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...It was on this date in 1540 that the Machiavellian minister of Henry VIII fell by the instrument he had wielded so ably against so many others. While Henry strove to get his end away, Thomas Cromwell made the Reformation, setting his energetic hand to the needfully violent reordering of England. In almost a decade as the king’s chief minister, he had dissolved so many monasteries, annulled so many noble prerogatives, backstabbed so many courtiers, and sent so many of every class to the scaffold that most at court had some reason to hate him. (Cranmer was the only one...

On this date in 1541, 68-year-old Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, was beheaded within the confines of the Tower of London, as befitted her rank. She was cousin to Henry VIII’s mother, and well trusted by the king for years. Yet this intelligent and dignified aristocrat died without trial in a horribly botched execution that is considered a low point of Henry’s reign. Margaret knew better than most how difficult it was to survive royal storms if your family was close to the throne. Yet despite all her efforts to stay out of danger, it was her family that doomed...

On this date in 1554, rebel leader Thomas Wyatt the Younger tied on his own blindfold and laid his head on the block, having declared that not “any other now in your durance [i.e., the Tower] was privy to my rising” That remark exculpated the Princess Elizabeth, who just days before had been ominously rowed to the Tower on suspicion of having known of or involved herself in Wyatt‘s abortive revolt. And Wyatt had had to do more than talk the talk to keep the future Queen Elizabeth I out of the executioner’s way. Sore afraid that Wyatt’s rebellion had...

On December 29, the Catholic Church remembers St. Thomas Becket, the other Thomas who was martyred for the Catholic Faith in England by a king named Henry over matters of Church governance. Thomas was born in London on the 21st of December in either 1117 or 1118 to Gilbert Becket and Matilda Roheise. His parents were buried in Old St. Paul's Cathedral. When Thomas was 10 he learned to read at the Merton Priory in England and then traveled to the Mainland for further studies of canon and civil law in Paris, Bologna, and Auxerre. After his studies were concluded...

...One of the most disputed stories of extreme age belongs to a 17th century man named Thomas Parr, who claimed to be 152 years old at the time of his death... Most of what historians know about the life of Tom Parr comes from John Taylor’s pamphlet, published the year of Parr’s death, “The old, old, very old man or the age and very long life of Thomas Parr.” Parr lived most of his life as a farm laborer in the county of Shropshire, and married his first wife when he was 80 years old... Parr, at some point, started...

"Having studied the skull of one of the men who went down with the Mary Rose, we found the bone structure was consistent with someone who had North African features, and DNA evidence seems to back this up," he said. "Today, with a much more mobile world population, it would have been harder to isolate, but in the 16th Century it's easier to pinpoint facial characteristics to a specific location. "Henry, as we've named him, had a broad nose bridge and wide cheek bones which are far more similar to skeletons found in Morocco or Algeria than those of the...

Ram-raiders who left a store empty-handed have inadvertently helped unearth archaeological discoveries dating from medieval and Tudor times. The East of England Co-op in Dedham, Essex, was targeted in an early morning raid on 10 December which caused major structural damage to the building. Archaeologists were then commissioned and a pot, which may have been used to stop "evil influences", was dug up. A timber-framed structure, built during Henry VIII's reign, was also unearthed. The precise nature of the structure has not been confirmed yet, but they have dated it to 1520. Following the ram-raid, villagers pulled together to find...

In King Henry VIII’s pleasure palace, Hampton Court, there was no escaping class—not even in the loo. The King, of course, had a luxurious place to squat. According to the Hampton Court Palace website, he and other royals sat atop a padded chair "covered in sheepskin, black velvet, and ribbons" lofted above a pewter chamber pot. This toilet was private, located in a so-called "stool room" that was attended to by a high-ranking courtier known as the Groom of the Stool. It was a privileged, well-respected gig to handle the monarch's waste. (Apparently the groom would even take notes on...

Elizabeth I- Born: 7 September 1533 - Birthplace: Greenwich, England - Died: 24 March 1603 Best Known As: "The Virgin Queen" of England, 1558-1603 The daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth succeeded Mary I in 1558. Dedicated to her position as ruler, Elizabeth fought off rivals (such as heir to the throne Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned for 19 years and executed in 1587) and expanded England's power overseas, eventually succeeding in defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588. Her nearly 45-year reign is considered one of England's high points: it featured luminaries such as Sir Walter Raleigh,...

The fabric at St Faith's Church in Bacton has been identified by experts as a piece of a 16th Century dress. An examination by Historic Royal Palaces curators has strengthened a theory it formed part of a court dress. The Queen is depicted in the Rainbow Portrait wearing a similar fabric, but no documentary evidence has been found to suggest the dress was worn by her. Historians believe the monarch could have gifted the garment to one of her servants, Blanche Parry. Dating back to the last decades of the 16th Century, the altar cloth that hung in a glass...

Did Henry VIII suffer same brain injury as some NFL players? February 3, 2016 by Bill Hathaway Henry VIII may have suffered repeated traumatic brain injuries similar to those experienced by football players and others who receive repeated blows to the head, according to research by a Yale University expert in cognitive neurology. Traumatic brain injury explains the memory problems, explosive anger, inability to control impulses, headaches, insomnia—and maybe even impotence--that afflicted Henry during the decade before his death in 1547, according to a paper published online the week of Feb. 1."It is intriguing to think that modern European history...

The bones of Elizabeth I, Good Queen Bess, lie mingled with those of her sister, Bloody Mary, in a single tomb at Westminster Abbey. But are they really royal remains — or evidence of the greatest conspiracy in English history? If that is not the skeleton of Elizabeth Tudor, the past four centuries of British history have been founded on a lie. And according to a controversial new book, the lie began on an autumn morning 470 years ago, when panic swept through a little group of courtiers in a manor house in the Cotswold village of Bisley in Gloucestershire.The...

'The bones of Elizabeth I, Good Queen Bess, lie mingled with those of her sister, Bloody Mary, in a single tomb at Westminster Abbey. But are they really royal remains — or evidence of the greatest conspiracy in English history?. If that is not the skeleton of Elizabeth Tudor, the past four centuries of British history have been founded on a lie.'

RJ Balson and Sons, a butchers based in Bridport, Dorset, boasts an astonishing history that is almost 500 years old. Experts have traced the businesses roots back through 25 generations to when founder John Balson opened a stall in the town's market on South Street in 1535. Since then dozens of family members have worked as butchers in the market town, passing their skills down the generations. And 476 years later, the shop remains a thriving business and has been named Britain's oldest family run retailer. At that time Henry VIII was still married to Anne Boleyn, the first complete...

... Every half-millennium or so an event occurs in our history that changes the basis of society. The Romans come, the Romans go. The Normans come; and between their arrival in 1066 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 there is one seismic event after which society sets off (after a false start or two) on an entirely new course: the Reformation in England. When the Convocation of Canterbury of the Church in England agreed in March 1531 to accede to Henry's demands about church governance that included the clergy's recognition of him as head of the English...

1 Henry VIII was slim and athletic for most of his life At six feet two inches tall, Henry VIII stood head and shoulders above most of his court. He had an athletic physique and excelled at sports, regularly showing off his prowess in the jousting arena. Having inherited the good looks of his grandfather, Edward IV, in 1515 Henry was described as “the handsomest potentate I have ever set eyes on…” and later an “Adonis”, “with an extremely fine calf to his leg, his complexion very fair…and a round face so very beautiful, that it would become a pretty...

Music from Thomas Tallis’s motet Gaude gloriosa was found buried in the walls of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1978. Recently, the conductor David Skinner has identified the text as being by Henry VIII’s sixth and last queen Catherine Parr. The words are from Parr’s psalm paraphrase ‘Against Enemies’ in her first publication Psalms or Prayers, published in London in 1544, and were set as a contrafact of Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei mater. The work will be performed at St John’s Smith Square London on Good Friday (14 April 2017). David Skinner says: ‘These discoveries are not only significant for cultural historians, but also fundamentally challenge...

A play which was first discovered nearly 300 years ago has been credited to William Shakespeare. The work, titled Double Falsehood, was written by the playwright and another dramatist, John Fletcher. Theatre impresario Lewis Theobald presented the play in the 18th century as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play but it was dismissed as a forgery. But scholars for British Shakespeare publisher, Arden, now believe the Bard wrote large parts of the play. Researchers think the play is based on a long-lost work called Cardenio, which was itself based on Don Quixote. "I think Shakespeare's hand can be discerned in...

Historians have suggested that Henry VIII, who had been described as an even-tempered and intelligent young man, may have suffered traumatic brain injuries that caused lasting health and behavioral problems. Muhammad Qaiser Ikram and Fazle Hakim Saijad of Yale University analyzed Henry's letters and other historical sources for information on his medical history and events that could explain his ailments. While in his 30s, Henry was injured during a jousting tournament when a lance penetrated his visor, and he received another blow to the head while attempting to pole-vault over a brook. In 1536, a horse fell on him during...

There is intense anticipation in the Catholic Church -- and no small amount of anxiety for traditionalists -- over what Pope Francis will say about Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics in a key document expected in the coming weeks. But Francis has already made an intriguing change in this area, albeit one that only concerns the Vatican's arcane diplomatic protocol and a very, very select group: Catholic heads of state. As longtime Vatican-watcher Andrea Tornielli reports, the pontiff has altered the long-standing Vatican custom that if a Catholic president or prime minister (or dictator) who is divorced and remarried...