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Why did Henry VIII send Anne Boleyn to the block?
Was she ensnared by a conspiracy, the victim of her own loose tongue, or simply guilty as charged? Suzannah Lipscomb tries to unearth the real reason why Henry VIII sent his second wife, Anne Boleyn, to the block
On the morning of 19 May 1536, Anne Boleyn climbed the scaffold erected on Tower Green, within the walls of the Tower of London. She gave a speech praising the goodness and mercy of the king, and asked those gathered to pray for her. Then she removed her fine, ermine-trimmed gown, and knelt down – and the expensive French executioner that Henry VIII had ordered swung his sword and “divided her neck at a blow”. Her death is so familiar to us that it is hard to imagine how shocking it would have been: the queen of England executed on charges of adultery, incest and conspiring the king’s death. And not just any queen: this was the woman for whom Henry VIII had abandoned his wife of nearly 24 years, waited seven long years to wed, and even revolutionised his country’s church. Yet just three years later her head was off – and the reason for her death remains one of the great mysteries of English history. To this day, historians cannot agree why she had to die. Had Henry and Anne’s relationship gone into terminal decline, prompting Henry to invent the charges against his wife? Was Thomas Cromwell responsible for Anne’s demise? Or was she indeed guilty of the charges laid against her? Evidence is limited – but there is enough to appear to support several very different conclusions. A timeline of the days before Anne Boleyn's execution There are a number of undisputed facts relating to Anne’s fall. On Sunday 30 April 1536 Mark Smeaton, a musician from the queen’s household, was arrested; he was then interrogated at Cromwell’s house in Stepney. On the same evening the king postponed a trip with Anne to Calais, planned for 2 May. Read more | He was the court musician who condemned Anne Boleyn: but was Mark Smeaton telling the truth? The next day, 1 May, Smeaton was moved to the Tower. Henry attended the May Day jousts at Greenwich but left abruptly on horseback with a small group of intimates. These included Sir Henry Norris, a personal body servant and one of his closest friends, whom he questioned throughout the journey. At dawn the next day Norris was taken to the Tower. Anne and her brother George, Lord Rochford, were also arrested. On 4 and 5 May, more courtiers from the king’s privy chamber – William Brereton, Richard Page, Francis Weston, Thomas Wyatt and Francis Bryan – were arrested. The latter was questioned and released, but the others were imprisoned in the Tower. On 10 May, a grand jury indicted all of the accused, apart from Page and Wyatt. On 12 May, Smeaton, Brereton, Weston and Norris were tried and found guilty of adultery with the queen, and of conspiring the king’s death. On 15 May, Anne and Rochford were tried within the Tower by a court of 26 peers presided over by their uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Both were found guilty of high treason. On 17 May Archbishop Thomas Cranmer declared the marriage of Henry and Anne null, and by 19 May, all six convicted had been executed. Later that day, Cranmer issued a dispensation allowing Henry and Jane Seymour to marry; they were betrothed on 20 May and married 10 days later. What could explain this rapid and surprising turn of events? Theory: Anne Boleyn was guilty of the charges against her The first theory, argued by Boleyn biographer and scholar GW Bernard, is simply that Anne was guilty of the charges against her. Yet even he is equivocal, suggesting the Scottish legal verdict of ‘not proven’ – he concludes that, though the evidence is insufficient to prove definitively that Anne and those accused with her were guilty, neither does it prove their innocence. Anne’s guilt was, naturally, the official line. Writing to the bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, Cromwell stated with certainty – before Anne’s trial – that “the queen’s incontinent living was so rank and common that the ladies of her privy chamber could not conceal it.” Six Wives: A HistoryExtra podcast series Member exclusive | In this six-part podcast series, we’ll be peeling back the layers of mythmaking to take another look at these fascinating women, who shaped the course of Henry’s reign – and the history of England. Listen to all episodes now The key piece of evidence was undoubtedly the confession by the first man accused, Smeaton, that he had had sexual intercourse with the queen three times. Though it was probably obtained under torture (the accounts vary), he never retracted his confession. Unlikely as it was to be true, it catapulted the investigation to a different, far more serious level. All subsequent evidence was tainted with a presumption of guilt. Henry VIII’s intimate questioning of Norris, and his promise of “pardon in case he would utter the truth”, must be understood in this light: whatever Norris said, or refused to say, it reinforced Henry’s conviction of his guilt. Read more | George and Anne Boleyn: their real relationship explored Other evidence for Anne’s guilt is unclear – the trial documents do not survive. Her indictment, however, states that Anne “did falsely and traitoroysly procure by base conversations and kisses, touchings, gifts and other infamous incitations, divers of the king’s daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines, so that several… yielded to her vile provocations”. She even, it charges, “procured and incited her own natural brother… to violate her, alluring him with her tongue in the said George’s mouth, and the said George’s tongue in hers”. Yet, as another Boleyn biographer Eric Ives noted, three-quarters of the specific accusations of adulterous liaisons made in the indictment can be discredited, even 500 years later. Certainly, Anne maintained her innocence. During her imprisonment Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, reported Anne’s remarks to Cromwell. His first letter details Anne’s ardent declaration of innocence: “I am as clear from the company of man, as for sin… as I am clear from you, and the king’s true wedded wife.” A few days later, Anne comforted herself that she would have justice: “She said if any man accuse me I can say but nay, and they can bring no witness.” Crucially, the night before her execution, she swore “on peril of her soul’s damnation”, before and after receiving the Eucharist, that she was innocent – a serious act in that religious age. Anne was not alone in professing her innocence. As Sir Edward Baynton put it: “No man will confess any thing against her, but only Mark of any actual thing.” And even Eustace Chapuys, ambassador for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Anne’s arch-enemy, would finally conclude that everyone besides Smeaton was “condemned upon presumption and certain indications, without valid proof or confession”. Theory: Anne Boleyn was the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by Thomas Cromwell Another set of historians have favoured the explanation that Anne was the victim of a conspiracy by Thomas Cromwell and a court faction involving the Seymours. This rests upon a view of Henry as a pliable king whose courtiers could “bounce” him into action and tip him “by a crisis” into rejecting Anne. But why should Anne and Cromwell, erstwhile allies of a reformist bent, fall out? Differences of opinion are thought to have arisen over the use of funds from the dissolution of the monasteries, as well as matters of foreign policy – seemingly slender motives for destroying a queen. It has been suggested that Cromwell’s court faction intended to replace Anne with Jane Seymour. Chapuys mentioned Jane in a letter of 10 February 1536, reporting that Henry had sent her a gift of a purse full of sovereigns, accompanied by a letter. She did not open the letter, which – Ives speculated – contained a summons to the royal bed. Instead, she kissed it and returned it, asking the messenger to tell the king that “there was no treasure in this world that she valued as much as her honour,” and that if the king wanted to give her a present, she begged it might be at “such a time as God would be pleased to send her some advantageous marriage”. Such a calculated reply is reminiscent of Anne during the days of her courtship with Henry. In response to Jane’s coyness, Henry’s love for her was said to have “marvellously increased”. Yet she was described as a lady whom the king “serves” – a telling word implying that he sought her as his ‘courtly love’ mistress. There is little evidence that, before Anne was accused of adultery, Henry had planned to make Jane his wife. Marriage to Jane was, surely, a symptom and a product of Anne’s downfall, not a cause. The pivotal piece of evidence for a conspiracy is a remark made by Cromwell to Chapuys after Anne’s death. In a letter to Charles V, Chapuys wrote that Cromwell had told him “il se mist a fantasier et conspirer le dict affaire,” which has been translated as “he set himself to devise and conspire the said affair,” suggesting that Cromwell plotted against Anne. Crucially, however, this phrase is often used out of context. The previous sentence states that “he himself [Cromwell] had been authorised and commissioned by the king to prosecute and bring to an end the mistress’s trial, to do which he had taken considerable trouble.” If we accept this account, it is impossible to dismiss Henry VIII from the picture – Cromwell claimed not to be acting alone. It has been proposed, therefore, that Henry asked Cromwell to get rid of Anne. David Starkey suggested that “Anne’s proud and abrasive character soon became intolerable to her husband”. JJ Scarisbrick, author of the authoritative volume Henry VIII, agreed: “What had once been devastating infatuation turned into bloodthirsty loathing, for reasons we will never completely know.” Evidence for this view is taken from the writings of the ever-hopeful Chapuys. As a Catholic and a supporter of Catherine of Aragon, he referred to Anne as “the concubine” or “the she-devil”, and had made bitter assertions about the doomed state of Henry and Anne’s relationship even at the height of their happiness in late summer 1533. But Chapuys himself recognised that Henry and Anne had always been prone to “lovers’ quarrels”, and that the king’s character was very “changeable”. True, Henry and Anne were direct with each other: they got angry, shouted and became jealous. But they were also frequently described as being “merry” together; it was an epithet still being applied to them during the autumn of 1535 – and one that was appended to their marriage more often than to any of Henry’s other unions. Bernard has described theirs as a “tumultuous relationship of sunshine and storms”. Read more | The downfall of Thomas Cromwell Theory: The belief that Anne Boleyn could never provide a suitable heir Some have proposed that the miscarriage of a male foetus suffered by Anne in January 1536 led inexorably to her downfall. Did it cause Henry to believe that Anne would never be able to bear him an heir, and thus to consider the marriage doomed? Certainly, the king was reported to have shown “great disappointment and sorrow”. Chapuys wrote that Henry, during his visit to Anne’s chamber after the tragedy, said very little except: “I see that God will not give me male children.” Henry then left Anne at Greenwich to convalesce while he went to Whitehall to mark the feast day of St Matthew. Chapuys, rather maliciously, interpreted this as showing that Henry had abandoned Anne, “whereas in former times he could hardly be one hour without her”. Clearly, the miscarriage was a great blow to both Henry and Anne – yet another four months were to pass before Anne’s death, so demonstrating a direct link between the events would be problematic. Another story, reported third-hand by Chapuys, quotes Henry as telling an unidentified courtier that he had married Anne “seduced and constrained by sortilèges”. That last word translates as ‘sorcery, spells, charms’, and has given rise to the suggestion that Anne Boleyn dabbled in witchcraft. Though this is regularly cited as one of the charges of which she was found guilty, it is not mentioned in the indictment. Ives, though, pointed out that the primary English meaning of sortilèges at this time was ‘divination’, a translation that changes the meaning of Henry’s comment. It could imply that he was induced to marry Anne by premarital prophecies that she would bear sons, or could refer simply to Henry’s earlier infatuation or ‘bewitchment’ by Anne. The idea that Henry had been “seduced by witchcraft” has become attached to another theory, which holds that the real reason for Anne’s ruin was that the foetus miscarried in January 1536 was deformed. According to Tudor specialist Retha Warnicke, the delivery of a “shapeless mass of flesh” proved in Henry’s mind that Anne was both a witch and adulterously promiscuous. But this description comes from a Catholic propagandist, Nicholas Sander, writing 50 years later; there is no contemporary evidence to sustain this salacious theory. Theory: A combination of gossip and indescretions An event in April 1536 suggests that, just weeks before Anne was executed, Henry was still committed to his marriage. In the early months of 1536, Henry was increasing the pressure on Charles V to recognise Anne as his wife. On 18 April he invited Chapuys to the court. Events that day were very deliberately staged: the ambassador attended mass and, as Henry and Anne descended from the royal pew to the chapel, she stopped and bowed to Chapuys. Etiquette dictated that he return the gesture – a significant diplomatic coup, because it implied recognition by the ambassador and, by extension, his emperor. It would, as Bernard has argued, have been extraordinarily capricious of Henry to seek to have Anne recognised as his wife if he already harboured intentions of ridding himself of her soon after. So was it not guilt, nor a court coup, nor Henry’s hatred of Anne that led to her downfall but, rather, a terrible combination of malicious gossip and her own indiscretions? A poetic account written in June 1536 by Lancelot de Carles, secretary to the French ambassador, relates that one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth Browne, was accused of loose living. She made light of her own guilt by stating that “it was little in her case in comparison with that of the queen”. These words reached Cromwell who, according to de Carles, reported them to Henry; the king blanched and, very reluctantly, ordered him to investigate. This certainly aligns with Cromwell’s own retelling of the events. De Carles adds a crucial, though unsubstantiated, clause, Henry telling Cromwell that “if it turns out that your report, which I do not wish to believe, is untrue, you will receive pain of death in place of [the accused]”. So Cromwell may have had reason to find evidence of Anne’s guilt. Given that Anne was accused of conspiring the king’s death (the only charge that actually constituted treason – consensual adultery was not covered by the treason law of 1352), it seems likely that the evidence used to demonstrate her guilt was a conversation she recalled – and William Kingston reported – with Norris. Anne had asked Norris why he did not go through with his marriage. He had replied that “he wold tary a time,” leading her to taunt him with the fateful words “you loke for ded men’s showys; for yf owth cam to the King but good, you would loke to have me.” Norris’s flustered response – that “yf he should have any such thought, he wold hys hed war of” – provoked her to retort that “she could undo him if she would,” and “ther with thay felle yowt” (“there with they fell out”.) It might seem that this overstepped the normal boundaries of ‘courtly love’ talk only a little. But the Treasons Act of 1534 held that even imagining the death of the king was treasonous, so Anne’s conversation with Norris was charged, reckless and, arguably, fatal – useful ammunition if Cromwell were looking for dirt. Was it, as Greg Walker (author of Writing Under Tyranny) has suggested, not what Anne did but what she said that made her appear guilty? When it comes to Anne Boleyn’s fall, historians give their ‘best guess’ answers on the basis of the available evidence – which is too sparse to be conclusive. For my part, it is the final ‘cock-up theory’ that convinces me. I believe that Anne was innocent, but caught out by her careless words. Henry was convinced by the charges against her; it was a devastating blow from which he never recovered. For Anne, of course, the consequences were far more terrible. This article was first published in the April 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine
15 minutes of fame | Suzannah Lipscomb chooses Marguerite de Navarre
As part of our series exploring lost or lesser-known figures from history who deserve their 15 minutes of fame, Emily Briffett interviews Professor Suzannah Lipscomb about the life of Marguerite de Navarre
Who was Marguerite de Navarre? Born in 1492, Marguerite de Navarre was the daughter of the Count and Countess of Angoulême, the sister of King François (Francis) I of France, and later, the wife of Henri II of Navarre. Though we are referring to her as Marguerite de Navarre, she also goes by several other names, including Marguerite d’Alençon (thanks to her first marriage to the Duke of Alençon), Marguerite d’Angoulême and Marguerite de Valois. De Navarre was a “key player in politics and diplomacy” at Francis I’s court, explains Lipscomb, and left a legacy as “a leading figure in intellectual, religious, and literary circles.” Marguerite de Navarre's life In the place of Francis I’s wife Claude, who spent a lot of time away from court life due to multiple pregnancies, Marguerite was a key hostess of entertainment at the royal court. It is, however, for her political and religious interventions that she is most remembered. Marguerite was “a kind of proto-Protestant, who really cared about the hypocrisy and the corruption and the abuses in the Church,” explains Lipscomb. Despite remaining a Catholic herself, Marguerite played a significant role in the Reformation, because she believed that people should be able to make up their own minds about faith, says Lipscomb. To facilitate this fight for freedom of belief, Marguerite influenced her brother Francis to put people with more reformed ideas into ecclesiastical positions, and was a patron for several people who were considered heretics. Lipscomb also credits Marguerite for her writing, which covered significant themes like religion and the mistreatment of women. Her posthumously-published collection of stories, the Heptaméron, explored the patriarchy and how it affected women at the time. It is often thought that Marguerite had drawn on her own experiences of maltreatment by men – a theory supported by Lipscomb ­– but regardless of her inspiration, says Lipscomb, the works she created were highly influential and brave, written “at a time when female voices were few and writing as a woman was to do something very risk to one’s reputation.” Perhaps Marguerite’s most important contribution in her lifetime was her role as a diplomatic figure. A key example, explains Lipscomb, was when Marguerite came to the rescue of her brother. In 1525, after the Battle of Pavia, Francis was taken prisoner by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. “It is Marguerite who makes the journey to Madrid,” says Lipscomb. “She negotiates for his release. She is the one parlaying with emperor to get him release and acting as this key political diplomatic figure.” Why does she deserve her 15 minutes of fame? Ultimately, says Lipscomb, Marguerite de Navarre deserves her 15 minutes of fame because she currently does not get enough credit for her significant interventions in both the Reformation and the Renaissance. “We often associate Francis I with bringing the Renaissance of Italy to France, and for supporting the work of humanist scholars,” says Lipscomb. But Marguerite “was totally influential in the spreading of the Renaissance in France and from there to England and in the shaping of the Reformation. “She has been called ‘the mother of the Renaissance’ and I think we have to see her role as very much influencing Francis,” explains Lipscomb. “I think that she has a major part to play.” Professor Suzannah Lipscomb was speaking to Emily Briffett. Lipscomb is a historian, author and broadcaster who has presented history documentaries for television, hosts the Not Just the Tudors podcast, and the co-editor of What is History Now? Listen to the full interview and find more episodes in our 15 minutes of fame podcast series Article compiled by Isabel King
15 minutes of fame: Marguerite de Navarre, royal influencer
Suzannah Lipscomb reveals why she thinks 16th-century royal influencer Marguerite de Navarre deserves to be better remembered today
It’s the HistoryExtra podcast’s 15th birthday! To celebrate, we’ve asked 15 historians to nominate a figure from history they think deserves their ‘15 minutes of fame’. In this episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb nominates Marguerite de Navarre. Speaking with Emily Briffett, she reveals how this royal woman, sister of French King Francis I, had a major influence on both the Renaissance and Reformation. Browse more episodes about figures from history who deserve 15 minutes of fame
Did Thomas Seymour sexually abuse the teenage Princess Elizabeth?
HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course
Was the teenage Princess Elizabeth sexually abused by her stepfather, Thomas Seymour? Evidence shows that Thomas Seymour asked the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth to marry him, months before his eventual marriage to Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s widow. Historian Suzannah Lipscomb considers the evidence…
Elizabeth I may have been the one of England’s longest reigning monarchs but, from her very first breath to the day she died, Elizabeth I was surrounded by enemies who threatened her crown and her life. There is an allegation that the teenage Princess Elizabeth was sexually abused by Thomas Seymour after Henry VIII’s death in January 1547. Seymour was the brother of one of her stepmothers, Jane Seymour, and the husband of another, Katherine Parr. So what’s the evidence and did it happen? Nearly everything we know about this case comes from Elizabeth’s servants. Her governess, Kat Ashley, and Thomas Parry, her ‘cofferer’, or accountant, testified in response to a Privy Council investigation in 1549 into whether Seymour tried to marry Elizabeth without the council’s consent. Watching Becoming Elizabeth? Find out more about the real history that inspired the drama: The real history behind Becoming Elizabeth Elizabeth I: your guide to her life and rule, plus 7 facts you might not know What was Thomas Seymour's relationship with Elizabeth? Here are the facts as best we know them. Thomas Seymour asked the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth to marry him by letter in February 1547, within a month of her father, Henry VIII’s, death. Seymour probably believed that marrying Elizabeth would increase his hold on power; his brother, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, had just been made Lord Protector, and the ambitious Thomas was probably envious of Edward’s position. Elizabeth rejected his proposal elegantly, also by letter, saying she was too young (she was 13 years old; he, at 38, was 25 years older than she) and would be in mourning for her father for two years. Within a month or so of receiving her rejection, Thomas Seymour married the queen dowager Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s widow and Elizabeth’s stepmother. Katherine had been in love with him since before her marriage to Henry, but it is possible that Thomas married her to get closer to Elizabeth. At almost exactly this time, Elizabeth started living with Katherine. Soon afterwards, Thomas moved in to live with his new wife. According to testimonies given in 1549 by Elizabeth’s governess and companion, Kat Ashley, and her cofferer, Thomas Parry, from June 1547 – within days of Seymour’s arrival – Elizabeth started to receive early-morning visits from him. He would “make as though he would come at her” and she would shrink back. The next day, she rose earlier so that he wouldn’t find her in bed, but when he arrived, she was still dressed only in a nightdress, he in a short nightgown, “barelegged in his slippers”. He greeted her and reached out to “strike her on the back or the buttocks familiarly”. Another time he climbed into Elizabeth’s bed, while she was still in it. She continued to get up earlier – if she were dressed, he would bid her good morning and then go on his way. Kat Ashley – in her depositions – said that she grew concerned about his visits, and came to sit in her mistress’s rooms in the early mornings, but that Seymour continued his behaviour. She maintained that she told him to “go away for shame” and squared up to him on one occasion saying that word of his behaviour was getting out. Seymour replied that “he meant no evil”. On two occasions, Katherine Parr joined Seymour in his morning visits to the now 14-year-old girl, and they tickled her in bed. On another occasion, Seymour wrestled with Elizabeth in the gardens at Hanworth on an autumnal day, with Katherine nearby – he cut Elizabeth’s gown “into a hundred pieces” while Katherine “held her”. The nature of Katherine’s holding is not clear – held her down? Held her to protect her? Laughingly participated in mere horseplay? We don’t know how Elizabeth reacted. Soon after this incident, Katherine asked Kat Ashley to keep watch on Elizabeth’s behaviour. She claimed that Seymour claimed to have seen Elizabeth “cast her arms about a man’s neck” in an embrace, but no one else in the household had seen it and Ashley came to believe that Katherine had made it up to get her to spy on Elizabeth and Seymour. Katherine and Seymour moved to his London house for several months, and Elizabeth did not go with them. When in spring 1548, she arrived to join them, he started up his morning visits again. Kat Ashley says she again reprimanded him for coming in a state of undress into “a maiden’s chamber”. Six Wives: A HistoryExtra podcast series Member exclusive | In this six-part podcast series, we’ll be peeling back the layers of mythmaking to take another look at these fascinating women, who shaped the course of Henry’s reign – and the history of England. Listen to all episodes now In June 1548, Katherine wrote to Seymour, and asked Elizabeth to arrange a messenger to get the letter to him. Elizabeth wrote on the outside of the letter, in Latin, “Thou, touch me not”, then deleted it, and wrote instead, “Let him not touch me” – suggesting his advances were unwanted, but that she feared to speak too directly to him about it. Kat Ashley said, however, that Elizabeth “did bear some affection” towards Seymour and would blush when he was spoken of. Finally, on 11 June 1548, according to Thomas Parry, Katherine came across her husband and stepdaughter embracing in a room alone together, and Katherine reacted with anger: “they were all alone, he having her in his arms, wherefore the queen fell out” with Seymour and Elizabeth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/06/eli1-105-040821-0060-a-1--ad120a7-e1654875750637.jpg" width="620" height="415" alt="The relationship between Thomas Seymour (Tom Cullen) and Princess Elizabeth (Alicia von Rittberg) is a focal point for the drama" title="The relationship between Thomas Seymour (Tom Cullen) and Princess Elizabeth (Alicia von Rittberg) is a focal point for the drama (Photo courtesy of Starz)" /> The very next day, Elizabeth went to live with Sir Anthony and Joan Denny – Kat Ashley’s sister – at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, and Katherine and Seymour went to Sudeley Castle. It is not clear whether Elizabeth chose to leave or was sent away. Throughout that summer, Elizabeth was ill with migraines, jaundice, digestive problems, and irregular menstruation. About 60 years later, an urban legend started to circulate that Elizabeth had been pregnant during this time – but the evidence is laughably slender and easily refuted. It seems more likely that Elizabeth was stressed and traumatised by the separation from her stepmother and the sexual harassment by her stepfather. Katherine wrote Elizabeth affectionate letters while they were apart. On 5 September 1548, a week after giving birth, Katherine died. There had been no reconciliation in person between Katherine and Elizabeth since the events in June. The newly single Seymour sent his nephew, John Seymour, to accompany Elizabeth as she moved to set up her own household at Hatfield soon after, and (according to Thomas Parry), Seymour told John to enquire of Elizabeth: “whether her great buttocks were grown any less or no?” Rumours started to circulate about this time that Seymour planned to marry Elizabeth. Parry asked her if she would marry Seymour if he asked; she replied, “when that comes to pass, I will do as God shall put in my mind” – a characteristically ambiguous response. Parry thought Elizabeth aware of Seymour’s interest but that it was not reciprocal. In January 1549, Seymour was arrested for trying to kidnap the king, marry Elizabeth without the council’s consent, and make himself de facto king. Ashley and Parry were questioned to find out if Elizabeth was in on it. With their testimonies, and her own witty defence, Elizabeth managed to extract herself from blame, and Seymour was beheaded on Tower Hill on 20 March. Learn more about Elizabeth I as Queen of England A Tudor love triangle: Elizabeth I, Lettice Knollys and Robert Dudley Queens at war: Elizabeth I vs Mary, Queen of Scots Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/GettyImages-1354452119web_ready-7c63418.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, painted to honour her victor over the Spanish in 1588 (Photo by: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, painted to honour her victor over the Spanish in 1588 (Photo by: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> What we know – and don’t know – about Thomas Seymour and Elizabeth As Kat Ashley and Thomas Parry’s evidence was given in response to the 1549 Privy Council investigation into whether Seymour tried to marry Elizabeth without the council’s consent, it was in their interests to appear as if they had acted impeccably throughout. That might mean that Ashley pretended to have been shocked or to have tried to send Thomas Seymour away, when she never actually did so. We don’t know how Katherine felt: was she jealous? Did she think Elizabeth was just a young girl infatuated with her handsome husband? Did she see it as mere high jinks? Or did she resist seeing what was happening in front of her face? It seems possible that she saw it, at first, as a bit of fun – and then, as Elizabeth matured, and when Katherine herself fell pregnant, became concerned that it was something more worrying. It is possible that Katherine sent Elizabeth away in order to protect her, as the heavily pregnant Katherine knew that she would soon have been going into confinement and would not be able to stop Seymour’s advances. We also don’t know how Elizabeth felt. Kat Ashley said that Elizabeth blushed when Seymour was spoken of, but this might not indicate affection, or fancy, so much as shame. From a modern perspective, a 13/14-year-old is a child and cannot give consent. But a 14-year-old of aristocratic birth could marry in Tudor England, even if it were not normal to cohabit (and, therefore, consummate a marriage) until the age of 16. Did Thomas Seymour sexually abuse Elizabeth? We cannot conclude with absolute certainty that he did, but he visited her in a state of undress, when she was in her nightgown, and his behaviour was thought to be shameful by her servants. If we cannot say for certain that he sexually abused her, we can, at least, say that he seems to have been trying do so; he harassed her and made her deeply uncomfortable, as indicated by her note on Katherine’s letter. He also may have been trying to groom her into marriage at a future point. These incidents from her childhood seem very likely to have affected the adult queen. It may well be that Elizabeth’s later decision not to marry was associated with this sexual harassment, at a pivotal period of her life. When she wrote “let him not touch me”, she prophesised not just about Thomas Seymour but about all the men she would encounter. As a result of Seymour’s actions, Elizabeth knew that when a man came a-courting, he would have one eye on her and one on the throne, and she was determined not to let any of them get their hands on it, or her. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in May 2017 Discover more learning from week three of the HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course Plots and Rebellions, with Professor Tracy Borman – watching time 15 mins Did Thomas Seymour sexually abuse the teenage Princess Elizabeth? – reading time 8 mins Sisters at war: Mary I and Elizabeth I – reading time 11 mins Margaret Douglas: The forgotten Tudor princess – reading time 8 mins Mary, Queen of Scots’ tragic life – listening time 33 mins Queens at war: Elizabeth I vs Mary, Queen of Scots – reading time 15 mins Sir Francis Walsingham: spy-master extraordinaire and Elizabeth I's security chief – reading time 11 mins Alternate history: what if the Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I had succeeded? – reading time 5 mins
History in 2021, with Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb
Public historians Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb explore how we should make sense of studying the past in 2021
Sixty years ago EH Carr’s groundbreaking book, What is History?, explored how we should study the past. Now his great-granddaughter, Helen Carr, has teamed up with Suzannah Lipscomb to edit a new volume, What is History, Now?. Here, they discuss the importance and challenges of writing history in the 21st century. Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb are the editors of What is History, Now? (Orion, 2021) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
A very brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb
Between 1482 and 1782, thousands of people across Europe – most of them women – were accused of witchcraft and subsequently executed. But why were so many innocent people suspected of such a crime? Historian and broadcaster Suzannah Lipscomb explores the history of witches...
Witches are everywhere. In fairytales, fantasy and satire, they appear time and again as a versatile synonym for evil and transgression. But, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, men and women of both high and low status believed in witches’ ubiquity in a far more disturbing way. Lord chief justice Anderson noted in 1602: “The land is full of witches… they abound in all places” – not as a symbol or figure of fun, but as a deadly threat to life, livelihood and divine order. 10 of Britain’s most infamous witch trials Witches in numbers: how many people were killed? The large-scale persecution, prosecution and execution of witches in these centuries was an extraordinary phenomenon. It is also an episode of European history that has spawned many myths and much inaccuracy. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is one of the purveyors of such erroneous hype, stating: “The church burned at the stake an astounding 5 million women”, which would be astounding if true. The actual numbers are far lower, but still striking: between 1482 and 1782, around 100,000 people across Europe were accused of witchcraft, and some 40–50,000 were executed. Listen | Historian Ronald Hutton reveals how the witch has been a symbol of fear across the globe for more than 2,000 years Neither were witches (with the exception of some targeted by the Spanish Inquisition) generally persecuted by the church. Although belief in witches was orthodox doctrine, following Exodus 22.18, the 16th and 17th-century witch trials were the result of witchcraft becoming a crime under law, and witches were prosecuted by the state. In England, witchcraft became a crime in 1542, a statute renewed in 1562 and 1604. As such, most witches across Europe received the usual penalty for murder – hanging (though in Scotland and under the Spanish Inquisition witches were burned). Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits Male witches Nor were all witches women – men could be witches too. Across Europe, 70–80 per cent of people accused of witchcraft were female – though the proportions of female witches were higher in certain areas: the bishopric of Basel; the county of Namur (modern Belgium); Hungary; Poland; and Essex, England. But one in five witches were male across Europe, and in some places, males predominated – in Moscow, male witches outnumbered women 7:3; in Normandy 3:1. Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages? Nevertheless, because women were believed to be morally and spiritually weaker than men, they were thought to be particularly vulnerable to diabolic persuasion. Most of those accused were also poor and elderly; many were widows, and menopausal and post-menopausal women are disproportionally represented among them. Top five hauntings in history In my two-part series, Witch Hunt: A Century of Murder (which aired in October 2015 on Channel 5), we seek to investigate witchcraft prosecution in the British Isles. Although witchcraft trials happened in every county in the country, the best evidence survives from three major witch crazes in the British Isles – in 1590s Edinburgh; 1612 Lancashire; and 1640s Essex and East Anglia, and we focus on those. James VI and I Above all, we have tried to consider the perspective of the victims – that is, those who were accused of witchcraft. We consider the circumstances in which alleged witches were accused, and the power of both neighbourhood accusation and elite sanction (James VI and I’s book on the subject of witchcraft, Daemonologie, published in 1597, is a case in point). We examine the way that torture – though illegal in England – was employed in late 16th-century Scotland and during the upheaval of the Civil War. We explore the role of the witchfinder, but also the willing collaboration of ordinary people in ridding the land of witches. And we look at what someone accused of witchcraft experienced as their fate. It is a sad, sorry and often harrowing tale – but it is one that needs to be heard. Suzannah Lipscomb is professor of history at the University of Roehampton and is the writer and presenter of 13 TV history documentary series . You can follow Lipscomb on Twitter @sixteenthCgirl or visit her website suzannahlipscomb.com. This article was first published on HistoryExtra in 2015
Suzannah Lipscomb on women’s lives in Reformation France
Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dan Jones about the lives of women in 16th-century France
Dr Suzannah Lipscomb talks to her fellow historian Dan Jones about her latest book, The Voices of Nîmes, which offers a fascinating window into sex and morality and the lives of women in 16th-century France. What was the Reformation?
The women who wouldn’t be silenced in Reformation France
Tales of wives shaming errant husbands, brides forcing lovers to marry them and maidservants taking their rapists to court emerge from Suzannah Lipscomb’s research into the female residents of Reformation France. So, she asks, does this mean that women in 16th-century Europe wielded more power than we previously thought?
In December 1600, a French maidservant called Marguerite Brueysse claimed that her master, Anthoine Bonnet, had made her pregnant. Anthoine, who was probably in his fifties or sixties, was an influential man. When summoned to the consistory (a sort of Huguenot church court) in the city of Nîmes in Languedoc to answer the accusation, Anthoine denied everything and called Marguerite a whore. He also claimed that she was pregnant by cobbler Andre Fauchier, who lived nearby. Before leaving, Anthoine even displayed a declaration Marguerite had apparently made before a magistrate assigning paternity to Fauchier. What was the Reformation? But that wasn’t the end of the matter. The consistory wanted to know more, and asked Marguerite for her story. She initially said that Anthoine had “persuaded and induced her by words and promises” to have sex with him and promised her 50 écus (which he never gave her) if she would blame her pregnancy on Fauchier. The consistory asked her – as a test of truth – if she would repeat her accusations to her master. She said she would. Read more from the February 2019 issue of BBC History Magazine here, including: Songs of the Holocaust (exclusive to The Library) A week later, the two came face-to-face and, in deference to his status, the consistory allowed Anthoine to cross-examine Marguerite. He told her to tell the truth “according to God and her conscience”. She replied that, “according to God and her conscience, she had been known carnally” and made pregnant by him. He enquired where he had known her first and how he had persuaded her. She replied that it was “one day when she was taking excrement out to the ditch in Bonnet’s garden” when he had ordered her into the stable and there “threw her on a pile of rye where he knew her by force, putting a handkerchief in her mouth to stop her from shouting”. In response, Anthoine disparaged Marguerite’s sexual reputation and suggested that her brother had made her accuse him. She denied having sex with anyone else or having been persuaded to act by her brother. When Anthoine started to question her for a second time about the circumstances in which he had propositioned her, she lost her composure, dropping angrily out of the official French into her mother-tongue, Occitan, to say: “As you wanted, in a ditch of dung, in Rodilhan, a year less a month ago.” Ten days later, the consistory met to deliberate on the matter. They summoned Anthoine and charged him to tell the truth. He swore that he was falsely accused – but the consistory didn’t believe him. Their unanimous judgment was that Anthoine would be suspended from the Eucharist. He was livid, shouting at them “in all passion and anger… that they did him a great wrong to believe a whore rather than a good man”. Impossible to prove It’s no surprise that Anthoine was angry. Most female domestic servants were in their teens or early twenties, and were especially vulnerable to sexual abuse by their male employers. Prosecution rates for rape were very low: women had to prove the impossible – active physical resistance throughout the attack. Not only that but women were believed to be physically, morally, mentally and emotionally weaker than men, and especially more driven to lust and lechery. It was assumed that in most seductions, the woman was either the initiator or had yielded voluntarily. Medical beliefs tipped the scales further in men’s favour. It was thought that women needed to reach a sexual climax to conceive, so a pregnant woman claiming to be raped could not have been raped at all. Therefore, most rapists got off scot-free. What’s more, a married woman had no legal status apart from her husband’s; any woman’s testimony was worth considerably less than a man’s. And yet, in the case of Anthoine Bonnet and Marguerite Brueysse, the Protestant church authorities believed a young, lowly servant-woman rather than an older man of influence. This is not what the consistory – the Protestant church’s mechanism for imposing morality – had been set up to do. Although it was also the governing body and welfare centre of the local church, most of its time was given to moral supervision, interrogation and reprimand. Throughout Protestant Languedoc, elders were appointed to oversee a district of a few streets and were charged to report back any moral failings. And the ministers, elders, deacons and scribes who made up the consistory in each Protestant town were nothing if not zealous. They investigated routine gossip, noted all indiscretions, and reported every impropriety. The aim was to create a community that was visibly distinguished by its holiness – holiness that would be achieved by eradicating superstition, magic, fortune-telling, games, dancing (which was thought “dissolute and scandalous, tending to fornication”), fights, violence, insults and, above all, sexual sin. As women were thought to be primarily responsible for sexual and other sins, controlling morals meant controlling women. The consistory was a fundamentally patriarchal institution, intended to uphold existing social hierarchies and reinforce the authority of husbands and fathers. Playing the system But there were unintended consequences to this moral discipline. First of all, women appeared before the consistory frequently: in my research into the consistorial records of 10 towns and cities in Languedoc (a total of 25 volumes and more than 1,200 cases), I have found well over a thousand testimonies about women and, crucially, by women – most of whom left no other record to posterity. And the consistorial system produced another – entirely ironic and accidental – result: it empowered Languedoc’s female residents. Women quickly learned how to use the consistory to their advantage: they denounced those who abused them, they forced men to honour marriage promises, and they started rumours they knew would be followed up by the elders. In short, they used the church courts to obtain justice, to secure marriage and to ensure provision for their children. And this empowerment is reflected in the consistorial registers, which suggest that women could be independent, self-determining and vocal – even in an age when they had limited legal rights, were barred from public office and higher education, and played no formal role in the church law or government. This is no heroic tale. Women’s suits were far from always successful, and women were frequently abused, forced to do what they did not want to do, and punished for doing that which they did. Nevertheless, my research suggests that we need to reconceptualise female power at this time – to recognise that it did not always conform to the stereotype of hidden, devious influence. Women were also bold, violent and vocal, and exercised power that was far more public and direct than historians have previously recognised. A shaming society The insights of the consistorial records even show us ordinary women using their power beyond the realms of the consistory in pursuit of their own agendas. We see women choosing to have sex outside marriage, despite the potentially devastating consequences in a shaming society; challenging church authorities; and electing not to return to estranged husbands. Take the example of Catherine Cheysse. In 1592 she had been married to Jehan Bertrand for 21 years and had had four children with him, but the couple had spent 11 of those years apart. Jehan explained that this was because they had lived in Piedmont, where a decade earlier Protestants had been greatly persecuted, so he had been obliged to flee to Languedoc, taking the children with him. Sometime afterwards, he said, when he thought it safe, he returned to the marital home to collect his wife, but – perhaps unimpressed by being left behind – she “did not want to obey”. At a later date, Catherine heard rumours that her husband and elder son were dead and turned up in Languedoc to see for herself. Jehan again asked her to stay and live with him, “which she did not want to do”, preferring to return to Piedmont. She chose her own path. Of all evidence the consistories offer us, perhaps the most surprising is the insight they give us into female violence. One example of women coming to blows occurred in 1562, when Jehanne Laudane hit Jehanne Liborde with a stick because, she claimed, Liborde had punched her. In 1582 Honorat Cany’s wife punched Donne Coderque and her daughters in the street, drawing blood. Coderque claimed that Cany’s wife had just discovered her husband with Coderque’s niece. Coderque had also overheard Cany’s wife shouting coarsely at her husband, “that he would just as soon fuck the arsehole of a cow”. In her fury, as she left their house, Cany had lashed out at Coderque and her daughters who were on the road outside. Men could find themselves on the receiving end of female violence, too. In 1587 in Pont-de-Camarès, Jehan Costeplane asserted that his daughter-in-law had hit him on the head with a bat and made him bleed. Alix Toulouse was reprimanded in 1592 because she “is often angry with her husband in the open street, using cruel insults”, while Sarra de Bely was chastised by the Montauban consistory in 1596 for acting “like a wild beast… being angry with her neighbours… and treating her husband with contempt to the scandal of many good people”. A woman called Claude Rouveyrolle reported in 1589 that two men had shouted insults at her, attempted to cut her dress all the way up to her bottom – with the words “she is a whore” – and then turned on her husband. The men reported that Claude had hit one of them with a stone and floored him; she made no attempt to deny it. As these anecdotes prove, the consistorial records of Languedoc are exceptionally valuable. They bring women’s agency in the 16th century into a sharper focus than any other sources. They gave women the opportunity to initiate cases, as they seldom could elsewhere. And, as they were free to use, a whole swathe of poor women could now bring suits without paying for the right to do so. But, while the records themselves are extraordinary, the people that appear in them were surely not. Just as the women of Protestant Languedoc were active, decisive and resourceful so, in all probability, were their counterparts across Europe. In other words, the records allow us to see how ordinary women 400 years ago really acted. How women fought back They weren’t afraid to pass judgment In 1588, a group of women led by the wife of Guillaume des Arènes and her neighbour Marguerite gathered outside the house of Vidal Raymond, a maker of pack-saddles living in Nîmes. These women were his neighbours. They beat their fists on the door and cried out to Raymond to let them in, saying that they knew he kept a woman inside. Raymond refused, so the women forced an entry and found a woman trying to hide herself beneath a pile of straw. They called her a ‘whore’ and chased her out of town. The women then went on to report the matter to a church elder. They could force men to marry them In 1598, Catherine Lamberte, a Catholic, told the Montauban consistory that she and a Protestant cordswain called Jehan Picard had made promises to marry, and that she had given him 100 livres towards her dowry. Jehan had since contracted marriage with another woman, and denied receipt of the dowry, but did admit that they had drawn up a contract. He said that, as Catherine had refused to convert to Protestantism, the contract was null. Catherine next appeared brandishing the contract of marriage, and a receipt for 60 livres of the dowry. It predated Jehan’s other marriage contract, so the consistory deemed that the marriage to Catherine should go ahead. They humiliated philandering husbands In Montauban in 1595, Anne de Valaty twice discovered her husband, Pierre Cordiny, trying to have sex with their maid. The first time she cried out to her neighbours on the street that she had found her husband lying with the maid on a sack, and wailed: “I would never have thought my husband would do this act.” She told a friend that “she should keep watch on her maid so that her husband does not do [with her] as Cordiny did with his”. When Anne found the couple together again, she hit the maid with a sieve, and threw her out of the house. Anne’s distress at her husband’s infidelity manifested itself in angrily denouncing him, and using her power as a housewife to dismiss the servant. Dr Suzannah Lipscomb is reader in early modern history at the University of Roehampton. Her books include Witchcraft (Penguin Ladybird Expert, 2018) The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc by Suzannah Lipscomb (OUP, February 2019) You can read more about early modern Europe at historyextra.com/period/early-modern This article was first published in the February 2019 edition of BBC History Magazine
Behind the scenes of Suzannah Lipscomb’s 'Hidden Killers of the Post-War Home'
In the 1950s, following long years of austerity and sacrifice, ordinary Britons were suddenly better off than ever. Many used their newfound spending power to embrace both consumerism and modernism. This was an optimistic age of new materials, such as plastics and bright colours. But, as Dr Suzannah Lipscomb outlines in Hidden Killers of the Post-War Home, not all the items Britons purchased were as well designed as they might have been – and some were downright dangerous
BBC History Magazine's TV editor, Jonathan Wright, caught up with her to find out more… Q: We all tend to think of the home in the post-1945 era as rather safer than in years previous but they may not have been as safe as we think? A: That’s right. This is the 1950s and the house looks like something one can absolutely identify, it looks like the houses of my grandparents, and it’s full of things we still have around. One of the astonishing things about this is that so much [of what we see] is familiar yet it is dangerous. In fact, some of the things that come out of this episode do constitute health and safety warnings today, things that we should all be aware of. Q: What sorts of dangers are we talking about? A: We’ve got seven hidden killers in this programme, including chemistry sets, plastics in the home, carbon monoxide that comes from having heaters or boilers in the bathroom, factory-farmed chickens, labour-saving devices – all manner of things. Q: Can you tell us more about some of these dangers? A: For example, they used to put the gas boiler or heater in the bathroom. The real danger of this is the bathroom is quite often a sealed room and, when the boiler is at work, if the fossil fuels don’t burn off completely it produces gases that go back into the room. And if there’s not enough oxygen, rather than forming carbon dioxide they form carbon monoxide, which is this odourless, colourless, tasteless, completely invisible – and deadly – gas. You can be lying in a bath feeling gently lulled, you think, by the warmth of the water, and you’re feeling a bit dozy. In fact, what’s happening is the gas enters your bloodstream and you’re essentially suffocated from the inside – absolutely terrifying. There was also in the 1950s a real craze for chemistry sets, especially among little boys. So what do you want from a chemistry set? You want things that can explode and make colourful flames. There are things in these chemistry sets such as copper sulphate, which can be caustic. We do an experiment in the show with potassium permanganate, which is another substance you find in these chemistry sets. You mix it up with glycerol, which you can find in most household cupboards, and you get an explosion. These things are fatal. There’s a story of a boy putting some of these chemicals in his coat when he went to the cinema and it burns through his coat and trouser pocket. In the US these chemistry sets would even include uranium dust and a Geiger counter – extraordinary, but apparently they didn’t sell very well because uranium doesn’t do anything very [visually] exciting. Q: What’s the story of where we live in the 1950s, is it the idea of the ideal home becoming democratised? A: We saw a massive expansion in home ownership at this time, and very much because of this optimism and feeling of affluence there was a sense of trying to make the home look a certain way. After the Festival of Britain in 1951, for example, there was a kind of ideal of what the home should look like, which drew on the modernism of the 1930s: a Bauhaus look, but a softer version – lots of bright colours, lots of abstract geometric patterns in the house, open-plan living, covering up old Victorian doors, taking away the doorknobs, putting in flush handles. DIY came into its own in the 1950s, too. Dulux paint [entered the retail market] in 1953, Black & Decker started selling to consumers in 1954, The Practical Householder [magazine] launched in 1955, and you had Barry Bucknell, the king of DIY, on telly. It was a period where there was a great interest in domesticity and in making the home this bright, new, modern place. Suzannah Lipscomb’s Hidden Killers of the Post-War Home airs on BBC Four on Wednesday 25 May 2016 at 8pm.
The battle of Jutland and 1950s domestic dangers
Admiral Lord West describes a crucial First World War naval clash, while Suzannah Lipscomb tells us about her new BBC documentary: Hidden Killers of the Post-war Home
As we approach its centenary, Admiral Lord West describes a First World War naval clash between Britain and Germany that he believes decided the outcome of the conflict. Meanwhile, we speak to historian Suzannah Lipscomb about how technological innovations could be lethal in 1950s homes