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

On 15th November 1491, Anne, the last independent Duchess of Brittany, was forced to submit to the French. Just eleven on the death of her father, François II, she fought desperately to keep the French from over-running her duchy. She arranged a proxy marriage to Maximilian, King of the Romans, that was solemnised in December 1490, but when she called on him for help against the troops of Charles VIII, he failed to materialise. With Charles at her border, she had no choice but to accept him as her husband, the contract even insisted that, should he die without a direct heir, the French Crown would choose her second husband.

Charles was an ungracious husband, keeping her away from her duchy, and not allowing her to be involved in its government. On his death, she was forced to marry his heir, now Louis XII of France. Louis became fond of Anne, and she was allowed to spend time in her duchy and take a role in government. She and Louis had two daughters. Frantic to keep Brittany independent, she willed Brittany to her second daughter, Renee, but Louis passed it to their elder daughter, Claude, who was married to his heir. The duchy thus became subsumed into France. Anne was a great patron of the arts, and her Book of Hours is one of the last of the great mediaeval illuminated manuscripts.

On 14th November 1501 Arthur, Prince of Wales and Katharine of Aragon were married at St Paul’s Cathedral. The couple had only met a few days before, but the treaty which their marriage fulfilled, had been made as long before as 1489. Katharine was the daughter of the joint sovereigns of Spain, Queen Isabella of Castile (the larger territory in the Iberian Peninsula) and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. For Arthur’s father to have agreed a match with the daughter of such illustrious parents not long after his own victory at Bosworth was a diplomatic coup. Throughout her childhood in Spain, Katharine had known that her destiny was to be Queen of England (although, curiosly, she did not learn English as child – presumably because French was still the language primarily spoken at the English court in Henry’s reign). The wedding celebration was one of the most spectacular, and expensive, public spectacles of Henry VII’s reign. Sadly, the bride, who turned sixteen a month after her wedding day, was widowed within a matter of months.

On 13th November 1553, the trial of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley, took place at the Guildhall in London. Lady Jane had been named as his heir by the late king, Edward VI, in a will that almost certainly had no legal validity. Whether Edward’s choice of his cousin, Jane, was entirely his own idea, or the product of undue influence by Jane’s father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, is a point which has been argued over for centuries. Whatever Edward VI and Northumberland felt, public sentiment, including that of the majority of the Privy Council, was not in favour of Jane inheriting at the expense of Edward’s half-sister, Mary. Within a few days, Jane’s brief reign was ended as the victorious Mary entered London, at the head of an army of volunteers.

Jane and Guilford were found guilty and sentenced to death. Queen Mary, reluctant to shed the blood of her sixteen year old cousin, postponed the sentence, with a view to pardoning the girl she believed (or wanted to believe) had been the pawn of her ambitious father-in-law. Unfortunately, Jane’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, became embroiled in another rebellion in February 1554, and the result was Jane’s execution. Read more about the succession crisis of 1553 here