacy over many years.
THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX, b. (in or before) 1485–1540. Wolsey’s servant, royal councillor and secretary from 1534 to 1536. Cromwell orchestrated the downfall of Anne Boleyn, oversaw the dissolution of the monasteries and the introduction of the Great Bible in English. Embarrassed by the failure of the Anne of Cleves marriage and concerned that Cromwell was determined on greater religious reforms, Henry VIII had him executed in 1540.
WILLIAM CECIL, FIRST BARON BURGHLEY, 1520/21–98. From the Lincolnshire gentry, Cecil was educated at Cambridge. Servant of Protector Somerset, he stayed in England during Mary’s reign, despite his Protestant faith. Elizabeth admired him, appointing him Secretary of State on her accession. He served her faithfully, though her indecision frustrated him. His over-arching aim was to protect her and the English crown, believing both vulnerable to Catholic Europe.
THOMAS DACRE, SECOND BARON DACRE OF GILSLAND, 1467–1525. One of the great magnates of northern England, he spent much of his life keeping the Scots at bay. Originally a supporter of Richard III, Dacre quickly switched allegiance to the Tudors. Knew James IV well, but it was Dacre’s cavalry who helped the English to victory at Flodden. Adviser (sometimes overbearingly so) to Margaret Tudor and her protector when she fled Scotland in 1515.
THOMAS RANDOLPH, DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVE IN SCOTLAND, 1525/6–90. Elizabeth I’s representative in Scotland during Mary Queen of Scots’ personal rule. He was flattered by Mary’s treatment of him but frustrated by Elizabeth’s refusal to commit to anything. He pursued the Leicester match enthusiastically but relations with the Scottish court deteriorated and he was expelled in 1566.
THE ENGLISH NOBILITY
THOMAS HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY AND SECOND DUKE OF NORFOLK, 1443–1524. The Yorkist Howards rose to prominence under Richard III. Injured at Bosworth and subsequently imprisoned, Surrey made his peace with Henry VII and served loyally in the north of England. Accompanied Margaret Tudor north to her Scottish marriage and formed a bond with James IV. Out-generalled the Scottish king at Flodden.
THOMAS HOWARD, THIRD DUKE OF NORFOLK, 1473–1554. Soldier, lord high admiral, diplomat and uncle of Anne Boleyn, Thomas played a major part in the English victory at Flodden and was thereafter consistently involved in politics and court intrigue. An outward affability hid a sometimes violent nature. Imprisoned on treason charges in 1546, Norfolk was saved from execution by Henry VIII’s death.
EDWARD SEYMOUR, EARL OF HERTFORD AND DUKE OF SOMERSET, c.1500–52. The son of a Wiltshire knight, Edward’s prospects were transformed when his sister, Jane, married Henry VIII and gave birth to a son. His stock increased in the 1540s and he became Protector to his nephew, Edward VI, on Henry VIII’s death. He defeated the Scots at Pinkie in 1547 but could not follow up the victory. His autocratic style led to his overthrow in 1549 and eventual execution.
JOHN DUDLEY, VISCOUNT LISLE AND DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND, 1504–53. Dudley’s father was executed in 1510 but he was able to follow the common trajectory of well-born young men, becoming a courtier and soldier. He was close to Edward Seymour, but led the coup against him in 1549. As chief minister to Edward VI, he encouraged the king’s alteration of the succession in favour of his own daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, but misjudged support for Mary I and was executed for treason.
ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER, 1532/3–88. The son of John Dudley, Robert claimed to have known Elizabeth I since childhood. Swiftly established as favourite after her accession, the mysterious death of his wife in 1560 compromised him but did not permanently affect his close relationship with the queen. Elizabeth’s proposal that he should marry Mary Queen of Scots met with a lukewarm response, from Dudley and from the Scottish queen herself.
THE FRENCH
CHARLES VIII, KING OF FRANCE, 1470–98. Charles succeeded his father, Louis XI, in 1483. His elder sister, Anne of Beaujeu, ruled as regent until 1491. Charles enhanced his power by marrying Anne of Brittany and invaded Italy in pursuit of his claim to the Kingdom of Naples. Dying as the result of a bizarre accident in 1498, he left no immediate heir as his children all pre-deceased him. He was succeeded by his cousin, Louis XII.
LOUIS XII, KING OF FRANCE, 1462–1515. Louis proved an energetic ruler. He divorced his first wife in order to secure Brittany by marrying Charles VIII’s widow, Anne. He supported James IV and expected Scottish assistance when Henry VIII went to war against the French in 1512. His third wife was Princess Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. Two daughters but no sons survived him.
FRANCIS I, KING OF FRANCE, 1494–1547. Francis was Louis XII’s cousin. His rivalry with Henry VIII was less important than that with the Habsburg Emperor Charles V. Defeated in Italy, he was imprisoned by Charles in 1525 and compelled to leave his sons as hostages. He married Louis XII’s daughter, Claude, and Eleanor, sister of Charles V. His daughter, Madeleine, was the first wife of James V of Scotland.
MARY OF GUISE, QUEEN OF SCOTS AND REGENT OF SCOTLAND, 1515–60. From a prominent family in north-eastern France, Mary was a widow with two small sons when Francis I informed her she was to marry James V of Scotland. Unenthusiastic at first, she did her duty, marrying James in 1538. Mary Queen of Scots was their only surviving child. She was pro-French regent from 1554 to her death.
HENRY II, KING OF FRANCE, 1519–59. Three years’ captivity in Spain gave Henry an abiding hatred of the Habsburgs. He mar
ried Catherine de Medici in 1533, becoming heir to Francis I following the death of his elder brother in 1536. Dominated by his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, Henry harboured an ambition to rule in both Scotland and England via Mary Queen of Scots, who married his son, Francis, in 1558. Henry himself died in a jousting accident.
FRANCIS II, KING OF FRANCE, 1544–60. The eldest son of Henry II, brought up with Mary Queen of Scots, his intended bride. Intelligent but sickly, he inherited the religious problems that had been growing during his father’s reign and was dominated by the Guise family, his wife’s relatives. He died unexpectedly of a severe ear infection.
CATHERINE DE MEDICI, QUEEN OF FRANCE, 1519–89. Mary Queen of Scots’ mother-in-law was the daughter of Lorenzo II de Medici. She married Henry II aged fourteen and was childless for many years and without influence, though she helped supervise Mary’s education. Her position was transformed by Francis II’s death, when she became regent, but her relationship with Mary had soured.
THE HABSBURGS
MAXIMILIAN I, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR, 1459–1519. A cunning ruler and dynast, Maximilian expanded his lands through marriage and diplomacy. He fought against the French in Italy and was a difficult ally to Henry VII and Henry VIII. He was succeeded as Holy Roman Emperor by his grandson, Charles V.
CHARLES V, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR, 1500–58. The great rival of Francis I was an unreliable ally to Henry VIII, whom he consistently outmanoeuvred. He arranged the marriage of his son, Philip of Spain, to Mary I in 1554. Ruled much of Europe but the rise of Protestantism challenged his authority. Exhausted and ill, he abdicated in 1556 and retreated to a Spanish monastery.
PHILIP II, KING OF SPAIN, 1527–98. Viewing himself as defender of Catholicism in Europe, relations between Philip and the Protestant Elizabeth eventually broke down. Often depicted as cold-blooded and fanatical, Philip’s reputation has been savaged by English-speaking historians but he was a hard-working ruler and the prime force in the western world after 1560.
Notes
Abbreviations
APS
Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes (Edinburgh, 1814–75)
BL
British Library
BN
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Cal SP Spanish
Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers relating to the negotiations between England and Spain, ed. G. Bergenroth and others (London, 1862–1954)
CSP Scotland
Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots, 1547–1603, ed. J. Bain and others (Edinburgh, 1898–1969)
L&P Henry VIII
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer and others (London,1862–1932)
NAS
National Archives of Scotland
NLS
National Library of Scotland
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
SHR
Scottish Historical Review
TA
Treasurer’s Accounts: Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, 1473–1513, ed. T. Dickson and J.B. Paul (Edinburgh, 1877–1902)
Prologue – Leith Harbour, Scotland, 19 August 1561
1. John Knox, The History of the Reformation in Scotland ed. W. C. Dickinson (1949), p. 267.
One – ‘This pretty lad’
1. Francis Bacon, The History of the Reign of King Henry VII, 1622 (2007 edition), p. 168.
2. Quoted in Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (2005), p. 63.
3. Sean Cunningham, Henry VII (2007), p. 14.
4. Ibid., pp. 16–18.
5. Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York (London, 1548), p. 397.
6. Henry Parker, Lord Morley, cited in Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 65.
7. ‘The Archives of Lilles, Lettres et Missions’, vol. 3, f. 52, quoted in James Gairdner, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII (1861), vol. 1.
8. Sean Cunningham, Richard III: A Royal Enigma (2003), p. 66.
9. J. O. Halliwell-Philipps, ed., Letters of the Kings of England (1846), vol. 1, pp. 161–2.
10. Quoted in Griffiths and Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty, p. 155.
11. Ibid., p. 168.
12. Denys Hay, ed., The Anglia Historia of Polydore Vergil, Camden Series (1950), vol. LXXIV, f. 35.
Two – The Field of Stirling
1. TA, vol. 1, pp. cciii, 30, 34, 35–6, 39–42, 56–7, 104, cited in Rosalind K. Marshall, Scottish Queens, 1034–1714 (2007), pp. 77–8.
2. S. B. Chandler, ‘An Italian Life of Margaret, Queen of James III’, SHR, xxxii (1953), pp. 53–7.
3. Blind Harry’s Wallace, introduced by Elspeth King (1998), p. 150.
4. Chandler, ‘An Italian Life’, SHR, xxxii, p. 56.
5. Ibid., p. 55.
6. Ibid., p. 57.
7. Norman Macdougall, James III, a Political Study (1982), p. 245.
8. APS, ii, 210. Cited in Macdougall, James III, pp. 248–9.
9. It has been speculated that Prince James was with the group who confronted his father at Blackness. If so, it was surely an awkward meeting. Norman Macdougall, James IV (1997), p. 34.
10. APS, ii, 210. The original is in the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), PA 2/5, f. 98v–98r.
11. Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Chronicles of Scotland (Edinburgh 1899), pp. 214–21.
12. Angus Graham, ‘The Battle of Sauchieburn’, SHR, xxxix, October 1960, pp. 89–97.
Three – Uneasy Crowns
1. Alexander Bruce of Earshall commanded the Scots who fought for Henry in 1485, joined Henry’s household in 1485 and became a valet of the royal chamber. See Griffiths and Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty, p. 198.
2. A Relation, or Rather a True Account of the Island of England about the Year 1500, by Andrea Trevisan, translated from the Italian by Charlotte Augusta Sneyd, Camden Society, 37 (1847), p. 20.
3. Ibid., p. 21.
4. See paper by UC Berkeley economist J. Bradford de Long, ‘Princes and Merchants: European city growth before the Industrial Revolution’ (1992), p. 8, at www.j-bradford-delong.net.
5. A. F. Pollard, ed., The Reign of Henry VIII from Contemporary Sources (2009), p. 51.
6. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, eds, The Great Chronicle of London (1983), suggests that Henry actually entered the city and went to St Paul’s on 27 August 1485 but other sources (Steven Gunn in the ODNB entry for Henry VII and BL Harleian MS 541 f. 217) give the date as 3 September.
7. Quoted in Sydney Anglo, ‘The foundation of the Tudor dynasty: the coronation and marriage of Henry VII’, The Guildhall Miscellany (1960–68), vol. 2, p. 6.
8. Ibid., p. 7.
9. For a fuller description, see P. R. Cavill, The English Parliaments of Henry VII, 1485–1504 (2009), pp. 21–33.
10. Unlike today, there was no specific building set aside for the English parliament to conduct its business, and meetings could be held in other English towns, such as York and Oxford.
11. See Arlene Naylor Okerlund, Elizabeth of York (2009), pp. 35–9.
12. The assertion that Elizabeth was at Sheriff Hutton cannot be proved. Several chroniclers claim that she was there with the earl of Warwick, both having been consigned to this Yorkshire ‘exile’ by an anxious Richard III. Henry VII was definitely keen to get hold of Warwick very soon after Bosworth, but the assumption that Elizabeth was there too, and that she was brought back south at the same time may be a telescoping of events with hindsight. Henry VII spent September and part of October 1485 with his mother in Surrey, at her Woking residence. See Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, pp. 66–7. It is not clear where Elizabeth was residing and I am grateful for the insights of Rosemary Horrox on this point.
13. Roderick J. Lya
ll, ‘The Medieval Scottish Coronation Service; Some Seventeenth-Century Evidence’, The Innes Review, xxviii (1), (1977), pp. 3–21.
14. Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Chronicles of Scotland, ed. John Graham Dalzell (1814), vol. 1, pp. xix–xxiv.
15. A Relation, or True Account of England, p. 15.
16. This may be an overstatement but he was, at least, showing a better grasp of history than the Foreign Office researcher who phoned the distinguished Scottish historian Norman Macdougall, in 1994, asking for further information on the Auld Alliance. She had clearly thought that this was something akin to the Entente Cordiale of 1904 but, on being told that the alliance was an offensive and defensive Franco–Scottish union directed against England, she refused to believe it. ‘The concept of civilised life on the planet before the existence of a unitary British state quite defeated her,’ wrote Macdougall drily.
17. Macdougall, James IV, p. 73.
18. Cited in Ishbel C. M. Barnes, Janet Kennedy, Royal Mistress (2007), p. 48.
19. James IV was the last king of Scotland who could speak the Gaelic tongue.
Four – The Impostor
1. Even allowing for minor linguistic variations, Perkin’s reference to his parents does not appear to have been entirely accurate. It is now accepted that they were Jehan de Werbecque and Nicaise Farou. (See Steven Gunn, ODNB entry for Perkin Warbeck.)
2. Quoted in Ian Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy (1994), p. 49.
3. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Burgundy had a far wider geographical connotation than it does today, encompassing parts of northern France, the Netherlands and Belgium, and was not just restricted to the region of central France it covers now. The Flemish name for Malines is Mechelen.