Tudor Marriage: Scandal - Edward Seymour and Katherine Grey

After the execution of Jane Grey, her sisters knew that they must tread carefully. Queen Mary had only reluctantly sent Jane to her death due to the continued scheming and rebellion of her father and pressure from the Spanish, but those who remained wished to be free of the stain of treason.

By the end of 1558, Queen Mary had died and was replaced with Queen Elizabeth. Their father had not expected either of his daughters to rule and their brother had attempted to revise his will to avoid it, but these Tudor sisters proved that they would not be denied. For the remaining Grey sisters, and anyone else with a bloodline that placed them close to the crown, Elizabeth’s accession was the end of marrying according to one’s own wishes.

Elizabeth is famous for remaining single during her four decades as queen, despite leading many men to believe that they might be lucky enough to win her hand. Although she made the decision not to bear her own heirs, she also did not want any of her extended family raising up sons who might threaten her. In a quest no less maniacal than her father’s obsession with bearing sons, Elizabeth tried to keep everyone around her from having them.

Katherine Grey was Elizabeth’s cousin, and her family had already made one grasp for the throne, but she was also a sensual young woman who desired a husband and family more than a crown. Her hopes for the future had already been crushed once. In a double wedding with her older sister, Jane, Katherine had been wed to the son of the Earl of Arundel. However, with Jane’s fall, he quickly decided that she was not as profitable of a match as originally thought. The marriage was annulled, and Katherine was left alone. She was also fatherless after Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, was executed for treason.

Before long, Katherine was in love again and begging her mother to write to the queen, with whom she was first cousins, to request her approval. Frances Grey died before she could finish the letter to Elizabeth, but her death proved to Katherine, as if she had not already had reason to learn it, that life was fleeting. She and her lover decided to marry in secret and hope that Elizabeth would be forgiving.

Queen Elizabeth I is known for many things. Being forgiving is not one of them, but her treatment of Katherine Grey is one of the darkest stains upon her character.

Katherine Grey and her son Lord Edward Beauchamp

Edward and Katherine were young and in love, but they were no match for their queen when it came to cleverness. Since the ceremony had been performed in secret, it was easy for Elizabeth to claim it had never happened. The only witness had been Edward’s sister, who had since died, and the priest who had performed the sacred act could no longer be located.

Katherine fell pregnant but was uncertain that she was with child until Edward was already far away in France, a plot to keep the young lovers apart that was enacted a bit too late. In her ninth month of pregnancy and alone, Katherine was tossed into the Tower by a very angry Queen Elizabeth. Edward was summoned home as those closest to them tried to distance themselves in the eyes of the queen.

When Edward landed in Dover, he was also arrested and taken to the prison that had been the final home of Katherine’s sister and both of the young people’s fathers. Remembering their fate could not have been an encouragement as they underwent numerous interrogations.

Elizabeth had two goals in questioning the couple. She sought to discover who had aided and abetted the young lovers behind her back, that they, too, might be punished. It was also vital to demonstrate that there was no valid marriage between Edward and Katherine, bastardizing their coming child. She was already battling with those who pressured her to name Mary Queen of Scots as her heir. The last thing Elizabeth needed was a male heir born to a branch of the royal family to further threaten her position.

In the Tower, Katherine gave birth to a son, further infuriating Elizabeth. A child with combined Tudor and Seymour blood was too much of a threat. Based upon the Act of Succession put in place by Henry VIII and still law, the child was Elizabeth’s heir. She took great pleasure in deeming him illegitimate. The queen further disgraced the names of the Grey sisters by claiming that they were unfit for consideration in the succession due to their father’s treason. Elizabeth, who continued to refuse to name or bear an heir, was obsessed with proving that there was no one worthy of inheriting her crown.

White Tower of the Tower of London

While Elizabeth raged against them, Edward and Katherine were as happy as inhabitants of the Tower could be. They had their little son and were housed in rooms just steps away from each other. Of course, they were only allowed to pass messages rather than spend time together, but it must have given each comfort to know that the other was near and that friends on the outside fought for their son’s rights as heir to the kingdom. Certainly, they hoped for a better outcome than their ancestors whose graves could be found nearby.

Even the young couple’s guards took pity on their situation, allowing them visits that were irrefutably prohibited by the queen’s orders. Before long, Katherine was pregnant again. She could not have made Elizabeth angrier had she attempted to physically swipe the crown from her golden-red head.

Since Edward and Katherine had declared their marriage to several interrogators by the time their second child was conceived, it was difficult for the queen to have this child illegitimatized. To make matters worse for Elizabeth, she fell ill with what was feared to be a fatal case of smallpox, and the council pressed for Katherine to be named her heir as set forth in King Henry’s will. They had no intentions of honoring Elizabeth’s wish that Robert Dudley be named Lord Protector.

Surprising everyone, herself included, Elizabeth recovered. However, the need for her to settle upon an heir had been placed under a spotlight. This did not open the queen’s heart to her cousin’s son. In fact, as more people pleaded the case of Edward and Katherine, Elizabeth fought harder to deny them. She had the Lieutenant of the Tower arrested for allowing Katherine to fall pregnant the second time.

On February 10, 1563, almost a year and a half after the birth of her first child, Katherine gave birth to another son. While Edward continued to fight for their rights, Katherine cared for the two boys in the Tower, likely trying not to think about the number of royal sons who had never left its precincts. When a plague hit London that summer, only the pleading of Katherine’s faithful supporters convinced the queen to allow the family to be removed from the Tower to house arrest in separate and more healthful parts of the country.

This may have initially been construed as a positive sign, but Elizabeth was not relenting. Edward and Katherine continued to fight for their right to be together, but the pressure from others to name Katherine or her son as Elizabeth’s heir made the queen unsympathetic toward them. When the youngest Grey sister, Mary, also secretly married in 1565, hope was lost.

Mary and her husband were quickly arrested and separated. Katherine, who had already suffered bouts of depression due to the separation from her husband and oldest son, would not recover. On January 26, 1568, she died at age twenty-seven, crushed by the jealous Queen Elizabeth. Katherine and Edward had broken the barriers to marriage but suffered severely in payment.


Don't miss the rest of the Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

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Additional Reading:

De Lisle, Leanda. The Sisters Who Would Be Queen. New York: Ballantine Books, 2009.

Tudor Marriage: Scandal - Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor

Henry VIII was not the only one to make up his own rules when it came to marriage. His sister, Mary, infuriated him when she demonstrated that she, too, would wed where she found love and desire rather than where she was told her duty lie.

Like many princesses before her, Mary Tudor was pledged to marry for the purposes of international relations and treaty arrangements. She was eighteen to her husband’s fifty-two, but that mattered little in these types of arrangements. Her brief marriage to Louis XII left her with the title “The French Queen” for as long as she lived, though she was married to her second husband for much more of her life.

King Henry’s closest friend was Charles Brandon. The two had grown up together after Brandon’s father died defending Henry’s at the Battle of Bosworth where the Tudor dynasty was born. They habitually enjoyed the same sports and activities and were known to joust in matching armor. Despite this close connection, Brandon could not have anticipated the wrath of his king when he dared to marry Henry’s sister.

Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon

Brandon was no stranger to marriage scandal, though Henry had not created any of his own at that time. Seven years older than his king, Brandon had revealed his ambitions and willingness to use and dispose of women in his treatment of his first wife, Anne Browne. Attempting to annul their marriage and marry the girl’s affluent aunt, Brandon was forced to accept Anne after she birthed him a daughter and people refused to accept the so-called annulment. However, Anne died in 1512, and Brandon betrothed himself to his eight-year-old ward, Elizabeth Grey.

While he waited for her to be old enough for marriage, Brandon flirted with other women and marriage plans, including an embarrassing incident with Margaret of the Netherlands. She would not think of accepting the upstart’s hand, but things were still looking up for Brandon. In 1514, he was given the illustrious title of Duke of Suffolk, and the king’s beautiful younger sister was in love with him.

Henry knew of the feelings that his sister and best friend had for one another, but he trusted both to respect and honor his command that they marry elsewhere. Initially, Mary did. She made the best of her betrothal to the aged King of France, despite her own wishes, but the marriage lasted less than three months. Brandon was sent to retrieve Mary from France when her elderly husband died, supposedly from too much physical activity in bed with his frisky teenage bride. One might wonder if Henry was purposefully testing his friend and sister, putting them in this position. If he was, they failed the test. When they next presented themselves to Henry, it was as man and wife after a private ceremony in France.

Already contemplating where Mary could next be wed to give Henry the greatest advantage, he was furious to see her wasted on Brandon, regardless of how much he treasured the friendship. The new French king, Francios, had also suggested new matches to Mary after her enforced seclusion of forty days to ensure that she was not with child by the late king. However, she was able to gain the French king’s sympathy and support for her marriage to Brandon and hoped that she would be able to do the same with her brother. Mary reminded Henry that he had promised that she could choose her next husband if she went along with the French match, but, of course, Henry had only said that to make her submissive. He had never expected her to act upon it, and so quickly!

The couple was sent away from court and fined heavily, but Henry eventually relented. The marriage between Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon would provide the fuel for future Tudor scandals. Their daughter, Frances, would become the mother of England’s “nine day queen” Lady Jane Grey. Her sisters did not fare much better.

All of that was far in the future though, in 1515, when the spirited Tudor princess got to marry the man she loved. Some members of the king’s council, who already thought that Brandon wielded too much power over the king, lobbied for Brandon’s execution since marrying the princess without royal consent amounted to treason. However, as angry as Henry was, he loved Charles and Mary and eventually forgave them.

It was not until a decade later when Henry pursued an annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon that his relationship with his sister soured. Mary did not support her brother’s setting aside of his formerly beloved wife. This may be in part due to her deep dislike of Anne Boleyn, the woman queued up as the queen’s replacement. Even then, Henry did not punish Mary the way he did others. Even those close to him, such as Thomas Moore, paid the ultimate price for disagreeing with the king. From his sister, Henry tolerated what he would not from any other quarter. While Henry pursued divorce from Katherine and a new marriage to Anne, Mary had little to say about it. Her own health was failing, and she kept to her private estates.

Mary did not survive to witness the full drama of her brother’s quest for a son. She could not have foreseen that it would be her own children eventually named in his will, second only to his own three children who each were born of a different mother. Besides Frances, who would become the couple’s most famous offspring, Mary bore two sons and another daughter for Charles. The boys, both named Henry, died young. Eleanor, went on to marry Henry Clifford. When Mary died in 1533, her husband married his fourteen-year-old ward, Catherine Willoughby, who was betrothed to his son, again proving that barriers to marriage meant little to Charles Brandon.


Don't miss the rest of the Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

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Additional Reading:

De Lisle, Leanda. Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013.

Tudor Marriage: Scandal - Henry VIII

Henry VIII is a man well-known for breaking any and all barriers surrounding marriage. When one is king, it is possible to create new rules to suit one’s purpose, and no one understood this better than the second Henry Tudor. He is one of the reasons that the Tudor dynasty continues to captivate people to this day. The scandal of all those wives is magnetic in its drama and unprecedented rebellion against the Catholic Church.

Henry surmounted barriers to marry and then rid himself of his succession of six wives. The Anglican Church thrives to this day due to Henry’s inability to allow anyone to have any authority over him. Rome had provided him with the dispensation he desired in order to clear the way for his first marriage, but when they would not give him the annulment that he wanted twenty years later, the Church of England was born.

Divorce, as we know it today, did not exist at Henry’s time. A couple might have their marriage annulled, but that dissolved the union as if it never existed. Children were bastardized and any betrothal contract agreements over division of property were void. Couples might separate in cases of adultery or abuse, but they were still married according to ecclesiastical law and could not remarry. Clearly this would not work in Henry’s case.

The Family of Henry VIII and
Allegory of the Tudor Succession

Claiming sinful consanguinity, Henry set Katherine aside by annulling their twenty year marriage, but he had issues to deal with before he could marry Anne Boleyn. She had been betrothed to Henry Percy, she was far below the king’s status, and those who did not support Henry’s annulment believed him to still be married to Katherine. The king handily set this all aside by founding his own church to back up everything he decided to do.

Splitting the Church of England from Rome allowed Henry to not only marry where he wished, but it brought his empty coffers the riches of the offerings that had once gone to the Pope. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries, he was able to enrich himself and reward others by plundering ancient religious houses.

It did not take long for Henry to tire of Anne, her high-strung demeanor had been tempting compared to the matronly Katherine but was wearying in a wife. More importantly, she had not provided him with the male heir he needed. A more dastardly path was taken to rid himself of his second wife.

Anne was not offered the opportunity to retire to a convent as Katherine had been. With no patience remaining for another long battle for single status, Henry’s most devoted men, Bishop Cranmer and Baron Cromwell, made it their priority to take care of the Boleyn problem.

They could have pointed to the long ignored precontract, but that would not satiate Henry’s desire to be rid of Anne immediately and for good. Therefore, a plot was hatched to accuse Anne of adultery, a treasonous offense for a queen since it put the succession of the crown into question. One of the men accused was Anne’s own brother, George. Whatever one thinks of Anne Boleyn, and she is a controversial character to this day, she and the five men who died with her did not deserve their fate.

With Anne dispatched by a Frenchman’s sword, Henry was free to marry again, and he did so only ten days later. Jane Seymour was probably the least troublesome of Henry’s wives, and that is likely the reason she was chosen. Calm and submissive where Anne had been fiery and tempestuous, Jane came to the crown with little protest.

Had she survived, the story of Henry’s scandals might have been much shorter, but poor Jane died less than two years after becoming queen. To her credit, she did so after providing the long awaited male heir.

Henry was content to wait a few years before marrying again, though one boy in the cradle was a risky foundation for the succession. He did not consider his two girls worthy of his crown, and he himself was only king because his older brother had predeceased him. Henry knew he needed more sons.

His break from the Catholic Church had fanned the flames of reformation in England, and there were some who were eager for Henry to make even more changes in how the English worshiped. They pressed the suit of Anne of Cleves, a German Lutheran princess. After unsuccessfully pursuing a couple of other ladies, including Christina of Denmark who famously quipped, “If I had two heads, I would happily put one at the disposal of the King of England,” Henry accepted Anne.

It seems that as soon as Henry laid eyes upon Anne of Cleves, he was disappointed in her. For her own part, she submitted to his desire to annul their marriage after six months. Lack of consummation of the union was given as grounds for dissolving their union. Anne went on to live “as the king’s sister” in England for the rest of her life, but Henry went on looking for love.

His fifth wife was one to be pitied for her youth and inability to navigate the murky waters she had been tossed into. Katherine Howard was a sensuous cousin of Anne Boleyn, and maybe the aging Henry believed that she would be able to arouse him in a way that Anne of Cleves had not. While she is more likely guilty of the adultery charge that led to her death as a traitor, it is difficult to feel less sympathetic toward her than Henry’s previously executed spouse.

Single again, Henry looked once more for a woman who might give him a second son. With his health problems making it necessary for Henry to frequently be carried about in a large chair to save him from the painful task of walking, his mortality was undeniable. A third Katherine was selected to be Henry’s sixth and final bride.

Katherine Parr was a widow in her early thirties. She had not borne any children, which makes her a somewhat unusual choice for the king who was obsessed with the idea of bearing sons. However, her first husband had been very young when he died and her second very old, so Henry might have believed that Katherine would be fruitful enough if given the right seed.

There was no particular barrier to marrying Katherine Parr. She was a widow and her lack of status was something that Henry had habitually ignored in his choice of wives. While it had been a scandal for his grandfather, Edward IV, to marry one of his own subjects, Henry had made the practice commonplace. He had also normalized annulment and divorce, practices that were rarely performed before Henry made such extensive use of them. Katherine was in love with Thomas Seymour, but she knew her duty and accepted the king’s proposal.

Katherine was clever and devout. While she failed to provide Henry with another son, he trusted her enough to make her regent when he attempted to make war on France. Had she borne him a child, she may have enjoyed that position again when Henry died while Prince Edward was only nine years old. Instead, Edward VI was surrounded by a council of men who fought for eminence and Katherine was free to marry Thomas Seymour, as had always been her will.


Don't miss the rest of the Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Additional Reading:

De Lisle, Leanda. Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013.

Tudor Marriage: Scandal - Sir Thomas Kymbe and Cecily of York

When Henry Tudor, the grandson of Owen Tudor, became king, he carefully controlled the marriages of his wife’s many sisters. Elizabeth of York was the eldest daughter of the Plantagenet king Edward IV. For this reason, she had been chosen as his partner in uniting England under Henry’s rule. With their marriage, it was hoped, the warring factions of Lancaster and York would be brought together in peace.

It would not do for one of Elizabeth’s sisters to marry a man who had ambitions to topple Henry from the throne he had fought so hard to gain. Therefore, it was vital to consider the remaining children of Edward IV to secure Henry’s crown, especially since the law deeming them illegitimate had been overturned by Henry’s parliament. He wished for his bride’s bloodline to be untainted, but that made her sisters an even greater prize to the men who gained permission to marry them.

The Daughters of Edward IV

The youngest of the girls, Bridget, became a nun, but that left three young, beautiful York princesses to deal with. They were each married to men who had Henry’s trust, Anne to Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk, Catherine to William Courtenay Earl of Devon, and Cecily to Viscount John Welles, Margaret Beaufort’s half-brother. That sorted, Henry had reason to believe that any threat of the girls’ York blood had been neutralized.

So it had, but he had also used the matches to reward loyal followers and keep men close enough to him to discourage them from rebellion. As a king raised through conquest, Henry VII had a tough balancing act to perform. He had not considered that one of his wife’s sisters might have plans of her own.

In Henry’s defense, each of the sisters seemed happy in their marriages, and none of them thought to defy him. That is, until Viscount Welles died. Cecily had first married the choice of her uncle, Richard III, only to have Henry VII annul it. When the second husband not of her own choice died, she moved quickly to secure her own happiness.

How Cecily had met and fallen in love with a squire is unknown. He was of such lowly status that it is not even certain if his name was Thomas Kymbe, Kyme, or Keme. Whatever the proper spelling of his name, he had managed to win the love of one of the greatest catches in the kingdom. Cecily was referred to as the most beautiful of the York sisters, and had Cecily’s father not suffered an untimely death, she would have likely been married to one of the princes of Europe. She does not seem to have mourned the loss of such an opportunity, though Cecily may not have understood the extent it would cost her.

Perhaps Cecily believed that her brother-in-law could not be angry enough to severely punish one of his beloved wife’s closest sisters. She was wrong. While Cecily may have thought that she had fulfilled her duty to her king in marrying his choice of spouse for her once, the repercussions of her decision were severe. Henry confiscated her estates, leaving Thomas and Cecily in poverty, though, one would hope, rich in love.

Only through generous gifts from her sister, the queen, and Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, did Cecily have anything at all, and she certainly did not live out the remainder of her life in the high style to which she was accustomed. Her cost for marrying beyond the barriers was great. There is little remaining documentation of Cecily’s during the years of her scandalous marriage besides the records of payments that these generous benefactors gave to her.

Still, she does not seem to have regretted her decision. Cecily and her squire lived out their days quietly until her death in 1507. Margaret Beaufort stepped in one more time to cover the costs of the funeral that poor Thomas Kymbe could not afford.


Don't miss the rest of the Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

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Additional Reading:

Bacon, Francis. The History of the Reign of King Henry VII. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1850.

Penn, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Weir, Alison. Elizabeth of York: A Queen and Her World. New York: Ballantine Books, 2013.

Tudor Marriage: Scandal - Owen Tudor and Catherine Valois

Few couples broke through as many barriers and changed the course of history more than Owen Tudor and Catherine Valois. They were unequally matched, married for love, and broke the law with their union. Because they dared to do so, England boasts the history of the Tudor dynasty.

Details of the marriage of Owen Tudor and Catherine Valois are lost to history. However, since there was no attempt made to declare their children illegitimate, we can quite safely assume that it took place sometime before their first child was born in 1430. This was long before the time prescribed by the king’s council for Catherine to consider another match. They had ordered the dowager queen to wait until King Henry VI, Catherine’s son, was old enough to approve any marriage that she might make. Since he was less than a year old when his illustrious father, Henry V, died, the council intended that Catherine have a rather long wait.

She had been a widow for approximately six years when she decided that she had waited long enough. The council had already thwarted her efforts to make a match with Edmund Beaufort, so Catherine was more clandestine in her plans with Owen. The king was only six years old, potentially a decade away from being deemed of age and able to approve his mother’s marriage, so Catherine took charge of her own future.

Marriage of Henry V and Catherine Valois

Owen’s ancestors, once a prosperous and prominent family in Wales, had been ruined due to their role in Welsh rebellions against King Henry IV, placing him far below his bride in both social and economic standing. No negotiations or betrothal are known to have taken place between Owen and Catherine or any representatives for them, and they certainly did not have anyone’s approval. They did what few others of Catherine’s station dared, they married for love.

While Catherine may have been encouraged by the fact that Owen was of low enough status to not pose a threat to her son or his council, evidence indicates that she married him primarily because of mutual attraction. The couple quickly produced four children and several disapproving accounts note Catherine’s lust for her handsome new husband. In fact, rumors of how their relationship began include stories of her discovering him naked as he bathed and another that he caught her eye by falling into her lap when dancing.

Women of this era were expected to be pillars of virtue, and no one more so than the queen. Therefore, the fact that Catherine had failed to control her urges in her defiance of the law brought down the wrath of the council upon her. If she thought Owen’s lowly status would protect him, she had lost that gamble. Worse, they thought even less of him because he was Welsh.

Not quite sure how to proceed against the mother of the king, the council bided their time until Catherine died on January 3, 1437. Did Owen ever regret that he had married the beautiful French princess as he sat in his cell at Newgate? He would have had no inkling that one of he and Catherine’s sons would become the father of a king of England.

The line of succession would not typically go through a queen consort, and even Owen’s oldest son’s marriage to Margaret Beaufort did not place them in line for the throne. Margaret, after all, was from a bloodline that had been legitimized but not included in the succession. Were it not for the Wars of the Roses, which so thoroughly pruned the branches of England’s royal families, the sprig of the Tudors would likely never have flourished.


Don't miss the rest of the Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Additional Reading:

De Lisle, Leanda. Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013.

Penn, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Bacon, Francis. The History of the Reign of King Henry VII. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1850.

Tudor Marriage: Barriers

The need for so much planning and negotiation in making a marriage in Tudor England was due to the greater barriers to marriage that existed during that time. Modern couples come to marriage for no more profound reason than because they have decided that they love each other. They need not obtain any approval or negotiate any contract; they simply do as they please. The Tudor couple had a more difficult journey ahead of them.

Not only was the wherewithal to survive of paramount importance, but couples usually were made up of two people from families of relatively similar means. If one of them did not bring their fair share to the union, it was expected that they have something else to offer that was desired by their potential spouse. For example, a daughter of a poor but titled family may make a good match with a rich merchant.

The Money Changer and His Wife by Matsys

As long as the couple could come together and, between the two of them, make a good life together, this issue could be overcome. What you would not often see is two people of little means getting married. Not only would their union be doomed to poverty and hunger, but they could likely not afford the church wedding.

Poor people were much more likely to live as man and wife without an official wedding. Because of the cost of the ceremony, many were content to make their promises to one another and live as handfasted spouses. While this was technically frowned upon by the church, it was a common enough of an occurrence when money was a problem. Since the church also recognized consummated betrothals as marriages, the handfasted couples could legitimately consider themselves married.

Of course, those with enough money could use it to maneuver around many of the remaining barriers that might be blocking the way to their desired match.

One did not often find a titled man marrying a woman of a common family. That was one of the factors that made Edward IV’s choice of Elizabeth Woodville so scandalous. Of course, the fact that he kept the marriage a secret while the Earl of Warwick negotiated a match with a French princess was another good reason. While kings could more often do what they choose, others were constrained by the expectation that they marry someone of a similar status.

It was not that there were any particular laws or rules restricting this, but a marriage was meant to be a match between equals. Each person was expected to bring their fair share into the union. This was scarcely possible if a laundress was to marry an earl.

Marrying one of equal status ensured a steady household and quality bloodline. However, a few lovers were willing to accept the lower status of their spouse in return for more intangible benefits. One such was a princess of France and queen of England, Catherine Valois, who married a servant of her household after King Henry V died.

On the other hand, if both parties were of particularly high status, their match had potential to gain unwanted royal attention. Catherine Grey, daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk, and Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, learned that the hard way during Elizabeth I’s reign. Equal status was just fine, as long as your status did not rival that of the queen.

Consanguinity is a challenging word that few people today can pronounce, let alone define. However, it was a solid barrier to marriage in Tudor times. Rules regarding consanguinity were designed to prevent people from marrying someone with whom they shared too close of a mutual ancestor. Although the risks of genetic defects caused by these relationships was at that time unknown, the church did not allow marriages between kin of certain degrees for Biblical reasons.

Degree of kinship depends upon common ancestry. For example, parents and siblings are within the first degree of consanguinity. First cousins are third degree. Modern canon law disallows marriages within any direct line of kinship and within the fourth degree for collateral lines, which are the branches of a family tree extended by siblings. This is ecclesiastical law, as opposed to divine law, which indicates that it can be altered. In the sixteenth century, breaking these rules left your marriage open to invalidation. If you are wondering why these types of regulations were a challenge, remember those tight-knit villages that people did not travel far beyond.

Not that the concept of consanguinity was solely a problem for common folk. It was actually rather common for the higher echelons of society to require papal dispensation to get around a consanguinity barrier. As families arranged marriages between cousins in order to retain titles and estates within a select circle, consanguinity could easily become a problem. Like many problems, it was more easily solved if one had the money to equip an envoy to visit the Pope and acquire the required dispensation.

Rules and accepted practices regarding consanguinity have changed throughout history. In some times and cultures, it has been acceptable to marry relatives as close as one’s sibling. Today, it is frowned upon to consider even distant cousins. This is more due to social stigma than genetic risk. Risks of genetic problems in children born to first cousins is approximately 1-4% higher than the general population due to shared genes. In Tudor times, people often were married to cousins, even first cousins, but it was important to receive papal approval first.

If a marriage took place within the boundaries of disallowed consanguinity, that bond could more easily be disavowed at a later date. This was this tactic selected by Henry VIII when he decided to set aside his wife of two decades, Katherine of Aragon. Pointing to the fact that she had first been married to his brother, he claimed that God did not bless their marriage due to this previous relationship. He ignored the fact that they had obtained the required papal dispensation allowing their marriage once it became inconvenient to him. King Henry was far from the only man to take advantage of the barriers created by consanguinity to rid himself of a wife he had decided he no longer desired.

Queen Elizabeth I of England, 1592

The need for royal approval was a barrier that common people in Tudor times need not concern themselves with. This was an extra step required of those with royal blood. It was a touchy topic under the Tudor regime to create a union that may be perceived as being more deserving of the crown than the one who wore it. Therefore, matches between the upper strata of noble men and women required the approval of their monarch.

Tudor kings and queens were not always eager to provide their blessing to a marriage that could be seen as a threat. Henry VII, the first Tudor king, set the example of marrying members of the York remnant to those he could trust. Katherine Woodville was married to Henry’s most trusted advisor and uncle, Jasper Tudor. Margaret Plantagenet, the daughter of George of Clarence, was paired with Sir Richard Pole, a man her father would never have considered for her but who was fervently loyal and distantly related to Henry Tudor.

Because these monarchs were so sensitive to which family trees became connected, some decided to marry without their approval. Invoking the age old adage that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, couples would elope and hope for mercy. Some received it, such as Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor, who scandalously wed after Princess Mary’s first husband, the king of France, had died. Others did not. When Cecily of York married a squire after the death of her second husband, Henry VII took hold of her estates and left the former York princess destitute.

The tradition begun by the first Henry Tudor continued under his successors. Henry VIII was initially confident and unthreatened by his extended family making their matches and growing their families. That is, until he had been married for twenty years and had no son to show for it. Yet it was his daughter, Elizabeth, who would show the greatest anger toward those who married without her approval.

Choosing never to marry herself, Elizabeth I was stingy with her approval for those closely enough related to her to require it. She was bothered not one bit by breaking up couples who had pledged their love to one another and insisting that they marry elsewhere. Given her cruel reluctance to approve marriages, there are several examples of those who chose to be married in secret. Unfortunately, with Elizabeth, it was not advisable to need to ask for forgiveness either.

Both of the sisters of Lady Jane Grey bore their queen’s wrath for this form of disobedience. Their marriages were broken up and the participants imprisoned. Neither cousin of the queen was allowed to live with their husbands or raise families that might threaten Elizabeth’s hold on her kingdom. While not required for most marriages, those who attempted to thwart the royal approval they needed often faced harsh penalties.

A precontract or betrothal agreement was necessary for a marriage to take place, but it could also become a barrier if one was attempting to make a match after turning down a previous offer. If a betrothal had taken place, especially if the union had been consummated, the consequences to a subsequent marriage could be severe.

A preexisting betrothal is just one of the arguments used by the frequently remarried Henry VIII. The precontract could dash the hopes of a couple or help an eager partner hold on to one who may have become disenchanted. Tudor betrothals were not as simply broken as our modern day engagements.

A consummated union was difficult to dissolve. Anyone who has heard about Katherine of Aragon’s unceasing insistence that her marriage to Arthur Tudor was never consummated cannot doubt the importance of this act. A marriage that had not been consummated was often considered not to be a marriage at all. Therefore, though Katherine and Henry had a papal dispensation absolving them from any sin of consanguinity, Katherine insisted that her first marriage had never been validated to create the familial link.

Henry later used this argument to successfully obtain an annulment from his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. She wisely went along with his wishes and agreed to the dissolution of her marriage, admitting that it had never been consummated.

In short, precontract and consummation, especially if it occurred before the wedding vows, were the ideal way to solidify a desired union, but they could create a solid barrier to one who was attempting to make another match.


Don't miss the rest of the Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

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Additional Reading:

Ingram, Martin. Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England. 1570-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

O'Hara, Diana.  Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England. Manchester and New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000.  

Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Swinburne, Henry. Treatise of Spousals or Matrimonial Contracts. London: 1686.

Tudor Marriage: Ceremony

A Tudor public church wedding ceremony began with the reading of the banns. Think of this as that movie moment when the priest asks if anyone knows of any reason why this couple should not be wed. The reading of banns was the moment to speak up if there was an objection or impediment to the couple’s marriage, such as a precontract with another, consanguinity, or vows to the church. Hopefully, this portion of the ceremony went off without a hitch or the rest of it would not take place.

Once the presiding clergy was satisfied that there was no barrier to the marriage, the bride was presented by her father or other male relative. In front of friends, family, and God, she would join hands with her soon to be husband. This “handfasting” was a remnant of medieval times when a ceremony outside of the church could create a handfasted marriage that was considered inferior to a church marriage.

Westminster Abby - author's photo

As we do today, the Tudor couple exchanged marriage vows. Portions of those vows were strikingly similar to our own. It was during the reign of young Tudor king Edward VI that vows were updated from a promise to be “bonny and buxom in bed and at the board” to “love, cherish and obey.” Edward’s reformation of the Church of England also added the phrases, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health till death do us part.” When Queen Mary I married Philip of Spain, she pledged to be obedient, “as much in mind as in body” though she was queen regnant of England.

The exchanging of rings came next. As the reformation surged in waves through Tudor England, this portion of the ceremony varied between the Catholic tradition and a simpler Protestant ritual. Early in the Tudor age, a man would place the ring first upon his wife’s thumb and move it to consecutive fingers until it rested on the middle finger while reciting, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Those who were married according to King Edward VI’s reforms would have simply placed the ring on the index finger and said, “With this ring, I thee wed.”

At this point in the ceremony, dowries and gifts were pledged to one another. Queen Mary I pledged, “This gold and silver I thee give. With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” Hers was a generous gift compared to her husband, Philip, who pledged his own “moveable goods.”

All that had taken place thus far would happen just outside the church or at the church door before the couple approached the altar for the nuptial mass. A veil would then be spread over the couple, who would kneel or prostrate themselves before the altar. By the end of the Tudor age, with the Reformation firmly entrenched, the veiling was omitted from the ceremony and many weddings took place inside churches as the tradition of beginning outside was abandoned.

Philip and Mary I of England

Finally, the officiant would bless the couple, and, in the case of royal marriages, declare their new titles. At the wedding of England’s first queen regnant, the king of arms introduced them as, “Philip and Mary by the grace of God King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland; Defenders of the Faith; Princes of Spain and Sicily; Archdukes of Austria; Dukes of Milan, Burgundy, and Brabant; Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol.” Thankfully, not all Tudor couples were such a challenge to announce.

The Tudor wedding was not so different than we experience today. It was the process of choosing a spouse that is at odds with our modern sensibilities. The constraints around Tudor couples caused them to have different expectations and desires for marriage than we have today. At least, most of them did. A few Tudor couples scandalously broke through the barriers around marriage in their day, some with happier results than others.

Catch up on the entire Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

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Additional Reading:

Cummings, Brian (ed). The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Swinburne, Henry. Treatise of Spousals or Matrimonial Contracts. London: 1686.

Nichols, J.G. (ed) The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Two Years of Queen Mary, and Especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat. London: Camden Society 1^st series, 53, 1850.

Whitelock, Anna. Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen. New York: Random House, 2009.

Tudor Marriage: Courtship

Those living in Tudor times would scarcely recognize our image of courtship, love, and marriage. Where the modern mind is concerned with inflamed passion above all else, the primary concern in a Tudor marriage was the wherewithal to support a family. Instead of searching for a partner whom one finds attractive and entertaining, the Tudor mind was trained with different expectations. They did not feel constrained necessarily, as we might imagine, but they had reasons for marrying that went beyond our dream of true love.

Call to Arms by Leighton

How this was managed could vary depending upon one’s station in life. Whether one was of common, noble, or royal blood had great impact on what one could expect from marriage. It is interesting to consider that a royal marriage often offered less opportunity for romance than any other with princes and princesses becoming betrothed to worthy suitors whom they had never laid eyes on. That being said, a noble or royal person at least had the means to marry for love if the opportunity arose, while common people would be forced to consider the financial aspect of any relationship. As unromantic as this sounds, it led to a greater proportion of stable marriages than we see in our modern society.

Factors such as geography and distance took on much greater importance than they do today. We might bemoan the difficulties of a long distance relationship, but they were almost unheard of in Tudor times. One would rarely even know people who lived more than a day’s travel from their own village, let alone consider marrying into a family so distant from one’s own. The village atmosphere, where everyone not only knows each other but is related in some way, was quite common.

Regardless of social standing or status, a relationship began with some form of courtship with the hopes of that evolving into a betrothal, which would lead to marriage. These stages could vary depending upon the challenges encountered by any particular couple. The Tudor romance faced greater barriers than those of more modern times. Besides money, the couple had to be concerned with issues such as consanguinity, obtaining royal approval, and having their union recognized by the church.

Tudor courtship often began with the rather unromantic notion of prearrangement. Parents or guardians would consider a match and go through what could be lengthy negotiations before even mentioning the potential engagement to their son or daughter. What would each young person bring to the marriage? A daughter would be expected to bring a dowry to contribute to the couple’s joint estate, and the husband would be required to demonstrate that he could support a family. What would happen if one of them died? Parents would negotiate whether or not the dowry would be returned to them if a daughter died without giving her husband a child. Many of the constraints and considerations of a Tudor marriage are scarcely thought of when planning modern weddings.

Once the parents had come to an agreement, they would recommend the match to their children and have the potential couple spend time together. This courtship period was intended to determine if the young couple liked each other enough to make a life together. Friendship, mutual respect, and fondness for each other was enough. Love was expected to grow as they lived, worked, and struggled in the adventure of life together.

These couples were often older than we tend to imagine. While the legal age of consent for marriage was young, twelve for girls and fourteen for boys, few were married that young. Because of the need to have obtained a set of skills, many people waited until their mid-twenties before partnering with a spouse. By that time, each had considerable talents and abilities to offer the other.

If a couple found that they were unable to meet on common ground, their parents often broke off negotiations. We tend to envision young women being compelled to marry harsh, ugly men as their true love looks on in anguish. Did this happen? Certainly, but not with the frequency that we might imagine. Parents, while looking for an arrangement that would provide for their children’s future, did also wish for them to be relatively happy and would not often force a couple into marriage. On the other hand, most young people understood the need to go into marriage with more practical ideas than romantic notions. There might be another who heated their blood, but they would accept the one their parents had determined was the better choice for their future.

A Marriage Feast at Bermondsey by Hoefnagel

Few accused their parents of tyranny when a match was suggested. For a commoner, this match could be based upon complementary skills or potential inheritances. Today, we might simply hope that a potential partner brings home a large enough paycheck. The reality of supporting a household was a more complicated question than that in the sixteenth century with businesses to run, daily tasks to complete, and a household to manage.

A man whose wife had died may take on another in order to care for his children and keep his household running. Daily obligations made it impossible for him to wait until he was ready to fall in love again. A grieving spouse did not always have the freedom to spend a lengthy mourning period on their own. Life went on, and a partner was often needed for the hard work of daily life. A marriage was more than a love match between two people, having effects upon extended family and the economics of the town in which they lived.

Another man might betroth his daughter to his apprentice in order to keep a business in the family in the absence of sons. In fact, that same daughter may be trained in the business herself to a much greater extent than if her parents had been blessed with sons. Necessity is the foundation of many a nontraditional arrangement, and Tudor women sometimes filled roles that may surprise us, whether they did so because they had no brothers or a husband died unexpectedly young.

Whatever the reason a betrothal was considered, the courtship period would determine whether or not it would take place. Young people understood the importance of the practical preparations of their parents and did not frequently rebel against them. More often than not, the couple respected their parents’ wishes enough to go along with the plan or at least spend time considering it.

The courtship period was carefully controlled for several reasons. A young couple did not spend time alone together for fear of them getting along somewhat too well. Even if the relationship was not taken too far, rumors could be dangerous for their future. If the couple did not end up getting married, unsupervised time together could bring a woman’s virtue into question when another match was proposed.

Sexual relations during this time could qualify as consummation of a marriage, and a couple might find themselves in a more serious commitment than they intended. Of course, a woman could also end up pregnant during this transitional state, which could be disastrous for her if the man argued that there had been no marriage agreement. To avoid this problem, courtships were carried out under watchful eyes.

The Wedding Feast by Brueghel

This was a time of conversation and spending time together. Couples would share meals, offer each other small gifts, play games, and get to know one another better. They might enjoy playing music or dancing, strolling through town or wooded lanes, or attending church together. Since group activities were preferred, hunting was a good choice that also allowed each person to show off their riding skill. For those without the means for these noble activities, attending a local market or fair was a common entertainment.

The amount of time spent in the courtship stage could vary wildly. Some couples spent years getting to know each other, especially if they were particularly young when their parents negotiated the match. Others, especially royal couples, met only days before their planned wedding, as was the case for Mary I and Philip of Spain in 1554. In most cases, the courtship would move on at a slower pace to the formal betrothal stage.

Not to say that all conformed to their parents’ wishes. Some things never change, and young people of the Tudor age also fell in love. The father of Tudor marriage scandal, Henry VIII, married six times in his search for love (and a male heir). However, most Tudor contemporaries expected love to grow between spouses after the wedding had taken place. As a couple experienced life together, with all its hardships and triumphs, they would forge a bond that one might argue was often stronger than one built on fading passions.

How much of a choice a young person might be given would significantly depend upon their social and economic status. Ironically, being of more common blood could mean more power over your marriage. Those of noble blood were often married as part of quests to strengthen bloodlines or increase estates. Royal marriages were part of treaties, often created long before a prince or princess was of an age to consider marriage on their own. Those lower on the socioeconomic ladder may have had more paths that could lead them to their goal of a steady, productive household.

Once a couple agreed to the proposed match, they became betrothed. A Tudor betrothal has many similarities to the modern engagement with one vital difference. Under the right circumstances, a betrothal was considered, by the law and the church, to be a binding marriage. This could lead to significant consequences if the marriage was never carried out or one of the parties changed their mind.

A betrothal included a promise to marry, a pledge that was sometimes made as part of a public ceremony. Just like today, a ring was often given as a symbol of that promise. Because a betrothal was considered binding, many couples considered themselves married at this point. The large percentage of babies born within the first eight months of Tudor marriages attests to this fact.

Unfortunately, some people did wish to free themselves of betrothals, and that could make for messy business. A broken betrothal could mean heartache for the couple and difficulties in making any future match. A woman might be viewed as less than pure if she is made newly single. A man might find that his heirs are made illegitimate based on an earlier betrothal.

This was the underlying problem that paved the way for the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. When Edward IV died unexpectedly in 1483, most believed that his twelve-year-old son would succeed him. His succession was quickly opposed by those who believed that Edward had been precontracted to another before his scandalous marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Edward’s brother, Richard, was crowned in place of the young prince, and the rest is history.

While these betrothal scandals occurred, the majority of couples smoothly transitioned from courtship, to betrothal, and on to married life together. The structure of a Tudor wedding was similar for all couples, regardless of status, though ceremonies for the rich and titled were often surrounded by greater pomp, dazzling jewels, and rich fabrics.


More to come in the ongoing Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

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Additional Reading:

Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Ingram, Martin. Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England. 1570-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

O'Hara, Diana.  Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England. Manchester and New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000.  

All images in the public domain.