Injury and Illness

By the early 1540s, Henry VIII’s private moments must have been increasingly taken up with medical concerns. Henry suffered most chronically from painful leg ulcers, probably a result of a severe jousting accident in 1536. He also struggled with headaches, swollen ankles, constipation, and many other physical complaints.

Henry’s Book of Medicines

Henry VIII’s increasing preoccupation with his health is suggested by a handwritten book of remedies for medical treatments, which was created for the King between 1540 and 1545. It contains almost 200 recipes and many of them are recorded as being devised by Henry himself.

This book, held in The British Library and known as Sloane MS 1047, offers a fascinating insight into Henry’s health problems and the kind of treatments he relied upon.

A “Pusset Oyntment” for Skin Sores

The book records just two remedies created by Henry VIII himself whilst he was staying at Hampton Court Palace. One of them is a “Pusset Oyntment” (ointment) made to heal excoriations, or skin sores.

Kill or Cure?

Some of Henry’s ingredients are poisonous, whilst others seem simply bizarre. Litharge of gold is actually a lead compound, named for its reddish-gold colour, whilst the ‘unicorn’s horn’ referenced in the recipe above was probably narwhal horn. Other recipes call for ceruse (white lead), nightshade and – a personal favourite – ‘long worms of the earth’ or as we know them today, earthworms.

Various non-toxic herbs and flowers, white wine and rose water are all also frequent ingredients in Henry’s recipes. The second recipe devised by Henry whilst he was staying at Hampton Court is a poultice, the ingredients for which include violet leaves, apples, mallow flowers, linseed, and a newly laid egg. This would have been a topical compound applied to the body on a cloth, possibly used to treat Henry’s leg ulcers.

Private Practices

Although the pain caused by Henry’s legs was public knowledge, medical treatment probably took place in the King’s private apartments.

A Tudor medical text by one of his nurse-physicians, titled Bullein’s Bulwarke of Defence against Sickness and Disease (1562), repeatedly urges patients to lie upon their bed when receiving topical treatments – including a treatment for swollen legs. Among the numerous medical recipes in Bullein’s Bulwarke is this particularly strange 16th-century recipe for Oleum vulpinum, or fox oil:

Take a whole Foxe, except the bowels, and put hym in a vessel, and powre uppon him Welle water, and salte Water, [and] old oyle. Seeth thys over a softe fyre, with Salte untyll the Water be consumed. Then put it into a vessel and powre to it sweete Water, wherein the herbes were sodden and […] seeth them again, till the Water be consumed.

Possibly one of the more disturbing recipes in Bullein’s book, this Oleum Vulpinum was recommended as a remedy against arthritis, back pain, and gout. Henry himself suffered from gout and may possibly have used something like this when under the care of Bullein.

A Daily Struggle

Other recipes in the Sloane manuscript suggest the extent to which Henry’s illnesses and treatments punctuated the waking hours of his later life. One anonymous remedy from the book advises the King to apply the mixture to his swollen legs by warming it and ‘with sponges make fomentation [a heated pad] thereof evening and morning’.

Henry was also known to have his ulcers lanced regularly by physicians who believed it safest to keep them open to the air, and to receive enemas for bowel problems. An enema or ‘Clister’ recipe from Bullein’s Bulwarke recommends combining dill oil, white wine, chicken, and duck grease, butter, egg white and cassia fistula plant, to be inserted into the rectum using an animal bladder.

A Tantalising Glimpse

We can never know the full extent of Henry VIII’s medical concerns. His doctors left no official records of what was ailing the King at which periods in his life. What we do know is pieced together from books such as the manuscript of medical recipes designed for the King and from the few state papers which reference his illnesses.

Yet the manuscript can offer us a tantalising glimpse into the private world of Henry’s later years. It suggests a day punctuated by medical care and offers us a deeper understanding of the late King as a sick man, who struggled so much with his health that he devised his own pharmaceutical remedies in his spare time.

Cara Gathern
Techne Placement Student, Hampton Court Palace

Suggested Further Reading

C. R. Chalmers and E. J. Chaloner, ‘500 Years Later: Henry VIII, Leg Ulcers and the Course of History’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 102(12) 2009, at PMC.

This post was originally written and published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 12 January 2023 as part of a placement funded by the Techne AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership. Read the original post and more from our experts here: The Weird and Wonderful medicines of Henry VIII

As Henry VIII’s chief minister, Cromwell oversaw significant reforms in religion and politics during the King’s reign including the dissolution of monasteries and increasing the power of Parliament.

Tracy Borman and Chief Curator Eleri Lynn explore the rise of Thomas Cromwell and his dramatic downfall, ending with execution at the Tower of London.

Listen to this episode and more Royal History on the Historic Royal Palaces podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcast

Read more about Thomas Cromwell and his legacy at the Tower of London on our website.

On 7 January 1536, news arrived at Henry VIII’s court that his first queen, Katherine of Aragon, had died. To celebrate, the King and his second wife Anne Boleyn appeared ‘clad all over in yellow from top to toe’ and paraded their infant daughter Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth I) in front of the assembled courtiers.

To the untrained eye, the woman who had replaced Katherine seemed triumphant. But the ever-vigilant Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys was not fooled. ‘Notwithstanding the joy shown by the concubine [Anne Boleyn] at the news of the good Queen’s death…’ he wrote, ‘she had frequently wept, fearing that they might do with her as with the good Queen [Katherine].’

More ominously, the ambassador went on to report that after only three years of marriage Henry already believed that he had been bewitched into marrying Anne.

This change in Henry’s favour spelt mortal danger for Anne, who was already deeply unpopular for supplanting Katherine of Aragon – the woman whom most of Henry’s subjects viewed as the rightful queen.

In Tudor England, Witchcraft was a capital crime, punishable by death. The fact that Anne was known for her flirtatious behaviour put her in great peril: it was a widely held belief that witches were sexually promiscuous and indulged in such perversions as incest.

It was also common for a suspected witch to be accused of causing infertility and impotence. Even though Anne had given Henry a healthy daughter (the future Elizabeth I), it was sons that counted. Her latest pregnancy felt very much like the last throw of the dice.

Then disaster struck. On 29 January, the day that Katherine of Aragon was laid to rest, Anne miscarried again. Even though it was probably too early to tell the sex of the baby, Chapuys claimed that it ‘seemed to be a male child which she had not borne 3½ months, at which the King has shown great distress.’

For Henry, already tired of a wife whom he judged had given him little but trouble, this was the last straw. He privately instructed his chief minister Thomas Cromwell to get him out of the marriage.

In the event, Cromwell chose not to pursue a witchcraft allegation and instead built a case of adultery and treason against the beleaguered Queen. But the fact that Anne was accused of committing adultery with five men, including her own brother, meant that the rumours of sorcery would never go away.

These rumours were amplified during the reign of Anne’s daughter Elizabeth. Hostile Catholic sources used every trick in the book to discredit the ‘heretic’ queen so that they could put Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne instead. Writing almost 50 years after Anne’s execution, Nicholas Sander asserted: ‘Anne Boleyn was everywhere regarded as a woman of unclean life’.

Inspired by hints of Anne’s witchcraft, Sander claimed that she had a sixth finger on her right hand and a large ‘wen’ (a boil or mole) under her chin. Such blemishes were commonly thought to be the ‘Devil’s Mark’ – a symbol of having made a pact with Satan. Sander had never met Anne so his observation is unreliable, to say the least.

The Scottish author Adam Blackwood went further still and declared that Elizabeth was the incestuous daughter of Anne Boleyn by her brother George.

Another of the English queen’s Catholic enemies, Cardinal William Allen, took up the theme and declared Anne ‘an infamous courtesan’ whose relationship with Henry VIII – Elizabeth’s ‘supposed father’ – was ‘incestuous copulation’.

The only corroborating evidence that Anne had a sixth finger is found in another later but more sympathetic source, The Life of the Virtuous Christian and Renowned Queen Anne Boleyn. Written by George Wyatt, the grandson of poet Thomas Wyatt who knew (and loved) Anne well, it refers to a small extra piece of fingernail that she had on one of her hands. But even this is not supported by any contemporary source.

Given how unpopular Anne was as Queen, it is inconceivable that if she had had such a physical defect, nobody would have commented on it. After all, such abnormalities were seen as signs of witchcraft.

When, in the 19th century, Anne’s body was exhumed in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London, there was no evidence of a sixth finger.

As Queen, Elizabeth I wisely chose not to dignify the scurrilous rumours about her mother with a response – at least, not in words. Instead, she chose actions, expressing her loyalty towards Anne by surrounding herself with Boleyn relatives at court and displaying her mother’s famous falcon emblem everywhere. She also commissioned portraits of Anne.

New research on the ‘Rose’ portrait

New research by curators at Hever Castle into one of the most famous of these has brought to light a surprising discovery. The artist responsible for the ‘Rose’ portrait at Hever Castle (her childhood home), started out by following what was then an established pattern, showing Anne’s head and shoulders and her famous ‘B’ necklace. But scientific imaging at Hever Castle has recently revealed a discarded triangular form beneath Anne’s right arm. This records the moment when the artist deliberately changed the composition to make Anne’s hands fully visible, clearly showing five digits on each hand.

Given the portrait was painted around the time of Sander’s scurrilous account in Elizabeth’s reign, there is a strong likelihood that it was intended to provide visual evidence to rebut a damaging myth about Henry’s second queen – and thereby to defend the legitimacy of their daughter.

Other women accused

But Anne Boleyn was by no means the only woman in history to be accused of witchcraft as a means of eroding her power. One of the earliest examples was Joan of Navarre, Henry IV’s widow, who in 1419 was accused of plotting to bewitch her stepson Henry V to death.

Then in 1441, Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, who was accused of ‘treasonable necromancy’ to plot the death of Henry VI and make her husband king. She was forced to do public penance and condemned to spend the rest of her life in prison.

Later that century, Jacquetta of Luxembourg was brought before the council and accused of luring Edward IV into marrying her daughter Elizabeth Woodville through witchcraft. Although no further action was taken against her, the rumours were slow to fade; Richard III later used them to discredit his Woodville rivals.

Of course, accusations of witchcraft are almost impossible to prove. But the terrifying fact is that rumour and hearsay were considered ‘evidence’ enough to send tens of thousands of innocent women to their death for this crime between the 14th and 17th centuries. Even those who escaped the pyre or hangman’s noose would find their lives blighted by suspicion and prejudice – just as Anne Boleyn did both during her lifetime and for centuries after her tragic death.

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 19 May 2026. Read the original post and more from our experts here: No, Anne Boleyn was not a witch

The former Lord Chancellor had been one of Henry VIII’s closest advisors, sharing a devotion to the Catholic faith and opposing Martin Luther’s Protestant reforms.

What led to his imprisonment and eventual execution on Tower Hill? Was he a saintly family man who died for his religious principles? Or a ruthless hunter of heretics?

Tracy Borman and historian Dr Joanne Paul reveal the real Thomas More.

Read more about Thomas More Sir Thomas More: Execution of a Saint and Thomas More's imprisonment at the Tower of London

Listen to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcast

For a period of time, he was Henry VIII’s right-hand man, known for being ‘good at getting things done,’ says Elizabeth Norton.

So what led Henry VIII to commit the ultimate act of betrayal—arresting Wolsey for high treason—against a man he called a friend?

Tracy Borman and Elizabeth Norton explore Wolsey’s rise to power. Who was responsible for his fall? How influential was Anne Boleyn? Was Wolsey the architect of his own fate?

Listen to more Royal History on the Historic Royal Palaces podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Read more about Cardinal Wolsey and see inside Hampton Court Palace on our Website.

Content warning: This blog post includes images and text relating to the excavation of human remains.

As a curator I spend my days researching and telling the stories of the people who lived in, visited, worked at, built, or otherwise experienced the palaces in our care. Curators do this in many ways – through documents, objects, clothes, or the buildings themselves.

These sources can give us incredible insight - painting images that bring historic spaces to life. We must remember, though, that these survivals were often made by those who could afford to create a legacy or were educated enough to document their experience.

The lives of most people are lost to us, only now accessible through accounts of workers, tax, or landholding, alongside registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials.

But modern scientific techniques can give us an insight into the lives of two people who may have lived, worked, and died at the Tower through the most sensitive record of their lives: their skeletons.

In 2019, a trial excavation outside the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London uncovered two burials. This was the first time anyone had excavated complete, articulated human skeletons from within the Tower of London for over 40 years. What could modern science reveal about the lives of these two individuals?

Image: Burial Registers 1550-4 from the Register of the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula: marriages 1580–1752; baptisms 1587–1821; burials 1550–1821. © Crown Copyright Historic Royal Palaces

The Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula

The Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula was built between 1519-20 and is the burial place of three Tudor queens (Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey), and two Catholic saints (John Fisher and Thomas More). For most of its history, the chapel served the Tower community as the parish church – a role it continues to hold today, holding regular services, baptisms, marriages, and concerts.

This chapel is one of the oldest and most important buildings at the Tower of London, but has historically been accessible only via stairs, preventing many disabled visitors from entering this wonderful space. As part of our commitment to improve access for disabled people, we’re installing a lift outside the building. Our first step in this process, though, was to undertake a trial excavation in 2019.

Image: The Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. © Historic Royal Palaces

The trial, undertaken by Pre-Construct Archaeology with the support of Historic England, revealed evidence of previously unknown buildings, alongside artefacts such as a fragment of a Roman jet bracelet and the skeleton of a 17th-century dog – likely a Tower pet.

What made this a truly special trial was the excavation of two burials found during the work.

Since then, plans have continued for installing the lift. But we have also undertaken a collaborative research project with Cardiff University and Historic England, through which these two individuals have become the first to be subject to detailed modern scientific analysis – offering new insights into the Tower’s community.

Image: Dr Richard Madgwick and Dr Katie Faillace of Cardiff University assessing the remains. © Historic Royal Palaces

Learning from Human Remains

Archaeology is the study of human activity, and no source of evidence can tell us quite as much about an individual as the human skeleton. Through careful, sensitive analysis of these remains, we can extract a wealth of information and gain a rare glimpse into a person’s life.

From these remains, we can determine:

• Where they may have been born

• When, and how, they were weaned (taken off breast milk and given solid food)

• The places they lived throughout their life

• Their diet

• Diseases they may have suffered from

• What kind of work they may have done

• And, sometimes, how they died.

When we add this to the evidence we have about their place and type of burial, we can begin to gain real insight into who these individuals may have been.

This work requires destructive sampling of teeth from each individual, along with small sections of bone. This sampling is considered ethically justified given the amount of information we can recover about each individual from a tiny fragment of their teeth.

The most important element of this work is to remember that these are real people, and we must ensure the work is undertaken respectfully, preserving the dignity of the dead.

Image: The Skeletons following initial analysis by Pre-Construct Archaeology. © Historic Royal Palaces

The evidence

The first skeleton found in the trial excavation was lying supine (on their back) in an east-to-west orientation – typical for a Christian burial. This person was buried in a coffin – nails were found surrounding the skeleton, and its position, particularly the skull, was consistent with a typical coffin burial.

Detailed scientific analysis revealed that this individual was a female aged between 35-50. She was born outside London, moving inland before her 10th birthday and finally moving to the Tower of London before she died. Throughout these moves, she appears to have maintained a rich diet, consuming more than was required to stay alive and frequently sugars – possibly hinting at a higher-status life. She probably had arthritis, which adds to our understanding of this woman’s daily life.

The second skeleton was also found lying supine, and on an east-to-west orientation. Evidence from the position of the skeleton showed that this person was more simply buried in a shroud (wrapped in fabric), rather than a coffin. Further analysis showed that these remains belonged to a male aged around 13. He was also born outside of London. He suffered from a period of stress, possibly caused by disease or malnutrition, from which he recovered a short time before his death.

While radiocarbon dating failed to provide a precise date for the remains, the stratigraphy (layers identified during the excavation) and pottery found within the fill of the burials, indicate that both individuals were buried between 1480-1550. We can refine this further due to the presence of charcoal in the fill of the grave. This charcoal is likely the result of a fire in 1512, which destroyed Edward I’s 13th-century chapel. This gives us a slightly tighter range of 1512-1550 for both burials – though we expect to be able to revise this date using information gained from further excavation work.

What does this mean?

By looking at this information in its entirety, we can gain some insights into who these people may have been and how they lived their lives.

The adult woman, whose diet exceeded her needs and included frequent consumption of sugar, was clearly in a stable position, which is also shown through the use of a coffin. While typical today, the use of coffins was not the norm in medieval or post-medieval burials. Instead, they were often reusable objects, used to process the shrouded dead to the place of burial. That this woman was buried within a coffin shows that more time and money had been spent on her funeral.

On the other hand, the juvenile male’s diet was not of the same quality. He also suffered from a period of significant stress or disease, which resulted in a reduction in the amount of food he consumed. Though he was able to recover before he died, his burial is also of lesser quality, being buried in a simple shroud. All of this points to him being of lower status than the adult woman.

It is important to note that shrouding, the practise of wrapping an individual in a fabric sheet (sometimes called a winding sheet), was the most common form of burial in medieval England. While not as extravagant as burial within a coffin, it does not suggest a lack of care, and it could be that the juvenile male was processed to his burial in a communal coffin, before being removed and buried separately.

Both burials do share some similarities, though. Both individuals were born outside London and moved throughout their lives, suggesting that the Tower community was likely composed of people from many areas across England and further afield.

Both of these individuals also show no signs of physical violence, suggesting they were not executed - though the period of stress experienced by the juvenile could conceivably have been due to imprisonment, but there is no direct evidence for this. The most likely answer is that these individuals are both ‘parish’ burials and were members of the Tower of London community.

In addition, both individuals were buried in the same location, which is immediately outside the chapel. Typically, burials closer to the church are more important, with internal burials of even higher importance. This area, close to the chapel but outside the building, suggests that both were reasonably important despite their differences in diet and burial practices. Their relationship to the building’s entrance may also suggest importance, but the current chapel was built in 1519-20, so they may predate its construction and bear no relation to the Tudor layout.

Further revelations.

While this work has left some questions unanswered (and even raised new ones!), this newly published analysis, while limited to two individuals, is groundbreaking. For the first time, we have detailed information about two people who lived, worshipped, and died at the Tower.

The importance of this work stretches much further, though. A larger excavation followed in 2025, revealing over 20 individuals. Our analysis of the first two skeletons served as the basis for the analysis of these new remains. Given how much we learned from the remains of just two individuals, we expect our analysis of the archaeological material revealed during the 2025 excavation to revolutionise our understanding of the Tower community, providing a wealth of new information about the people who lived and died at the Tower for over 700 years.

Once the works on the chapel have been completed, all the remains will be re-interred with dignity and respect into the Crypt of the Chapel of St Peter – ensuring their continued rest within a consecrated space.

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 21 July 2025 and has been edited for Substack. Read the original post and more from our experts here: What two skeletons found at the Tower of London can tell us about the Tudor Tower community

This project is a collaboration with Cardiff University and Historic England, funded by the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Research Grant.

Content warning: This post contains descriptions of torture that some people might find distressing.

Faith, Fear and Torture in Elizabethan England

Few accounts of life or death at the Tower of London are as shocking, visceral, and as difficult to read as that recorded by the Jesuit priest John Gerard in his autobiography. Gerard was only 32 years old when he was moved from the notorious Clink Prison to the Tower in April 1597. For all its gruesome reputation, the Clink did not possess instruments of torture; the Tower, on the other hand, most certainly did.

An Elizabethan State Consumed by Fears of a Catholic Conspiracy

Gerard’s crime was his Catholic faith. He had been arrested and locked away by an increasingly paranoid and persecutory Protestant government some three years earlier and had spent his time in incarceration in prayer and ministering to the many other Catholic prisoners occupying the cells. By 1597, the government’s fear of a growing conspiracy to bring down the Elizabethan State by an underground Catholic network had reached fever pitch, and new avenues were being explored to uncover the supposed plot. Gerard was a Jesuit priest who, before his capture, had travelled widely on the Continent and in England, illegally serving the recusant Catholic community. With his web of high-level Jesuit contacts and with direct access to the growing band of Catholic prisoners, he was marked for interrogation at the Tower.

Despite the increasing frequency of its use by Elizabethan and Jacobean inquisitors, torture was not formally recognised as a means of interrogation under English law. However, the officers who subjected prisoners to the horrors of the rack, the Scavenger’s Daughter, and the manacles in the Tower’s torture chamber did so with the full knowledge and authority of the Privy Council and the monarch. Torture was not, on the face of it at least, used as a punishment – it was a method of getting information from the prisoner – but in a period well-used to violence and bloodshed, it remained a controversial practice. In arguments that echo those used to reject torture today, Catholics and Protestants alike recognised that torture created martyrs, increased hostility to the State, and risked extracting unreliable evidence from prisoners willing to say anything to end their distress.

Imprisoned at the Tower

Such concerns did little to help John Gerard. Initially confined to his cell within the Salt Tower, he was soon taken before a panel of inquisitors in the former great hall of the Queen’s House (a room later converted into the Council Chamber). There, he was questioned at length about his Catholic networks in an attempt to uncover how messages were passed amongst the group. But Gerard was unwilling, or perhaps unable, to answer their demands.

Having failed to extract satisfactory answers from their prisoner, the inquisitors led Gerard in an ominous candlelit procession to a dark underground chamber where he was threatened with violence by the torturer (probably one of the Yeoman Warders) and shown the instruments they would use on him. The theatricality of the procession and the direct warning of his painful fate were designed to scare him into submission and avoid subjecting him to physical pain. However, it was to no effect, and Gerard remained unable, or unwilling, to cooperate.

Anatomy of Torture

What happened next is best told in Gerard’s own words:

‘They took me to a big upright pillar, one of the wooden posts which held the roof of this huge underground chamber. Driven into the top of it were iron staples for supporting heavy weights. Then they put my wrists into iron gauntlets and ordered me to climb two or three wicker steps. My arms were then lifted up and an iron bar was passed through the rings of one gauntlet, then through the staple and rings to the second gauntlet. This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it from slipping, and then, removing the wicker steps one by one from under my feet, they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head... Hanging like this I began to pray.

‘The gentlemen standing around me asked me whether I was willing to confess now. ‘I cannot and I will not,’ I answered. But I could hardly utter the words, such a gripping pain came over me. It was worst in my chest and belly, my hands and arms. All the blood in my body seemed to rush up into my arms and hands and I thought that blood was oozing from the ends of my fingers and the pores of my skin. But it was only a sensation caused by my flesh swelling above the irons holding them... The pain was so intense that I thought I could not possibly endure it...

‘Sometime after one o’clock, I think, I fell into a faint. How long I was unconscious I don’t know, but I think it was not long, for the men held my body up or put the wicker steps under my feet until I came to. Then they heard me pray and immediately let me down again. And they did this every time I fainted - eight or nine times that day – before it struck five.’

Gerard endured the horrific pain of his torture, refusing throughout to confess. Eventually, his torturers admitted defeat and sent him back to his cell. So damaged were his hands and arms that he recorded that it was three weeks before he could hold a knife.

What Modern Medicine Can Tell Us About the Effects of Tudor Torture

Modern studies of the effects of the type of suspension torture used on Gerard, reported by organisations such as the Danish Institute Against Torture, show that it can cause dislocations and permanent and lasting damage to the nerves and blood vessels of the hands.

Incredibly, despite his injuries, Gerard seems to have made a full enough recovery that he later scaled the walls and moat of the Tower in a daring escape. He fled to Europe and died in Rome aged 72. Others who have suffered the same torture have not been so lucky.

The Past is not a Foreign Country: Telling Difficult Histories

Why these stories still matter

At a time when television news reports are filled with stories of State-sponsored persecution on the grounds of religious belief and ethnicity and when the use of torture is still evident in countries in all regions of the world, it is incumbent on all of us to remember that the past is not such a foreign country. Nor should the distance of 400-or-so years between us and the violence metered out on real men and women at the Tower of London in the name of religion and State security make those horrors any less real or uncomfortable to contemplate.

At Historic Royal Palaces, we tell the stories of history in the very places where they happened; it is both a privilege and a deeply felt responsibility. Some of those stories are light-hearted and fun, and we present them in ways that we hope will entertain our visitors, but other stories are dark and complicated, and it is our job to tell them with the dignity and respect they deserve. We cannot shy away from telling stories that are uncomfortable and that shed light on the darkest moments from our past. In doing so, our task is always to ensure that we never downplay nor trivialise the very real moments of human suffering that have happened within our walls.

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 4 October 2021 and has been edited for Substack. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Torture at the Tower: The case of John Gerard

An illness and death shrouded in secrecy…

The final illness and death of Henry VII

On 21 April 1509, the preparations for the St George’s Day celebrations were in full swing at Richmond Palace. But all was not well in the Tudor court.

For several weeks before, the King, Henry VII had kept to his privy chamber at Richmond. His health had been faltering for several years, thanks to the onset of what was probably tuberculosis. But he was always careful to hide his symptoms from his courtiers, for fear that a rival claimant might take the throne from him and his heir, Prince Henry.

Even greater secrecy was needed when Henry VII made his last will and testament on 10 April 1509 – an indication of just how ill the King had become. Only a handful of his most trusted advisors needed to know – and his son was not among them. Finally, on 21 April, the King breathed his last.

A contemporary sketch of Henry VII’s final moments shows several servants and officials clustered around the deathbed. All were sworn to secrecy by the King’s closest advisers. They feared a rebellion if word got out that Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, who was viewed by many of his subjects as a usurper, had died.

During the next two days, they made frantic preparations to secure the succession for his son, who was now Henry VIII. What mattered most was that the new King continued the Tudor dynasty that his father had started.

Power struggles between the young Prince Henry and the ageing King

With striking good looks and charm to match, Prince Henry – the only surviving son of Henry VII and the heir to the Tudor dynasty – presented a dazzling contrast to his dour and emaciated old father.

Relations between father and son had deteriorated significantly since the death of the King’s eldest son, Prince Arthur, in 1502; Arthur’s death had thrust Prince Henry into the limelight as the new heir to the throne. From that day forward, the King had exerted suffocating control over every aspect of the young prince’s upbringing. The untimely death of the Queen, Elizabeth of York, can’t have helped the strained family dynamic.

Read More: Elizabeth of York: The Death of the Original Tudor Queen

As Prince Henry grew to maturity and hungered for power, he had a series of high-profile clashes with his father. In 1508, the King quarrelled so violently with his son that, according to one eyewitness, it seemed ‘as if he sought to kill him.’

Now, on 21 April 1509, the time had come for Prince Henry to become Henry VIII – if only the old King’s advisors could keep it a secret until all was prepared.

Henry VIII’s accession is deliberately delayed

Two days after the old King’s death, during the St George’s Day celebrations of 23 April, the young Henry looked on as the heralds proclaimed his absent father’s largesse before the assembled company. He was still unaware that his father had in fact died 48 hours before.

After dinner, one of the King’s body servants entered from the King’s privy chamber, with a ‘smiling countenance’. Aware that all eyes were upon him, the servant walked calmly over to Archbishop Warnham and ‘certain other lords’ and told them that the King wished to see them.

These men duly retired to the privy chamber for ‘a good pause’, leaving the King’s son to enjoy the festivities. They then re-emerged into the throng ‘with good countenance... as though the king had not been dead, showing no great manner of mourning that men might perceive.’

A short while later, Prince Henry progressed to the Chapel Royal for evensong. As was customary for the king and his family, he heard mass in the holyday closet, rather than the main body of the chapel. It may have been here in the privacy of the closet that he was finally told of his father’s death, while the service proceeded.

After the service, Henry and his entourage returned to the presence chamber for the Garter supper. Giving him a few final moments before his reign officially began, Henry was ‘served and named as prince and not as king’.

Only when the last dish had been taken away was his father’s death finally announced.

Why was St George’s Day important?

Henry VIII and St George

The timing of Henry VIII’s proclamation on St George’s Day was certainly convenient for the image of this young man, who was now King of England.

St George had already emerged as England’s patron saint. But he was particularly important for the Tudor monarchs, who needed to convey a sense of tradition on their fledgling dynasty.

Henry VII had used St George’s image to his advantage, but in being declared King on St George’s Day 1509, Henry VIII had the perfect excuse to make a direct and powerful association. He would continue to use this association to full effect throughout his reign.

And so, during the celebrations of England’s patron saint, 23 April 1509, the momentous reign of Henry VIII began. With hindsight, perhaps it was ironic that Henry, along with his six wives and powerful councillors such as Thomas Cromwell, would change the face of England forever.

St George and the Tudors

Strategic symbolism in England’s new royal dynasty

St George’s Day was already well established by the Tudor period, but the Tudor monarchs saw something more in this patron saint – the perfect symbol to bolster their shaky claim to the throne.

Read more: St George and the Tudors: Strategic Symbolism in England's New Royal Dynasty

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 21 April 2025. Read the original post and more from our experts here: The death of Henry VII and the delayed accession of Henry VIII

In the Tudor period, most royal weddings tended to be simple evening affairs, conducted in the king or queen’s private apartments with just a handful of guests. But there were notable exceptions; when the dynasty wanted to flaunt its wealth and power, a royal wedding was the perfect excuse.

Portrait paintings of Anne Boleyn (1507-1536) and Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536) featured in The Tudor World exhibition in the Wolsey Rooms at Hampton Court Palace.

© Royal Collection Enterprises Ltd 2026 | Royal Collection Trust.

Tudor Royal Wedding Traditions

Tudor royal bridal fashion

Katherine of Aragon wore white satin for her first wedding to Prince Arthur Tudor, which was embellished with gold, pearls and precious stones. But white wedding gowns were by no means an established tradition by the Tudor period.

For public celebrations, royal Tudor brides were dressed to impress, with gold and silver being the ultimate show of wealth. For her marriage to the new Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon wore cloth of gold and silver, bedecked in jewels inherited from Henry’s indomitable grandmother, Margaret Beaufort.

Then, when the King’s sister Mary married the King of France, she wore a gown of white gold brocade on her arrival into her new country, then changed into the French style for her wedding.

Anne of Cleves wore gold to her wedding to Henry VIII. Mary I wore cloth of gold and was wedded with ‘a plain hoop of gold, because maidens were so married in old times’.

‘Till Death us Depart’: Tudor Marriage Vows

Henry VIII and Katherine Parr used wedding vows that had been used for hundreds of years. Henry vowed to ‘have and to hold… for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart’. The slightly altered phrase, ‘til death us do part’ that is used today in some Christian ceremonies was introduced in the 17th century.

In response, Katherine promised ‘to be gentle and courteous, and buxom in bed and in board,’ to her husband. These same vows form the basis of those exchanged in a modern-day Church of England wedding ceremony – with some notable alterations!

The ‘bedding ceremony’

During the traditional ‘bedding ceremony’, a royal groom was escorted by a throng of courtiers to meet his wife in the royal bedchamber. The bed was then blessed and the courtiers departed – but listened in to make sure the newlyweds were having sex (known as ‘consummation’ of their marriage).

A ‘bedding ceremony’ might seem like a scandalous invasion of privacy. But in the 16th century, when royal marriages could make or break a dynasty, it had an important purpose; it proved the marriage had been ‘consummated’ and therefore could not be broken down. So everyone had to be sure the deed was done.

The ‘bedding ceremony’ was so important that Arthur’s grandmother (and Tudor matriarch) Lady Margaret Beaufort laid down detailed ordinances (instructions) about how the ceremony should be conducted.

Uniting the Roses: The Wedding that ended a War

The wedding of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York: St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 18 January 1486

Although Tudor monarchs generally didn’t see a wedding as an excuse for a party, the first royal wedding of the Tudor era was a splendid affair. Henry VII, who founded the dynasty, had finally brought an end to years of civil strife by taking Elizabeth of York as his bride.

The union of the Houses of York and Lancaster was ‘celebrated with all religious and glorious magnificence at court and by their people with bonfires, dancing, songs and banquets throughout all London’, as one contemporary recorded.

Henry VII and Elizabeth of York married at St Paul’s Cathedral on 18 January 1486. John de Gigli, canon of St Paul’s, enthused about ‘bright Elizabeth’ with her necklace ‘framed in fretted gold’ about her ‘snowy neck’, her ‘beauteous form’ clad in ‘robes that glow with gold and purple dye’.

The event was so spectacular that it even eclipsed Henry’s coronation the previous year.

Read more: The Death of Elizabeth of York at the Tower of London

When the Younger Brother Steals the Show…

The wedding of Prince Arthur Tudor and Katherine of Aragon: St Paul’s Cathedral, November 1501

In another notable exception to the modest marriage tradition, St Paul’s was the venue for a magnificent wedding in November 1501, when Henry VII and Elizabeth of York’s firstborn child and heir, Prince Arthur, married a Spanish princess, Katherine of Aragon.

She was escorted to the cathedral by Arthur’s 10-year-old brother Henry, Duke of York (the future Henry VIII). The tall, handsome young Duke stole the show at the entertainments that followed at Baynard’s Castle; Henry danced so energetically that he threw off his gown and continued in his doublet.

Katherine would later marry Arthur’s brother Henry (the future Henry VIII) after Arthur died prematurely.

While the citizens of London enjoyed free wine, the guests were treated to two full weeks of entertainments, including ‘disguisings’ (parties and entertainments), banquets and tournaments.

At the conclusion of all this, the newlyweds underwent a bedding ceremony.

This didn’t prevent all problems, though: Arthur died less than a year later, leaving Katherine a widow. Whether or not they had consummated their marriage would be the subject of intense controversy during Katherine’s later marriage to his brother, Henry VIII. Indeed, Henry justified their annulment with the theory that she had consummated her marriage to Arthur (a claim that Katherine strenuously denied).

Arthur and Katherine’s wedding would be the last public royal wedding for more than 50 years.

A Wedding Shrouded in Secrecy

The wedding of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn: Holbein Gate, Whitehall Palace, around 25 January 1533

Henry VIII was no shrinking violet: he loved to be the centre of attention and his court was renowned for its ostentation and glamour. And of course, Henry had six wives, so he loved a wedding. But most of his weddings were quite low-key affairs, certainly compared with the pomp and ceremony that we are used to today.

The most private of all Henry’s weddings was his second, to Anne Boleyn, who was reviled throughout his kingdom as a usurper and ‘concubine’. The need for secrecy was paramount because Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon had not yet been annulled. But time was running out: Anne was already pregnant (with the future Elizabeth I) and it was imperative that their child be born in wedlock.

Henry and Anne’s discretion was so successful that even to this day, the date and location of their wedding is not certain. Most historians believe that the ceremony took place on 25 January 1533 in the Holbein Gate at Whitehall Palace.

'The Kings Gate', The Holbein Gate, Whitehall. Illustration from an early guidebook. © Historic Royal Palaces. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s wedding ceremony is beleived to have taken place in the Holbein Gate, part of the lost palace of Whitehall.

Read more: Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s secret wedding at Whitehall Palace

After the wedding, Henry’s courtiers were quick to notice that something had changed. The Imperial ambassador Chapuys reported to his master Charles V: ‘On Saturday… dame Anne went to mass in Royal state, loaded with jewels, clothes in a robe of cloth of gold frieze… and was brought to church, and brought back with the solemnities or even more, which were used to the queen.’

But Anne’s new life of luxury was not to last; she would be executed at the Tower of London just three years later.

Read more: Henry VIII’s wives: six queens, six women

All That Glitters is Not Gold

The Doomed Union of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves: Greenwich Palace, 6 January 1540

Ironically, of all Henry VIII’s weddings, the one that was celebrated with the greatest ceremony was also the shortest-lived. His fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves took place early in the morning of 6 January at Greenwich Palace, amidst several days of lavish pageantry and entertainment.

The bride and groom were bedecked in sumptuous gowns of cloth of gold decorated with pearls and flowers. Around her neck, Anne wore a chain studded with such large stones that they ‘glistened all the field’.

All of the attendants were similarly dressed, so the whole wedding party made such a dazzling sight that the watching crowds − who were well used to the spectacle of Tudor pageantry – had never seen the like. It was as if Henry was trying to blind them to the true farce that was being played out before their eyes.

After choosing Anne from a portrait, the King had disliked his future bride when he met her in the flesh. Even as the wedding took place, ministers such as Thomas Cromwell were desperately trying to find a way to have the marriage annulled.

Anne and Henry’s marriage was annulled six months later; Henry was already besotted with the young Catherine Howard, who became his fifth wife. Anne maintained her dignity throughout and was rewarded with land and property.

Read more: Thomas Cromwell’s fateful match-making

Image: Katherine Parr in around 1545, two years after her wedding to Henry VIII. © National Portrait Gallery, London

Sixth Time Lucky…?

The wedding of Henry VIII and Katherine Parr: Hampton Court Palace, 12 July 1543

Henry’s sixth and final wedding was – like the marriage – one of the most straightforward. The bride was Katherine Parr, a twice-widowed, 30-year-old who had served the King’s eldest daughter, Mary.

Katherine was the most intelligent of all Henry’s wives and something of a religious radical. Her calm and sensible demeanour formed a welcome contrast to Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, whose alleged adulterous affairs had left the King broken-hearted and humiliated.

Henry VIII and Katherine Parr were married on 12 July 1543 in the Queen’s Private Apartments at Hampton Court Palace (later demolished), with just 20 guests in attendance.

The ceremony was performed by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, a religious conservative who was hostile to the new queen. Gardiner would try to engineer Katherine’s downfall three years later.

It was noted that Henry married his sixth wife with ‘none opposing and all applauding’. The wedding was followed by a celebration breakfast at the palace.

Unlike her predecessors, Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr was not crowned – probably because by now, in the closing years of Henry’s reign, the treasury was so depleted that it could not bear the cost. Instead, she was proclaimed Queen on the day of the wedding. It had all been an occasion as modest and discreet as the new Queen herself.

A Deeply Unhappy Union

The wedding of Mary I and Philip of Spain: Winchester Cathedral, 25 July 1554

Henry VIII’s daughter Mary I married Philip of Spain after fallen ‘half in love’ with his portrait (the Tudor equivalent of internet dating!). Mary and Philip were married in Winchester Cathedral, making Mary the only one of Henry VIII’s legitimate children to be married.

A banquet was held in nearby Wolvesey Palace and lasted three hours, after which there was dancing. Mary’s modesty would not permit a bedding ceremony so the couple enjoyed greater privacy than was usual for a royal wedding night.

Afterwards, Philip, who was 11 years younger than his 38-year-old wife, confided that she was ‘no good from the point of view of fleshly sensuality’.

Mary’s marriage to Philip brought her deep unhappiness and no heir. Little wonder her sister Elizabeth I chose to be the ‘Virgin Queen’, who proclaimed herself married only to England.

Read more: Princess Mary, Henry VIII and Tudor history’s greatest battle of wills

The end of Tudor royal weddings

Mary I’s marriage to Philip was the last royal wedding to be celebrated publicly for three centuries. Not until Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840 did the people have an excuse to celebrate in style once more.

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 9 February 2026. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Tudor Royal Wedding Traditions

Detail of The Queen's Drawing Room at Hampton Court Palace with Queen Anne in the centre surrounded by personified virtues. © Historic Royal Palaces

An intimate friendship

At Anne’s ascension in 1702, Sarah was given the coveted titles Keeper of the Privy Purse, Groom of the Stole, and Lady of the Bedchamber. Anne’s letters to Sarah still exist, detailing the beautiful, highly devotional language of love that the women exchanged. Although it was common in the 17th and 18th centuries to address a close female friend with elaborate declarations of love and desire, Anne and Sarah’s letters are extremely intimate. They adopted the names ‘Mrs Freeman’ and ‘Mrs Morley’, so they were, in Anne’s words, ‘equals’.

The unravelling of a once close relationship

Before the final blow that destroyed their relationship for good, Sarah and Anne had been on rocky ground for a few years because of their differing political opinions: Sarah was a devoted Whig who favoured mercantile growth and a parliament separate from the monarch, and Anne, although continuing with the constitutional monarchy introduced by her sister Mary II and her co-ruler William III, leaned towards Tory politics. The Tories favoured absolute monarchy, and the party was made up of the landed gentry. England’s involvement in the Spanish War of Succession was a point of contention for these parties: the Whigs wanted England to invade France, but the Tories fought against this as landowners would be charged tax to pay for the battle.

The new royal favourite: Abigail Masham becomes closer to Anne

Anne’s growing closeness to her chambermaid, Abigail Masham, Sarah’s distant cousin whom she had introduced to the court, further strained the relationship. Spending time and possibly having a romantic relationship with outwardly apolitical Abigail, Anne grew tired of Sarah’s political forcefulness. An argument occurred between Sarah and Anne in 1708 on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Whilst attending a ceremony to commemorate England’s defeat of France in the Spanish War of Succession (the army led by Sarah’s husband John Churchill), Sarah noticed Anne was not wearing the jewels she had laid out for her. She imagined Abigail had something to do with it. The women bickered, resulting in Sarah telling her Queen to ‘be quiet’ in front of the roaring crowd.

As rumours about the Queen’s female friends started to spread, Sarah compelled Anne to meet at Kensington Palace.

Things only worsened after this argument, and gossip and rumour careered around the streets of London about the Queen’s female companions. In April 1710, Sarah begged Anne to settle their differences, threatening Anne with blackmail by saying she would publish the letters she had sent her (Sarah had cleverly told Anne to burn her letters after reading them). At this time, the Queen was retreating at Kensington Palace before her Easter Sunday services. Anne finally entertained Sarah with a ‘private hour’ to discuss their troubles on Good Friday, after Sarah stormed into the queen’s chambers at Kensington, crying to the page.

The final clash that ended their friendship.

The page let Sarah through, who ran into Anne’s Closet, a small, private room previously used by her sister Mary II as a dressing room. According to Sarah’s memoirs, the queen remained calm and collected, standing her ground. For once, they did not argue about Abigail Masham. To many of Sarah’s devotional and defensive statements, Anne coldly repeated ‘you may put it into writing’ and ‘you desired no answer and I shall give you none.’ Sarah, with tears ‘in streams’ was defeated, and after their discussion ran out to the Queen’s Gallery to compose herself. Some versions of her memoir state that she ran back to the queen to further defend herself, telling Anne that she would suffer for her inhumanity, to which Anne staunchly replied ‘that would be to herself.’

The truth of Anne and Sarah’s relationship remains elusive but enduring

The Queen’s Closet was the last place Sarah and Anne spoke in person. Sarah was stripped of her titles and, in 1711, was forced to return her key and move out of Hampton Court Palace. The walls of Kensington contain the ghosts of this lost relationship. We only know what has been published by Sarah, which of course is not impartial, and by gossip and rumour circulated in letters and print, which include some very suspicious letters from Anne’s sister Mary, who did not favour Sarah.

After Anne’s death in 1714, Sarah published Anne's memoirs and the letters Anne had sent her over the years. Despite their very public fallout, Sarah dedicated a statue to Anne at Blenheim Palace, which the Queen had gifted to the Churchills in an apparent attempt to smooth over her reputation and possibly her guilt for removing her from her offices and lodgings.

Anne and Sarah’s story helps us to understand that LGBTQ+ desire was expressed and queer-coded relationships existed in the early modern period. It must also be remembered that, when it comes to monarchs, love and desire are often politically motivated. We will never know the extent of Sarah and Anne’s relationship, but we do know they were, at one stage, each other’s closest companions.

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 25 February 2021. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill's last stand off at Kensington Palace.

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light production stills at Hampton Court Palace. Duke of Norfolk (Timothy Spall); Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) © Playground Entertainment/BBC Pictures

Later that same year, Cromwell was imprisoned in the Tower of London and eventually beheaded. His desperate plea for ‘mercy, mercy, mercy’ went ignored.

Why did Thomas Cromwell arrange Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves?

Charles V and Francis I, King of France – Europe’s two superpowers – had agreed not to ally themselves with Henry without each other’s consent. To make matters worse, the Pope had re-issued the Bull of Excommunication against him. The English King was also without a Queen, having spent over a year grieving his third wife, Jane Seymour.

England – and its King – were looking lonely. Luckily, Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister, had a plan.

A much-needed ally (and wife)

Although the then Duke of Cleves, Johann (Anne’s father), was no Protestant, he – like Henry – had expelled papal authority from his domain. If Cromwell, an ardent reformer, could arrange a marriage between Henry and Anne, it would boost the reformation in England and give Henry a much-needed ally in Europe. It would also prevent a match between the King and one of Cromwell’s aristocratic rivals.

Anne, the sister of Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, had first been proposed as a bride for Henry in the closing weeks of 1537. Without confirmation of her beauty, and still in mourning for Jane Seymour, Henry declined. In March 1539, though, after Cromwell raised the matter, the King agreed that negotiations could begin. Ominously, he made it clear that Cromwell was solely responsible for the match. Cromwell had little choice but to press on.

Although Cromwell was quick to relay reports of Anne’s beauty, the increasingly paranoid King no longer trusted his chief minister. To check what he was letting himself in for, Henry dispatched the renowned portrait painter Hans Holbein to Cleves to paint Anne from life.

The most famous profile picture in history?

Holbein’s portrait of Anne showed a pretty young woman with fair hair, a doll-like face, delicate eyes, mouth and chin, and a demure, maidenly expression. To be on the safe side, though, (according to The Spanish Chronicle) Cromwell waited until Henry was in a ‘very merry’ mood before presenting it to him. To Cromwell’s relief, Henry was delighted.

The match was confirmed, and a treaty was signed on 4 October 1539. Anne would be the only one of Henry’s six brides whom he agreed to marry without seeing her in the flesh. For Cromwell, this would prove a fateful mistake.

‘She is nothing so well as she was spoken of’

The disastrous first meeting between Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII

There is no doubt that Henry hoped his union with Anne would result in more sons to secure his dynasty. While Anne prepared for her journey to England, her future husband gleefully ordered a new bed head (now in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow) decorated with fertility symbols. Ever the romantic, Henry rushed to meet his new bride as soon as she arrived at Rochester in Kent – in true chivalric tradition, he dressed in disguise.

According to chivalric theory, a lady would instantly recognise her true love, even if he was wearing a mask. But Anne was not expecting to meet her new husband for another two days, so hadn’t dressed in her finest clothes or prepared herself in any other way. Then, suddenly, a group of masked men burst into the room. Still reeling from the shock, she was assailed by one of them (Henry) who strode up to her and tried to kiss her. She angrily repelled him, cursing in German.

Anne had not only failed to recognise her ‘true love’ but had shown a complete ignorance of the courtly games that he so enjoyed. For Henry at least, the dye was cast. It seemed Anne did not possess the courtly refinements that he expected in a wife. He also felt she had been rather flattered by her portrait; in the stormy audience with Cromwell that followed, the King ranted that his new bride was ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of’.

Even Cromwell’s attendant Thomas Wriothesley (nicknamed ‘Call-Me’ in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series) urged: ‘For God’s sake, devise for the relief of the King; for if he remain in this grief and trouble, we shall all one day smart for it.’

Faced with a royal master who clearly wanted rid of his new wife, a humiliated Cromwell was forced to admit that there was no way out. Henry would have to marry Anne, or face a major diplomatic incident and lose a much-needed ally.

Cromwell loses control

On 6 January 1540, the day appointed for the wedding, Henry snarled at Cromwell: ‘My lord if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm I would not do that I must do this day for no earthly thing.’ Cromwell sweetened the pill by promising to secure an annulment for his master as soon as the ceremony was over.

The morning after the wedding night, Cromwell went to see the King and find out ‘how he liked the queen.’ ‘My lord as you know I liked her before not well’, Henry snapped, ‘but now I like her much worse.’ He complained: ‘She is nothing fair, and have very evil smells about her’. He went on to claim that there had been certain ‘tokens’ to suggest that Anne was not a virgin.

Either Henry could not bring himself to consummate his new marriage, or he was unable to. As events spiralled out of Cromwell’s control, he could only suggest that the panicked Queen Anne make herself as pleasing to her new husband as possible.

Cromwell’s enemies were quick to seize the opportunity presented by their rival’s disgrace. The Duke of Norfolk soon caught the attention of the King with his attractive young niece, Catherine Howard, giving Henry even more incentive to rid himself of Anne.

Contrary to popular belief, the whole fiasco was not the cause of Cromwell’s undoing. Henry blamed Cromwell for his own declining popularity with the people of England, which had been prompted by his religious reforms. The previous year, he had beaten Cromwell in front of the court, ‘knocking him well about the pate [head]…as it were a dog.’ Henry had publicly forgiven him for pressing the match with Anne and even ennobled him with the earldom of Essex. But Cromwell’s mistake gave Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner the chance to persuade Henry that his faithful minister was plotting against him. The paranoid King took little convincing.

On 10 June 1540, Cromwell was suddenly arrested and taken to the Tower of London, where he was later charged with treason. But the King had not quite finished with him.

‘Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy’

Determined to escape his marriage, Henry demanded that Cromwell give evidence from his Tower prison that the union had not been consummated. On 30 June, just a day after he had been convicted by attainder, the obliging Cromwell rushed off a letter to the King in a last-ditch attempt for the King’s pardon. He was, in effect, writing for his life.

The extreme desperation with which Cromwell composed this letter is suggested by the numerous crossings out and redrafting. It ran to eight full pages. On 9 July, partly thanks to Cromwell’s testimony, the marriage was declared illegal based on Anne’s prior betrothal. But it was not enough to save him.

On the morning of 28 July 1540, Thomas Cromwell was led from his apartments in the Tower to the scaffold on Tower Hill. With three blows of the axe, he was beheaded. Later that day, Henry VIII married Catherine Howard, as if to prove how little he cared for the death of his ‘faithful servant’.

Tracy Borman

Chief Historian, Historic Royal Palaces

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 29 November 2024. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Thomas Cromwell's fateful match-making

The boys disappeared in 1483 during the Wars of the Roses, creating one of the biggest mysteries in British history. Then, nearly 200 years after they vanished, Charles II re-interred the two skeletons from the Tower in their names at Westminster Abbey.

The Discovery

Charles II’s reign witnessed some of the most famous chapters in the Tower of London’s long history. His was the last coronation to begin with a grand procession from the Tower to Westminster. The Crown Jewels went on display to the public for the first time during his reign, and in 1671 the dastardly Colonel Blood tried to steal them. Yet, perhaps most famous of all was the discovery of two skeletons, who were assumed to be the missing Princes in the Tower.

The skeletons were found by labourers when parts of the Tudor and Medieval Palace, to the south of the White Tower, were demolished. The Great Fire of 1666 had reminded the authorities that safe storage of gunpowder was of utmost priority, and the topsy-turvy nature of the Tower was being reorganised to better house this most flammable of materials.

While a historical plaque in the White Tower today asserts that the bones were discovered under a staircase inside the White Tower itself, the exact location of the discovery is still debated. Most experts suggest they were discovered outside the White Tower.

According to John Knight, Chief Surgeon to Charles II, the bones were found when ‘digging down the Stairs which led from the King’s Lodgings, to the chappel in the said Tower, about ten foot in the ground’. In likelihood this was to the south of the White Tower, used to access the Chapel of St John.

In 1866, Lieutenant-Governor of the Tower Lord De Ros reported that Charles II had ordered Sir Thomas Chichley, the Master General of Ordnance who oversaw the building works in 1674, to plant a mulberry tree on the spot where the ‘Princes’ were discovered. The tree, De Ros noted sadly, was ‘caused to rapid decay’ after a new staircase was added nearby in 1674.

The discovery of the bones near a staircase seemed to comply with Sir Thomas More’s The History of Richard III (1513-1518), which famously accused Richard III of murdering the Princes (his nephews). More recorded that the boys were buried inside the Tower ‘at the stair foot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones’. Of course, More was no eyewitness and arguably part of the Tudor propaganda machine. He was perhaps at best recounting a tradition present at court and in the Tower.

The ‘Princes’ Identified

John Knight recalled the bones were quickly identified as the Princes in the Tower. He noted ‘the Bones of two striplings [children] in (as it seemed) a wooden chest, which upon the survey were found proportionable to the ages of those two Brothers viz about thirteen and eleven years.’

Knight reported that the bones were much disturbed: ‘The younger skull was broken, probably by the worker’s tools, and the bones were found ‘as it seemed’ in a wooden chest.’

‘At first the bones were simply tossed aside,’ Knight continued, ‘However, they soon became identified as the missing Princes. Workers then sifted the rubbish heap to retrieve the bones.’

The ‘Princes’ Interred

Sir Thomas Chichley informed Charles II of the discovery. Knight recalled that: ‘upon the presumptions that these were the Bones of the said Princes, His Majesty King Charles II, was graciously pleased to command that the said Bones should be put into a Marble Urn, and deposited among the Reliques of the Royal Family in the Chapel of King Henry the Seventh, in Westminster Abbey.’

Preparations for the internment were put into action, and no expense was spared. On 18 February 1675 Sir Christopher Wren was issued with a warrant ordering him to provide the urn. Wren is considered by many to be Britain’s greatest architect – perhaps best known for designing St Paul’s Cathedral and re-modelling Hampton Court Palace.

After Wren’s designs, the monument was executed by Joshua Marshall, the King’s Master Mason. Marshall was an equally prestigious choice, executing such well-known sculptures as London’s Monument to the Great Fire of 1666 and the equestrian statue of Charles I at Charing Cross.

The urn was installed in the Henry VII Chapel in 1678.

Previous Discoveries

This was not the first time bones speculated to be the Princes had been discovered at the Tower. Reports suggest that the bones of a child had been found in a ‘high desolate turrett’ at the Tower, presumed to be one of the Princes, in 1623. Then in the early 1600s, two skeletons were reportedly discovered in a bricked-up room near the King’s Lodgings at the Tower.

Yet, neither of these discoveries seems to have been taken seriously by the crown. It seems unlikely they would not have been informed, and so we can speculate that they decided the discoveries were not worth their attention. So why was Charles II’s reaction so different?

The King’s Motives

Charles II’s exact motives for supporting the association of the bodies with the Princes in the Tower may never be known. Perhaps he hoped that his public commitment to his ancestors would be an appropriate demonstration of his fitness to rule. It seems likely that there was also something about the story of the Princes, and the idea of righting past wrongs to the monarchy that resonated with him. The deposition and murder of Edward V must have felt very tangible and personal to a king whose own father was deposed and executed just 25 years before.

For Charles II, the newly interred ‘Princes’ in Westminster Abbey provided a potent example of past wrongs corrected. Like the newly forged Crown Jewels at the Tower of London, they were powerful symbols of the restored monarchy. Just as Charles had returned to the Tower of London to process to his coronation in 1660, and (albeit temporarily) restored a centuries-old tradition; in 1678 he publicly interred two of his ‘ancestors’ in the traditional burial place of English kings. All of these provided powerful symbols of the past and future of the monarchy.

The Mystery Endures

The identity of the children discovered at the Tower of London in 1674 may never be known. Similarly, the fate of the Princes in the Tower may forever lie beyond our understanding. However, this should not deter us from asking questions and embarking on new research. Research is a journey we learn from even if we don’t arrive at our anticipated destination.

What seems likely is that the debate surrounding these mysteries will endure for centuries to come. While we strive to be scientific and definitive, those goals are impossible to achieve. Even as new evidence emerges, old records are reassessed, and research techniques are developed, it seems unlikely consensus will ever be reached. As always, the work of the historian is never truly done.

Charles Farris, Public Historian for the History of the Monarchy
Historic Royal Palaces

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 17 July 2024. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Charles II and the Discovery of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ in 1674

Postdoctoral Researcher Rory MacLellan explains how the Templars came to be prisoners of the medieval Tower of London.

Who were the Knights Templar?

The Knights Templar were an order of soldier-monks who fought in the crusades and are today the subject of countless conspiracy theories.

The Templars arose in the aftermath of the First Crusade (1096-99), which saw four new Crusader States established in Palestine and Syria, states that were desperately short of manpower.

Hugh de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer, two knights from northern France, banded together with several other knights to help defend pilgrims visiting the region’s many pilgrimage sites. They would combine the religious vows of a monk with the military role of a knight.

Recognised by the Pope in 1129, the Order of the Temple of Solomon of Jerusalem, better known as the Knights Templar, quickly grew, gaining support across Europe and receiving lands and estates to fund their campaigns in the East.

By the end of the 12th century, the brethren had holdings throughout Western and Central Europe and had begun to become important landlords and political figures in their respective kingdoms. When the Crusader States finally fell in 1291, the order’s headquarters moved to Cyprus, but whatever chance the Templars had at recovery was cut short.

Arrested on charges of heresy

On Friday 13 October 1307, Philip IV of France had all of the Knights Templars within his kingdom arrested in dawn raids. The order was accused of 127 heresies, ranging from spitting on the cross to illegally granting confession and absolution.

Historians do not think that the Templars were guilty, and Philip was probably more interested in acquiring the order’s wealth.

Pope Clement V soon took over the trials and the order’s arrest elsewhere in Europe followed. Edward II initially disbelieved the charges but his need to keep the support of the Pope and Philip IV, whose daughter he was engaged to marry, forced him to go along with these attacks upon the order.

In December, Edward II ordered the arrest of the Templars in Britain and Ireland; those in England were seized on 9-11 January 1308.

Transferred to the Tower

The captured Templars were initially held at local royal castles throughout the country. Those arrested in Kent, for example, were held at Canterbury Castle.

On 27 November 1308, Edward ordered the sheriffs of London and Middlesex to have all Templars in their jurisdiction transferred to the Tower.

The Templars were not put on trial until October 1309, and some had evaded arrest. On 14 September 1309, Edward II ordered his sheriffs to seize any remaining Templars, with those found in southern England to be brought to the Tower of London. He also wrote to the Constable of the Tower ordering him to hold the Templars safely and securely.

Forty-eight Templars were eventually put on trial in London, including William de la More, grand commander of the Templars in England, and Himbert Blanc, grand commander of Auvergne in France, who may have been in England to promote a new crusade.

We don’t know where exactly in the Tower the Templars were held, but records from the mass imprisonment of Jews at the Tower in the late 1270s show that prisoners could be held all over the site, including in smaller towers on the inner curtain wall or even in the stables or the elephant-house.

The Tower was already home to many Scottish and Welsh prisoners in 1308, including knights and minor nobles. With the more obvious places likely already taken, some Templars may have been imprisoned in the Tower’s stables and cellars, as Jews had been 30 years earlier.

In August and October 1310, Edward tried to move the Templars from the Tower to the gates of London, but the sheriffs of London and Middlesex said that the gates were not royal property. They belonged to the city and so could not be used as a royal prison. The Templars remained at the Tower.

Their incarceration was probably harsh. Several of the brethren were elderly and died in prison. From March 1310, the Templars held at the Tower and elsewhere were imprisoned separately, something the inquisitors interrogating them had requested, probably to prevent them from coordinating their testimony. Torture was eventually used towards the end of the trials, from June 1311, but only on the Templars interrogated in London. Those in York, Ireland, and Scotland were spared.

In the end, most of the brethren agreed to ‘confess’ to heresy and to abjure, that is, to renounce the heresies that they were accused of, promising to be true Catholics in future. A detailed account survives of one such abjuration.

On 13 July 1311, five elderly Templars, Richard Peitevin, Henry of la Volee, William of Welles, Robert of the Wolde, and William of Chesterton, were too weak to travel from the Tower to St Paul’s Cathedral to abjure. Instead, the bishops of London, Chichester, and Winchester went to All Hallows by the Tower, the small church that still stands outside the Tower today, to receive their abjuration.

The brethren were brought in, escorted by the Constable of the Tower’s men. Unable to stand due to their age, they ‘sought with many tears’ to confess to the charges of heresy and abjure. After giving their ‘confessions’ in private, the five Templars swore public oaths in English and French rejecting their heresies and were then absolved by the bishop of Chichester.

The aftermath

In 1312, the Council of Vienne ruled that the order had to be dissolved. William de la More, who refused to make a confession, was still held at the Tower. He died there on 20 December 1312.

Himbert Blanc was to be transferred to the archbishop of Canterbury in April 1313 to be retried, but he later disappears from the record.

In March 1314, Jacques de Molay, grandmaster of the Templars, who had taken back his confession, was burnt at the stake in Paris.

The Templar leadership was now gone, and its surviving members were sent to live out the rest of their lives in monasteries across Europe. As an organisation, the order of the Temple was over, but this dramatic end ensured that the fame of the Templars would last for centuries.

Rory MacLellan
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Historic Royal Palaces

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 12 August 2021. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Templars at the Tower

Suggested further reading

Helen J. Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308-1311 (Stroud, 2009)

Mary instantly sided with her mother, and avoided any accusations of disobedience to the King by placing the blame on the ‘concubine’, Anne Boleyn. Here, Chief Historian Tracy Borman explores the dramatic battle of wills between Mary and her tyrannical father.

By 1531, Mary was gradually slipping from her father’s favour. But she clung doggedly to the belief that her mother’s position was unassailable. She refused to be cowed, but this shocking turn of events had a profound impact on her health. Beset with melancholy and depression, she also suffered increasing bouts of nausea. On one occasion, she was unable to keep any food down for three weeks, causing panic among her attendants.

In the spring of 1531, when Mary was recovering from one of her frequent stomach upsets, she wrote to her father, saying that nothing would speed her recovery more than to visit him at Greenwich. Her request was peremptorily refused, as Chapuys believed: ‘to gratify the lady [Anne]’. Henry banned Mary from visiting or writing to her mother; the two women were forced to be strangers.

Having spent most of her youth as the King’s cherished only child and heir, this sudden change must have been devastating for Mary. But the crisis also strengthened certain aspects of her character and beliefs. As a show of support for her sainted mother, she identified herself strongly with the Spanish cause, becoming closely allied with Katherine’s foremost supporter Chapuys and his Imperial master, Charles V. She also embraced her mother’s Roman Catholic faith even more fervently than before.

Every bit as unyielding as her mother, when a message arrived to say that the King ordered that Mary should no longer use the title of princess, she refused to accept it because it was not delivered by a ‘person of honour’. She maintained that ‘she was the King’s true and lawful daughter and heir’, to which Henry angrily accused her of forgetting her duty as his daughter.

To make matters worse, when the new Queen Anne heard that Mary had stubbornly refused to pay her daughter Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth I) due reverence as princess, Anne ordered her aunt Lady Shelton to box her ears ‘as the cursed bastard she was’. Undaunted, Mary insisted she ‘knew no other Princess in England except herself’.

In 1536, Katherine of Aragon died, and Anne Boleyn was executed at the Tower of London. But Mary’s luck was changing; her father soon married Jane Seymour, who was much more sympathetic to the Catholic cause and Mary’s situation.

But if Mary thought she would now be automatically restored to her place in the succession and given the title of princess, she was mistaken. Her father persisted in trying to force her to accept her illegitimate status.

At first, Mary refused to give in, even in the face of pressure from Thomas Cromwell, the King’s Chief Minister, and the Dukes of Norfolk and Sussex. The latter two men told her, ‘if she was their daughter, they would beat her and knock her head so violently against the wall that they would make it as soft as baked apples’.

In June 1536, Mary reluctantly gave in. She wrote to Cromwell acknowledging that her parents’ marriage had been invalid and her father was the supreme head of the church.

Along with her sister Elizabeth, Mary was restored to the succession during Henry’s marriage to Katherine Parr, and reconciled with her father. But she never forgot the slight against her mother – when she became Queen Mary I in 1553, she ensured that her very first Parliament passed an act that validated her parents’ marriage.

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 22 August 2025. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Princess Mary, Henry VIII and Tudor history’s greatest battle of wills

But the Tower would also be where his enemies enacted their revenge – eventually ending with his head on the execution block on Tower Hill.

From a Putney youth to ‘the King’s ear and mind’

The son of a blacksmith from Putney, Thomas Cromwell enjoyed a meteoric rise in Henry VIII’s service. When his first prominent patron, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey fell from grace in 1529, Cromwell was one of precious few attendants who remained loyal to him. In trying to persuade the King to pardon Wolsey, Cromwell came to Henry’s attention himself.

Thanks to his brilliant mind and enormous capacity for hard work, by the end of 1530, Cromwell had been appointed to the privy council. Foreign ambassadors at Henry’s court were quick to report the prominence of this new kid on the block. Eustace Chapuys told his master Charles V that Cromwell ‘manages all his [Henry’s] affairs’ and added in another dispatch that the minister ‘now enjoys most credit with the King.’

‘Trusty and well-beloved master of our jewel house’

On 14 April 1532, Cromwell was made Master of the Jewels. As well as being his first office, this deceptively minor appointment gave him access to the royal coffers and allowed him to administer government finance from the funds brought under his control. John Strype observed that this appointment signalled that Cromwell had ‘grown in great favour with the King.’

Following his appointment, Cromwell became a frequent visitor to the Tower. He would have heard the roars of the lions and other exotic beasts in the royal menagerie as he passed through the entrance gate, the hammering of the coin makers in the Royal Mint that stood close by, and of the King’s armourers as they crafted bows, arrows, pikes and other weapons in the artillery.

Cromwell wasted no time in ordering a range of improvements to this ancient fortress – notably the rebuilding of the jewel houses on the south side of the White Tower, and the building of the Lieutenant’s Lodgings (now known as the King’s House), an elegant timber-framed building overlooking the scaffold site.

A new portrait

To mark his new appointment, Cromwell commissioned the celebrated court painter Hans Holbein to paint his portrait. The painting, which now hangs in the Frick Gallery in New York, shows Cromwell in his study with a pile of papers in front of him. The document on top of the pile is inscribed: ‘To Master Cromwell, trusty and well-beloved master of our jewel house.’

Cromwell was quick to capitalise upon his new role as a means of securing even more regular contact with his sovereign. In September 1532, he wrote to inform Henry of progress in making the new jewel-encrusted collar that the King had designed.

The King’s right-hand man is imprisoned in the Tower

Alongside his official duties in the Jewel House, Cromwell was the King’s chief enforcer. As such, he visited various high-profile prisoners in the Tower, most notably Thomas More and Anne Boleyn. He had played a pivotal role in bringing down both, in 1535 and 1536 respectively.

Following his own spectacular fall from grace in June 1540 (the arrest scene for Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light was filmed at Hampton Court Palace) Cromwell entered the fortress as a prisoner.

As he arrived by barge, Cromwell might just have caught a glimpse of the scaffold on Tower Hill, the site of hundreds of executions during Henry’s reign. Public executions were the football matches of their day. Thousands of eager Londoners would surge onto the hill, hoping to catch a glimpse of the grisly spectacle. Some would even cling to the masts of ships on the Thames to get a better view.

Where was Thomas Cromwell imprisoned in the Tower of London?

There is no record of where Cromwell was held as a prisoner in the Tower of London. However, the commonly held view is that he was placed in the Queen’s Apartments on the south lawn, in the shadow of the White Tower. The apartments were built for Henry VIII’s first queen, Katherine of Aragon and then refurbished in 1533 for his second, Anne Boleyn; Cromwell himself had arranged their refurbishment in 1532-3 on the King’s orders. He had visited Anne during her imprisonment less than three years later, in 1536.

The Queen’s Apartments were comfortable and well-appointed, and comprised a presence chamber, closet (which Anne had used as a private oratory), dining chamber and a bedchamber with a privy. If the furnishings were starting to show signs of neglect, then they at least offered a good deal more comfort than most prisoners in the Tower could expect.

Henry’s ‘most faithful servant’ executed on Tower Hill

Cromwell’s fate was sealed by a bill of attainder, passed by Parliament on 29 June 1540. This terrifying instrument of royal jurisdiction allowed for noblemen to be stripped of their lands and their lives without recourse to the normal processes of the law.

Most attainders were used to supplement a court’s decision, but in 1537 Cromwell had arranged for Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, to be convicted and executed on attainder alone. This denied her the opportunity to put her case in court, and she was executed on Tower Hill, metres from where Cromwell was now held as prisoner. In an ironic (and chilling) twist of fate, Cromwell’s doom was to be secured by his own scheme.

From his prison, Cromwell wrote a series of increasingly desperate letters to his sovereign, begging him to spare his life. The last of these ended with a plaintive postscript: ‘Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy.’ The King asked for it to be read to him three times. It looked like he was softening towards his former minister.

But the royal pardon never came.

Thomas Cromwell was executed on Tower Hill on the morning of 28 July 1540. After the axe fell, his head was displayed on London Bridge alongside those of other convicted traitors. Cromwell’s remains were buried in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula inside the Tower of London, alongside those of Anne Boleyn, Thomas More and the other victims of Henry VIII’s increasingly brutal regime.

Tracy Borman, Chief Historian, Historic Royal Palaces

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 6 December 2024. Read the original post and more from our experts here: Triumph and tragedy: Thomas Cromwell's legacy at the Tower of London

Queen Elizabeth I beat considerable odds and ruled England for 44 years, leaving behind a legacy that would have her named as one of England’s greatest monarchs for centuries to come. Yet, as the sun set on the Elizabethan ‘Golden Age’, it also set on the Tudor dynasty.

Elizabeth was the last Tudor monarch, dying as she lived – single and without an heir. Her successor, James VI of Scotland, was proclaimed King James I of England by the Queen’s councillors a matter of hours after her death.

Like Elizabeth, James was a direct descendant of Henry VII. James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots — whose own claim to the English throne ended with her execution in 1587 — was Elizabeth’s cousin. She and James were therefore the Queen’s closest living relatives, but England and Scotland were longstanding enemies. Therefore, a Scottish claimant to the English crown would always be controversial.

Before her death, Elizabeth never outrightly named her successor, possibly out of fear of losing vital support. During the 1590s, there was a growing line of potential heirs, some, perhaps not surprisingly, favoured even above James VI himself.

The Queen’s determination not to name her successor created huge concern within the Elizabethan government. The succession crisis consumed the state, but the issue also spilled into the conversations of the populace. It became a topic of discussion across the social levels.

In about 1594, a book attributed to the exiled Jesuit priest Robert Persons was published that ignited the debate. In A conference about the next succession to the crowne of Ingland, Persons investigated and weighed up the claims of 16 potential heirs to Elizabeth’s crown. James was included within the long list of potential successors, but his claim was certainly not presented as the most legitimate or the most appealing.

The Puritans’ contenders

Robert Persons also focused on the internal disunity between Puritans and Protestants and the favoured contenders on both sides. The most notable choices for these religious factions were James VI, Lady Arabella Stuart, Edward Seymour Lord Beauchamp, and Henry Hastings third Earl of Huntingdon.

Persons’ favoured choice was not James, the eventual king, but he presented a neck-and-neck grapple between Edward Seymour and Henry Hastings. Both were Protestants, both were English, both had royal blood, and both had been ostracised by Elizabeth because of their claim.

An unlikely favourite: the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain

The religious divide that had gripped England throughout Elizabeth’s reign had a significant impact on the proposed candidates for the throne, splitting most of the candidates into the groups of Catholics, Protestants and Puritans. Once Mary Queen of Scots had been executed, many Catholics preferred a Spanish heir.

In ‘A conference about the next succession to the crowne of Ingland’, Robert Persons implies that his favoured candidate was of the Spanish line, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain. Despite her Catholicism, her gender, the anti-Spanish feeling after the Armada, and his supposed impartiality, Persons promotes Isabella’s claim above all others. But why?

Persons presented Isabella as the most legitimate heir to the English throne because of her direct Lancastrian heritage dating back to the 14th century. The Wars of the Roses had concluded with the supposed unification of the warring houses of Lancaster and York through the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.

But a Lancastrian heir was still presented as a superior claimant at the close of the next century. Perhaps old wounds had not yet fully healed, or perhaps it was a convenient way to promote the claim of a Catholic successor.

Edward Seymour and the Grey line

Edward Seymour’s claim came through his mother, Katherine Grey, sister of the once Queen, Lady Jane Grey. Henry VIII and Edward VI’s wills had placed the Grey line above that of James’ Stuart line, meaning that Katherine Grey herself had a legitimate and strong claim on Elizabeth’s throne.

As a result, Katherine became a political hot potato. Early into Elizabeth’s reign, she had secretly married Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, and became pregnant. This created a huge scandal and a threat to Elizabeth; Katherine and her offspring could become figureheads for future rebellions.

Elizabeth imprisoned Katherine and her husband in the Tower of London. The marriage was annulled, and their two sons were declared illegitimate. Katherine spent the remainder of her days under house arrest until her death in 1568.

Her marriage was never validated by the Queen, and her sons Edward and Thomas were never legitimised. However, even in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, Katherine’s son Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp was still seen by some as the rightful heir to the throne, and many argued for his case.

Henry Hastings and the Plantagenet line

Henry Hastings was also viewed as a threat by Elizabeth. Hastings’ parents, Catherine Pole and Francis Hastings, were both descendants of the Plantagenet line, the dynasty usurped by the Tudors. This meant that even though Hastings was not a close relative to Elizabeth, he did have royal blood and an ancestry that included centuries of English monarchs.

Hastings was first presented as a serious claimant to the throne by the Protestants during the early succession crisis of Elizabeth’s reign. In 1562 Elizabeth fell seriously ill with smallpox; so ill in fact that her council believed she would not survive. As the Queen had failed to name her successor, Hastings was put forward as a potential heir to the crown in opposition to the Catholic claimant Mary Queen of Scots.

When she regained consciousness, Elizabeth discovered the discussions concerning her death and heir, and her distrust of Hastings was sparked. Despite his assurance of his loyalty, Elizabeth shunned him and in all but name banished him from court.

Although he was able to gain back some trust, his political career was certainly diminished and he remained a serious, and perhaps the favourite, contender for the throne throughout his life.

In the end, Hastings died childless a year after the publication of Persons’ book, removing him and his line from the race.

The Queen’s choice?

As Elizabeth I lay dying at Richmond Palace, the decision had finally been made on who should succeed her, and the sun rose on the new Stuart dynasty on the English throne.

Elizabeth chose James Stuart as her successor because of his blood and religion, but was also persuaded by her personal advisors that James was the best choice. However, she ensured that the identity of her heir was unknown until her mortality gave her no other option than to secure the line of succession.

Elizabeth spent much of her reign holding off her council from making her choose an heir and distancing potential successors both emotionally and physically. So spare a thought for those who Elizabeth chose to keep politically and socially distanced throughout her life.

Lauren Shaw, PhD Researcher, University of Roehampton, Historic Royal Palaces and The National Archives

Watch: Who was next in line to the Tudor throne?

The story goes that Elizabeth I finally named an heir on her deathbed – James VI of Scotland. But the sources aren’t always reliable.

In this video, Tracy Borman rates the chances of other candidates who could have become king or queen after Elizabeth’s death.

Video transcript

Watch a transcript of this video on YouTube. A link to the transcript can be found in the description.

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 11 April 2025. Read the original post and more from our experts here: The death and succession of Elizabeth I: claimants to the Tudor crown

Apothecary bills and other records in Elizabeth of York’s personal accounts suggest that her seventh and last pregnancy was a difficult one. In the middle of December 1502, even though she was still seven weeks from giving birth, she ordered the girdle of Our Lady of Westminster, a religious token believed to keep mother and baby safe during labour.

The Queen travels to the Tower of London

In January 1503, after her daughter Margaret’s proxy wedding to James IV of Scotland, the Queen travelled to the Tower of London so that she could spend Candlemas with her husband before entering her confinement – a month-long period of seclusion before the birth.

Upon reaching the Tower, Elizabeth attended a ceremonial mass in the Chapel of St John the Evangelist, after which wine and sweetmeats were served. Then, accompanied by an entourage of ladies headed by her mother-in-law Lady Margaret Beaufort, she entered the chambers that had been appointed for her in the medieval Queen’s Lodgings.

A difficult birth

However, either the royal physicians had miscalculated the date of conception or the baby was premature because just a few days later, on 2 February 1503, the Queen was delivered ‘suddenly’ of a girl. The baby was named Katherine, perhaps as a compliment to Katherine of Aragon, the young widow of Elizabeth’s son Prince Arthur.

Tragically, neither Elizabeth or her infant daughter Katherine thrived after the birth. A messenger was dispatched to Kent to find a doctor named ‘Aylsworth’ or ‘Hallysworth’.

The death of a Queen and a Princess

The Queen’s symptoms are not clear, but it is possible that she had succumbed to a post-partum infection such as puerperal fever, or that she was suffering the consequences of iron-deficiency anaemia. The more babies a woman bore, the greater the risk of sickness or death.

The infant princess also began to wane, and on 10 February she died. Elizabeth followed her to the grave the following day – her 37th birthday.

Henry VII was prostrate with grief. According to one account, he ‘privily departed to a solitary place and would no man should resort unto him’. When he finally reemerged several weeks later, his hair had turned white and his face was marked with the lines of grief.

‘Never since the death of my dearest mother…’

An illuminated manuscript once belonging to Henry VII and now in the National Library of Wales shows the King in mourning robes with a doleful expression on his face.

On the left of the picture, in their late mother’s bedchamber, Elizabeth’s daughters Mary and Margaret are seated on the floor wearing black veils. Elizabeth’s ‘loving son’, the 11-year-old Prince Henry, is weeping onto the sheets of his mother’s empty bed.

The manuscript is believed to have been in Henry’s own library when he became Henry VIII.

The pain of the young Henry’s loss was still raw four years later when, aged 18 and now King of England, he wrote to Erasmus, lamenting the death of Philip ‘the Handsome’, King of Castile: ‘Never, since the death of my dearest mother, hath there come to me more hateful intelligence,’ he confided. He went on to upbraid the scholar for telling him about Philip’s death ‘because it seemed to tear open again the wound to which time had brought insensibility’.

Burying a Queen: Elizabeth of York’s funeral

Elizabeth’s baby daughter Katherine was quietly interred next to her two siblings, Elizabeth and Edmund, in the vault at Westminster Abbey. There was no stinting on the pomp and pageantry surrounding the late Queen’s burial, however, which cost a staggering £2,800 (more than £1.8 million today).

Elizabeth was interred in the Lady Chapel, which her husband had commissioned just a month before her death. He was buried next to her upon his own death six years later. The Italian Renaissance sculptor, Pietro Torrigiano, crafted beautiful bronze effigies of husband and wife for their tomb.

Thomas More penned a ‘Rueful Lamentation’, which was painted on a board and hung next to her tomb. Written as a farewell address from Elizabeth to her grieving family, it reserved the most tender words for ‘mine own dear spouse, my worthy lord’, urging him:

‘Erst were you father, and now must you supply
The mother’s part also, for lo now here I lie.’

Tracy Borman
Chief Historian, Historic Royal Palaces

This post was originally published on the Historic Royal Palaces website on 5 July 2024. Read the original post and more from our experts here: The Death of Elizabeth of York at the Tower of London