A Personal History with the Tudors

Dear readers, I am so excited to introduce you to Karen Heenan. She shares my love for the Tudor era and the historical figures of the time who are often overlooked. I have had the pleasure of working with Karen on the latest Historical Writers Forum anthology, Alternate Endings. While I imagined a brighter future for Queen Mary in my story, Karen went back a little further and looked at Catherine's story if Prince Arthur had lived. I know you're going to love it!

Welcome, Karen!

~ Samantha

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A Personal History with the Tudors . . . and how Henry VIII doesn't improve with age

A Guest Post by Karen Heenan

My first introduction to the story of Henry VIII was the 1970 BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which we got in the US in 1972. I was eight. My mom was a big reader and had some knowledge of (and sympathy for) Anne Boleyn, so she wanted to watch the first two episodes covering Catherine of Aragon and Anne. After one episode, I was hooked and insisted on watching the rest of the series, even though Mom lost interest once Anne was executed. 

Throughout my teens and early twenties, I devoured every bit of Tudor-related historical fiction I could get my hands on. I loved stories of Henry and the queens, but it didn’t occur to me at that point to wonder “what if” about any of it. History was what it was, and I accepted it. 

As I got older, and read more non-fiction, threads began to present themselves, offering clues to different ways the story of Tudor England could have gone, if only one tiny thing had happened differently.  

Arthur Tudor’s death in 1501 was no tiny thing. He was Henry VII’s firstborn son, the heir to the newly-created Tudor dynasty, trained and educated from birth to take on the role of his father’s successor and lead the Tudors into a new age.  

Henry, on the other hand, was the younger brother, educated separately, and intended for the church. It was a failing on the part of Henry VII that he didn’t prepare the “spare” as thoroughly as he educated the heir, and I sometimes like to imagine the panic he felt when Arthur died and he realized that he had a limited amount of time to reshape his son into an eventual monarch.  

Which is not to say Henry VIII did a bad job as a young king. He kept on Thomas Wolsey as an advisor, and promoted him. Wolsey was a master of detail and excelled at the day-to-day drudgery of ruling, and Henry relied heavily on him in the early years. He also got rid of Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley (via execution). Empson and Dudley had been his father’s “hatchet men,” two lawyers who headed up the king’s council Learned in the Law and who enriched Henry VII (and themselves) by collecting taxes, dues, selling wardships, pardons, and licenses, and generally extorting from the nobility with the king’s full permission. 

He also married Catherine of Aragon. This was a fiscally sound idea, since her Spanish dowry had already been paid and Henry, like his father, was of no mind to return it. It had been widely proclaimed that Arthur and Catherine’s marriage had not been consummated, but a dispensation was obtained from the pope anyway because canon law forbade a man – even a king – from marrying his brother’s widow.  

Henry and Catherine fully expected to have children during the course of their marriage. And they did, but only one, the future Mary I, survived childhood.  

Thus began Henry’s frantic quest for a son, changing the course of English history and ending or turning upside down the lives of many people. 

I chose to write Princess of Spain in Catherine’s voice, allowing Arthur to live until their eldest son was sixteen, and questioning what would happen to an over-ambitious Archbishop named Henry if he tried to put himself forward as regent for the young king, rather than allowing his sister-in-law and the council to act as regent for two years. Catherine will have a fight on her hands, but at her side she also has two of Arthur’s most trusted advisors – Edmund Dudley and Thomas Wolsey. 

As a lover of history – and a stickler for accuracy in fiction - It was strangely cathartic to imagine what might have happened had Arthur Tudor survived and Henry had been left in the secondary spot history intended for him, and if Catherine had been given the wife, mother, and queen she could have been. Want to know more?  

Read my story in Alternate Endings to find out! 

Connect with Karen Heenan and check out the rest of her books on her Blog, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads, or her Amazon Author Page.

Get Alternate Endings from Historical Writers Forum for only 99c!

 

What Killed Elizabeth of York?

Elizabeth of York
Mother of the Tudor Dynasty

On February 11, 1503, her thirty-seventh birthday, Elizabeth of York died just days after giving birth to her eighth child. The baby girl had been named Catherine, which seems appropriate considering it is likely that her parents decided to have another child when their firstborn son, Arthur, died unexpectedly. He had been briefly married to Catherine of Aragon.

Henry VII was left with his only remaining son, another Henry, as his heir. A single son was a shaky foundation to build a dynasty upon. Therefore, Elizabeth risked another pregnancy, despite problems experienced with earlier confinements. The risk proved an unrewarding one when the child was born a girl and even more so when both mother and baby died within days.

It is easy to assume that Elizabeth of York died from what was termed childbed fever, as so many woman of her time did. Unsanitary conditions and limited understanding of what caused infection often resulted in the introduction of infection to the womb by efforts intended for healing. Other treatments, such as bleeding, often only made a patient's health decline more quickly. There are reasons to believe that Elizabeth's death was not quite so simply explained.

Evidence of illness long before Elizabeth's labor brings into question the diagnosis of childbed fever in this case. It could be that another complication besides infection, but just as treatable in our modern age, was Elizabeth's true cause of death. Some pieces of evidence that we can look at include Elizabeth's complications with previous pregnancies, her actions during her last pregnancy, and her medical complaints that do not fit a case of childbed fever.

Prince Arthur Tudor

Only eight months after the royal wedding, Elizabeth had given birth to Prince Arthur, a baby expected to complete the healing and unification begun by his parents. It is recorded that Elizabeth suffered an ague after his birth. This vague description tells us only that she suffered a fever of unknown severity. The situation was apparently more serious in 1499 when she gave birth to Prince Edmund. Whatever difficulties took place, it is recorded that there had been "much fear for her life." It is after this that Elizabeth does not risk another pregnancy until the death of Prince Arthur brings about a change of heart.

Although Elizabeth believed it was right and even her duty to provide England with another prince, there is evidence that she struggled with doing so long before her labor came early. In November and December of 1502, records show that Elizabeth paid for visits from medical professionals. Whether this was due to concerns for the child, herself, or both, is unknown. Even more telling, the pious queen employed the skills of an astrologer, something that she had not done before. She seemed to be looking for additional reassurance that she and her child would thrive.

Tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York
Photo Credit: Westminster Abbey

Despite the fact that she may not have been in optimal health, Elizabeth undertook a progress during her pregnancy, almost as though she felt she were running out of time. She had not previously traveled often without her husband, and her route took her on an unusual course. Delays in her itinerary due to poor health indicate that Elizabeth's problems began long before she reached the birthing room. Could something as simple as anemia have resulted in the first Tudor queen's fatigue, headaches, and inability to resist infection? This is proposed in Alison Weir's Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and her World, and it fits what we know of Elizabeth rather well. It is heartbreaking to think that such a mundane health issue could have led to her death.

Elizabeth was forced to give birth within the confines of the Tower of London, a location that was most assuredly not her first choice given the disappearance of her brothers from that place two decades earlier and her cousin Edward of Warwick's controversial imprisonment and execution more recently. When she went into premature labor, her prepared confinement rooms at Richmond went unused and a Tower chamber was secured for her. After her death, Henry had Elizabeth laid to rest in the Lady chapel at Westminster, which Henry had just decided to rework to include a tomb a month earlier. When he died in 1509, Henry joined her there, having never remarried.