The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

On the 24th of August 1572, the sanguineous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was carried out. Under the influence of his homicidal mother, Catherine de’ Medici, King Charles IX of France ordered the murder of the Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, which triggered a wave of the shocking violence towards the Huguenots in...

Catherine Parr’s unwanted wedding to Henry VIII

On this day in history, the 12th of July 1543, Henry VIII married Catherine Parr, widow of Sir Edward Burgh and Sir John Neville, Baron Latimer of Snape.  The wedding took place in the queen’s closet at Hampton Court Palace.  Sometime in the spring of 1543, the aging ruler proposed...

The Pope Urges Henry VIII to abandon Anne Boleyn

On the 11th of July 1533, Pope Clement VII declared that Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was valid and legal. Effectively, it meant that the King of England’s marriage to Anne Boleyn was declared null and void. This is the excerpt from Letters and Papers (the source is...

A fatal love triangle untangled: Execution of Anne Boleyn, the 19th of May 1536

the links to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 of the series “A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour After Anne’s trial and her condemnation, events were happening at a breakneck speed. On the 16th of May 1536, Archbishop Cranmer visited the condemned Anne...

Henry FitzRoy: Henry VIII’s “illegitimate” heir to the throne

When King Henry VIII was alive, he might have considered naming Henry FitzRoy, his illegitimate son with Lady Elizabeth Blount, his successor even without legitimizing it. The fact that Henry VIII openly acknowledged his bastard and bestowed two dukedoms upon the boy doesn’t mean that the king wanted to legitimize...

A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour (part 5)

the links to part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 of the series “A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour On the 15th of May 1536, a fatal love triangle was finally untangled. To end Anne Boleyn’s marriage to King Henry quickly, only a legal solution would suffice.  Henry...

A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour (part 4)

the links to part 1, part 2, and part 3 of the series “A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour After the arrests of Anne and George Boleyn, and her other alleged paramours, tension was rising in the air, and the royal court froze in anticipation of the appalling...

AU: Queen Elizabeth I marries Robert Dudley

First of all, we need to determine whether Queen Elizabeth I could have married Robert Dudley. Is the alternate history scenario of her marriage to Dudley probable? Robert Dudley married his first wife, Amy Robsart, in 1550, three days before her 18th birthday. At that time, the seventeen-year-old Elizabeth was a...

A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour (part 3)

the link to part 2 of the series “A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour” is here The drama continued on the traditional May Day joust at Greenwich Palace.  Queen Anne was aware that something had gone wrong: King Henry attended extended council meetings, their trip...

A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour (part 2)

the link to part 1 of the series “A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour” is here  The fatal love triangle of Henry VIII, Anne, and Jane Seymour was at the centre of the grisly murder of Queen Anne Boleyn.  In April 1536, stormy clouds were...

What would have happened if Queen Mary I had a reason to execute her younger sister, Elizabeth?

One of my readers asked me what would of happened if Queen Mary I had a reason to execute her younger sister, Elizabeth? Could Mary send her sister to the block? Would she have named Mary Stuart as her heir? Mary and Elizabeth had a very strained relationship after Mary’s...

Another Boleyn woman: Elizabeth Howard Boleyn

Lady Elizabeth Boleyn née Howard, Countess of Wiltshire and of Ormond, and the wife of Thomas Boleyn, died on the 3rd of April 1538. It happened somewhere near Baynard’s Castle, the home of the Abbot of Reading. Elizabeth was a member of one of the highest-ranking noble families in England:...

A fatal love triangle: King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour (part 1)

In the first half of 1536, King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour were tangled in a fatal love triangle, which in the end resulted in the murder of the innocent anointed queen and the monarch’s third marriage soon after Anne's execution. Lady Jane Seymour, who was born in...