As Ian W Archer explains in his article about Thomas Wyatt, “The anomalous position of a king regnant crystallized fears about how Philip might use his powers within England; the possibility that England might become another Habsburg milch cow was very real; and there was a real risk of a succession struggle on Mary’s death” and even members of Mary I’s privy council were concerned about the Spanish match and were putting forward Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, as a match.

In November 1553, Parliament tried to dissuade Mary from her marriage plans but she had made up her mind and some men decided that a military coup might be the only way to prevent Mary’s marriage. On the 26th November 1553, a group of men including Wyatt, Sir Peter Carew, Sir Edward Rogers, Sir Edward Warner, Sir William Pickering, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Sir James Croft, Sir George Harper, Nicholas Arnold, William Thomas, and William Winter, met in London. Archer writes of how the leader at this point was probably Croft and not Wyatt.

In December, the rebel group was joined by Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk and father of Lady Jane Grey, and plans were put into action: “a fourfold rising scheduled for Palm Sunday (18 March): Carew would raise the west country, Croft Herefordshire, Suffolk the midlands, and Wyatt Kent”, but there were disagreements over the fine details, with William Thomas promoting the idea that Mary should be assassinated, something which Wyatt did not agree with. The plan was to depose Mary I and replace her with her half-sister Elizabeth who would marry Courtenay.

Unfortunately, by the end of December 1553 the privy council heard that trouble was brewing and Edward Courtenay spilled the beans to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, on the 21st January. The rebels were forced into action earlier than planned and while Carew spread dissent in Devon, Wyatt called a meeting at Allington on the 22nd January 1554 to organise the Kent uprising. Three days later, on the 25th January, Wyatt “raised his standard in Maidstone and his supporters made simultaneous proclamations in Rochester, Tonbridge, Malling, and Milton”. On the 28th January, Mary I’s government sent 600 men from London to Kent under the leadership of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, but they were far outnumbered by Wyatt’s forces and many men mutinied, joining the rebels. On the 30th January, Wyatt and his men besieged Cooling Castle, owned by George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham, who had withdrawn to his castle after the Duke of Nrofolk’s forces had mutinied and dispersed. According to C S Knighton’s article on Cobham, he claimed that he had fought valiantly against the rebesl for seven hours before surrendering to them but Knighton points out that his resistance was actually a “pretence” and he joined the rebels. Things were looking good for Wyatt who then marched on to London.

Thomas Wyatt the Younger

By the time Wyatt had reached London on 3rd February 1554, Mary I had rallied her troops with a rousing speech given at Guildhall on the 1st February and Wyatt found the City guarded and barricaded. Wyatt changed his plan, moving from Southwark to Kingston, and was successful in entering Kingston on the 6th February. There, he encountered problems: the bridge over the Thames needed repairing before it could be crossed and his siege artillery became bogged down and had to be abandoned. Archer writes of how “Some observers doubted the loyalty of the queen’s commanders, as they apparently let Wyatt advance unmolested” but Wyatt was left alone because he was actually being “lured into a trap”. By the time Wyatt and his troops reached Ludgate, Mary’s force had barred the gates and the rebels were forced into turning around and heading to Temple Bar where Mary’s troops were waiting for them. With his men surrendering and swearing allegiance to the Queen, Wyatt was forced to surrender and he was arrested by Sir Maurice Berkeley and taken to the Tower of London.

Thomas Wyatt the Younger was tried at Westminster Hall on the 15th March. He denied plotting the assassination of Mary I and refused to implicate Elizabeth. He was found guilty of treason and was executed on the 11th April 1554. He was beheaded and then his body was quartered and his bowels and genitals burned. His head and the quarters of his body were then taken to Newgate where they were parboiled, nailed up and the head placed on a gibbet at St James’s. It is not known what happened to his head, as it disappeared from the gibbet.

Elizabeth was taken to the Tower on the 18th March – see The Imprisonment of Elizabeth – and imprisoned while Mary’s council tried to implicate her in the rebellion. She was released in May 1554 but Lady Jane Grey, whose father had been involved in the rebellion, was not so lucky: she and her husband, Guildford Dudley, were executed on the 12th February 1554. Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, was executed on the 23rd February 1554.

Notes and Sources

• Ian W. Archer, ‘Wyatt, Sir Thomas (b. in or before 1521, d. 1554)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
• C. S. Knighton, ‘Brooke, George, ninth Baron Cobham (c.1497–1558)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

The famous Tudor chronicler Charles Wriothesley recorded his execution:-

“Fryday, the 22 of January 1552, Edward Seimer, Duke of Somersett, was beheaded at Tower Hill, afore ix of the clocke in the forenone, which tooke his death very patiently, but there was such a feare and disturbance amonge the people sodainely before he suffred, that some tombled downe the ditch, and some ranne toward the houses thereby and fell, that it was marveile to see and hear; but howe the cause was, God knoweth.”

There is a note on that page of The Chronicle explaining that “Edward VI appears to have been perfectly convinced of his uncle’s guilt, and in that conviction to have given himself no further concern about the duke, only noting in his diary that ‘the Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.’ ” How sad! Edward VI had now lost both of his uncles, Edward and Thomas Seymour, to the executioner for alleged treason.

Edward Seymour was laid to rest in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London and records show that he was actually buried next to Anne Boleyn in the chancel area.

You can read all about Edward Seymour’s arrest and the reasons for it in my article The Arrest of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector

Notes and Sources

• A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, Charles Wriothesley, printed for the Camden Society, p65-66

Also on this day in history…

• 1561 – Birth of Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban, the Elizabethan Lord Chancellor, politician, philosopher, author and scientist at York House in the Strand, London. Bacon is known as “the Father of the Scientific method” and developed an investigative method, the Baconian method, which he put forward in his book “Novum Organum” in 1620. Some people (Baconians) believe that Francis Bacon was the true author of William Shakespeare’s plays.

“Certain men of the parish came unto him, and earnestly entreated that considering the multitude was great, and that it was pity they should be disappointed of their expectation, that it would please him to take the place for that time. But he excused his age and the infirmities thereof, and that his memory failed him, his voice scarce to be heard, and he not able to do it, that they would hold him excused. Nevertheless such were their importunate requests that, would he nould he, he must and did yield unto their requests: and between two men he was carried up into the pulpit, where God did with his spirit so strengthen him, that he made his last and the best and the most godly sermon that ever he did in all his life. And very shortly after he died, being very honourably buried with the presence of the duchess of Suffolk, the earl of Bedford, and many others, honourable and worshipful personages.”

Coverdale was laid to rest in the chancel of St Bartholomew by the Exchange but his remains were moved in 1840 when the church was demolished. He was re-interred at the church of St Magnus the Martyr.

Here are some facts about Miles Coverdale:-

• He was born c1488 in Yorkshire, making him around 80 when he died
• He was ordained as a priest in Norwich
• He became an Augustinian friar and was part of an order in Cambridge where he was influenced by the prior, Robert Barnes, who was sympathetic to religious reform
• Coverdale took a degree at Cambridge – Foxe says a BTh and Cooper says a BCL
• He met Thomas Cromwell in the 1520s
• “By Lent 1528 he had left the Augustinians and ‘going in the habit of a secular priest’ (Acts and Monuments, ed. Pratt, 5.40) he preached in Essex against transubstantiation, the worship of images, and confession to the ear” – His ‘heretical’ views led to him having to flee to the Continent in exile at the end of 1528
• In exile, according to John Foxe, Coverdale worked closely with Bible translator William Tyndale
• In 1534 Coverdale translated Campensis’s 1532 Latin paraphrase on the psalms
• On 4th October 1535 Coverdale’s translation of the Bible, the Coverdale Bible, was printed. He “was the first to translate and print the entire Bible in English”
• Coverdale returned to England in late 1535
• In 1537 and 1538, at Cranmer and Cromwell’s request, Coverdale oversaw a revision and reprinting of “The Matthew’s Bible”. Unfortunately, all bound copies were burned but Cromwell was able to initiate fresh printing. It was called “The Great Bible”
• Coverdale was forced into exile again, with his new bride Elizabeth Macheson, due to the 1539 Act of Six Articles
• While in exile, he obtained his DTh and became an assistant preacher and headmaster of a school in Bergzabern, near Strasbourg, where he also met Conrad Hubert, Martin Bucer’s secretary
• In exile he translated German tracts and produced his “Defence of a Certayne Poore Christen Man”
• All of Coverdale’s books were condemned on the 8th July 1546 and many were burned at St Paul’s Cross on the 26th September 1546 by Bishop Bonner
• Coverdale returned to England from exile in 1548
• He became almoner to the Dowager Queen Catherine Parr and preached at her funeral in September 1548. He then became a royal chaplain to Edward VI
• Coverdale was involved in pacifying the rebels in the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, doing the work of the elderly Bishop of Exeter
• He was a member of the 1551 commission appointed to deal with Anabaptists
• On the 14th August 1551 he became Bishop of Exeter
• He regularly attended the House of Lords and was a member of the 1552 commission reforming canon law
• He remained an active preacher
• In 1553 he was ejected from his seat of bishop by Mary I
• In 1555 Mary I allowed Coverdale to travel to Denmark. He then made his way back to Bergzaben
• In 1558 he became an elder of a church in Geneva
• He returned to England in August 1559, lodging with the Duchess of Suffolk
• In January 1564, Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, offered Coverdale the living of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge
• Coverdale survived a dose of the Plague in 1563
• His wife Elizabeth died in September 1565 and Coverdale married his second wife, Katherine, on the 7th April 1566
• He resigned from St Magnus the Martyr in the summer of 1566 but continued preaching actively in London even though he was in his 70s
• He preached right up to his death on 20th January 1569

Notes and Sources

• David Daniell, ‘Coverdale, Miles (1488–1569)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

In his book, “Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord and Dissension”, David Cressy writes of this extraordinary tale which came to the attention of Queen Elizabeth I and her Privy Council and was investigated. According to the midwife, Elizabeth Harrison, Agnes Cowper from Market Harborough in Leicestershire had told her of how “the likeness of a bear, sometimes like a dog, sometimes like a man” had had carnal knowledge of her in its various guises.

Harrison went on to describe how Agnes gave birth to the cat, “the hinder part coming first”. The other six women who were present at the birth were questioned and Cressy writes of how “none could tell for certain what had happened”. Margaret Harrison said “that she was at the birth of the monster with her child in her arms, and the wives willed her to fetch a candle for they had not light… and when she came in with the candle she saw the monster lie on the earth and she thinketh it came out of Agnes Bowker’s womb.” Another woman spoke of seeing the monster but none of them had actually seen it born.

Testimonies from the local men were also taken. They had examined the cat and even dissected it, finding bacon in its digestive system. This convinced them that the “monster” was nothing but a real cat who had been enjoying a piece of bacon in the last few hours rather than being carried in the womb of young Agnes. They also spoke of how Agnes had recently tried to borrow a cat and that a neighbour’s cat had gone missing. Their testimonies, and those of the women present at the birth, were heard at a special ecclesiastical court in front of the archdeacon of Leicester. A secular hearing was also set up to examine the evidence and to see if a crime, such as infanticide, had been committed.

Agnes herself was obviously examined and she told some rather tall tales involving being seduced by a schoolmaster who gave her “falling sickness” (epilepsy) and who told her that she could be cured by having a child. According to Agnes, Mr Brady, the schoolmaster, sent “a thing” to her “in the likeness of a man” and she slept with him. When questioned about her pregnancy and its outcome, she went from saying that she had given birth to a child who was being nursed at Guilsborough, to saying that she had given birth before Christmas to a dead child which was buried in Little Bowden and then to saying that she didn’t know what had happened when she gave birth in January but that the midwife told her that the monster had come out of her body.

The case was referred to Henry Hastings, the Earl of Huntingdon, on the 18th February 1569 and Anthony Anderson, the archdeacon’s commissary, passed on a drawing of the cat, the results of the examination of the cat and another cat as comparison, and full transcripts of testimonies. This package of information was then passed to William Cecil, Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State, who shared it with Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London in August 1569. Grindal concluded “for the monster, it appeareth plainly to be a counterfeit matter; but yet we cannot extort confessions of the manner of doings”, in other words he could not establish what exactly had happened. As Cressy points out, “it mattered little Cecil whether Agnes gave birth to a bastard or to a beast, or whether she had murdered her baby; but it became a matter of public concern when people saw threatening portents in this apparent violation of nature, and when credulous Catholics gained ground by exploiting a dubious story” and in a superstitious age time when such portents “assumed political dimensions, as augeries of ‘alterations of kingdoms’ and portents of ‘destruction of princes’” Cressy concludes that “it should come as no surprise, then, to find the government attempting to control or neutralize such reports in 1569″.

Although the Elizabethans obviously didn’t have Twitter and Facebook, the tale of Agnes Cowper’s cat still went viral through a now lost pamphlet. The story is also mentioned by characters in William Bullein’s “A dialogue against the fever pestilence” from 1573:-

“Roger: Thei would destroie all the Commonwealth; but we see what mischief thei haue dooen. And also, maister, what a worlde is this? How is it chaunged ! it is marueilous, it is monstrous ! I heare saie there is a yong woman, borne in the toune of Harborough, one Booker, a Butchers doughter, whiche of late, God wote, is brought to bed of a cat, or haue deliured a catte ; or, if you will, she is the mother of a catt. Oh God ! how is nature repugnant to her self. That a woman should bryng forthe a verie catte or a very Dogge, &c., wantyng nothyng, neither hauyng more then other Dogges or Cattes haue ! Takyng nothyng of the mother but onely as I gesse her Cattishe condition.

Ciuis: It is a lie, Roger, beleue it not ; it was but a Catte : it had Baken founde in the bealie, ahd a strawe. It was an old Catte, and she a yong Quene ; it was a pleasaunt practise of papistrie to bring the people to newe wonders. If it had been a monster, then it should haue had somewhat more or els lesse ; But an other Catte was flaied in the same sorte, and in all poinctes like, or, as it were, the self same ; thus can drabbes do somtime when thei haue
murthered their owne bastardes, with the helpe of an olde “Witch bryng a Catte in place. A toye to mocke an Ape withall. Roger, it should haue been a kitlyng first, and so growne to a Catt ; but it was a Catte at the first.”

Such a story being gossipped about and spread really needed dealing with, however silly it sounds to us today, and that is why it was fully investigated.

Notes and Sources

• Travesties and transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: tales of discord, David Cressy, p9-22
• A dialogue against the feuer pestilence, William Bullein, 1573, p73 – Read online at archive.org

Thomas Seymour was not only accused of trying to kidnap his nephew, he was also accused of plotting to marry the teenaged Elizabeth and put her on the throne. As her husband he would then have been made Lord Protector, just like his brother was for Edward VI. He was interrogated in the Tower and examined before the Privy Council and on the 25th February a bill of attainder was introduced into Parliament and lawyers argued that Seymour’s offences ‘were in the compasse of High Treason’. The bill was passed on the 5th March and Thomas Seymour was executed on Tower Hill on the 20th March 1549.

G W Bernard writes of how Seymour plotted right up to the end, allegedly sending letters to Mary and Elizabeth, encouraging them to plot against Lord Protector Somerset. “These papers had been found in his shoe, sewn between the soles. He had ‘made his pen of the aglet of a poynte that he plucked from his hosse’.”

You can read more about Thomas Seymour in the following articles:-

• The Execution of Thomas Seymour
• Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour – Part One
• Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour – Part Two

Notes and Sources

• G. W. Bernard, ‘Seymour, Thomas, Baron Seymour of Sudeley (b. in or before 1509, d. 1549)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
• Thomas Seymour Breaks into the King’s Residence, Claire Ridgway, 2011

You can read the full details of Elizabeth’s triumphant day in my article “The Coronation of Elizabeth I – 15th January 1559″ and you may also be interested in reading more about Elizabeth’s coronation chart and why John Dee chose the 15th January as an auspicious day for the occasion – see Elizabeth I’s Coronation Chart.

Thomas Wentworth, 2nd Baron Wentworth

On this day in history, at 6am on the 7th January 1558, Thomas Wentworth, the Lord Deputy of Calais, was forced to surrender Calais to François de Lorraine-Guise, 2nd Duke of Guise, after a siege of seven days.

Barry Denton, in his article on Thomas Wentworth, writes of how “The causes of the fall of Calais were many and various” and cites the following factors:-

• Mary I’s privy council’s “failure to act on Wentworth’s requests in December 1557 for naval interception of French convoys of artillery and supplies up the English Channel”
• Wentworth’s mistaken belief that the French were going to attack Hesdin, not Calais
• Wentworth’s refusal to flood the plains around Calais when the French were approaching, “the key to the defence system”, because he wanted the water for brewing beer for the garrison
• Wentworth’s delay in requesting reinforcements from Mary’s husband, Philip II – He did not ask until the 2nd January

Calais was the very last English territory in France and had been held by England since 1347, when King Edward III had captured it, so it was a bitter blow for Mary I. It is said that on hearing the news of the loss of Calais, Mary commented “When I am dead and opened, you shall find ‘Philip’ and ‘Calais’ lying in my heart”. How sad!

You can read more about the loss of Calais in my article 7th January 1558 – England Loses Calais.

Notes and Sources

• Barry Denton, ‘Wentworth, Thomas, second Baron Wentworth and de jure seventh Baron Le Despenser (1525–1584)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

Thomas Radcliffe Earl of Sussex and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland

On this day in history, 6th January 1562, Shane O’Neill (Irish name Seán Ó Néill), King of the Ulster O’Neill clan in Ireland, was received in the English court by Queen Elizabeth I:-

“John Onell the Frenshman who had don much myschief the sommer past in Ireland cometh by save condytt into England and was receved gentelly in the courte in his saffron shorte the twelveth day at night. He accuseth the erle of Sussex of great crymes, crueltie, breache of promyse, putting to death of divers contrary to promyse and saue conduytt, pilling and polling etc.”¹

Shane O’Neill, who had become chieftain of the Ulster O’Neill clan after the death of his father Conn O’Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, in 1559, had refused to help the English led by Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex and Lord Deputy of Ireland, against Scottish immigrants in Ireland, even allying the O’Neills with the Macdonnells who had settled in Antrim. Elizabeth I had agreed to recognise his claims to be head of the O’Neill clan, over his half-brother Brian O’Neill, in return for his submission to her and her Lord Deputy, O’Neill was not willing to submit to Sussex and Sussex was able to persuade the Queen into permitting him to bring O’Neill to obedience by force if necessary. Sussex’s operations against O’Neill were a failure and so Elizabeth sent the Earl of Kildare to deal with O’Neill. Kildare invited the Irish chieftain to court to negotiate and O’Neill agreed to go if he was promised safe conduct, He travelled to Dublin, escorted by Kildare and the Earl of Ormonde who were to act as guarantors of his safety, to Dublin to meet with Sussex before taking a ship to England accompanied by Kildare and Ormonde, and followed by Sussex.

In a meeting with the Queen, O’Neill signed a submission but, as Cyril Falls points out, “Elizabeth kept him hanging about, undecided what to do or how to reconcile his claims with the rights of Dungannon’s elder son, Brian O’Neill”². In March 1562, she ordered that Brian O’Neill should be sent to her but on the 12th April Brian was killed by Tirlagh Luineach O’Neill. The Queen and O’Neill were able to come to an agreement after articles were drawn up on the 30th April 1562 and O’Neill took the oath of a subject and “offered to reduce Ulster outside Tyrone to peace – a delicate way of saying that Elizabeth hoped to use him to tame the Antrim Scots”³. In return, he was to be lord of Tyrone and rule “O’Cahan’s country, east of Lough Foyle, and the greater part of Antrim”⁴, but to submit to Elizabeth’s minister and council if there were any disagreements between his clan and others. However, it was not long before Sussex was reporting to Elizabeth that O’Neill was not sticking to the agreement!

You can read more about O’Neill, Elizabeth and Ireland in “Elizabeth’s Irish Wars” by Cyril Falls and Wikipedia also has an excellent page on Shane O’Neill.

Notes and Sources

1. Quoted in “Religion, politics, and society in sixteenth-century England”, Ian W. Archer, p90
2. Elizabeth’s Irish Wars, Cyril Falls, p89
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p90

“Lisa Jardine remembers 2011 for the spectacle of the Royal Wedding, reflecting on the historic power of regal glamour in times of austerity. Queen Elizabeth I “used ostentation and opulence in her dress as a political tool to increase national confidence in the solvency of her regime.”

Definitely worth a listen if you get chance.

It is an excellent article and well worth a read. Jardine writes of how the daily inventory of outfits worns by Elizabeth I, which “details meticulously the pearls and gems individually stitched on to the queen’s articles of clothing for state occasions, then painstakingly removed and checked back in to her jewellery collection afterwards”, shows us that Elizabeth’s amazing attire in the 1588 Armada Portrait “is no artistic exaggeration”. Jardine says of Elizabeth’s outfit:-

“At each intersection of patterning in her silk sleeves and kirtle a pearl or a flower-shaped jewel with diamond petals has been lovingly attached, while shoulders and gown-edge are decorated with pink silk bows, each with a jewelled flower at its centre. The effect is dazzling – a clever way of making a female monarch appear as powerful in victory as her male counterpart would have been, dressed in full armour and ready for battle.”

As I have said before, in my articles “Elizabeth I – Queen of PR” and “Elizabeth I’s Image”, Elizabeth was a very image conscious woman. She used her portraits and her outfits as propaganda and recognised them as powerful ways to send messages to her people and to other monarchs.

The BBC article also has an interesting bit on New Year’s gifts so do read it.