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

On 6th November 1479 Isabella, Queen of Castile and Queen Consort of Aragon gave birth to her third child to survive and named her Juana, perhaps for her paternal grandmother, Juana Enriquez. When Juana was sixteen she married Philip, Duke of Burgundy, son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian. Whilst the Imperial Crown was not hereditary, there was every likelihood that Philip would be elected on his father’s death. Initially Philip, who was less than a year older than his bride was delighted with her, and the two had a passionate relationship resulting in six children. Soon, however, Philip, who was a notorious philanderer, was unfaithful, and Juana reacted in a way considered inappropriate in a time when wives were expected to ignore their husband’s affairs. Stories of their quarrels delighted the European courts. In a series of tragedies for the Spanish royal family, both of Juana’s elder siblings died, and her nephew, leaving her as heir to her mother’s kingdom (Aragon was more ambivalent about female inheritance.) When Isabella died in 1504, the couple travelled to Spain to take up Juana’s inheritance. Things did not go well….You can read more about Juana in the excellent ‘Sister Queens’ by Julia Fox, reviewed here.

The 5th November 1499 was an important day in the history of language. On that day Jehan de Lagadeuc’s Catholicon Armoricain was first printed at Treguier. The Catholicon was the first tri-lingual dictionary, between French, Latin and Lagadeuc’s native Breton. It had first been assembled in a manuscript version some thirty years previously. Whilst it is now a valuable source of information about the Breton language when the Duchy was being subsumed into France, at the time it was intended for badly educated parish priests to understand sufficient Latin to enable them to minister to their flocks.

On 4th November 1530, Cardinal Wolsey was arrested for treason at his palace at Cawood, Yorkshire. Wolsey had had a spectacular career, rising from the son of a townsman of Ipswich to become Lord Chancellor of England as well as Archbishop of York. For over fifteen years, from about 1514, he had been the right-hand man of Henry VIII, so powerful that he was referred to by Ambassadors as ‘alter rex’ (the other king). Nevertheless, he was completely dependent on Henry’s goodwill, and when he failed to attain an annulment of Henry VIII’s first marriage, he rapidly fell from power.