Claire | June 25, 2022
On this day in Tudor history, 25th June 1503, in the reign of King Henry VII, the nearly twelve-year-old Henry, Prince of Wales, the future King Henry VIII, got betrothed to seventeen-year-old Catalina de Aragón (Catherine of Aragon). The betrothal took place at the Bishop of Salisbury’s palace in Fleet Street, London. Henry was the […]
Claire | February 14, 2013
As it’s Valentine’s Day today, I just wanted to share with you some facts about courtship in Tudor times. David Cressy, in his excellent book Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, writes of how “courtship was no mere game or idle dalliance” and that its goal […]
Claire | May 20, 2010
On this day in history, the 20th May 1536, Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial Ambassador, wrote to Seigneur de Granvelle informing him of the latest developments in London:- “Has just been informed, the bearer of this having already mounted, that Mrs. Semel [Seymour] came secretly by river this morning to the King’s lodging, and that the […]
