On This Day in Tudor History

On December 10, 1541, Sir Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were executed at Tyburn for their sexual relationships with Queen Catherine Howard.

Dereham was a courtier, who had an affair with the very young Catherine Howard until she was made lady-in-waiting to Henry's fourth wife Anne of Cleves. After Catherine's marriage to the King, Dereham was made a secretary at Hampton Court, an appointment possibly engineered to silence him about Catherine's previous indiscretions.

Culpeper was reportedly exceedingly attractive. He was described as 'a beautiful youth' and he was a great favorite of the King's, which placed him in Catherine's life after she became queen consort.

Culpeper was most likely using the affair and her feelings for him as leverage to gain power and control over the queen herself. Catherine, for her part, was deeply in love.

When her past relationship with Dereham was brought to the attention of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, he reported it to the King in a letter, provoking an investigation which resulted in the arrests of Dereham, Thomas Culpeper and Queen Catherine herself.

Under interrogation, Dereham admitted a pre-marital relationship with Catherine, but claimed that they were never intimate after Catherine's marriage to the King and that he had been supplanted in her affections by Culpeper.

Dereham was given a traitor's death of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Culpeper's sentence was commuted to beheading.

Queen Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Rochford were both subsequently executed on February 13, 1542.

The Hotness: The Tudors Season 4 Trailer

The Tudors: It's a WRAP!

The Showtime series The Tudors has just wrapped filming of the fourth and final season in Ireland.

I have very mixed feelings on the subject after my disappointment in season three... but in general, I am sad it is over. I also have very high hopes for season four, with the execution of Catherine Howard, Joely Richardson as Kateryn Parr and finally, the death of Henry VIII.

The huge project that was The Tudors was a very big event every year for the past four in Ireland. In honor of that, there is an excellent special feature on the IFTN (Irish Film & Television Network) website.
I'm VERY proud of Tudors' creator and writer Michael Hirst for FINALLY hitting back at Historian David Starkey for his non-stop criticism of himself and the show! Go Michael!!!
Check it out here!

The Tudors: Season 4 Premiere... with a FAT Henry???

Just got my press release from Showtime...

The Tudors Season Four will premier on Sunday night April 11th.
Looking forward to seeing the fall of Kitty Howard and Joely Richardson as Kateryn Parr. Here's a peek at Joely arriving on set in Ireland...

Gossip Columnist Liz Smith recently wrote a piece for Variety that claims that Jonathan Rhys Meyers has agreed to allow make-up artists on set to properly age him.

Interestingly, other outlets picked-up this story and claim in their items that he will be fat in the final season. Nowhere in that interview does Jonathan or Liz state that Henry will be corpulent, or for that matter even the least bit pudgy!!!

In fact, here is the excerpt from Variety:

He will now appear as the older, more debauched Henry VIII. I am told that Jonathan has actually consented to "some aging." After all, he was, from the beginning, such an unlikely -- though brilliant -- choice for the role of the red-haired English monarch, and he got through most of this amazing series looking ravishing.


Look for the graying hair and prosthetic wrinkles, but don't expect Jonathan to pull a Tom Cruise... Here is a shot of JRM on set of season 4... a lil gray, but NOT fat!

However... they DO seem to be fattening the delicious Henry Cavill as Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. Here's a photo posted on the TudorsWiki on Sho.com

Antonia Fraser is a Funny Lady...

Biographer Antonia Fraser felt the need to respond to an item printed about her in the British tabloid Tatler. I hope you enjoy her explanations as much as I did, especially the one about Jane Seymour!

Tatler got it wrong about me and Marie Antoinette

I do not read Tatler. So it was left to my 13-year-old granddaughter to inform me that I had been placed at No 7 on Tatler's list of "most-invited" people. But I should like to clear something up which might otherwise lead to a period of social stagnation. I do not, as Tatler and Gold claimed, mourn Marie Antoinette for the whole of the first half of October: only on 16 October, the date of her execution. This year I shall be in deepest black, incidentally, at the Cheltenham festival, preparing to talk about Mary Queen of Scots. I mourn her on 8 February.

At least Oliver Cromwell was ritually executed after his death so there's no need for precise mourning. On the other hand, as his biographer, I feel I must pay tribute to him – after all, I have profited from him, as it were, so why should I not make some gesture of respect? The answer with Cromwell is 3 September: the day on which he died in 1658, but also termed by him his "most fortunate day". He won both the battles of Dunbar and Worcester on that date, and in my unsubstantiated opinion, delayed his death to fit in. The anniversary has been taken over by the second world war, so one could sneak into the Churchill Museum incarnating the war cabinet rooms and have a quick pious reflection.

Now to Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, among other decapitated women I have written about and annually commemorate: to save time, I suggest a day-long tour of the six tombs of the six wives of Henry VIII. You begin with the Tower of London for Boleyn and Katherine, first cousins and, respectively, second and fifth wives. On to St George's Chapel where poor old Jane Seymour lies beneath Henry VIII himself: we shall spare a thought for that predicament. On again to Sudeley Castle, near Cheltenham, where lies Catherine Parr. A swerve east to Peterborough and the marvellous tomb of Catherine of Aragon (although her age at death is given wrong). Lastly Westminster Abbey and the tomb of the fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, adjacent to the high altar.

Readers may feel that this is all mourning too far. But I repeat: since I have in a sense been lucky enough to benefit from the lives and deaths of these people, why should I not remember them? Otherwise it's a hard life, with only the parties to cheer one up.

On This Day in Tudor History:

On July 28, 1540, Thomas Cromwell was executed on charges of treason.
Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, served as King Henry VIII's chief minister from 1532 to 1540. Cromwell rose to such power because he was one of the strongest advocates of the English Reformation, the English Church's break with the papacy in Rome, something which was vital to King Henry in having his marriage to Katherine of Aragon annulled so he could marry Anne Boleyn.
Cromwell started his political career with the patronage of the Boleyn family and then, ironically, he was instrumental in the family's downfall and the execution of Queen Anne and her brother George.


Also on this day: Because Henry VIII liked nothing better than to get married the same day as a high profile execution (he was formally betrothed to Jane Seymour the day Anne Boleyn was beheaded), the King married his 5th wife, Catherine Howard, on this same day.

Kateryn Parr Cast!

Just when I stopped showing much Tudors love, they go and do something that makes me SO HAPPY!
Actress Joely Richardson has been cast as Kateryn Parr, Henry VIII's sixth wife, for the fourth and final season of the Showtime series The Tudors. YES! Love, love, LOVE her! I forgave the whole 2 Jane Seymours debacle, didn't much mind Joss Stone as Anna of Cleves, but that Tamsin girl as Catherine Howard is just not right. I'm sorry, but after the parade of beauties in seasons 1 & 2, how could they cast a girl who is NOT at all attractive to play a notorious seductress?

They have completely redeemed themselves with the casting of Joely! Not only has she been fabulous in Nip/Tuck, but I loved her as Marie Antoinette in The Affair of the Necklace, opposite Mel Gibson in The Patriot and as an evil Nazi sympathizer in Shining Through. She can do period VERY well and she is a perfect age to go opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers... even if he isn't the right age or size for Henry in in the 1540's!