1547: 28 January Henry VIII dies at 2.00 a.m. in his Palace of Westminster only hours before the third Duke of Norfolk is due to be executed in the Tower. The king’s son, Edward, is proclaimed king at the Tower on 31 January.
1547-53 The third Duke remains a prisoner in the Tower.
1553: 6 July Edward VI dies at Greenwich Palace of pulmonary tuberculosis after an attack of measles. Sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey proclaimed queen 9 July.
1553: 18 July Mary, Edward’s half-sister, proclaims herself queen at Framlingham Castle and marches on London.
1553: 3 August Mary enters London and greets third Duke of Norfolk, and other prisoners, kneeling before her at the Tower of London. They are freed.
1554: 25 January Sir Thomas Wyatt raises his standard at Maidstone, Kent, in a rebellion against Mary’s planned marriage with Philip of Spain.
1554: January Third Duke of Norfolk sent in command of a force of royalist troops from London to subdue rebels but they desert, forcing him to flee back to the capital. Wyatt’s rebels defeated after a running battle along the Strand and Fleet Street at the gates of the city of London on 7 February. Lady Jane Grey executed on 12 February.
1554: 25 August Third Duke of Norfolk dies at Kenninghall, Norfolk. His grandson, Thomas, becomes fourth Duke of Norfolk.
1557: 28 June Birth at Arundel House, in the Strand, London, of Philip Howard, only child of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and his first wife, Mary, second daughter and co-heir of Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl of Arundel. He is baptised on 2 July in the Chapel Royal in the Palace of Whitehall. Among his godfathers is Philip of Spain.
1558: 17 November Elizabeth succeeds Mary as Queen of England.
1559: 16 January Mary Queen of Scots (daughter of King James V of Scotland and his second wife, Mary of Guise) and her husband, Francis, the Dauphin of France, assume the style of title ‘Francis and Mary, by the Grace of God, of Scotland, England and Ireland, King and Queen’ and include the arms of England in their heraldry.
1559: 10 July Mary Queen of Scots’ husband becomes Francis II, King of France, but he dies on 5 December 1560.
1563: July Marriage of Charles Howard to Katherine Carey, eldest daughter of Lord Hunsdon, second cousin of Elizabeth I.
1565: 29 July Mary Queen of Scots marries her second husband - Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, son and heir of the Earl of Lennox. He is proclaimed ‘King of Scots’. Her only child James (later James VI of Scotland and from 1603, James I of England) born in Edinburgh Castle on 19 June 1566. Darnley is murdered on 10 February 1567 and Mary marries James, Earl of Bothwell, according to Protestant rites, on 15 May.
1567: 24 July Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, James, who is crowned James VI at Stirling five days later. Her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, is appointed Regent of Scotland.
1568: 13 May After escape from imprisonment, Mary’s forces are defeated at the Battle of Langside, near Glasgow, by an army led by the Earl of Moray. Three days later, she crosses the Solway Firth and enters England as a refugee.
1568: 16 October Scottish Secretary of State William Maitland suggests to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, that he should marry Mary Queen of Scots.
1569: October Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is arrested on suspicion of treason and imprisoned in the Tower. Francis Walsingham writes a propaganda pamphlet, attacking any marriage between Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots.
1569: 14 November The Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland rise in revolt, backed by a 7,500-strong army, with the twin aims of overthrowing Elizabeth I and re-establishing the Catholic religion in England. The rebellion is brutally suppressed, with 750 insurgents executed by royalist forces.
1569 Philip Howard betrothed to Anne Dacre, daughter of Thomas Dacre, fourth Baron Dacre of Glisland, and one of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk’s stepchildren by his third marriage in 1567. Philip’s marriage was solemnised after September 1571 when he and his wife had reached the age of fourteen, then the age of consent.
1570: 25 February Pope Pius V excommunicates Elizabeth I by the Papal Bull Regnans in Excelsis, depriving this ‘pretended queen’ of her throne and absolving her subjects of any allegiance or loyalty to her.
1570: August Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is released from the Tower of London but kept under house arrest at his London home in Charterhouse Square. The Florentine banker Roberto Ridolphi visits him within days, asking him to write to the Duke of Alva, the Spanish Captain General in the Low Countries to solicit funds for the Scottish queen.
1571: 7 September Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is re-arrested and imprisoned in the Tower.
1572: 16 January Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is tried by his peers at Westminster Hall on charges of treason.
1572: 2 June Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk: beheaded at Tower Hill.
1574-85 Henry Howard, second son of beheaded Earl of Surrey, arrested five times during this period on suspicion of involvement in various conspiracies. The former Spanish ambassador to England, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, paid him an annual salary of 1,000 crowns in 1582-4, to send him ‘confidential and minute accounts twice a week’ of events at Elizabeth’s court.
1580: 24 February Philip Howard becomes the thirteenth Earl of Arundel on the death of his Fitzalan grandfather, but his title is questioned and he is not restored in blood until 15 March 1581. His uncle, John Lumley, Baron Lumley, makes over to him his life interest in the castle and honour of Arundel in Sussex.
1583-4 Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, is placed under house arrest, on suspicion of harbouring a Catholic priest and involvement in the Throgmorton conspiracy.
1584: 30 September Philip Howard, eldest son of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, received into the Catholic Church by the fugitive Jesuit priest William Weston at Arundel Castle.
1585: 15 April Arrest of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, after he flees England in a ship from Littlehampton and is intercepted at sea. He is committed to the Tower on 25 April.
1585: May Charles Howard appointed Lord High Admiral of England.
1586: 15 May Arraignment of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in the Star Chamber at Westminster on charges that he tried to leave England without royal permission; that he had been converted to the Church of Rome and was also plotting to be restored as Duke of Norfolk. He is fined £10,000 and is imprisoned in the Tower ‘during the Queen’s pleasure’.
1586: 11 October Elizabeth’s commissioners arrive at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, to try Mary Queen of Scots for high treason. After further hearings in the Star Chamber at Westminster, she is condemned to death on 25 October.
1587: 18 February Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.
1587: 15 December Charles Howard appointed to command English naval forces against the expected Spanish invasion of England.
1588: July-August Defeat of the Spanish Armada.
1589: 14 April Trial of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in Westminster Hall, for arranging a Mass in the Tower for the success of the Armada. Attainted and condemned to death for treason. Elizabeth I does not sign his death warrant.
1595: 19 October Death from malnutrition - some claim he was poisoned - of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in the Tower of London and his body buried in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. His remains were reburied in 1624 in the Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel Castle and again in the Catholic cathedral at Arundel in 1971. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929 and canonised by Paul VI on 25 October 1970.
1597: 22 October Charles Howard created Earl of Nottingham.
1599 Charles Howard appointed Lieutenant General of All England and responsible for England’s defences.
1601 Henry Howard, second son of beheaded Earl of Surrey, works with Robert Cecil in secret correspondence with James VI of Scotland to ensure his acquisition as King of England on Elizabeth’s death.
1603: 24 March Deat
h of Elizabeth I at Richmond Palace, probably from broncho-pneumonia and septicaemia from tooth decay. James VI of Scotland succeeds unopposed as James I to the English throne.
1603: 21 January Thomas Howard, son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, created first Earl of Suffolk.
1604: 6 January Henry Howard appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.
1604: 13 March Henry Howard created baron of Marnhull, Dorset, and Earl of Northampton.
1604: 18 April Thomas Howard, heir of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, restored in blood by Act of Parliament and estates granted him.
1614: 16 June Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, dies from gangrene of the leg, unmarried, at his house in Charing Cross, London. His will says that he died ‘a member of the Catholic and Apostolic church’ after being secretly received into the Catholic Church earlier in the year.
1619: Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, dismissed from government office for gross corruption.
1624: 14 December Death of Charles Howard, second Baron Effingham and Earl of Nottingham, at Haling House, Croydon, Surrey.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THE ROYAL HOUSES OF ENGLAND
Richard III (1452-85). Youngest son of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, killed at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460. Created Duke of Gloucester at the age of eight. In 1472, he married the Prince of Wales’s widow, Anne, younger daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’. Edward IV died on 9 April 1483 and Richard was appointed Lord Protector over the heir to the throne, twelve-year-old Edward V, who, with his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, disappeared mysteriously in the Tower of London. Richard Duke of Gloucester seized power and was crowned on 6 July 1483 in Westminster Abbey. His army was defeated and he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth on 22 August I485 by invading forces commanded by the Lancastrian pretender, Henry VII. Richard III was the last reigning English monarch to be killed on the battlefield.
Henry VII (1457-1509). Exiled in 1471 after the defeat of the Lancastrian cause in the Wars of the Roses and spent the following fourteen years under the protection of Francis II, Duke of Brittany. He snatched the throne of England after his defeat of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, Leicestershire, on 22 August 1485. Crowned as the first of the Tudor monarchs at Westminster on 30 October and married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville in 1486. They had two sons and two daughters: Arthur, who married Catherine of Aragon on 14 November 1501 but died six months later; Henry VIII; Margaret, who married first James IV of Scotland, then Archibald Douglas, sixth Earl of Angus and finally Henry Stuart, Lord Methven; Mary, who married firstly Louis XII of France and then Charles Brandon, first Duke of Suffolk.
Henry VIII (1491-1547). Second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Succeeded to the throne 24 April 1509 and married six times - (1) his elder brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536) on 11 June; one surviving child, Mary Tudor, later Mary I. Marriage annulled by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, on 23 May 1533. (2) Anne Boleyn (c. 1501-36), niece of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, on 25 January 1533. One surviving child: Elizabeth, later Elizabeth I. Anne Boleyn was executed on 19 May 1536 for incest and adultery. (3) Jane Seymour (?1509-37), daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall, Savernake, Wiltshire. Died from puerperal fever and septicaemia following birth of Prince Edward, later Edward VI, at Hampton Court, 24 October 1537. (4) Anne of Cleves (1515-57), at Greenwich Palace, 6 January 1540; the marriage was annulled in July 1540 and she was pensioned off. (5) Catherine Howard, another niece of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, on 28 July 1540 at Oatlands, near Weybridge, Surrey. Beheaded on 13 February 1542 for treason - adultery. (6) Katherine Parr (?1512-48). Married on 12 July 1543 at Hampton Court. Following Henry’s death on 28 January 1547, she married Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral, probably early in June 1547. Died from puerperal fever following the birth of a daughter, 5 September 1548.
Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond (1519-36). Illegitimate son of Henry VIII and Elizabeth Blount, a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon. Created Duke of Richmond on 18 June 1525. Under care of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. Married, on 26 November 1533, Mary Howard, daughter of Norfolk. Died 23 July 1536 of a pulmonary infection at St James’s Palace, London. The marriage was never consummated.
Edward VI (1537-53). Legitimate son and heir of Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour. Proclaimed king 31 January 1547 at the Tower of London. Died of tuberculosis after suffering attack of measles, Greenwich Palace, 6 July 1553.
Mary I (1516-58). Fourth and only surviving child (from at least six pregnancies) of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Proclaimed queen 18 July 1553. Reintroduced Catholicism to England after the Protestant policies of the governments of her half-brother, Edward VI. Married Philip, son of Charles V of Spain at Winchester, 25 July 1554. Died, childless, from ovarian or stomach cancer, St James’s Palace, London, 17 November 1558.
Elizabeth I (1533-1603). Daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Succeeded her half-sister Mary I as queen, 17 November 1558. Secured Protestantism as state religion. Died, unmarried, probably from broncho-pneumonia and dental sepsis, Richmond Palace, 24 March 1603.
FOREIGN ROYALTY AND THEIR AMBASSADORS TO ENGLAND FRANCE
Louis XII (1462-1515). Succeeded his cousin Charles VIII in 1498. His first marriage to the pious Joan of France was annulled so that he could marry his predecessor’s widow, Anne of Brittany. After her death in 1514, he married Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England, on 9 October. He died on 1 January 1515, reputedly through overexertion in the marital bed.
Francis I (1494-1547). Crowned at Reims, 1515, as the cousin of his father-in-law, Louis XII. Fought four wars against Charles V of Spain. Died at Château Rambouillet, thirty miles (48 km.) south-west of Paris, and succeeded by his son, Henry II.
Henry II (1519-59). Reigned 1547-59. Married Catherine de Medici (1519-89) on 28 October 1533. Became Dauphin when his elder brother, Francis, died after a game of tennis in 1536. Father-in-law of Mary Queen of Scots. Recaptured Calais from England, 1558. Died, following a jousting tournament to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth of Valois to Philip II of Spain, 30 June 1559, in the Place des Vosges, Paris. A splinter from the broken lance of Gabriel de Montgomery, Seignour de Lorges, an officer in his own Scottish Guard, went through his visor, pierced his eye and penetrated his brain.
Francis II (1544-60). Reigned 10 July 1559-5 December 1560. Second son of Henry II. Became King Consort of Scotland after marrying Mary Queen of Scots on 24 April 1558 aged fourteen, in Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris. Died 5 December 1560 at Orléans after an ear infection caused an abscess on the brain.
Charles IX (1550-74). Reigned 1560-74. Third son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici. Witnessed the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Huguenots in Paris on 24 August 1572.
Henry III (1551-89). Reigned 1574-89. Fourth son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici.
FRENCH AMBASSADORS TO ENGLAND
Louis de Perreau, Sieur de Castillon (c. 1487-1553). Ambassador November 1537- December 1538.
Charles de Marillac (c. 1510-60). Ambassador 1538-43. Later Bishop of Vannes (1550); Archbishop of Vienne (1557).
Odet de Selve (c. 1504-63). Ambassador 6 July 1546-50. Later served in Venice and Rome.
Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1523-89). Ambassador 1568-75. Returned briefly on a new embassy to London in 1582, but returned to France, via Scotland, the following year.
Michel Castelnau, Seignour de la Mauvissière (c. 1520-89). Ambassador 1575-85.
Claude de l’Aubespine de Châteauneuf. Ambassador from August 1585.
SPAIN
Charles V (1500-58). King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Nephew of Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII. Acceded to Spanish throne 1516. Abdicated in favour of his son, Philip (husband of Mary I of England), 1556. Retreated to monastery of Yuste, dying two years later.
Philip II (1527-98). King of Spain, 1556-98, and King of Portugal (as Philip I), 1580-98. Married four times - (1) on 15 November 1543, to his cousin, Princess Maria of Portugal who died in 1545, a few days after giving birth to his only son Don Carlos (1545-68); (2) Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and Elizabeth I’s half-sister, on 25 July 1559; she died 17 November 1558; (3) Elizabeth of Valois, daughter of Henry II of France, in 1559; she died 3 October 1568; and (4) his niece, Anne, Archduchess of Austria, in 1570. Despatched Spanish Armada against England, 1588.
SPANISH AMBASSADORS TO ENGLAND
Eustace Chapuys (1489-1556). Lawyer, born in Annecy in Savoy. First embassy 1529-38, then served in Antwerp. Second embassy 1540-45. Retired to Leuven in the Low Countries and founded a grammar school.
Francis van der Delft. Ambassador from 1545.
Diego de Guzman de Silva. Canon of Toledo. Ambassador June 1564-8, and afterwards ambassador to Venice, November 1569-October 1577.
Guerau de Spes. Ambassador from September 1568 to December 1571 when he was expelled because of his involvement in the Ridolphi plot.
Bernardino de Mendoza. Ambassador 1578-84 and supporter of Mary Queen of Scots. Implicated in the Throgmorton plot and banished in January 1584. As Spanish ambassador in Paris from November 1584, he was involved in the Babington plot. Born before 1541, the son of the Count of Corunna, he served as a cavalry captain with Spanish forces in the Low Countries. Stricken by blindness in 1590, he died in the convent of San Bernardo of Madrid in 1604.
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