2 MIN READ ·
Thomas Boleyn After the Fall: The Privy Seal Taken, 29 June 1536
His son was executed on Tower Hill. His daughter was executed two days later. She had been queen. On the twenty-ninth of June 1536 the king's men came for the seal.
ON THIS DAY THIS HAPPENED · THE ARTICLE COLLECTION
History worth reading.
Royal scandals, forgotten lives and moments that changed everything. Take a little longer with the stories behind them.
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151 articles
9 MIN READ ·
Margaret Beaufort: Devoted Mother and the Most Dangerous Political Mind of the Fifteenth Century
History remembers Margaret Beaufort as a devoted mother, a pious noblewoman, a woman who prayed for her son from a distance and wept when he finally came home. That is the story she wanted told. She was also the most dangerous political mind of the fifteenth century, and the two things are not separate.
4 MIN READ ·
Lettice Knollys: The Woman Elizabeth I Could Not Forgive
Lettice Knollys, the eldest daughter of Francis Knollys and Catherine Carey, was born on the 8th of November 1543 at Rotherfield Greys in Oxfordshire, and she inherited from her mother's side of the family two things that would define the entire shape of her life. Tudor red hair, and a connection to the English crown that everyone could see and nobody was permitted to discuss.
2 MIN READ ·
Catherine Seizes the Russian Throne: Wife at Dawn, Empress by Dusk, 1762
At dawn she had woken up as a wife. By dusk she was empress.
2 MIN READ ·
Matilda, Daughter of Henry II: Sent to Saxony at Eleven
She was eleven years old when they sent her to Saxony to marry a thirty-eight-year-old duke. Her father was Henry II of England. She was just a daughter, nobody asked her.
5 MIN READ ·
Henry, Duke of Cornwall: The Fifty-Two-Day Prince Whose Death Changed Tudor History
He lived for fifty-two days. In those fifty-two days he was the most important person in England. Everything that came after him was the consequence of his absence.
3 MIN READ ·
Anne Boleyn and the Sweating Sickness of 1528: A Love Letter and the Second-Best Physician
When Anne Boleyn fell sick with the sweating sickness Henry sent her a love letter and his second best physician. Then he fled.
3 MIN READ ·
Ethelreda Malte: The Daughter Henry VIII Paid His Tailor to Claim
Henry VIII paid his tailor to claim his daughter. The tailor put it in his will... Ethelreda Malte was born around 1535, the daughter of John Malte, Henry VIII's personal tailor, a man whose work required him to stand in closer physical proximity to the king than almost anyone else at court. He measured him. He fitted him. He stood in silence while Henry VIII decided what kind of king he wanted to look like that day.
4 MIN READ ·
Catherine Carey: Mary Boleyn's Daughter and Elizabeth I's Closest Companion
Catherine Carey was born in early 1524 at the precise midpoint of her mother Mary Boleyn's affair with Henry VIII, which is either a coincidence or the most consequential piece of timing in her entire life, depending on which historians you read and how carefully you look at her portraits.
4 MIN READ ·
Mary Boleyn: The Boleyn Daughter Who Survived Everything
Mary Boleyn was born around 1499 or 1500, the eldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard, at the family estate of Blickling Hall in Norfolk, and history has spent five hundred years treating her as a footnote in her own sister's story.
3 MIN READ ·
Catherine of Aragon's Coronation Procession in the Rain, June 1509
She had waited seven years to be crowned. When the procession finally came, it rained so hard she had to shelter under a draper's stall. London dressed itself in cloth of gold and crowned her queen the next morning anyway.
3 MIN READ ·
Mary Ayer Parker: Hanged in 1692 When Andover Had Four Mary Parkers
Nathan Parker died and left his land to his wife. There were four women in Andover named Mary Parker. The court picked one and hanged her.