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

On 21st September 1516 Matthew Stuart, later 4th Earl of Lennox, was born. His grandfather, the second earl had been killed at Flodden, and his father, the 3rd Earl, was in dispute for precedence with the Hamilton Earls of Arran and was murdered by one of his party in 1526. Following this, Matthew was sent to France, to be brought up with another branch of the Lennox Stuarts. Matthew spent most of his youth in France, hence the change in the spelling of his name from Stewart to Stuart. He was in the army of Francois I and fought with some distinction in the Italian Wars.

On the death of James V in 1542, when the Earl of Arran took the role of Regent, as heir to the baby Mary, Queen of Scots, Matthew returned to Scotland, during the War of the Rough Wooing. Initially, Lennox was an envoy of France, and it was rumoured that he planned to marry the widowed Queen Mother, Marie of Guise. So long as Arran remained pro-English, Lennox would remain pro-French. However, as the political landscape altered and Lennox changed allegiance. He joined the English party, and was rewarded in 1544 with marriage to the niece of the King of England, Lady Margaret Douglas.

Lady Margaret was also the half-aunt of the Queen of Scots. The Lennoxes had two sons who lived to adulthood. The eldest Lord Darnley married his cousin, Queen Mary, in 1565. Lennox had his Scottish estates restored, but, after Darnley’s murder, faction fighting broke out again. A brief period of regency for his grand-son, James VI, ended in Lennox being shot, possibly by one of his own men.

Picture shows the Lennoxes in mourning for their murdered son.

On 20th September 1492 Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick died, aged about 66, in Beaulieu Abbey. The Countess had led an extremely eventful, and tragic, life. Countess in her own right, in around 1450 she was married to Richard Neville, son of the Earl of Salisbury, nephew-by-marriage and key supporter of Richard, Duke of York. Her husband took her title, and became known as ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’ for his involvement in the Wars of the Roses – first supporting York, then, when he understood that he could not have unlimited power, Lancaster. When Warwick was killed at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, Anne’s own Warwick lands were taken from her in an appalling act of injustice by her two sons-in-law, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III. For a brief while, she was the mother of the Queen, when Richard III took the throne with Anne Neville beside him. In 1486, when Henry VII was victorious, the Countess petitioned for the return of her lands. She received some, but was obliged to disinherit her grandson, Edward Earl of Warwick, in favour of the King.

On 19thSeptember 1521, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, who was Bishop of Salisbury, and, in theory, England’s advocate at the court of Rome, wrote to Cardinal Wolsey in London. In his letter, Campeggio says how delighted he was to read the ‘golden book’ that had been sent to him for presentation to the Pope. The book in question was Henry VIII’s own handiwork – his ‘Assertio septem sacramentorum contra M. Luther.’ This was a polemic against the reforming Augustinian Canon, Martin Luther, whose criticisms of the Church were sending shockwaves around Europe.

The actual authorship has been disputed – did Henry write it himself, or was it ghost written by Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, or Thomas More? Henry certainly had both the intellectual capacity and the interest to write it himself. Theological argument was one of his favourite pastimes. Erasmus (whose word cannot entirely be relied on as he was always eager to flatter anyone who might send him money) said he believed Henry was the author. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that Henry developed the main arguments, perhaps in discussion with leading thinkers in the debating style that he often promoted. He was notorious for not actually enjoying writing, so he probably dictated the actual words, or perhaps gave an outline and then reviewed it.