Tudor Times is the online repository for all things Tudor and Stewart (1485–1625)

On 1st August 1571, the siege of Famagusta, Cyprus, ended when the city fell to the Ottoman Empire. The previous year had been dominated in Central and Eastern Europe by war with the Ottoman Empire. Cyprus was one of the territories controlled by the Venetian Republic, and was an important part of their trading empire, but, surrounded as it was by Turkish lands, it was hard to protect. During the late 1560s Venice was aware that the Ottoman Sultan, Selim II had designs on Cyprus, but the Republic did not have sufficient money or troops to defend it successfully. The other European Powers were involved in their own wars – Spain was attempting to control the Netherlands, France was riven by religious conflict and the Empire was busy fending off the Turks in Hungary, before concluding a truce. The Ottomans duly invaded, and swiftly captured Nicosia and the north, before beginning the eleven month siege of Famagusta. Things were not all bad for the Greek Orthodox population, who had groaned under Venetian Catholic tyranny and were now granted liberty from serfdom.

On 31st July 1527, the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, brother of the Emperor Charles V, and his wife, Anne of Bohemia, had a son, named Maximilian for his great-grandfather, Emperor Maximilian I. The young Maximilian was elected as Emperor in 1564. He remained theoretically, if not whole-heartedly, a Catholic, but he frequently sought reconciliation with German Protestants, whilst not always maintaining a warm relationship with his cousin and brother-in-law, Philip II of Spain. As well as being Emperor, Maximilian was King of Hungary and King of Bohemia (both inherited via the maternal line). During his reign, much of his time was taken up with defending his eastern borders from Turkish advances. Maximillian’s main residence was the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, where the block now called the Stallburg (Imperial Stables) was built for him in Renaissance style. By his wife, Maria of Austria (his first cousin), Maximilian had some sixteen children of whom two sons succeeded him as Emperor, and two daughters became Queens of Spain and France. Maximilian was elected as a member of the Order of the Garter in 1567.

On 30th July 1489, Anne Woodville, Viscountess Bourchier, died. Anne was one of the daughters of Sir Richard Woodville and his wife, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford, whose clandestine marriage had caused scandal at the Lancastrian court. When Anne’s sister, Elizabeth, became Queen as the wife of Edward IV, her siblings were as advantageously married as possible.

Anne’s husband was William Bourchier, son of the Earl of Essex and first cousin to the King. Anne and William had three children before his death in 1480, after which she married George Grey, later Earl of Kent. Anne became a lady-in-waiting to her sister, on an annual salary of £40.

Anne’s son, Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, was a solid member of the Tudor establishment. Her granddaughter, Anne Bourchier, Baroness Bourchier, was unhappily married to the William Parr, brother of Katherine Parr.