Notes

List of Abbreviations

AGS: Archivo General de Simancas, Spain

BL: British Library

CSP Spain: Calendar of State Papers, Spain, ed. G. A. Bergenroth et al. (London, 1862–1954), available at British History Online

CSP Venice: Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, ed. Rawdon Brown et al. (London, 1864–1947), available at British History Online

Hall: Hall’s Chronicle; containing the History of England, during the Reign of Henry the Fourth, and the succeeding monarchs, to the end of the reign of Henry the Eighth, in which are particularly described the manners and customs of those periods, ed. Henry Ellis (London, 1809)

HMC Rutland: The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland, G.C.B., preserved at Belvoir Castle, HMC Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part 4 (London, 1888)

Lisle Letters: The Lisle Letters, ed. M. St Clare Byrne, 6 vols (Chicago, 1981)

LP: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer et al. (London, 1862–1932)

LRO: Lincoln Record Office

NRO: Norfolk Record Office

ODNB: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Statutes of the Realm: The Statutes of the Realm, ed. T. E. Tomlins and W. E. Taunton, 9 vols (London, 1810–25), III

TNA: The National Archives, Kew

Preface

1. 1 AGS, Estado, 347, no. 68 (Letter of Marquis of Cañete, viceroy of Navarre, to royal secretary Juan Vazquez. Pamplona, June 5th, 1536). The original Spanish is as follows: ‘[The empress Isabel] me hizo merced con las nuevas de Inglaterra, que aunque acá se habían dicho no tan particularmente, como yo fui hijo de quien fue aya de la reina doña Catalina, no puede suceder caso que pueda ser castigo para aquél rey que no huelgue de ello.’ My thanks to José Escribano-Paez for the reference, and to Rocío Martínez López for help with translation.
2. 2 CSP Spain I, 288. ‘The son of Francisca de Silva’ is also on this list as chief cupbearer, so it’s possible that Mendoza himself had come to England, though more likely one of his brothers or surely he’d have mentioned that here.
3. 3 For more on this see Barbara Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550 (Oxford, 2002).
4. 4 As the Countesses of Oxford and Worcester did for Anne Boleyn at her coronation in 1533 (BL Harley MS 41, fol. 10). Worcester was Elizabeth Browne; Oxford was most like Anne Howard.
5. 5 John Bellamy, The Tudor Law of Treason (London, 1979), pp. 12, 15, 22.
6. 6 There have been article-length studies of groups or individual ladies-in-waiting, such as Harris, English Aristocratic Women, pp. 210–40, or Olwen Hufton, ‘Reflections on the Role of Women in the Early Modern Court’, Court Historian 5 (2000), 1–13, or Nicola Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics: The Howard Women, 1485–1558 (Oxford, 2018), pp. 92–115. Ladies-in-waiting are garnering increasing attention; see, for example, Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben, eds, The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2013).
7. 7 See Charlotte Merton, ‘The Women Who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge (1990).
8. 8 Tim Stretton and Krista Kesselring, eds, Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the Common Law World (Montreal, 2013).
9. 9 See Nadine Akkerman, Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2018), pp. 23–5.

Chapter 1: Brittle Fortune

1. 1 The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, pp. 45–7.
2. 2 Barbara Harris, ‘Vaux [married names Guildford and Poyntz], Lady Jane’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000369099 (accessed July 2023).
3. 3 Theresa Earenfight, Catherine of Aragon (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2021), pp. 55–8, 73–4.
4. 4 Jane’s mother was Katherine Peniston. See A. R. Myers, Crown Household and Parliament in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1985), pp. 135–210, and A. D. K. Hawkyard, ‘Vaux, Sir Nicholas (c.1460–1523), of Great Harrowden, Northants.’, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509–1558 https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/vaux-sir-nicholas-1460-1523#footnote4_6dlr251 (accessed July 2023).
5. 5 On life for women in Queen Isabella’s court see Álvaro Fernández de Córdova Miralles, La Corte de Isabel I (Madrid, 2002), pp. 160–67. See also Elizabeth Teresa Howe, Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Aldershot, 2008).
6. 6 María’s parents are usually erroneously given as Martín de Salinas and Josefa González de Salas, or simply listed as unknown. See, for instance, Retha Warnicke,‘Willoughby [née de Salinas], Maria, Lady Willoughby de Eresby’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68049 (accessed July 2023) and more recently Theresa Earenfight, ‘Raising Infanta Catalina de Aragon to be Catherine, Queen of England’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46:1 (2016), 417–43, and ‘A Precarious Household: Catherine of Aragon in England, 1501–1504’, in idem., ed., Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2018), pp. 338–56.
7. 7 See forthcoming article by Nicola Clark and Vanessa Cruz de Medina.
8. 8 CSP Spain I, 288.
9. 9 The Receyt, p. 4.
10. 10 Ibid., pp. 5–8.
11. 11 Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England (London, 2008), pp, 16–23.
12. 12 The Receyt, pp. 9–11.
13. 13 Ibid., pp. 32–3.
14. 14 Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in English Archives (London, 2008), pp. 275–6.
15. 15 CSP Spain I, 288.
16. 16 Earenfight, Catherine of Aragon, p. 67.
17. 17 The Receyt, pp. 39–44.
18. 18 College of Arms MS M8, fols 38v–39; see Lauren Johnson, Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI (London, 2019), pp. 242–3.
19. 19 TNA SP1/65, fols 18v–19r (LP V, 6 (9)).
20. 20 According to testimony later given by his attendants: TNA SP1/65, fol. 22v (LP V, 6 (9)).
21. 21 Crónica del rey Enrico Octavo de Inglaterra, Vol. 4, ed. Mariano Roca de Togores Molíns (Madrid, 1874), pp. 336–7.
22. 22 TNA SP1/65, fols 18v–19r (LP V, 6 (9)).
23. 23 CSP Spain, Supplement to I and II, no. 1.
24. 24 CSP Spain I, 319.
25. 25 The Receyt, p. 91. For more on the speculative theories around Arthur’s illness and death see Sean Cunningham, Prince Arthur: The Tudor King Who Never Was (Stroud, 2016), pp. 167–78.
26. 26 ‘Item to John Cope of London Taillour for the lynyng and covering of a lyttur of blake veluet with blake cloth for the quene wherein the princes was brought from Ludlowe to London frynged aboute with blake valance and the twoo hed peces of the same bounden aboute with blake Rebyn and frynged abowte with blake valance v s’ in Elizabeth of York’s privy purse account for 1502–3, TNA E36/210, fol. 94.
27. 27 For detailed discussion of the negotiations see Patrick Williams, Katharine of Aragon (Stroud, 2013), Chapter 7.
28. 28 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 306.
29. 29 By June 1502 Henry VII was paying a monthly sum for the maintenance of Catherine’s household, initially slightly variable, then set at £83 6s 8d until July 1503, when it was raised to £100. The first clear monthly payment is for June 1502 at 100 marks (TNA E101/415/3, fol. 98v). For July, August, September and October 1502 the account specifies 125 marks per month, or £333 6s 8d (ibid., fol. 101r); for November 1502 it is set at £83 6s 8d (BL Add. MS 59899, fol. 3r) and does not change again until July 1503 when there is another lump payment for July, August and September 1503 of £300, i.e. £100 per month (ibid., fol. 27v). Elizabeth of York’s privy purse account for 1502–3 documents receipt of £3585 19s 10d ob (TNA E36/210, fol. 17).
30. 30 CSP Spain I, 394.
31. 31 Ibid., 400.
32. 32 https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/15442/juan-manuel (accessed July 2023).
33. 33 CSP Spain I, 439.
34. 34 Ibid., 440.
35. 35 Ibid.
36. 36 Ibid., 431.
37. 37 Ibid., 448.
38. 38 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 314.
39. 39 The last monthly payment of £100 for Catherine’s household was made in December 1505. After that date the king’s payment books show occasional payments to specific people in her retinue, such as her confessor and the man in charge of her wardrobe, and then in August 1506 he paid the board wages of ‘diverse of my Lady Princess’s servants’ at 51s. This arrangement continued, with him paying for their lodging usually several months at a time, in arrears. TNA E36/214, fols 9v, 24r, 32v, 34v, 39r, 47v, 66v.
40. 40 CSP Spain I, 427, 459.
41. 41 AGS, CSR leg. 9, fol. 288 and leg. 11, fols 302–18. Currently in preparation for publication by Nicola Clark and Vanessa de Cruz Medina. With thanks to Paula Martínez Hernández for so kindly sharing her images, and to José Escribano Páez and Vanessa de Cruz Medina for help with transcription and translation.
42. 42 See Martínez Hernández, El Tesorero Vitoriano Ochoa de Landa: Las cuentas de la casa de Juana I de Castilla (1506–1531) (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2020).
43. 43 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 306.
44. 44 CSP Spain I, 444, 446. These six women were most likely María de Salinas, María de Salazar, Francisca de Cáceres, Catalina Fortes, Inés de Vanegas and María de Guevara.
45. 45 CSP Spain I, 532. It isn’t wholly clear which of the previous six women had left by this point. María de Rojas did indeed depart in 1506, but was probably of higher status and not a maid of honour. It may have been María de Salazar, as she was not listed at the coronation in 1509. The chamber account of Henry VII for January 1506 records a payment of 10s for alms for ‘the Spanisshe Lady late Decessed’, so it is also possible that one of Catherine’s maids passed away while in England. TNA E36/214, fol. 16r.
46. 46 CSP Spain I, 448.
47. 47 Simon Thurley, Houses of Power: The Places That Shaped the Tudor World (London, 2017), pp. 47–53.
48. 48 Earenfight, Catherine of Aragon, p. 79.
49. 49 CSP Spain I, 513.
50. 50 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fols 306, 317.
51. 51 Ibid., fol. 308.
52. 52 Ibid., fol. 302.
53. 53 Ibid., fol. 306.
54. 54 Ibid., fol. 314.
55. 55 J. Froude, ed., Life and Letters of Erasmus (London, 1906), p. 49.
56. 56 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 315.
57. 57 Ibid., fol. 318.
58. 58 Ibid., fol. 306.
59. 59 CSP Spain I, 413.
60. 60 Ibid., 439.
61. 61 Her return is often placed earlier, in 1504 or 1505, but she was given £20 ‘in reward’ by Henry VII on 24 April 1506, which shows that she was still in England at that time, and perhaps suggests that that is when she departed. TNA E36/214, fol. 28v.
62. 62 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 302. The Gaona family had a business exporting wool to northern Europe, but they also lent money to the Spanish monarchs, which is probably how María’s family knew them. See Javier Goicolea Julián, ‘Mercaderes y hombres de negocio: el poder del dinero en el mundo urbano riojano de fines de la Edad Media e inicios de la Edad Moderna’, Hispania: Revista española de historia 67, no. 227 (2007), 947–92.
63. 63 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 302.
64. 64 Ibid., fol. 306.
65. 65 Ibid.
66. 66 Ibid., fol. 307.
67. 67 CSP Spain I, 529.
68. 68 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 314.

Chapter 2: So Much Loyalty

1. 1 Raúl González Arévalo, ‘Francesco Grimaldi, un mercader-banquero genovés entre Granada, la corte e Inglaterra (siglos xv–xvi)’, En la Espana Medieval 39 (2016), 97–126.
2. 2 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 310.
3. 3 Ibid.
4. 4 Ibid., fol. 315.
5. 5 Ibid., fol. 310.
6. 6 Ibid.
7. 7 Ibid.
8. 8 Correspondencia de Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, ed. the Duke of Berwick and Alba (Madrid, 1907), p. 533.
9. 9 Williams, Kindle edn. loc. 3160.
10. 10 Real Academia de Historia 9/317, fols 86r–87r. My thanks to Rafael M. Girón Pascual for this reference and transcription.
11. 11 Correspondencia, pp. 533–40.
12. 12 Ibid., p. 536.
13. 13 Ibid., pp. 536–7.
14. 14 CSP Spain, Supplement to I and II, no. 3.
15. 15 Arévalo, p. 114.
16. 16 The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (Gloucester, 1983), p. 340.
17. 17 Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 12–38.
18. 18 TNA E36/315, fols 18, 20.
19. 19 Of the twenty-nine women on the list of ‘the Queen’s chamber’ for coronation livery (TNA LC9/50, fols 204r–204v) – discounting the five countesses, who were more usually in ‘extraordinary’ service – four had come from first Elizabeth of York’s and then Princess Mary’s households (Lady Anne Percy, Lady Eleanor Verney, Mrs Denys and Mrs Weston); another six straight from Elizabeth of York’s (Lady Elizabeth Stafford, Lady Margaret Bryan, Lady Darell, Lady Peche, Mrs Butler and Mrs Brews); one from Princess Mary’s alone (Mrs Jerningham); two from Margaret Beaufort’s (Mrs Clifford and Mrs ‘Stannap’ or Stanhope); and four were already with Catherine of Aragon or, like Margaret Pole, had previously served her in Ludlow (María de Guevara, Inés de Vanegas, Catalina Fortes and Lady Margaret Pole).
20. 20 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 306.
21. 21 LP 1, 127.
22. 22 CSP Spain II, 20. In 1512 Mountjoy became Catherine’s chamberlain, which meant both he and likely his wife returned to live at court. Between 1509 and 1512, however, Mountjoy travelled extensively on the continent. We don’t know whether he took his wife with him, but there are no references to her at court during these years and she must have died before February 1515, when Mountjoy remarried.
23. 23 CSP Spain II, 43.
24. 24 There are occasional references to other Spanish women as ‘wife of’ various male Spanish household officers, but it’s not clear whether they were in formal service as ladies-in-waiting and many are not identifiable.
25. 25 Seen most clearly in the wage list from Elizabeth of York’s privy purse account of 1502–3: TNA E36/310, fol. 91.
26. 26 As shown in the list made for the funeral of Henry VII in 1509: TNA LC2/1, fol. 95v.
27. 27 TNA E101/418/6, fols 1, 22; TNA E101/418/6.
28. 28 King Henry wrote to King Ferdinand in November 1509 that ‘the child in her womb is alive’, suggesting that quickening had already occurred. This is usually at the fourth or fifth month, meaning that she must have fallen pregnant extremely quickly after the marriage in June, and can only have been seven months or so advanced by January. CSP Spain II, 23.
29. 29 CSP Spain, Supplement to I and II, no. 7.
30. 30 K. L. Geaman and T. Earenfight, ‘Neither Heir nor Spare: Childless Queens and the Practice of Monarchy in Pre-modern Europe’, in Elena Woodacre et al., eds, The Routledge History of Monarchy (London, 2019), pp. 518–33.
31. 31 Thurley, Houses of Power, p. 17.
32. 32 CSP Spain, Supplement to I and II, no. 7.
33. 33 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 306.
34. 34 Ibid., fol. 322.
35. 35 Ibid., fol. 323.
36. 36 CSP Spain, Supplement to I and II, no. 8.
37. 37 Ibid.
38. 38 CSP Spain II, 122.
39. 39 BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, fol. 92 (LP II, 2120).
40. 40 Arévalo, pp. 115–16.
41. 41 BL Arundel MS 26, fol. 29v; TNA E36/210, fol. 91; TNA LC2/1, fol. 136; LC9/50, fols 182v, 189v, 204, 212.
42. 42 Account given in CSP Spain, Supplement to I and II, no. 8.
43. 43 Ibid.
44. 44 Ibid.
45. 45 BL Add MS 21116, fol. 40.
46. 46 G. W. Bernard, ‘Compton, Sir William (1482?–1528)’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6039 (accessed July 2023).
47. 47 TNA PROB 11/23/8.
48. 48 Sean Cunningham, ‘Guildford, Sir Richard (c. 1450–1506)’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/11723 (accessed July 2023).
49. 49 Lauren Johnson, Margaret Beaufort (forthcoming).
50. 50 S. J. Gunn, ‘Brandon, Sir Thomas (d. 1510)’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3268 (accessed July 2023).
51. 51 TNA PROB 11/16/746.
52. 52 S. J. Gunn, Charles Brandon: Henry VIII’s Closest Friend (Stroud, 2016), p. 18.
53. 53 Joanne Paul, The House of Dudley (London, 2022), p. 40.

Chapter 3: My Lord, My Husband

1. 1 R. Virgoe, ‘The Recovery of the Howards in East Anglia, 1485–1529’, in Wealth and Power in Tudor England, ed. E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht and J. J. Scarisbrick (London, 1978), pp. 1–20.
2. 2 Elizabeth later wrote that she and Ralph had ‘loved to gether ij yeres’, and that if Howard had not made suit to her father, she and Ralph would have been married ‘afore crystynmas’. Since Ralph would not reach fourteen, the canonical age of consent, until February 1512, this must have meant Christmas of that year. BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 390.
3. 3 On the arrangement of marriage during this period see Chapter 3, ‘The Arrangement of Marriage’, in Harris, English Aristocratic Women.
4. 4 ‘… & my lorde my husband had not sende immedyatly word after my lade an my lordes furst wyff wos ded he mad sute to my lord my father or elles I had be[en] maryed afore crystynmas to my lorde off westmereland & yt was my lord my husbandes sute to my lorde my father & neu[er] came off me nor no[ne] off my fryndes: & when he came thether at shroft tyde he wold haue no[ne] off my systeres but only me’. BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 390.
5. 5 Elizabeth’s birthdate is not certain as it was not recorded at the time. Her own letters give two possibilities, but neither were phrased in such a way as to be definitive. In June 1537 she described herself as ‘yonger then he [Howard] by xx yeres’; we know that Howard was born in 1473, which would place her birth in 1493, making her eighteen or nineteen in 1512. In October 1537, however, she described herself as ‘xl yeres of age’, which would place her birthdate in 1497, making her fifteen in 1512. BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 388, 390.
6. 6 Ibid., fol. 388.
7. 7 Howard’s first wife was Anne Plantagenet, daughter of King Edward IV and younger sister of Queen Elizabeth of York.
8. 8 Prince Henry was born on New Year’s Day 1511, and died of unknown causes on 22 February of the same year.
9. 9 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 390.
10. 10 An account of her sister-in-law Muriel Howard, Lady Knyvett’s funeral on 21 December 1512 lists Elizabeth as one of the mourners and gives her name as ‘The lady haward dowght[er] to the duc of bokingh[a]m’, indicating that the marriage had taken place by this time. BL Add. MS 45131, fols 69v–71.
11. 11 Neil Murphy, ‘Henry VIII’s First Invasion of France: The Gascon Expedition of 1512’, English Historical Review 130:542 (2015), 25–56.
12. 12 LP I, 1221 (48); TNA SP1/2, fol. 135 (LP I, 1286).
13. 13 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 388.
14. 14 TNA SP1/2, fol. 135 (LP I, 1286).
15. 15 Grafton’s Chronicle, p. 250.
16. 16 TNA PROB 11/17/293.
17. 17 BL Add. MS 45131, fols 69v–71.
18. 18 TNA SP1/4, fols 79–80 (LP I, 1965).
19. 19 Hall, pp. 545–7.
20. 20 TNA E36/215, fol. 167.
21. 21 Hall, p. 564.
22. 22 David M. Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune: The Life of Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk (Athens, Georgia, 1995), pp. 34–9.
23. 23 BL Add MS 29549, fol. 1.
24. 24 This was Katherine Peniston. See Harris, English Aristocratic Women, p. 218.
25. 25 Lauren Johnson, Margaret Beaufort (forthcoming).
26. 26 BL Add. MS 21481, fols 15, 27, 41v, 56, 63v, 69, 86v, 103v, 121, 135v, 150, 167v.
27. 27 Anne of Cleves’ maids of honour were paid 50s a quarter or £10 per annum, as were most of these women; TNA E101/422/15.
28. 28 The earliest explicit reference I have found to the queen’s ‘maids’ is a livery list dated to 1519, where ‘ladi graye and the quenes maydes’ were allotted bouche of court; TNA SP 1/19, fol.117.
29. 29 Maids of honour were usually around sixteen. Since we know that most of these women had served Elizabeth of York, they cannot possibly have been young enough to be maids of honour to Catherine of Aragon. Elizabeth Burton, for instance, was described as ‘the wife of John Burton’ in 1514 (LP I, 3324 (13)).
30. 30 Annuities of various amounts were granted to Elizabeth Saxby, Elizabeth Catesby, Elizabeth Burton, Mary Reading, Dorothy Verney and Elizabeth Chamber, all in September 1514: LP I, 3324 (8, 12, 13, 14, 18, 36).
31. 31 There are two surviving lists of Mary’s retinue in 1514: Leland, Collectanea I, ii, p. 703, and BL Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fol. 155. Both of these refer only to ‘Mademoiselle Boleyn’, but, as Eric Ives pointed out, a French payment list for October–December 1514 includes ‘Marie Boulonne’, which suggests that it was Mary and not Anne Boleyn. See Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 2004), p. 27, n. 27.
32. 32 Erin Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters (Basingstoke, 2011), p. 21; TNA LC9/50, fol. 229; BL Add MS 21481, fol. 15.
33. 33 BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, fol. 201.
34. 34 Ibid.; TNA SP1/9, fol. 114.
35. 35 TNA SP1/230, fols 221–2.
36. 36 The two lists don’t match up completely. Anne Jerningham is on both, but Denys is only on the English list preserved in Leland, Collectanea I, ii, p. 703; the list made by the French in BL Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fol. 155 has ‘Jeanne Barnesse’. All three appear in payments and clothing warrants as part of Mary’s household before 1514.
37. 37 Sadlack, pp. 64–70.
38. 38 Mary’s letters to her brother and to Wolsey, both dated 12 October 1514, are transcribed in Sadlack, pp. 167–8. Charles, Earl of Worcester’s relation of his conversation with Louis can be found in BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, fol. 205 (LP I, 3416).
39. 39 Sadlack, pp. 73–4.
40. 40 Ibid., p. 168.
41. 41 Ibid., p. 76.
42. 42 LP I, 3381, 3440.
43. 43 Hall, p. 570.
44. 44 Sadlack, p. 78.
45. 45 LP I, 3499 (59); LP II, 569.
46. 46 CSP Spain II, 201.
47. 47 Ibid.
48. 48 The precise relationship between him and María is difficult to pin down, in part because of the sixteenth-century habit of describing every relationship beyond parents, siblings, aunts and uncles as ‘cousin’, and they do not seem to have been straightforward first cousins.
49. 49 Martínez Hernández, pp. 85–6.
50. 50 Ernesto García Fernández, ‘Hombres y mujeres de negocios del País Vasco en la Baja Edad Media’, en J. A. Bonachía Hernando, y D. Carvajal de la Vega, eds, Los negocios del hombre: Comercio y rentas en Castilla (siglos XV y XVI), (Valladolid, 2012), pp. 139–44.
51. 51 https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/15442/juan-manuel (accessed 18 May 2023).
52. 52 LP I, 1683 ; CSP Spain II, 119; LP I, 2083, 2421; 2502; CSP Spain II, 160, 163, 169; LP I, 2908.
53. 53 CSP Spain II, 201.
54. 54 Ibid., 238.
55. 55 Martínez Hernández, pp. 129–37.
56. 56 Cockayne, Complete Peerage, Vol. 12B, pp. 670–73; see also Willoughby’s will, TNA PROB 11/23/362.
57. 57 Queen Catherine had had a miscarriage/stillbirth in January 1510; Prince Henry was born in January 1511 and died in February 1511; a stillbirth immediately after Flodden in 1513; another pregnancy lost in the summer of 1514. See John Dewhurst, ‘The Alleged Miscarriages of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn’, Medical History 28 (1984), 49–56.
58. 58 LP II, 1573.
59. 59 TNA E36/215, fol. 449.
60. 60 LP II, 1953.
61. 61 LRO 2 ANC 3/A/36; LP II, 2172.
62. 62 TNA E36/215, fol. 452.

Chapter 4: Richly Beseen

1. 1 Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, ed. William Douglas Hamilton (London, 1875), pp. 10–11.
2. 2 John Stow, The Annales, Or Generall Chronicle of England, ed. Edmund Howes (London, 1615), p. 506.
3. 3 A letter from the Duke of Buckingham requesting to joust on the king’s side rather than against him shows that preparations were being made as early as February 1517. TNA SP1/15, fol. 22 (LP II, 2987).
4. 4 Hall, p. 582.
5. 5 LP II, 1501 (Revels Accounts, no. 7).
6. 6 Elizabeth Norton, Bessie Blount: Mistress to Henry VIII (Stroud, 2011).
7. 7 The fullest accounts of Evil May Day, as it became known, are found in Hall, pp. 586–91 and Sebastian Giustinian, Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, ed. Rawdon Brown (Cambridge, 2013), Vol. 2, pp. 70–76. See also Shannon McSheffrey, ‘Disorder, Riot, and Governance in Early Tudor London: Evil May Day, 1517’, EHR, 128 (2023) 27–60, and B. Waddell, ‘The Evil May Day Riot of 1517 and the Popular Politics of Anti-Immigrant Hostility in Early Modern London’, Historical Research 94:266 (2021), 716–35. My thanks to Shannon McSheffrey for sending me her article, and for discussion on the queen’s role in these events.
8. 8 As described by de Puebla, Imperial ambassador during the reign of Henry VII: CSP Spain I, 210.
9. 9 Giustinian, Vol. 2, pp. 71, 76.
10. 10 Waddell, ‘The Evil May Day Riot’.
11. 11 McSheffrey, ‘Disorder, Riot and Governance’.
12. 12 For more on pregnancy wear see Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (Leeds, 2007), pp. 167–8.
13. 13 CSP Venice, II, 1103.
14. 14 Hayward, Dress at the Court, p. 167.
15. 15 CSP Spain, Supplement to I and II, no. 8; Tracy Adams and Christine Adams, The Creation of the French Royal Mistress (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2020).
16. 16 See, for instance, the example of Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III: Laura Tompkins, ‘The Uncrowned Queen: Alice Perrers, Edward III and Political Crisis in Fourteenth-century England, 1360–1377’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews (2013).
17. 17 Norton, Chapter 9 ‘The King’s Mistress’.
18. 18 Harris, English Aristocratic Women, pp. 68–70.
19. 19 Hall, p. 595.
20. 20 Norton, Chapter 10 ‘Mother of the King’s Son’.
21. 21 HMC Rutland, I, pp. 21–2; see also TNA SP1/19, fol.117.
22. 22 David Loades, The Tudor Court (London, 1986), pp. 40–41.
23. 23 As is clear from a livery list made in 1519: TNA SP1/19, fol. 117.
24. 24 TNA SP1/37, fol. 53. See also James Taffe, ‘Reconstructing the Queen’s Household, 1485–1547: A Study in Royal Service’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Durham (2021), Appendix 1A, pp. 265–6.
25. 25 In 1529, for instance, the king’s councillors had to wait for the queen to be fetched from within her privy chamber before they were able to speak with her: George Cavendish, The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. Samuel Weller Singer (London, 1825), p. 227. See also Taffe, Courting Scandal: The Rise and Fall of Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford (2023), pp. 98–9, and N. Clark, ‘Queen Katherine Howard: Space, Place, and Promiscuity, Pre- and Post-Marriage, 1536–42’, Royal Studies Journal 6:2 (2019), 89–103.
26. 26 Lisle Letters IV, nos 864a, 868a and 867.
27. 27 David Cressy, Birth, Marriage & Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1999), pp. 28–31.
28. 28 Ibid., pp. 50–73; Delores LaPratt, ‘Childbirth Prayers in Medieval and Early Modern England: “For drede of perle that may be-falle.” ’, Symposia 2 (2010), https://symposia.library.utoronto.ca (accessed June 2023); K. French, ‘The Material Culture of Childbirth in Late Medieval London and its Suburbs’, Journal of Women’s History 28:2 (2016), 126–48.
29. 29 Katherine’s birthdate is traditionally given as 22 March 1519 and is recorded as such in Cockayne’s Peerage. This is taken from Cecilie Goff, A Woman of the Tudor Age (London, 1930), p. 9, and I have been unable to find any contemporary source to corroborate this. However, as a member of the Willoughby family, Goff may have had access to records that no longer survive, and had no reason to fabricate this information; I have therefore followed Goff in placing Katherine’s birth in 1519 at Parham.
30. 30 Cressy, pp. 80–94.
31. 31 Again, following Goff, many genealogies state that there was at least one son who did not survive to adulthood, but I have yet to find a contemporary source to support this.
32. 32 Norton, Chapter 10 ‘Mother of the King’s Son’.
33. 33 This house was called ‘Jericho’. ‘Notes to the diary: 1550–51’, in The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, 1550–1563, ed. J. G. Nichols (London, 1848), pp. 313–23. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/camden-record-soc/vol42/pp313-323 (accessed 26 June 2023).
34. 34 Grace Coolidge, Guardianship, Gender and the Nobility in Early Modern Spain (London, 2011); Stretton and Kesselring, Introduction, pp. 1–23.
35. 35 Coolidge, p. 85.
36. 36 AGS, CSR leg. 11, fol. 252. A Castilian ducat was worth about 375 maravedis. 800 ducats was just under half of the amount that Queen Isabella routinely paid to her ladies-in-waiting as dowry (2000 ducats). Conversion between Spanish and English currency was variable and has proved too difficult to attempt with accuracy here; exchange rates depended on the specific date, weight of metal, and type of exchange, and may even have involved a third currency (often Italian). See the introduction to Peter Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London, 1986).
37. 37 Ibid., fol. 253.
38. 38 Escoriaza was often known in England as ‘Fernando de Victoria’, quite literally ‘from Vitoria’, but this was not his actual name. See Julio-Cesar Santoyo, El Dr. Escoriaza en Inglaterra y otros ensayos Británicos (Biblioteca alavesa Luis de Ajuria / Institución Sancho el Sabio, 1973).
39. 39 Juan de Pesquera, who was a ‘fourrière’ of Charles V’s household, an office similar to the English ‘harbinger’, somebody who rode ahead to arrange lodgings for the royal household. He was probably in Dover arranging this for Charles V in advance of his visit at this time. See J. Martinez Millan, La corte de Carlos V (Madrid, 2000), 5 vols, Vol. 5, p. 36.
40. 40 LP III, 2486.
41. 41 TNA SP 1/20, fol. 41 (LP III 806).
42. 42 CSP Venice III, 50.
43. 43 Ibid.
44. 44 Bodleian MS Ashmole 1116, fol. 101r.
45. 45 Steven G. Ellis, ‘Centre and Periphery in the Tudor State’, in Robert Tittler and Norman L. Jones, eds, A Companion to Tudor Britain (London, 2004), pp. 133–50.
46. 46 TNA SP60/1, fol. 40 (LP III, 940).
47. 47 TNA SP1/29, fol. 293.
48. 48 BL Cotton MS Caligula D VII, fol. 240v.
49. 49 Norton, Chapter 12 ‘First Marriage’.
50. 50 Sadlack, pp. 91–117.
51. 51 Ibid.
52. 52 TNA SP1/15, fol. 33 (LP II, 3018).
53. 53 Ibid.
54. 54 TNA E36/216, fol. 77r.
55. 55 Ives, pp. 18–34.
56. 56 Lauren Mackay, Among the Wolves of Court: The Untold Story of Thomas and George Boleyn (London, 2018), p. 143.
57. 57 The names of the parts and of the women involved come from two separate accounts. Historians have tended to match these up according to the order in which the women are listed in the revel account, but this can only be speculation. See Hall, p. 631 and LP III, Revels Accounts, p. 1559.
58. 58 Hall, p. 630.
59. 59 Ibid., p. 631.

Chapter 5: Stout Resolution

1. 1 As shown in the kitchen accounts of the Earl and Countess of Surrey: University of California, Berkeley, MS UCB 49, unfoliated (1523–4), Cambridge University Library, Pembroke MS 300, unfoliated (1526–7), and NRO Rye 74, fols 1–14, analysed by Richard Howlett as ‘The Household Accounts of Kenninghall Palace in the year 1525’, Norfolk Archaeology 15 (1904), pp. 51–60. See also C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (New Haven, 1999), pp. 111–65.
2. 2 Under the Duke of Albany the Scots had invaded England for the first time since Flodden a decade previously.
3. 3 Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, trans. Sarah Lawson (London, 1985), p. 130. The fact that there are sixteenth-century copies surviving shows that this text was still owned and used by women of Elizabeth’s time.
4. 4 UCB, MS UCB 49. The two were married by May the following year.
5. 5 The kitchen account makes this clear, and it was the custom for the nobility to dine away from the hall by this date. See Woolgar, pp. 145–6.
6. 6 See the account in Hall, pp. 622–3.
7. 7 C. S. L. Davies, ‘Stafford, Edward, third duke of Buckingham (1478–1521)’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/26202 (accessed July 2023).
8. 8 Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 52–6; UCB, MS UCB 49.
9. 9 College of Arms MS I.7, fols 56r–60v; Henry Howard, A defensative against the poison of supposed prophecies (London, 1583, reprinted 1620), p. 119. My thanks to Kirsten Claiden-Yardley for this reference.
10. 10 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 388–388v.
11. 11 Loades, The Tudor Court, p. 45.
12. 12 UCB, MS UCB 49.
13. 13 The earliest mention of Maud Parr in relation to the queen’s household is in the Ordinary of 1517: HMC Rutland, Vol. 1, pp. 21–2. It’s not clear whether Lady Bryan was Margaret Bourchier, governess to the princess at this time, or her daughter-in-law Philippa Spice/Fortescue, wife of Sir Francis Bryan, courtier and diplomat.
14. 14 The Parkers, Barons Morley lived at Great Hallingbury in Essex.
15. 15 Sally Varlow, ‘Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin Dictionary: New Evidence for Katherine Carey’, Historical Research 80:209 (2007), 315–23.
16. 16 Beverley Murphy, Bastard Prince: Henry VIII’s Lost Son (Stroud, 2001), pp. 41–68.
17. 17 Jeri McIntosh, From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, 1516–1558, http://www.gutenberg-e.org/mcintosh/chapter2.html#s2.3 (accessed July 2023), pp. 19–29.
18. 18 A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household (London, 1790), pp. 135–207.
19. 19 Loades, The Tudor Court, pp. 62–5.
20. 20 A Collection of Ordinances, p. 149.
21. 21 Loades, The Tudor Court, p. 88.
22. 22 A Collection of Ordinances, pp 162–4.
23. 23 TNA SP1/37, fol. 53.
24. 24 William’s deathbed was later described by witnesses: LRO 1 ANC 5/B/e.
25. 25 There are several surviving copies of William’s will: TNA PROB 11/23/362, LRO 2 ANC 3/A/41 and 42.
26. 26 Coolidge, p. 4.
27. 27 LRO 1 ANC 5/B/e.
28. 28 The Register or Chronicle of Butley Priory, ed. A. G. Dickens (Winchester, 1951), pp. 50–51.
29. 29 TNA PROB 11/23/362.
30. 30 Helen Nader, Introduction to idem., ed., Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: Eight Women of the Mendoza Family, 1450–1650 (Chicago, 2004), pp. 1–26.
31. 31 Harris, English Aristocratic Women, pp. 17–26.
32. 32 This is outlined clearly in LRO 1 ANC 5/B/c.
33. 33 See, for instance, TNA STAC 2/21/30; STAC 2/21/17; STAC 2/27/169; STAC 2/21/14; REQ 2/4/141; LRO 1 ANC 5/B/c; 1 ANC 5/B/1/g.
34. 34 TNA STAC 2/27/169.
35. 35 Ibid.
36. 36 Harris, English Aristocratic Women, pp. 31–2.
37. 37 Coolidge, p. 4; AGS, CSR leg. 11, fols 29–30. María’s mother Inés had actually voluntarily relinquished guardianship on grounds of ill-health in 1500.
38. 38 LRO 2 ANC 3/A/46.
39. 39 TNA SP1/44, fol. 130.
40. 40 LP IV, 3140.
41. 41 Hall, p. 707.
42. 42 Jessica Sharkey, ‘Between King and Pope: Thomas Wolsey and the Knight Mission’, Historical Research 84:224 (2011), 236–48.
43. 43 TNA SP1/43, fol. 48.
44. 44 LP IV, 3318, 3360; Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune, pp. 85–8; Sharkey, ‘Between King and Pope’.
45. 45 TNA STAC 2/21/30; STAC 10/4/138; STAC 2/21/22; STAC 2/21/17.
46. 46 TNA SP1/47, fol. 37 (LP IV, 3997).
47. 47 TNA SP1/42, fol. 252 (LP IV, 3327). See also Taffe, ‘Reconstructing the Queen’s Household’, pp. 222–3.
48. 48 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F I, fol. 77 (LP IV, 3265).
49. 49 Taffe, ‘Reconstructing the Queen’s Household’, pp. 223–6; LP IV, 4685.
50. 50 TNA SP1/42, fol. 252 (LP IV, 3327).
51. 51 LP IV, 6526.
52. 52 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, p. 190.

Chapter 6: Faithful to Her

1. 1 Cavendish. Life of Wolsey.
2. 2 Ibid.
3. 3 The royal lodgings at Bridewell were stacked vertically, the queen’s on top of the king’s. Thurley, Houses of Power, p. 136.
4. 4 We don’t know whether this was the same day as Catherine’s famous speech on 21 June 1529, but it seems likely. The account of the cardinals’ visit to the queen comes from Cavendish, and he doesn’t give a specific date save that it happened while the court was in session, and both the queen and the king were at Bridewell. The 21st was the only day that both monarchs appeared before the court and thus might reasonably have been at Bridewell, as neither monarch spent the entirety of the trial period there; Catherine was at Baynard’s Castle on the 18th, and by the 26th she had moved to Greenwich. LP IV, 5685, 5716.
5. 5 Cavendish wrote that ‘we, in the other chamber, might sometime hear the queen speak very loud, but what it was we could not understand’.
6. 6 CSP Spain IV, i, 224.
7. 7 Ibid.
8. 8 Ibid., 232.
9. 9 William Carey, Mary Boleyn’s husband.
10. 10 TNA SP1/50, fol. 83 (LP IV, 4710).
11. 11 CSP Spain IV, i, 232.
12. 12 See Lauren Mackay, Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Eyes of the Spanish Ambassador (Stroud, 2015).
13. 13 As in surviving New Year gift lists.
14. 14 CSP Spain IV, i, 232.
15. 15 Leland, Collectanea IV, p. 259, and I, Part 1, p. 701; BL Harleian MS 3504, fol. 232.
16. 16 TNA E30/1456.
17. 17 TNA SP1/65, fols 18v–19r (LP V, 6 (9)).
18. 18 CSP Spain IV, ii, Supplement 573, 574, 575; Crónica del rey Enrico Octavo de Inglaterra, Vol. 4, pp. 336–7; Júlia Benavent, ‘El apoyo de Isabel de Portugal a Catalina de Aragón, reina de Inglaterra. Registro de cartas de la emperatriz (AGS Est. Libro 68)’, Hipogrifo 9:2 (2021), 431–44.
19. 19 CSP Spain IV, ii, 917.
20. 20 Arévalo, pp. 120–22.
21. 21 LP IV, 5636.
22. 22 TNA WARD 9/149/28; CSP Spain IV, i, 228.
23. 23 CSP Spain IV, i, 460.
24. 24 Statutes of the Realm III, 357–61.
25. 25 CSP Venice IV, 694. See Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune, pp. 86–103.
26. 26 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 99r–101v.
27. 27 BL Egerton MS 2623, fol. 7.
28. 28 See Catherine Fletcher, Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and His Italian Ambassador (London, 2012).
29. 29 CSP Spain IV, i, 509.
30. 30 Ibid.
31. 31 See, for instance, Neil Murphy, ‘Spies, Informers and Thomas Howard’s Defence of England’s Northern Frontier in 1523’, Historical Research 93:260 (2020), 252–72.
32. 32 CSP Spain IV, ii, 584.
33. 33 Ibid., 608.
34. 34 Ibid., 619.
35. 35 Stanford Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1970), p. 114.
36. 36 LP V, 216.
37. 37 Ibid.
38. 38 See Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 80–81.
39. 39 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 390r–390v.
40. 40 CSP Spain IV, ii, 720.
41. 41 Ibid.
42. 42 Ibid.

Chapter 7: On the Queen’s Side

1. 1 BL Add MS 6113, fol. 70 (LP V, 1274 (3)).
2. 2 See Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 101–2.
3. 3 Accounts aren’t specific as to which room the investiture happened in, saying only that it was at Windsor, in the morning, in the king’s presence: but it’s most likely it was in his presence chamber, the room usually used for this kind of thing.
4. 4 CSP Spain IV, ii, 756; Hall, p. 781.
5. 5 CSP Spain IV, ii, 786.
6. 6 CSP Venice IV, 682.
7. 7 CSP Spain IV, ii, 786.
8. 8 TNA SP1/81, fol. 95 (LP VI, 1642).
9. 9 See Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cromwell (London, 2019), pp. 133–5.
10. 10 G. W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (New Haven 2005), pp. 47–8.
11. 11 MacCulloch, pp. 135–7.
12. 12 J. G. Nichols, ed., Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, Camden Society First series 77 (1859), pp. 52–7; George Wyatt, ‘Extracts from the Life of Queen Anne Boleigne’, in Cavendish https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54043/54043-h/54043-h.htm#FNanchor_210_210 (accessed July 2023). See also Thomas Freeman, ‘Research, Rumour and Propaganda: Anne Boleyn in Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” ’, Historical Journal 38:4 (1995), 797–819.
13. 13 Henry Savage, ed., Love Letters of Henry VIII (London, 1949), p. 37.
14. 14 LP V, 421.
15. 15 MacCulloch, pp. 131–55.
16. 16 Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune, pp. 103–4.
17. 17 TNA E101/420/15.
18. 18 J. Smyth, The Berkeley Manuscripts: The Lives of the Berkeleys, ed. J. Maclean, 3 vols (Gloucester, 1883) Vol. 2, p. 253.
19. 19 Anne Joscelyn was probably either the unmarried daughter of John Joscelyn (d. 1525) and Philippa Bradbury, listed as ‘Anne, my daughter’ in her mother’s will of 1530, or née Grenville, wife of John Joscelyn, Serjeant of the Pantry.
20. 20 Hall, p. 784.
21. 21 Wyatt, ‘Extracts from the Life of Anne Boleigne’.
22. 22 Sadlack, pp. 150–51.
23. 23 CSP Spain IV, ii, 739.
24. 24 Ibid., 756.
25. 25 Shannon McSheffrey, ‘The Slaying of Sir William Pennington: Legal Narrative and the Late Medieval English Archive’, Florilegium 28 (2011), 169–203.
26. 26 CSP Venice IV, 761.
27. 27 Wynkyn de Worde, The Maner of the Tryumphe of Caleys and Bulleyn and The Noble Tryumphant Coronacyon of Quene Anne, Wyfe unto the Most Noble Kyng Henry VIII, ed. Edmund Goldsmid (Edinburgh, 1884), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32515/32515-h/32515-h.htm#f16.1 (accessed July 2023).
28. 28 Ives, p. 157.
29. 29 CSP Spain IV, ii, 980.
30. 30 Ibid., 986.
31. 31 See James Taffe, Courting Scandal.
32. 32 In the summer, Venetian ambassador Capello reported that Anne planned to cross the Channel with ‘thirty of the chief ladies of this island’. CSP Venice IV, 802.
33. 33 Worde, The Maner of the Truymphe.
34. 34 Hall, p. 793.
35. 35 The other two women, Honor Grenville, Viscountess Lisle and Elizabeth Harleston, Lady Wallop were the wives of the deputy of Calais and the most recent English ambassador to France, and were there by dint of geography.
36. 36 CSP Venice IV, 802.
37. 37 Hall, pp. 793–4.
38. 38 See discussion in G. W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (New Haven, 2010), pp. 24–33 and 65–6.
39. 39 Ibid., p. 794.
40. 40 Thurley, Houses of Power, pp. 50–51.
41. 41 Nicholas Harpsfield, A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce Between Henry VIII and Catharine of Aragon (Camden Society, 1878), p. 234.
42. 42 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1053.
43. 43 On 23 February Chapuys reported that Henry might have hurried with the wedding because Anne was pregnant; she had an insatiable appetite for plums and the king had told her that was a sure sign. Anne was indeed pregnant at this time. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, pp. 66–7.
44. 44 The occasion was widely reported. See CSP Spain IV, ii, 1061; Wriothesley, p. 17; Hall, p. 795; CSP Venice IV, 870.
45. 45 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1061.
46. 46 Ibid., 1057.
47. 47 Ibid., 1061.
48. 48 Worde, The Maner of the Tryumphe.
49. 49 Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, p. 67.
50. 50 Ibid., pp. 67–71.
51. 51 The list of women in attendance at Anne’s coronation is found in BL Add. MS 71009, fols 58r–58v.
52. 52 BL Add. MS 71009, fol. 58; LP VI, 563.
53. 53 Hunt, pp. 39–76.
54. 54 LP VI, 585.
55. 55 Ibid.
56. 56 Sadlack, pp. 153–4.
57. 57 Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England, trans. Martin A. S. Hume (London, 1889), p. 135.
58. 58 LP VI, 723.
59. 59 Sadlack, p. 155.
60. 60 Francis Ford, Mary Tudor (Bury St Edmund’s, 1882), pp. 34–56 (p. 41).

Chapter 8: Fragility and Brittleness

1. 1 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1154; Hall, p. 812.
2. 2 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1154.
3. 3 See Genelle Gertz and Pasquale Toscano, ‘The Lost Network of Elizabeth Barton’, Reformation 26:2 (2021), 105–28.
4. 4 Diane Watt, ‘The Prophet at Home: Elizabeth Barton and the Influence of Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena’, in Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-medieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 161–76.
5. 5 Her earliest recorded appearance was at the Field of Cloth of Gold as the Countess of Devon (TNA SP1/19, fol. 268). While it’s possible that Gertrude served at court before her marriage, there is no surviving proof of this.
6. 6 J. P. D. Cooper, ‘Courtenay, Henry, marquess of Exeter’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6451 (accessed August 2023).
7. 7 LP VI, 1438.
8. 8 BL Add. MS 71009, fol. 58; TNA SP1/80, fol. 180.
9. 9 BL Harl. MS 543, fol. 128.
10. 10 Will Coster, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 7–9.
11. 11 LP VI, 1125.
12. 12 Alexandra Barratt, Anne Bulkely and her Book: Fashioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England (Turnhout, 2009), p. 63.
13. 13 TNA SP1/80, fols 130–130v (LP VI, 1468 (7).
14. 14 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1149.
15. 15 Gertz and Toscano, ‘The Lost Network of Elizabeth Barton’.
16. 16 As is made clear by Gertrude’s reply: BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E IV, fols 94–5 (LP VI, 1464).
17. 17 TNA SP1/80, fol. 116 (LP VI, 1465). The draft sent to Cromwell has edits in the margins, but these do not appear to be in Cromwell’s hand; see MacCulloch, p. 236, n. 8.
18. 18 BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E IV, fols 94–5.
19. 19 Ibid.
20. 20 Gloria Kaufman, ‘Juan Luis Vives on the Education of Women’, Signs 3:4 (1978), 891–6 (p. 893).
21. 21 James Daybell, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), p. 255.
22. 22 On deferential space in letters see James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Practices and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512–1635 (Basingstoke, 2012).
23. 23 BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E IV, fols 94–5.
24. 24 CSP Spain IV, ii, 756.
25. 25 Ibid., 1123.
26. 26 LRO 1 ANC 5/B/1/g; see also 1 ANC 5/B/c.
27. 27 LRO 1 ANC 5/B/1/m; TNA SP1/68, fol. 61; LRO 1 ANC/5/B/1/d (this document is catalogued as 1530, but dated the twenty-first year of the reign of Henry VIII, which was 1540. However, the fact that it is signed by Thomas Elyot, who was only clerk of the Privy Council up until around 1531, suggests that they did indeed mean 1530.)
28. 28 For instance, TNA STAC 2/21/14; REQ 2/4/141; C 1/665/40; C 1/670/9.; C 1/689/32; C 1 691/26; C 4/43/69.
29. 29 TNA STAC 2/20/400.
30. 30 LP VI, 1486.
31. 31 Ibid., 1558.
32. 32 Ibid., 1541 (original BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fols 210–12, mutilated).
33. 33 TNA SP1/79, fol. 158 (LP VI, 1252).
34. 34 Elizabeth Darrell was the daughter of Catherine’s former vice-chamberlain Sir Edward Darrell. Elizabeth ‘Ffynes’ may have been a relation of the Barons Dacre. Margery and Elizabeth Otwell, Elizabeth Lawrence, Emma Brown, Dorothea Wheler and Blanche Twyford were of gentry status.
35. 35 CSP Spain V, i, 60.
36. 36 Ibid.
37. 37 TNA SP1/79, fol. 158 (LP VI, 1252). For a more detailed discussion of this see Taffe, ‘Reconstructing the Queen’s Household’, pp. 212–21.
38. 38 TNA SP1/81, fol. 3 (LP VI, 1543).
39. 39 LP VI, 1558.
40. 40 LP VII, 296.
41. 41 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1154.
42. 42 Murphy, Bastard Prince, pp. 143–5.
43. 43 Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 100–103.
44. 44 TNA SP1/76, fol. 168 (LP VI, 613).
45. 45 Elizabeth Heale, ed., The Devonshire Manuscript: A Women’s Book of Courtly Poetry (Toronto, 2012), pp. 59–60.
46. 46 See Heale, and A Social Edition of the Devonshire MS (BL Add. MS 17942) https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Devonshire_Manuscript (accessed August 2023).
47. 47 Heale, pp. 25–8.
48. 48 Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (London, 1976), Book 3, pp. 207–78.
49. 49 See David Grummitt, ‘Plantagenet, Arthur, Viscount Lisle’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22355 (accessed August 2023).
50. 50 Lisle Letters II, nos 182, 193.
51. 51 Lisle Letters I, no. 67.
52. 52 Lisle Letters II, no. 260.
53. 53 Ibid., nos. 109, 114.
54. 54 Ibid., no. 299a.
55. 55 Ibid., no. 421.
56. 56 Ibid., no. 175; LP VII, 958.
57. 57 Dewhurst, pp. 54–6.
58. 58 CSP Spain V, i, 90.
59. 59 Ibid.
60. 60 Ibid., i, 97.
61. 61 Ibid., i, 118.

Chapter 9: Extreme Handling

1. 1 This event has been variously dated to either 1533 or 1534, but can be firmly placed in 1534. She states more than once that it occurred on the Tuesday of the Passion week, i.e. Easter week. In 1533, this was 8 April. The Spanish ambassador, Chapuys, stated that the day after this – 9 April – the Duke of Norfolk and other noblemen had ridden to the queen at Ampthill, so it seems highly unlikely that he could have been free to ride to East Anglia to deal with Elizabeth the night before, and still less that he could have returned to court in time to receive this instruction and depart with his colleagues (CSP Spain IV, ii, 1058). In 1534, however, Tuesday of the Passion week was 31 March and Norfolk had been in London attending Parliament until its prorogation on 30 March (BL Add. MS 4622, fol. 298).
2. 2 This phrase comes from one of Elizabeth’s own letters (BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 390–390v). It is just about possible for Norfolk to have reached Kenninghall from London in one night, but probably not with his usual retinue, and he would have needed to change horses frequently and be careful in the dark. It may be that this was simply a figure of speech.
3. 3 An inventory of Kenninghall taken later shows that the lodgings for the duke himself were in the inner courtyard. They were part of a stacked lodging block, with apartments above and below him. Given the tendency for the lady’s rooms to be at a point of greater seclusion, which in a stacked lodging like this would mean the highest floor, it is very likely that the apartments occupied by Norfolk’s mistress at the time the inventory was taken in 1546 were originally Elizabeth’s. TNA LR 2/117.
4. 4 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 390–390v.
5. 5 See Harris, ‘Marriage Sixteenth-Century Style: Elizabeth Stafford and the Third Duke of Norfolk’, Journal of Social History 15:3 (1982), 371–82, and Susan Dwyer Amussen, ‘ “Being stirred to much unquietness”: Violence and Domestic Violence in Early Modern England’, Journal of Women’s History 6:2 (1994), 70–89.
6. 6 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1130.
7. 7 The surviving sequence includes nine letters from Elizabeth to Thomas Cromwell, between 1534 and 1540. One from Elizabeth to her brother Henry, Lord Stafford, and one to her brother-in-law Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland; two from her husband, Norfolk, to Cromwell; one from Lord Stafford to Norfolk, and one from Stafford to Cromwell. BL Cotton Vespasian F XIII, fol. 151 (Elizabeth to Cromwell, 23 August 1534, calendared LP VII, 1083); TNA SP1/91, fol. 23 (E to C, 3 March, calendared as 1535 in LP VIII, 319, but date unconfirmable); BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 392–3 (E to C, 30 December 1536, uncalendared); TNA SP1/115, fol. 80 (Norfolk to Cromwell, 27 January 1537, calendared LP XII, i, 252); TNA SP1/106, fol. 219 (E to C, 28 September, calendared as 1536 at LP XI, 502, but internal evidence places it in 1537); BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 390v (E to C, 24 October 1537, calendared LP XII, ii, 976); BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 389 (E to C, 10 November 1537, calendared LP XII, ii, 1049); BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 388v (E to C, 26 June; calendared as 1537 at LP XII, ii, 143, but internal evidence places it in 1538); TNA SP1/144, fol. 16 (E to C, 3 March 1539, calendared LP XIV, i, 425); BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 391 (E to C, 29 January, calendared as 1539 in LP XIV, i, 160, but internal evidence places it in 1540); TNA SP1/158, fol. 201 (E to Westmorland, 11 April, calendared as 1540 at LP XV, 493, but internal evidence places it in 1541). The remainder of the letters are not obviously datable: TNA SP1/76, fol. 38 (Henry, Lord Stafford to Norfolk, 13 May, calendared as 1533 at LP VI, 474); TNA SP1/76, fol. 39 (Stafford to Cromwell, 13 May, calendared as 1533 at LP VI, 475); Bl Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 162 (E to Stafford, calendared as 1537 at LP XII, ii, 1332); BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 394v (Norfolk to Cromwell, no date).
8. 8 BL Cotton Titus B I, fol. 388.
9. 9 TNA SP1/97, fols 120r–120v.
10. 10 Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 66–72.
11. 11 Elizabeth used at least two different scribes, and sometimes added her own postscripts.
12. 12 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 388–388v, states that it was eleven years since Norfolk had fallen for Bess. Internal evidence dates this letter to 1538, which means the affair with Bess began in 1527.
13. 13 Gunn, Charles Brandon, p. 109; Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicholas Harris Nicolas, 2 vols (London, 1826), Vol. 2, pp. 533–4.
14. 14 TNA SP1/121, fol. 55.
15. 15 See Daybell, The Material Letter.
16. 16 TNA SP1/76, fol. 38.
17. 17 Ibid., fol. 39.
18. 18 Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 392–3; 388–388v.
19. 19 BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E IV, fol. 99. The identity of Mistress Amadas is uncertain. It’s usually taken for granted that this is Elizabeth Bryce, wife of royal goldsmith Robert Amadas; but he had died early in 1532 and the rehearsal of her crimes from July 1533 makes it clear that her husband was still alive. Sharon Jansen suggests that she was the first wife of John Amadas, a member of the king’s household who hailed from Devon. See Sharon Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms of Henry VIII (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 68.
20. 20 CSP Spain IV, ii, 1130.
21. 21 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 394–394v.
22. 22 Ibid.
23. 23 CSP Spain V, ii, 70.
24. 24 Amussen, p. 73.
25. 25 Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), pp. 42–56 and 189–90.
26. 26 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 390v.
27. 27 Ibid., fols 388–388v.
28. 28 Ibid., fol. 390v.
29. 29 Ibid.
30. 30 TNA LR 2/117, unfoliated.
31. 31 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 390–390v.
32. 32 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, fol. 151.
33. 33 TNA SP1/158, fol. 201; BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 388–388v, 389.
34. 34 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 392–3.
35. 35 Cromwell owed his seat in Parliament to Norfolk’s intervention; he witnessed his will a decade later. Michael Everett, The Rise of Thomas Cromwell (London, 2015), pp. 59–60; TNA SP1/115, fol. 80.
36. 36 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 390–390v, 389.
37. 37 Recent research shows clearly that the king’s divorce had this effect throughout society: Gwilym Owen and Rebecca Probert, ‘Marriage, Dispensation and Divorce During the Years of Henry VIII’s “great matter”: A Local Case Study’, Law and Humanities 13:1 (2019), 76–94.
38. 38 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fol. 389.
39. 39 Ibid.
40. 40 ‘Parishes: Kimbolton’, in A History of the County of Huntingdon: Volume 3, ed. William Page, Granville Provy and S. Inskip Ladds (London, 1936), pp. 75–86.
41. 41 Bellamy, The Tudor Law of Treason, p. 12.
42. 42 BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 171 (LP VII, 610). Commissioners like Gardiner had been receiving oaths since March, so the November Act simply formalised what was already occurring.
43. 43 TNA SP1/89, fol. 136 (LP VIII, 196). For more examples of female resistance see Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior.
44. 44 CSP Spain V, i, 45 and 57.
45. 45 LP VIII, 566; CSP Spain V, i, 138.
46. 46 BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E VI, fol. 243 (LP VIII, 963).
47. 47 TNA SP1/96, fol. 83 (LP IX, 289). ‘Gaunt’s Chapel’ still stands as St Mark’s Church. It was built to serve the adjacent Gaunt’s Hospital, standing opposite St Augustine’s Abbey, now Bristol Cathedral. It’s likely that Lady Guildford lived within the abbey precinct.
48. 48 TNA SP1/95, fol. 8 (LP IX, 6).
49. 49 LP VIII, 996.
50. 50 TNA SP1/96, fol. 73 (LP IX, 274).
51. 51 CSP Spain V, i, 75.
52. 52 TNA SP1/96, fol. 172 (LP IX, 386).
53. 53 CSP Spain V, i, 238.
54. 54 Ibid.
55. 55 LP IX, 970.
56. 56 CSP Spain V, i, 246.
57. 57 TNA SP1/99, fol. 163 (LP IX, 1040).
58. 58 LP IX, 1037.
59. 59 The account of her arrival was written by Bedingfield and Chamberlain to Cromwell on 5 January 1536. The original was damaged in the Cotton fire in the eighteenth century, but it was seen by antiquarian John Strype before this time, who put a version of it in his Ecclesiastical Memorials. Using the two together gives a fairly clear picture of the original text. BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 215 (LP X, 28); Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, Part 1, p. 372.
60. 60 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, Part 1, p. 372.
61. 61 CSP Spain V, ii, 3.
62. 62 Ibid., 9.
63. 63 TNA SP1/101, fol. 21 (LP X, 37).

Chapter 10: Inconstant and Mutable Fortune

1. 1 LP X, 141.
2. 2 Ibid.
3. 3 The fact that María was there when Catherine died on 7 January, and was named as one of the women acting as chief mourners for the masses from around 15 January, strongly suggests that she remained at Kimbolton throughout this time.
4. 4 CSP Spain V, ii, 9.
5. 5 LP X, 284.
6. 6 Ibid.
7. 7 The noblewomen who performed the role of chief mourner at the masses preceding the funeral were Eleanor Brandon, who was the overall chief mourner; Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk; Frances de Vere, Countess of Surrey; Anne Howard, Countess of Oxford; Elizabeth Browne, Countess of Worcester; Margaret Gamage, Lady Howard; María de Salínas, Lady Willoughby; Jane Hallighwell, Lady Bray and ‘Lady Gascon’, whose identity is unclear. It’s likely that the seven ladies who performed the role of chief mourners at the funeral were from this group. LP X, 284.
8. 8 There was some debate about whether she ought to have a hearse at St Paul’s in London, but the king refused, as Ralph Sadler wrote to inform Cromwell: TNA SP1/101, fol. 50 (LP X, 76).
9. 9 LP X, 128 (original BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 220, heavily mutilated).
10. 10 There are several copies of Catherine’s will; the contemporary copy, BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 216, is mutilated but calendared in LP X, 40 and printed in Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, Part 2, p. 252. A later copy in BL Cotton MS Titus C VII, fol. 44 is clearer to read.
11. 11 Harris, English Aristocratic Women, pp. 46–7.
12. 12 This might be Elizabeth Otwell, who is mentioned in other docs; Isabel is the Spanish form of Elizabeth.
13. 13 LP II, 2747.
14. 14 This anonymous account is LP X, 284.
15. 15 Ibid.
16. 16 LP X, 284.
17. 17 Chapuys claimed that Queen Anne miscarried on the same day as Catherine’s burial (CSP Spain V, ii, 21). This was repeated by the Bishop of Faenza (the Imperial ambassador in France) to Dr Ortiz (the empress’s envoy in Rome), who wrote the same to the empress on 6 March (LP X, 427). Wriothesley’s Chronicle said she miscarried three days before Candlemas, which would have been 30 January, the day after Catherine’s burial (Wriothesley, p. 33).
18. 18 LP X, 427.
19. 19 There is a theory that Henry’s fall may have caused a traumatic brain injury that affected his personality going forward. See Muhammad Qaiser Ikram, Fazle Hakim Sajjad and Arah Salardini, ‘The Head that Wears the Crown: Henry VIII and Traumatic Brain Injury’, Journal of Clinical Neuroscience 38 (2016), 16–19, and also Suzannah Lipscomb, 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII (Oxford, 2009).
20. 20 LP X, 352.
21. 21 CSP Spain V, ii, 29.
22. 22 Wriothesley, p. 43; TNA E101/421/13.
23. 23 LP X, 901.
24. 24 Ibid., 601.
25. 25 Ibid.
26. 26 Historians have debated endlessly whether the surviving evidence points towards or away from plots to get rid of Anne before April 1536. Both George Bernard and Greg Walker have argued that Anne’s fall was triggered very suddenly (Bernard’s argument is laid out in his Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, and for Walker see ‘Rethinking the Fall of Anne Boleyn’, The Historical Journal 45:1 (2002), 1–29). Eric Ives, and more recently Diarmaid MacCulloch, have argued that there is evidence of a longer-standing attempt to remove Anne, whether as a ‘plot’ by conservatives or at the direction of the king (see Ives, pp. 289–364 and MacCulloch, pp. 292–342). On the scholarly debate about the existence and role of faction more broadly at this time see Janet Dickinson, ‘Redefining Faction at the Tudor Court’, in Ruben Gonzalez Cuerva and Alexander Koller, eds, A Europe of Courts, A Europe of Factions (Leiden, 2017), pp. 20–40. I do not think it should be particularly surprising that the surviving evidence for Anne Boleyn’s fall can be read in either direction. Both Henry VIII and his advisors were masters both of keeping their options genuinely open and of dissimulation, and thus it shouldn’t be considered odd that we see Henry pushing for European recognition of his marriage to Anne while simultaneously seeking ways out of that same marriage.
27. 27 TNA SP70/7, fols 3–13 (summarised and translated in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 1, 1558–1559, ed. by Joseph Stevenson (London, 1863)
28. 28 For more on Ales’s letter and career see MacCulloch, pp. 313–17, and Gotthelf Wiedermann, ‘Alesius [formerly Allane or Alan], Alexander’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/320 (accessed August 2023).
29. 29 SP70/7, fol. 6v: ‘Dilatores, quia nehementer subi a Regina metuebant, noctu et interdiu obseruant cubientum eius, tentant muneribus favitorum et pedissequarum aios, nihil non pollicentur Virginibus in genicaeo’.
30. 30 Ibid.: ‘Affirmant elia Regem odire Reginam, propterea, q hoeredem regni ex ea non sustulisset, nec speraret quidem’.
31. 31 TNA E101/420/15.
32. 32 BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 210 (LP X, 799). Both MacCulloch and Ives have thrown a spotlight onto Margery Horsman as playing a role in Anne Boleyn’s fall. Both note that she moved seamlessly to the service of Jane Seymour, and MacCulloch adds that she and her family were ‘precocious evangelicals with links to Cromwell’ (p. 316). See Ives, p. 332.
33. 33 The Story of the Death of Anne Boleyn: A Poem by Lancelot de Carle, translation, edition and essays by JoAnn DellaNeva (Tempe, AZ, 2021). All references to the poem itself are to this edition.
34. 34 The identification was made by George Bernard in his Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, p. 154, and de Carle’s editor JoAnn DellaNeva follows this (pp. 47–50), pointing out that Worcester and her brother Anthony Browne were also given starring roles in an Italian novella written during the 1540s.
35. 35 TNA E36/210, fol. 91.
36. 36 For instance TNA SP1/73, fol. 71v, SP1/233, fol. 263, SP1/19, fol. 149, SP1/37, fols 53, 58, E179/69/20, LP IV, 2972, E101/420/11, E101/420/15, SP2/N, fol. 2, E101/421/13, LP X, 871. It’s possible that some of these references may be to Elizabeth Empson/Catesby/Lucy, Lady Lucy as the two women are largely impossible to unravel in the surviving records.
37. 37 The Privy Purse Expences of King Henry the Eighth, ed. Nicholas Harris Nicolas (London, 1827), p. 22.
38. 38 BL Add. MS 71009, fol. 58.
39. 39 TNA SP1/103, fol. 318; Bernard, p. 154; W. R. B. Robinson, ‘The Lands of Henry, Earl of Worcester in the 1530s. Part 3: Central Monmouthshire and Herefordshire’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies xxv (iv) (1974), pp. 460, 492.
40. 40 Both would soon find themselves in trouble for pushing for Princess Mary’s return to the succession.
41. 41 See DellaNeva, pp. 148–9.
42. 42 Lisle Letters III, no. 703a and IV, no. 847.
43. 43 De Carle, lines 386–7.
44. 44 Cromwell later identified 18/19 April as the day he decided to ‘plot out the whole business’ of getting rid of Anne Boleyn. CSP Spain V, ii, 61.
45. 45 MacCulloch, p. 336.
46. 46 ‘not six days before her apprehension’. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne, eds, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, D. D. Archbishop of Canterbury Comprising Letters Written by Him and to Him, from A.D. 1535, to His Death, A.D. 1575 (Cambridge, 1853), p. 59.
47. 47 Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (London, 1993), pp. 48, 232–3, and Houses of Power, p. 8; The History of the King’s Works, Vol. 3, ed. Howard Montagu Colvin (London, 1963), pp. 266–8.
48. 48 Anne told this and many other anecdotes to Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, during her imprisonment, and he relayed them by letter to Thomas Cromwell. Many of Kingston’s letters survive in BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 225r onwards, but are heavily fire-damaged. The calendared versions in LP X are generally clearer and I have used these, supplemented by Strype’s versions in his Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, Part 1.
49. 49 LP X, 793.
50. 50 De Carle, lines 491–516.
51. 51 Hall, p. 819.
52. 52 MacCulloch, p. 338.
53. 53 Thurley, Houses of Power, p. 82.
54. 54 Their precise identities vary depending on the source. Chapuys wrote that Anne was arrested by Norfolk, ‘the two Chamberlains, of the Realm and of the Chamber’ – probably Lord Chancellor Audley and Treasurer of the Chamber Fitzwilliam (CSP Spain V, ii, 48). Wriothesley’s Chronicle didn’t mention Fitzwilliam, but added Cromwell and Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, to that list (Wriothesley, p. 36).
55. 55 According to Chapuys; LP X, 782.
56. 56 Wriothesley, p. 36.

Chapter 11: Such about Me as I Never Loved

1. 1 LP X, 793.
2. 2 As the king’s building accounts show. Bodleian MS Rawlinson D 775, fol. 206.
3. 3 Ibid., fols 204–10.
4. 4 University of Nottingham, Newcastle MS Ne 02 (formerly 65), unfoliated: ‘[for the] stopping upe of ij other windowed wth tymbr in the house where the bowe staves standdes whiche was removed oute of the hall ayenste the raynement of the Ladye Anne late wyffe to oure said souaigne Lorde’.
5. 5 This is how the king’s chambers at the Tower were decorated (Thurley, Houses of Power, p. 241.) We also know that the lower parts of the windows in the queen’s lodging on the garden side were ‘closed up’ with plain panelling. Bodleian MS Rawlinson D 775, fol. 210.
6. 6 This is what happened to Thomas More. In extreme cases it could be indefinite, as was the case later for Edward Courtenay and Walter Raleigh. See Ruth Ahnert, The Rise of Prison Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 12–13.
7. 7 TNA LC2/1, fol. 136; E101/417/3, no 2.
8. 8 We don’t have a birth date for Mary Scrope, but she must have been born before her father’s death in 1485. The daughter of Sir Richard Scrope of Upsall, Yorkshire, and Eleanor Washbourne, she’d been connected to the court since at least 1506, when she received a grant of clothing (TNA E101/416/3, fol. 76r). In 1509 she’d married Sir Edward Jerningham of Somerleyton, Suffolk as his second wife, and had many children, several of whom followed her to court. Widowed in 1515, Mary then married Sir William Kingston by 1532.
9. 9 LP VIII, 327; Lisle Letters I, no. 52.
10. 10 Catharine Davies, ‘Coffin, Sir William’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/70721 (accessed August 2023).
11. 11 Roger Virgoe, ‘Boleyn (Bullen), Sir James (c. 1480–1561), of Blickling, Norf.’, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509–1558, ed. S. T. Bindoff (London, 1982).
12. 12 There are two candidates for ‘Mrs Stonor’: either Isabel Agard or Margaret/Anne Foliot, her sister-in-law, wife of Sir Walter Stonor. While Sir Walter, as the eldest son, was the more prominent courtier, there is no other record of his wife having been in court service. Isabel, on the other hand, was named as being ‘in service with the Queen’ on a grant to herself and her husband John in August 1536 (LP XI, 253), and later received an annuity from Philip and Mary in January 1554 ‘in consideration of her service to Henry VIII and Edward VI and to the queens consort of Henry VIII in the place of the mother of his daughters’ (Calendar of Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary, Volume 1, 1553–4 (London, 1937) p. 60). This strongly suggests that she was the ‘Mrs Stonor’ described as the mother of the maids through the reigns of Henry’s last four wives. Isabel is described in visitation records as the daughter of Clement Agard of Foston Hall, Derbyshire, but this is unlikely to be accurate; Clement was not born until 1515. She may perhaps have been his sister.
13. 13 In his first letter, Kingston noted that Lady Boleyn and Lady Coffin lay on pallets in the queen’s bedchamber; Lady Kingston and himself lay at the door outside; and ‘the other ij gentlewomen’ likewise outside the chamber. One of these must have been Mrs Stonor, whom he mentioned later on, but this leaves one unnamed woman. LP X, 793.
14. 14 Ibid., 797.
15. 15 Ibid., 797, 798.
16. 16 Ibid., 797.
17. 17 Sara M. Butler, ‘More than Mothers: Juries of Matrons and Pleas of the Belly in Medieval England’, Law and History Review 37:2 (2019), 353–96.
18. 18 LP X, 793.
19. 19 Ibid.
20. 20 Ibid.
21. 21 Ibid.
22. 22 Ibid., 797.
23. 23 Ibid., 797, 798.
24. 24 Ibid., 798.
25. 25 CSP Spain V, ii, 54.
26. 26 Ibid.
27. 27 Ibid., i, 138.
28. 28 LP X, 798.
29. 29 Ibid.
30. 30 Ibid., 848.
31. 31 Bellamy, pp. 40–41.
32. 32 Wriothesley, p. 37.
33. 33 BL Add. MS 25114, fol. 160 (LP X, 873).
34. 34 Ibid.
35. 35 Ibid.
36. 36 As described in the indictment. LP X, 876.
37. 37 Wriothesley, p. 38.
38. 38 Ibid., pp. 37–8; University of Nottingham, Newcastle MS Ne 02 (formerly 65), unfoliated.
39. 39 LP X, 876.
40. 40 J. H. Baker, ed., The Reports of Sir John Spelman, Selden Society (London, 1977), pp. 70–71.
41. 41 TNA SP1/10, fol. 268v.
42. 42 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, fol. 198.
43. 43 CSP Spain IV, i, 345.
44. 44 She gave the king ‘a shirt of cambric, the collar wrought with gold’ (TNA E101/421/13).
45. 45 Taffe, Courting Scandal, pp. 141–2.
46. 46 Bellamy, p. 76.
47. 47 That Spelman specifically identifies Lady Wingfield as the one who ‘disclosed this matter’ is interesting in light of other sources that have the Countess of Worcester as ‘the first accuser’. It may be that Wingfield was part of the earlier investigation from January 1536, but did not say anything that could then have led to a treason charge without the corroboration of Worcester’s unguarded remarks to her brother in May. Alternatively, it’s possible that she was being used as a kind of scapegoat for Worcester and other women who gave evidence, because her death meant that she could not suffer for anything said in court. It’s plausible that Worcester’s brothers, Anthony Browne and William Fitzwilliam, had moved to keep their sister’s name out of the formal trial for fear of repercussions, and that this was a ploy that served the prosecution.
48. 48 Wriothesley, pp. 35–6; CSP Spain V, ii, 55.
49. 49 Wriothesley, p. 38; CSP Spain V, ii, 55.
50. 50 CSP Spain V, ii, 55.
51. 51 Elizabeth Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London, 1999), p. 5.
52. 52 Taffe, Courting Scandal, pp. 152–4.
53. 53 Ibid., pp. 145–6. Taffe also suggests that Jane had not returned to court after her dismissal in the autumn of 1534, and that therefore she knew that she could not be incriminated in any more recent events. While it’s true that there are no extant references to Jane between 1534 and 1536, the general dearth of material relating to ladies-in-waiting during those years makes it too difficult to rely on negative evidence in this way.
54. 54 For instance, C. Whittingham, ed., The Life of Cardinal Wolsey: And Metrical Visions from the Original Autograph Manuscript, 2 vols (London, 1825), Vol. 1, pp. 71–4; John Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or TAMO (The Digital Humanities Institute, Sheffield, 2011), p. 1210 (marginalia); Wyatt, ‘Extracts from the Life of Queen Anne Boleigne’, p. 447.
55. 55 This is reported by Gilbert Burnet, writing in 1679. Burnet had had sight of a journal kept by Anthony Anthony, surveyor of the ordinance at the Tower in 1536, which reportedly claimed that Jane had gone to the king with ‘many stories, to persuade, that there was a familiarity between the Queen and her Brother, beyond what so near a Relation could justifie’. This journal is no longer extant. Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England (London, 1679), Vol. 1, p. 189.
56. 56 See Anne Crawford, ‘Victims of Attainder: The Howard and DeVere Women in the Late Fifteenth Century’, in Medieval Women in Southern England, ed. Keith Bate (Reading, 1989), pp. 59–74.
57. 57 LP X, 908.
58. 58 Ibid., 890.
59. 59 Ibid., 908.
60. 60 De Carle, lines 1173–82.
61. 61 LP X, 910.
62. 62 Lancelot de Carle describes Anne’s attendants in the Tower as ‘damoiselles’, a term denoting a gentlewoman, ‘anyone under the degree of lady’. DellaNeva argues that Carle used this ‘to suit the rhyme and meter and not to indicate their actual age or status’. DellaNeva, p. 255n.
63. 63 De Carle, lines 1278–95.
64. 64 Samuel Bentley (ed.), Excerpta Historica (London, 1833), pp. 261–5.
65. 65 De Carle, lines 1290–91.
66. 66 Statutes of the Realm III, p. 317.
67. 67 Arundel Castle MS G1/4; TNA SC12/25/53.
68. 68 TNA SP1/104, fol. 82 (LP X, 1011).
69. 69 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, fol. 199.
70. 70 TNA SP1/105, fol. 5 (LP XI, 17).
71. 71 Taffe, Courting Scandal, p. 170.
72. 72 Kate E. McCaffrey, ‘Hope from day to day: Inscriptions newly discovered in a book belonging to Anne Boleyn’, TLS, May 2021 https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/inscriptions-discovered-in-a-book-owned-by-anne-boleyn-essay-kate-e-mccaffrey/ (accessed August 2023).
73. 73 BL Cotton MS Vespasian C XIV, fol. 266.
74. 74 Alice was a knight’s wife, Elizabeth was not.
75. 75 LP XV, 477.
76. 76 See Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 128–9; David M. Head, ‘ “Beyng Ledde and Seduced by the Devyll”: The Attainder of Lord Thomas Howard and the Tudor Law of Treason’, Sixteenth Century Journal 13:4 (1982), 2–16; Kimberly Schutte, ‘ “Not for Matters of Treason but for Love Matters”: Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, and Tudor Marriage Law’, in James V. Mehl, ed., Laudem Caroli: Renaissance and Reformation Studies for Charles G. Nauert (Kirksville, MI, 1998), pp. 171–88.
77. 77 TNA SP1/126, fol. 48.
78. 78 Statutes of the Realm III, pp. 655–62.
79. 79 TNA E36/120/65.
80. 80 Ibid.
81. 81 His attainder was one of only three which included clauses extending the treason law so that in future the crime listed, i.e. marrying a relative of the king without permission, would be legally treasonable. Interestingly, it also stated that in future, anybody advising or aiding in the making of such a match would share the penalties for high treason, a clause which, had it come into immediate effect, would have lost Mary her head. See Head, ‘ “Beyng Ledde and Seduced” ’, and Statutes of the Realm III, pp. 680–81.
82. 82 Lady Margaret remained in the Tower until November 1536, at which point she was moved to Syon Abbey (TNA SP1/110, fol. 186). Lord Thomas died of sickness in the Tower a year later in October 1537 (SP1/126, fol. 48).
83. 83 CSP Spain V, ii, 77.
84. 84 Statutes of the Realm III, pp. 655–62.
85. 85 CSP Spain V, ii, 77.
86. 86 LP X, 1087 (17).

Chapter 12: Too Wise for a Woman

1. 1 The original of Lady Hussey’s answers is heavily mutilated (BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 254), but calendared in LP VII, 1036.
2. 2 Both Lady Hussey and her husband had been involved with the Nun of Kent’s prophecies in 1534.
3. 3 LP VII, 1036.
4. 4 Passed in July 1536. Statutes of the Realm III, pp. 655–62.
5. 5 Her illegitimacy hadn’t been officially stated, but it had been officially implied by the annulment of her parents’ marriage in 1533 and then the First Act of Succession in 1534.
6. 6 McIntosh, p. 75.
7. 7 CSP Spain V, i, 45, 138.
8. 8 LP VII, 1036.
9. 9 Ibid.
10. 10 CSP Spain V, ii, 70.
11. 11 LP XI, 10.
12. 12 LP VII, 1036.
13. 13 McIntosh, p. 73.
14. 14 CSP Spain V, ii, 70.
15. 15 LP VII, 1036.
16. 16 BL Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 276 (LP X, 968).
17. 17 CSP Spain V, ii, 61.
18. 18 McIntosh, pp. 101–4; BL Cotton MS Vespasian C XIV, fols 274–275v; Otho C X, fols 266–91.
19. 19 This sum represented over eighteen years’ worth of wages for a skilled tradesman, which does demonstrate the comparative wealth of even the smaller monastic houses.
20. 20 See R. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001), and Michael Bush, The Pilgrims’ Complaint: A Study of Popular Thought in the Early Tudor North (Farnham, 2009).
21. 21 LRO 1 ANC 5/B/c.
22. 22 Statutes of the Realm III, pp. 596–8.
23. 23 This has been uncovered and laid out by Steven Gunn in ‘Peers, Commons and Gentry in the Lincolnshire Revolt of 1536’, Past and Present 123 (1989), 52–79.
24. 24 TNA E36/118, fol. 7 (LP XII, i, 854).
25. 25 Ibid., fol. 3v.
26. 26 Ibid.
27. 27 LP XII, i, 946.
28. 28 LP XI, 585; TNA SP1/107, fol. 66; LP XI 828 i, iii; LP XI, 975.
29. 29 Gunn, ‘Peers, Commons and Gentry’; LP XI, 828.
30. 30 Hoyle, pp. 159–66.
31. 31 TNA SP1/109, fol. 70.
32. 32 TNA E36/118, fol. 7.
33. 33 Jansen, p. 27.
34. 34 Ibid.
35. 35 LP XI, 860, 1250.
36. 36 Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 129–32.
37. 37 TNA SP1/106, fol. 248 (LP XI, 533).
38. 38 TNA SP1/107, fol. 100 (LP XI, 615).
39. 39 TNA SP1/106, fol. 248 (LP XI, 533).
40. 40 Gunn, Charles Brandon, pp. 157.
41. 41 Grimsthorpe was technically in María’s hands, but Suffolk did not himself have a house in Lincolnshire at this time. After the suppression of the rebellion he was ordered to relocate to Grimsthorpe to keep the county quiet for the future, and in 1540 he had it remodelled. He and Katherine lived there for many years after this.
42. 42 TNA SP1/107, fol. 141 (LP XI, 650).
43. 43 TNA SP1/112, fol. 149 (LP XI, 1267).
44. 44 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, fol. 232 (LP XII, i, 81).
45. 45 TNA SP1/115, fol. 196 (LP XII, i, 345).
46. 46 Those who inventoried her late husband’s goods noted that she had taken horses to go into Kenninghall. LP XI, 163.
47. 47 TNA LR 2/117.
48. 48 Ibid.
49. 49 Ibid.
50. 50 According to Mary’s mother Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk: BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 390r–v.
51. 51 TNA E36/230/65.
52. 52 TNA SP1/128, fol. 69.
53. 53 See Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 28–31.
54. 54 TNA SP1/111, fol. 240.
55. 55 Ibid.
56. 56 Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune, pp. 135–7.
57. 57 TNA SP1/111, fol. 204.
58. 58 Ibid.
59. 59 Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune, p. 143.
60. 60 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, fol. 144.
61. 61 TNA SP1/114, fol. 48.
62. 62 TNA SP1/115, fol. 80.
63. 63 Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune, pp. 144–6.
64. 64 Gunn, Charles Brandon, p. 166.
65. 65 Jansen, p. 26.
66. 66 Ibid., pp. 26–7.

Chapter 13: Sworn the Queen’s Maid

1. 1 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895.
2. 2 Ibid., no. 899.
3. 3 Lisle Letters III, no. 578.
4. 4 Ibid., no. 717.
5. 5 TNA SP1/124, fol. 1 (LP XII, ii, 379).
6. 6 David Grummitt, ‘Plantagenet, Arthur, Viscount Lisle’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22355 (accessed August 2023).
7. 7 Many of John Husee’s letters to Lady Lisle are occupied with this question. See Lisle Letters IV, nos 850 (ii), 864, 865, 870, 874, 884.
8. 8 Ibid., no. 896.
9. 9 Ibid., nos 850 (ii), 863.
10. 10 Lisle Letters II, no. 299a; IV, no. 880.
11. 11 Lisle Letters IV, no. 870.
12. 12 Lisle Letters III, no. 729.
13. 13 Lisle Letters IV, no. 850 (ii).
14. 14 Ibid., no. 868a.
15. 15 Ibid., no. 875.
16. 16 Ibid., no. 867.
17. 17 Ibid., no. 868a.
18. 18 A Collection of Ordinances, p. 199. Ordinances routinely specify numbers of beds rather than servants themselves. It’s difficult to map numbers of beds directly onto numbers of servants, since bed-sharing was a normal practice.
19. 19 Lisle Letters IV, no. 868a.
20. 20 Ibid., nos 871, 872.
21. 21 Ibid., no. 854a.
22. 22 Ibid., nos 875, 868a.
23. 23 Ibid., nos 878, 879, 881, 883, 886, 887, 888, 889.
24. 24 TNA SP1/121, fol. 95 (LP XII, ii, 77).
25. 25 Or rather, Lady Lisle thought she was pregnant, but no baby materialised.
26. 26 Lisle Letters IV, no. 889.
27. 27 Ibid., no. 887.
28. 28 Ibid.
29. 29 Ibid., no. 891.
30. 30 Ibid., no. 894.
31. 31 Ibid., no. 895.
32. 32 Ibid.
33. 33 Thurley, Houses of Power, pp. 217–24.
34. 34 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895.
35. 35 Taffe, ‘Reconstructing the Queen’s Household’, pp. 207–10.
36. 36 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895.
37. 37 A. R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester, 1959), pp. 92–3.
38. 38 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895; A Collection of Ordinances, p. 164.
39. 39 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895.
40. 40 Hayward, Dress at the Court, p. 158.
41. 41 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895. It’s often said that this was because the French style of dress, and hoods in particular, were so strongly associated with Queen Anne Boleyn that Queen Jane was actively trying to break from that. However, Maria Hayward notes that Jane actually had only French hoods in her wardrobe as inventoried after her death. Hayward, Dress at the Court, p. 171.
42. 42 Ibid., pp. 158–74.
43. 43 Lisle Letters IV, no. 896.
44. 44 The use of certain colours, fabrics and furs was regulated by law according to social status, in an effort to maintain social hierarchy despite an increasingly rich merchant class, and to prevent people spending beyond their means. These were called Sumptuary Laws. Though they did not officially apply to women, their clothing was supposed to reflect the status of their father or husband. See Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (Aldershot, 2009).
45. 45 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895.
46. 46 TNA SP1/125, fol. 211 (LP XII, ii, 680).
47. 47 College of Arms MS M8, fols 32–3.
48. 48 Wriothesley, pp. 65–6.
49. 49 Ibid., pp. 66–7.
50. 50 College of Arms MS I.14, fols 135–8. This is the draft account; there is a fair copy in College of Arms MS 6, and another version in BL Egerton MS 985, fol. 33. See also LP XII, ii, 911.
51. 51 Lisle Letters IV, no. 900.
52. 52 Ibid.
53. 53 LP XII, ii, 970.
54. 54 Hall, p. 825.
55. 55 Lisle Letters IV, no. 905.
56. 56 A full account of Queen Jane’s burial can be found in BL Add MS 71009, fols 37–44v. See also LP XII, ii, 1060.
57. 57 Hall, p. 825.
58. 58 Lisle Letters IV, no. 905.
59. 59 Ibid., no. 904.
60. 60 Ibid., no. 906.
61. 61 TNA SP1/126, fol. 58 (LP XII, ii, 1030).
62. 62 Lisle Letters V, no. 1086.
63. 63 Mary Shelton was one of the key contributors to the Devonshire Manuscript in the mid-1530s.
64. 64 Lisle Letters V, no. 1086.
65. 65 TNA SP1/127, fol. 32 (LP XII, ii, 1187).
66. 66 MacCulloch, pp. 422–7, 443–5.
67. 67 Ibid., pp. 444–5; Head, The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune, pp. 152–5.
68. 68 Suggestion made by editor of the Lisle letters, Muriel St Clare Byrne, V, pp. 11–13.
69. 69 LP XIV, ii, 400.
70. 70 LP XIII, i, 995.
71. 71 Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, ed. Frederick Madden (London, 1831)
72. 72 Mary Norris, in April 1538. Ibid., p. 67.
73. 73 Lisle Letters IV, no. 1038.
74. 74 Lisle Letters V, no. 1182.
75. 75 Ibid., no. 1136a.
76. 76 Ibid., no. 1137.
77. 77 Ibid., no. 1154.
78. 78 TNA SP1/128, fol. 11 (LP XIII, i, 13).
79. 79 TNA SP1/131, fol. 24 (LP XIII, i, 690).
80. 80 Ibid.
81. 81 TNA SP1/131, fol. 67 (LP XIII, i, 741); TNA SP1/131, fol. 192 (LP XIII, i, 846).
82. 82 Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 28–31.
83. 83 TNA SP1/134, fol. 160.
84. 84 Ibid.
85. 85 Ibid.
86. 86 TNA SP1/135, fol. 74 (LP XIII, ii, 84).
87. 87 TNA SP1/135, fol. 76 (LP XIII, ii, 75).

Chapter 14: Juggling

1. 1 Pre-modern priests were often given the courtesy title of ‘sir’; this should not be confused with possession of a knighthood.
2. 2 TNA SP1/144, fol. 16 (LP XIV, i, 425).
3. 3 See the entry in the Oxford English Dictionary at https://www.oed.com/dictionary/juggling_n?tab=meaning_and_use (accessed August 2023).
4. 4 TNA SP1/144, fol. 16 (LP XIV, i, 425).
5. 5 TNA SP1/124, fol. 9 (LP XII, ii, 469).
6. 6 BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E IV, fol. 55 (LP XII, ii, 267).
7. 7 Lisle Letters V, no. 1120.
8. 8 BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E V, fol. 300 (LP XII, ii, 592). See also Fiona Kisby, ‘ “When the King Goeth a Procession”: Chapel Ceremonies and Services, the Ritual Year, and Religious Reforms at the Early Tudor Court, 1485–1547’, Journal of British Studies 40:1 (2001), 44–75.
9. 9 MacCulloch, pp. 498–501.
10. 10 See T. F. Mayer, ‘Pole, Reginald’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22456 (accessed August 2023); MacCulloch, pp. 472–8; Madeleine Hope Dodds and Ruth Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace 1536–1537 and The Exeter Conspiracy 1538, 2 vols (London, 1971); Sylvia Barbara Soberton, Gertrude Courtenay: Wife and Mother of the Last Plantagenet (2021), pp. 97–133.
11. 11 Bernard, King’s Reformation, p. 542.
12. 12 T. F. Mayer, ‘Pole, Sir Geoffrey’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22447 (accessed August 2023).
13. 13 The same Bess who had been in service with Catherine of Aragon at her death in 1536, and who became the mistress of Thomas Wyatt.
14. 14 TNA SP1/138, fol. 180 (LP XIII, ii, 804 (3)).
15. 15 Ibid., fol. 183 (LP XIII, ii, 804 (6)).
16. 16 Ibid., fol. 181 (LP XIII, ii, 804 (5)).
17. 17 Wriothesley, p. 88.
18. 18 TNA SP1/138, fol. 132 (LP XIII, ii, 765).
19. 19 Ibid., fol. 172 (LP XIII, ii, 802).
20. 20 Wriothesley, p. 92.
21. 21 LP XIV, i, 191 (3).
22. 22 BL Cotton MS Appendix L, fol. 77v; see Janice Liedl, ‘ “Rather a Strong and Constant Man”: Margaret Pole and the Problem of Women’s Independence’, in J. A. Chappell and K. A. Kramer, eds, Women During the English Reformations (New York, 2014), pp. 29–43.
23. 23 TNA SP1/140, fol. 218 (LP XIII, ii, 1176).
24. 24 LP XIV, i, 37.
25. 25 Stanford Lehmberg, ‘Carew, Sir Nicholas’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4633 (accessed August 2023); LP XIII, ii, 830.
26. 26 TNA SP1/144, fol. 16 (LP XIV, i, 425).
27. 27 Ibid.
28. 28 David Loades, ‘Henry Grace á Dieu’, in John J. Hattendorf, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History (Oxford, 2007).
29. 29 LP XIV, i, 1260, 1261.
30. 30 Dominic Fontana, ‘Charting the Development of Portsmouth Harbour, Dockyard and Town in the Tudor Period’, Journal of Marine Archaeology 8 (2013), 263–82.
31. 31 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, fol. 251.
32. 32 There were ten women in all who signed their names to this letter: Mabel Clifford, Countess of Southampton; Margaret Gamage, Lady Howard, wife to Lord William Howard; Margaret Skipwith, Lady Tailboys, wife of George, Lord Tailboys; Anne Pickering, wife to Sir Henry Knyvett; Alice Gage, wife of Sir Anthony Browne; Jane Champernowne, wife of Sir Anthony Denny; Jane Ashley, wife to Sir Peter Mewtas; Elizabeth Oxenbridge, wife of Sir Robert Tyrwhit; Anne Basset; and Elizabeth Harvey.
33. 33 Lisle Letters V, no. 1395.
34. 34 Ibid., nos 1436, 1441, 1453, 1457a; TNA E101/422/15.
35. 35 Lisle Letters IV, no. 895.
36. 36 Lisle Letters V, no. 1513.
37. 37 Ibid., no. 1558.
38. 38 See Retha Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves (Cambridge, 2000).
39. 39 Bernard, King’s Reformation, p. 543.
40. 40 See Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 79–93; Nicole Bertzen, ‘Mission Impossible? Ambassador Karl Harst, Anne of Cleves, and Their Struggles to Secure the Strategic Alliance between Cleves and England’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Kent (2022); Heather R. Darsie, Anna, Duchess of Cleves: The King’s ‘Beloved Sister’ (Stroud, 2019).
41. 41 Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 107–11; LP XIV, ii, 424, 494.
42. 42 TNA SP1/154, fol. 5 (LP XIV, ii, 297).
43. 43 Susan E. James, ‘The Horenbout Family Workshop at the Tudor Court, 1522–1541: Collaboration, Patronage and Production’, Cogent Arts and Humanities 8 (2021).
44. 44 See ibid.; Susan Foister, ‘Horenbout, Susanna’, in ‘Horebout [Hornebolt], Gerard’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13797 (accessed August 2023); Kathleen E. Kennedy, ‘Susanna Horebout, Courtier and Artist’, Art Herstory (1 December 2019), https://artherstory.net/susanna-horenbout-courtier-and-artist/ (accessed August 2023).
45. 45 The Chronicle of Calais in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII to the year 1540, ed. John Gough Nichols (London, 1846), p. 172; BL Harley MS 296, fol. 169v; BL Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fol. 220v.
46. 46 TNA SP1/155, fol. 85 (LP XIV, ii, 634). Wotton gives their names: Swarzenbroch, Brempt, Ossenbruch, Loe and Willik.
47. 47 Chronicle of Calais, p. 169.
48. 48 History of the King’s Works, Vol. 3, pp. 341, 349–50.
49. 49 TNA SP1/155, fol. 108 (LP XIV, ii, 677).
50. 50 Lisle Letters V, no. 1620.
51. 51 TNA SP1/155, fol. 36; Lisle Letters VI, no. 1364; BL Add. MS 45716A, fol. 15v.
52. 52 Mabel Clifford, Countess of Southampton, Margaret Gamage, Lady Howard, Margaret Skipwith, Lady Tailboys, Elizabeth Oxenbridge, Lady Tyrwhit and Elizabeth Harvey were not on the list to serve Anna at this stage. Anecdotal evidence shows that Elizabeth Harvey may have remained at court, but she is not on any relevant official lists during this time.
53. 53 TNA SP1/155, fol. 121 (LP XIV, ii, 693).
54. 54 BL Cotton Vitellius C XVI, fol. 227 (LP XIV, ii, 754).
55. 55 Melissa Franklin-Harkrider, Women, Reform and Community in Early Modern England: Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Lincolnshire’s Godly Aristocracy, 1519–1580 (Woodbridge, 2008), p. 54.
56. 56 LP XIV, i, p. 293.
57. 57 LRO 2 ANC 3/A/48. There’s also an indenture dated 3 July 1539 that implies she is still alive at that date (2 ANC 3/A/50), so it’s possible that the scribe made a mistake with the regnal year on either this or the 20 May document that means we can’t certainly verify the date of her death. My thanks to Steven Gunn for discussion on this point.
58. 58 Neither of these places have parish records that go back far enough to check, and there is no surviving tomb.
59. 59 The rumour seems to have been begun by Cecilie Goff (p. 109). A newspaper article from the Northampton Mercury, 28 August 1891, p. 8, however, shows that it was impossible: ‘The workmen engaged in concreting the floor of the choir in Peterborough Cathedral have made an important discovery… In the course of events Queen Catherine’s tomb was opened. It was found to be a vault over 8ft. long by 3ft. 11in. wide. In the interior was a stone, on which was inscribed the fact that the tomb was opened in 1790. What would probably be the remains of the Queen were enclosed in a large leaden shell, from which all traces of the wood coffin had long ago disappeared.’
60. 60 Lisle Letters V, nos 1396a; 1409; 1441.
61. 61 Chronicle of Calais, p. 173; Harley MS 296, fol. 171; SP1/155, fol. 27. Lady Cobham (either Anne Bray, wife of the 4th Lord Cobham, or Elizabeth Hart, widow of the 3rd Lord Cobham); Lady Hart (most likely Frideswide Bray, wife of Sir Percival Hart, but possibly Elizabeth Peche, wife of Sir John Hart); Lady Finch (Catherine Gainsford, second wife of Sir William Finch); Lady Hault (probably Margaret Wood, second wife of Sir William Hault); Lady Hales (most likely Elizabeth Caunton, wife of Sir Christopher Hales).
62. 62 Hall, p. 833.
63. 63 Hall says that they stayed in the ‘palace’ (p. 833) and Wriothesley ‘Abbey’ (p. 109). It’s possible that a combination of lodgings was used, because the number of people then with Anna was large, and also because the king remained one night at Rochester too, but at a separate location. My thanks to Heather Darsie for discussion on this.
64. 64 Wriothesley, pp. 109–10.
65. 65 Hall, p. 833.
66. 66 Bertzen, Part 1, pp. 115–18.
67. 67 Hall, pp. 833–4.
68. 68 Ibid., p. 835.
69. 69 TNA SP1/157, fols 172–4 (fol. 174) (LP XV, 243).
70. 70 It’s not clear how many German maids remained with Anna. It may be that they didn’t stay long in England; there’s a payment in Queen Anna’s expenses (undated) to somebody for their ‘going over’ with the ‘duche maydes’ (‘Dutch’ and ‘German’ were often conflated by the English at this time) (TNA E101/422/16, unfoliated). Among those who stayed were one ‘Gertrude Willik’ and a ‘Katherine’; the two are lumped together in a list of rewards to Anna’s suit in July 1540 (LP XV, 937), and Gertrude’s surname is given on the subsidy list of 1544–5 (TNA E179/69/48). She was still attending Anna at Henry VIII’s funeral in 1547 (TNA LC 2/2, fol. 59). Gertrude was no doubt the ‘Mistress Willik’ named by Wotton, a relation of the Cleves steward Willik.
71. 71 Lisle Letters VI, nos 1636, 1649–50.
72. 72 TNA E101/422/15 and 16, both unfoliated.
73. 73 Ambassador Karl Harst relayed an anecdote of Queen Anna translating between himself and Lady Rutland at dinner: see Bertzen, Part 2, p. 51.
74. 74 Nicola Clark, ‘Katherine Howard: Victim?’, in Aidan Norrie et al., eds, Tudor and Stuart Consorts: Power, Influence, and Dynasty (Basingstoke, 2022), p. 127.
75. 75 TNA SP1/167, fols 141–141v (LP XVI, 1339).
76. 76 LP XV, 613 (12).
77. 77 Bernard, King’s Reformation, p. 543.
78. 78 Bertzen, Part 1, pp. 78–82.
79. 79 Ibid., Part 2, pp. 5–6, 30.
80. 80 Bernard, King’s Reformation, pp. 560–69.

Chapter 15: The Principle Occasion of Her Folly

1. 1 LP XV, 872.
2. 2 Harst, 10 July 1540, in Bertzen, Part 2, pp. 94–8.
3. 3 Ibid.
4. 4 LP XV, 872.
5. 5 Both Catherine of Aragon and Princess Mary had been kept at Richmond Palace during times when they were out of favour.
6. 6 Thurley, Houses of Power, pp. 50–51, 136, 256.
7. 7 Harst, 3 July 1540, in Bertzen, Part 2, pp. 84–7.
8. 8 Harst, 19 June 1540, in ibid., pp. 69–77; 13 July 1540, pp. 104–8; 29 July 1540, pp. 121–6.
9. 9 LP XV, 872.
10. 10 Dorothy Fitzherbert/Wingfield also had a history of service with Jane Seymour. Elizabeth Rastall appears to have been a new addition, but it is likely that she was the sister of Sir Thomas More, and was therefore no stranger to the dangerous whims of the Crown.
11. 11 For more on this see Darsie, Anna, Duchess of Cleves, and Nicole Bertzen, ‘Mission Impossible?’.
12. 12 The depositions themselves haven’t survived, but were seen and transcribed by Strype in his Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, Part 1, Appendix CXIV, pp. 452–63. The ladies’ deposition is on p. 462–3.
13. 13 Outlined in the depositions above; also see Cromwell’s letters to the king in BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 273–274v (LP XV, 776); LP XV, 823, 824.
14. 14 Harst’s letters have been transcribed, summarised and analysed by Nicole Bertzen in Part 2 of her recent PhD thesis ‘Mission Impossible?’. My thanks to Nicole for her kind permission to use her work here.
15. 15 Harst, 17 April 1540, in ibid., pp. 32–5, and 6 May 1540, pp. 36–8.
16. 16 Harst, 10 July 1540, in ibid., pp. 94–8.
17. 17 Harst, 18 July, in ibid., pp. 110–20.
18. 18 BL Cotton MS Titus B I, fols 273–274v (LP XV, 776).
19. 19 See, for instance, Bernard, King’s Reformation, pp. 542–79; MacCulloch, pp. 506–31.
20. 20 TNA SP1/154, fol. 95 (LP XIV, ii, 455); TNA SP1/155, fol. 36; LP XIV, ii, 494.
21. 21 LP XV, 860.
22. 22 Harst, 7–8 July 1540, in Bertzen, Part 2, pp. 87–94.
23. 23 Harst, 18 July 1540, in ibid., pp. 110–20.
24. 24 Harst, 12 June 1540, in ibid., pp. 50–59.
25. 25 Harst, 18 July 1540, in ibid., pp. 110–20.
26. 26 Harst, 7–8 July 1540, in ibid., pp. 87–94.
27. 27 Harst, 13 July 1540, in ibid., pp. 104–9.
28. 28 Harst, 18 July 1540, in ibid., pp. 110–20.
29. 29 See Gareth Russell, Young & Damned & Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII (London, 2017).
30. 30 TNA SP1/168, fols 53–75v (LP XVI, 1409). Katherine Howard’s age at this time is a matter of considerable debate. We do not know exactly when she was born; estimates of her birthdate range from 1518 to 1527. A date of 1521 or 1522 allows for her parents to have married as late as 1515 and still to have had four children before Katherine, without pushing her mother’s childbearing years too far beyond the bounds of reasonable possibility. This would make Katherine around eighteen or nineteen in 1540. See discussion in Clark, ‘Katherine Howard: Victim?’.
31. 31 Harst, 3 July 1540, in Bertzen, Part 2, pp. 84–7.
32. 32 Harst, 12 July 1540, in ibid., pp. 98–103; 31 July 1540, pp. 126–35; 11 August 1540, pp. 138–42.
33. 33 Statutes of the Realm III, p. 792.
34. 34 Thurley, Houses of Power, pp. 262–3.
35. 35 TNA SP1/157, fol. 14.
36. 36 TNA LC 2/2, fol. 59.
37. 37 Harst, 23 August 1540, in Bertzen, Part 2, pp. 148–53.
38. 38 TNA SP1/157, fol. 14.
39. 39 MacCulloch, pp. 449–51, 522; Lisle Letters VI, pp. 219–53.
40. 40 Wriothesley, pp. 122–3.
41. 41 LP XVI, 12.
42. 42 Wriothesley, p. 122–3.
43. 43 John Husee, when asked by his mistress Lady Lisle which women were in Anna of Cleves’ chamber, reported not only those of the higher-status ladies and gentlewomen that he knew, but thought it important enough to include the names of the chamberers too. Lisle Letters VI, no. 1642.
44. 44 This all comes from Margaret Morton’s deposition, given later on in November 1541, when she said that ‘afftar catryn tylnay was com that the quen crld not a byd mesttrysst loffken nor this deponent’. TNA SP1/167, fols 133–4 (LP XVI, 1338).
45. 45 Ibid.
46. 46 TNA SP1/167, fol. 136 (LP XVI, 1339).
47. 47 Clark, ‘Katherine Howard: Victim?’, pp. 126–8.
48. 48 TNA SP1/167, fol. 142r.
49. 49 Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath Preserved at Longleat, Wiltshire, Vol. 2 (London, 1907), pp. 9–10; TNA SP1/167, fols 141–2 (LP XVI, 1339); TNA SP1/167, fols 133–4 (LP XVI, 1338).
50. 50 TNA SP1/167, fol. 142 (LP XVI, 1339).
51. 51 Pontefract had been occupied by Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, in 1525–6 and by Lord Darcy during the Pilgrimage of Grace, but not since. See Ian Roberts, Pontefract Castle (West Yorkshire Archaeology Service, 1990).
52. 52 Clark, ‘Queen Katherine Howard: Space, Place, and Promiscuity’, 89–103.
53. 53 TNA SP1/167, fol. 141 (LP XVI, 1339).
54. 54 Clark, ‘Queen Katherine Howard’.
55. 55 TNA SP1/167, fols 142–3 (LP XVI, 1339).
56. 56 Ibid.
57. 57 Ibid.
58. 58 Ibid.
59. 59 Ibid.
60. 60 Clark, ‘Queen Katherine Howard’.
61. 61 Ibid.
62. 62 Russell, pp. 122–9.
63. 63 Burnet, History of the Reformation, Vol. 4, p. 504.
64. 64 Queen Katherine’s brother Charles, in fact. Margaret was displaced for Katherine, nominally forgiven only because her isolated location was needed for a more serious purpose. She was sent instead to the Duke of Norfolk’s house at Kenninghall in Norfolk with her friend, Queen Katherine’s cousin, Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond. TNA SP1/167, fols 123–124v, 127 (LP XVI, 1331, 1333).
65. 65 TNA SP1/167, fols 123–124v (LP XVI, 1331).
66. 66 There is no way to know where in Syon Abbey Queen Katherine’s chambers were. Though recent excavations and archaeological surveys have gone some way towards reconstructing the abbey before its suppression, the fact that it was largely demolished and rebuilt by the Duke of Somerset in the later 1540s makes it impossible to have an actual room plan. See Wessex Archaeology, ‘Syon House, Syon Park, Hounslow: An Archaelogical Evaluation of a Bridgettine Abbey and an Assessment of the Results’, (2003), available at https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/syon-house-syon-park (accessed August 2023).
67. 67 TNA SP1/167, fols 123–124v (LP XVI, 1331).
68. 68 Later in 1546, the Duke of Norfolk claimed in a letter that Ladies Herbert and Tyrwhit had been in the Tower with Queen Katherine: ‘what malise both my nesys that it plesed the kynges highnes to marry dyd bere unto me is not unknowen to such lades as kept them in this howse as my lady herdberd my lady tirwit my lady kyngston and others’. BL Titus B I, fols 99–101v (fol. 101) (LP XXI, ii, 554).
69. 69 TNA SP1/167, fols 133–4 (LP XVI, 1338).
70. 70 Ibid., fols 131–2 (LP XVI, 1337).
71. 71 Clark, ‘Queen Katherine Howard’.
72. 72 TNA SP1/167, fols 123–124v (LP XVI, 1331).
73. 73 LP XVI, 1332.
74. 74 Bradley J. Irish, ‘ “The secret chamber and other suspect places”: Materiality, Space, and the Fall of Katherine Howard’, Early Modern Women 4 (2009), 169–73; LP XVI, 1342.
75. 75 Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 135–8.
76. 76 TNA SP1/167, fols 147–147v (LP XVI, 1340).
77. 77 LP XVI, 1366.
78. 78 Wriothesley, p. 132.
79. 79 TNA SP1/168, fol. 112 (LP XVI, 1443).
80. 80 Ibid., fol. 164 (LP XVI, 1472).
81. 81 Clark, ‘Katherine Howard: Victim?’, p. 136.
82. 82 LP XVI, 1401.
83. 83 Ibid.
84. 84 This was Anne Sapcote. See Diane Willen, ‘Russell, John, first earl of Bedford’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24319 (accessed August 2023).
85. 85 Bellamy, pp. 40–41.
86. 86 Statutes of the Realm III, pp. 857–60.
87. 87 LP XVII, 28 (15).
88. 88 Wriothesley, p. 133.
89. 89 Ibid.; CSP Spain VI, i, 232.
90. 90 Ibid.
91. 91 LP XVII, 100.
92. 92 Ibid.; CSP Spain VI, i, 232.

Chapter 16: When Women Become such Clerks

1. 1 It’s reasonable to suppose that Katharine and Anne Basset did write to one another, but there are no surviving letters to prove it. This is very often the case for correspondence between women, as personal letters were not routinely kept and their survival is often a case of chance.
2. 2 She was certainly there by July 1541: LP XVI, 1023.
3. 3 CSP Spain VI, i, 207; LP XVI, 1445, 1449, 1453.
4. 4 Harst, 23 August 1540, in Bertzen, Part 2, pp. 148–53.
5. 5 TNA SP1/168, fol. 50 (LP XVI, 1407). Though the source refers to ‘Elizabeth’ Basset, it’s far more likely that Katharine was meant; the women talked about the ‘maids’ room’ being ‘sadly down’, which is information that only those with a close connection to the queen’s household would have known, and there is no ‘Elizabeth Basset’ in any other court records.
6. 6 TNA SP1/168, fols 100–103, 112–113 (LP XVI, 1425, 1433).
7. 7 CSP Spain VI, i, 230.
8. 8 Ibid.
9. 9 CSP Spain VI, ii, 94.
10. 10 Ibid., i, 143; TNA E179/69/41; Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, pp. 99, 144.
11. 11 Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, p. 111.
12. 12 LP XIV, ii, 427, 780 (32); LP XV, 436 (87).
13. 13 Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, p. 177; McIntosh, pp. 39–44.
14. 14 BL Royal MS 17 B XXVIII, fol. 5v; Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, pp. 50, 51, 55, 58, 68, 69, 82, 96, 102, 134, 138, 143.
15. 15 For instance, Lady Kingston (p. 178); and Dorothy Wheler (pp. 53, 123, 159).
16. 16 Wriothesley, p. 141, says that the winter of 1542–3 saw ‘greate cold and frost’ following an unusually wet summer.
17. 17 Susan James, Catherine Parr: Henry VIII’s Last Love (Stroud, 2009), p. 77.
18. 18 Ibid.
19. 19 CSP Spain VI, ii, 105.
20. 20 LP XVII, i, 873.
21. 21 Franklin-Harkrider, p. 48.
22. 22 James, pp. 78–9.
23. 23 Ibid., p. 80.
24. 24 TNA PROB 11/31/456.
25. 25 Kathryn Parr’s household is comparatively well documented. See Dakota Hamilton, ‘The Household of Katherine Parr’, unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford (1992); and, for example, subsidy lists for the queen’s household, TNA E179/69/41, 44, 47, 48, 55; lodging list BL Cotton MS Vespasian C XIV, fol. 107; household accounts and expenses, TNA E101/424/3, 12, 13, 15, E315/161, 340.
26. 26 TNA E315/161, fols 22, 23.
27. 27 Ibid., fol. 22v.
28. 28 J. Evans, ‘ “Gentle Purges corrected with hot Spices, whether they work or not, do vehemently provoke Venery”: Menstrual Provocation and Procreation in Early Modern England’, Social History of Medicine 25:1 (2021), 2–19.
29. 29 Wriothesley, p. 141.
30. 30 LP XVIII, i, 144.
31. 31 Gunn, Charles Brandon, pp. 197–236.
32. 32 Ibid., pp. 205–9.
33. 33 James, pp. 153–4; Retha Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and her Six Daughters-in-Law (Basingstoke, 2017), pp. 147–152; Micheline White, ‘Katherine Parr: Wartime Consort and Author’, in Norrie et al., eds, Tudor and Stuart Consorts, pp. 139–61 (pp. 149–51).
34. 34 Gunn, Charles Brandon, p. 208.
35. 35 LP XX, i, 1220.
36. 36 CSP Spain VIII, 126, 128.
37. 37 Bodleian MS Ashmole 1109, fols 142–6. My thanks to Kirsten Claiden-Yardley for this source.
38. 38 TNA PROB 11/31/456.
39. 39 See Franklin-Harkrider, pp. 46–58.
40. 40 Ibid., p. 49; CSP Spain VIII, 174; LP XX, ii, 900.
41. 41 Gunn, Charles Brandon, pp. 118–20.
42. 42 Franklin-Harkrider, p. 51.
43. 43 TNA WARD 9/149, fol. 136; Franklin-Harkrider, p. 51.
44. 44 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, Part 1, pp. 597–8; Foxe (1583), p. 1263 at https://www.dhi.ac.uk/foxe/index.php?realm=text&gototype=&edition=1583&pageid=1263&anchor=violet#kw (accessed August 2023) (LP XXI, i, 1181).
45. 45 Ibid.
46. 46 Franklin-Harkrider, p. 50, n. 19.
47. 47 Diane Watt, ‘Askew [married name Kyme], Anne’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/798 (accessed August 2023).
48. 48 For more on religious policy during the 1530s and 1540s see Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003) and Peter Marshall, Religious Identities in Henry VIII’s England (Aldershot, 2006).
49. 49 See Bernard, King’s Reformation.
50. 50 Franklin-Harkrider, p. 49.
51. 51 See Janel Mueller, ed., Katherine Parr – Complete Works and Correspondence (Chicago, 2011).
52. 52 Ibid., p. 112, no. 12.
53. 53 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 200; Franklin-Harkrider, p. 50.
54. 54 TNA SP10/10/46, 10/11/4.
55. 55 See Kisby, ‘ “When the King Goeth a Procession” ’.
56. 56 Watt, ODNB.
57. 57 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 1, Part 1, pp. 597–8.
58. 58 Foxe (1583), pp. 1262–3.
59. 59 Franklin-Harkrider, p. 50. n. 19.
60. 60 Watt, ODNB.
61. 61 Franklin-Harkrider, pp. 49–53.
62. 62 Foxe (1583), p. 1267.
63. 63 See Thomas S. Freeman, ‘One Survived: The Account of Katherine Parr in Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” ’, in Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb, eds, Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (Aldershot, 2013), pp. 235–52.
64. 64 BL Cotton MS Vespasian C XIV, fol. 107; Cotton Appendix XXVIII, fol. 104v.
65. 65 Hall, p. 867.
66. 66 TNA E101/424/12, Part 2 (195).
67. 67 Thomas Fuller, History of the Worthies of England (1662), p. 151; https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1062823?section=official-list-entry.
68. 68 TNA E101/424/12, Part 1 (72).
69. 69 For example, E101/424/12, Part 2 (195); E101/424/12, Part 2 (178); E101/424/12, Part 1 (97); E101/424/12, Part 2 (178).
70. 70 LP XXI, i, 1237.
71. 71 CSP Spain VIII, 331.
72. 72 Ibid., 370.
73. 73 James, pp. 253–4.
74. 74 Suzannah Lipscomb, The King is Dead: The Last Will and Testament of Henry VIII (London, 2015), p. 65.
75. 75 TNA E101/424/12, Part 1 (55, 76, 78).
76. 76 Lipscomb, The King is Dead, pp. 121–2.
77. 77 James, p. 259.
78. 78 TNA E101/424/12, Part 2 (20, 118, 120–21).
79. 79 See Ian W. Archer, ‘City and Court Connected: The Material Dimensions of Royal Ceremonial, ca. 1480–1625’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly 71:1 (2008), 157–79, and Jennifer Loach, ‘The Function of Ceremonial in the Reign of Henry VIII’, Past and Present 142 (1994), 42–68; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 2, Part 2, pp. 289–311.
80. 80 TNA LC 2/2, fol. 44.
81. 81 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. 2, Part 2, pp. 289–311 (p. 306).

Epilogue

1. 1 TNA E315/340, fol. 82.
2. 2 Ibid., fol. 88. In the first list there is no separation between gentlewomen and maids of honour, but by the second list this has been reinstated. Chamberer Mistress Skipwith had left by Michaelmas, but another Mistress Skipwith, perhaps her daughter, had joined as a maid of honour, replacing Mistress Guildford, who had also left. Carew, Copley, Bridges, Stafford and Aglionby were also new among the maids by Michaelmas.
3. 3 S. J. Gunn, ‘Brandon, Charles, first duke of Suffolk’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3260 (accessed August 2023).
4. 4 TNA E101/424/12, Part 1 (82, 86), Part 2 (18).
5. 5 Mueller, p. 131.
6. 6 TNA SP10/1/43.
7. 7 James, p. 269.
8. 8 Ibid., pp. 267–8.
9. 9 TNA E101/424/12, Part 1 (2, 7, 23); TNA E315/340, fols 27v–28.
10. 10 See Helen Graham-Matheson, ‘ “All wemen in thar degree shuld to thar men subiectit be”: The Controversial Court Career of Elisabeth Parr, Marchioness of Northampton, c.1547–1565’, unpublished PhD dissertation, UCL (2015), pp. 90–137.
11. 11 See James, pp. 272–3, and Retha M. Warnicke, ‘Seymour [née Stanhope], Anne, duchess of Somerset’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68053 (accessed August 2023).
12. 12 Mueller, p. 131.
13. 13 James, pp. 289–91.
14. 14 Ibid., pp. 292–4.
15. 15 Ibid., p. 299.
16. 16 Mueller, pp. 184–7.
17. 17 James, pp. 299–300.
18. 18 Franklin-Harkrider, p. 50.
19. 19 Foxe (1583), p. 2078.
20. 20 The commissioners who inventoried her possessions at Kenninghall in 1546 described her closet and coffers as ‘soo bare as your maiestie wolle hardlie think’ and stated that her jewels had been sold to pay her debts. TNA SP1/227, fol. 84.
21. 21 Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics, pp. 161–5.
22. 22 Ibid.
23. 23 Ibid., pp. 146–8.
24. 24 Ibid., p. 166.
25. 25 Wriothesley, pp. 94–5.
26. 26 J. P. D. Cooper, ‘Courtenay [née Blount], Gertrude, marchioness of Exeter’, ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6450 (accessed August 2023).
27. 27 LP XXI, i, 148 (27, 28), 1165 (58), LP XXI, ii, 475 (118).
28. 28 TNA E101/426/5, fols 39–39v.
29. 29 Lisle Letters VI, pp. 277–9.
30. 30 Ibid., pp. 276–7.
31. 31 Hall, p. 592.
32. 32 Franklin-Harkrider, p. 57.
33. 33 Foxe (1570), pp. 2884–6.
34. 34 See Natalie Mears, ‘Politics in the Elizabethan Privy Chamber: Lady Mary Sidney and Kat Ashley’, in James Daybell, ed., Women and Politics in Early Modern England 1450–1700 (London, 2004), pp. 67–82. See also Merton, ‘The Women Who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth’.