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

The 7th November 1558 was a deeply depressing day for Mary I of England. Henri II of France entered Calais, which had been the last foothold of English occupation from the once vast Angevin Empire that had stretched from the Scottish Border to the Pyrenees. During Henry VIII’s reign, the English territory had expanded a little with the capture of Boulogne, but the reality was that, in the long term, England could not hope to hold territory in a France that was significantly wealthier and more populous. It was eventually agreed that Boulogne would be returned to France on payment of a 400,000 gold ecus and in 1550, the English departed. They intended, however, to hold on to Calais.

The costs of Henry VIII’s wars and the high inflation of the 1540s and 1550s meant that the English government in the late 1550s was close to bankrupt. One of the cost-saving measures was a failure to keep Calais properly provisioned, despite the complaints of the Governor, Lord Wentworth. When Queen Mary foolishly agreed to involve England in the endless Franco-Spanish wars at the behest of her husband, Philip II, the military situation was not good. An initial, almost overwhelming victory for the Anglo-Spanish troops at St Quentin was not followed up, and Henri II’s army made a daring swoop on Calais in January 1558. The King himself entered later in the year – some ten days before the death of Mary, who, apparently, said that when she was dead, Calais would be found written on her heart.

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.