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

On 15th October 1527, Catherine of Austria, Queen of Portugal, gave birth to her last child, Maria Manuela. Queen Catherine was the sister of the Emperors Charles V and Ferdinand I and niece of Katharine of Aragon. Maria Manuela’s father was Joao III of Portugal. She was one of nine children, but the majority of them succumbed to an early death. Maria Manuela was married to her own first cousin, Philip of Spain, in 1543, at Salamanca (shown in the picture). She died not long after giving birth to her only child, Don Carlos, in 1545. Unsurprisingly, Don Carlos was mentally unstable – instead of the usual complement of eight great-grandparents, he had only four – a genetic disaster. Maria is buried in the Escorial palace, near Madrid.

On 14th October 1536, Lady Katherine Scrope, nee Clifford, wrote to her father, Henry, Earl of Cumberland, to inform him that the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace were in the vicinity of her home at Bolton Castle and were ‘persuading’ the local nobles and gentry to join them. The tone of Katherine’s letter is rather ambivalent – she implies that her husband, John, 8th Baron Scrope of Bolton, would follow his father-in-law’s lead on whether to join with the rebels or not. Whilst the Earl of Cumberland stayed staunchly loyal, Lord Scrope became embroiled and Bolton suffered some reprisals by the king’s troops.

Lady Katherine was well-connected – her grandmother, Anne St John, was half-cousin to Henry VII, and her own half-brother, another Henry, was married in June 1537 to the king’s niece, Eleanor Brandon – perhaps as reward for the Cliffords not joining the rebels.

On 13th October 1499, Claude de Valois, Queen of France was born. She was the daughter of Louis XII, and his second wife, Anne of Brittany. Queen Claude’s life was brief – unable to inherit her father’s throne, she was married at 14 to her cousin, François d’Angouleme, by whom she had several children, including Madeleine de Valois, Queen of Scots. In 1520, Queen Claude was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold. She died in 1524.