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

On 12th November 1555, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, died. Gardiner began his career in the household of Thomas Wolsey, before transferring to that of Henry VIII in 1529 when he became the King’s secretary. He undertook a number of embassies to France and Rome, to try to garner support for Henry’s annulment. Gardiner readily accepted royal supremacy, but remained firmly Catholic in religious doctrine. Towards the end of Henry's reign, he was seen as one of the leaders, together with the Duke of Norfolk, of the conservative faction. He was left out of the council of regency set up under Henry's will. After falling out with Archbishop Cranmer over the prayer book of 1549, he spent the next four years in the Tower. On Mary’s accession, he became Lord Chancellor. It has been alleged that Gardiner was an illegitimate descendant of Jasper Tudor, but there is no known evidence to support the theory.

On Monday 11th November 1517, Sir Thomas Parr, a member of the King’s household died, aged about thirty-nine. Parr was from a Yorkist family in Westmoreland, with relatives in almost every noble or gentry family in the north, as well as connections in Warwickshire and Lincolnshire. He was the great-nephew of Warwick the Kingmaker, and so second cousin once removed to Elizabeth of York. Too young to fight at Bosworth, Parr had been brought up largely by his mother’s second husband, Nicholas Vaux, who later became his brother-in-law. Parr served both Henry VII and Henry VIII, and was in such high favour that he was selected with three others to bear the canopy over the infant Princess Mary at her christening in 1516. His elder daughter, Katherine, aged about five at the time of his death, later became the king's sixth wife.

On 10th November 1565, Lettice Knollys, wife of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, gave birth to her first son. He was named Robert. In total, the Earl and Countess of Essex would have four children who lived to adulthood – two sons, Robert and Walter, and two daughters, Penelope and Dorothy. When Robert was 11, his father died and he became Earl himself. As was customary, he was brought up by a guardian, rather than his mother. He was lucky, in that his guardian was Sir William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s most favoured minister. He was also fortunate in that his mother’s second husband was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s closest companion. Young Robert was brought up with all of the privileges owing to a man of ancient family and honour. He was charming, courageous, and incurably rash. In the 1580s, after the death of Leicester, Essex became the Queen’s most favoured courtier, but he did not know when he was well off, and his career ended in rebellion and death.