50 Fun Facts About The Tudors

Richard III's remains, lost since his death at Bosworth in 1485, were found in 2012 under what in Leicester?

A car park of Leicester City Council lay over the lost Greyfriars friary church where the king had been buried after the battle; the dig began on 25 August 2012 and found him on the site.

Which noblewoman, heir under the dying boy king's 'Devise for the Succession', reigned nine days in July 1553?

Lady Jane Grey, nicknamed the Nine Days Queen, was deposed by the Privy Council in favour of her cousin Mary and beheaded in February 1554, aged about sixteen.

Which French port, English since 1347, fell in 1558 and, Mary I said, would be found lying in her heart?

Calais had been England's last possession on the European mainland; French forces took it in January 1558, ten months before Mary died, and the loss haunted the end of her reign.

Which of Henry VIII's queens was beheaded with a sword, not an axe, by a swordsman brought over from France?

Anne Boleyn was spared the axe by an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer after Henry commuted her sentence from burning, and she was beheaded inside the Tower on 19 May 1536.

Which king, once Mary I's husband and so Elizabeth I's brother-in-law, sent the Armada against England in 1588?

Philip II of Spain had been king consort of England from 1554 until Mary's death; his 1588 Armada aimed to depose his former sister-in-law and restore Catholicism, but was repulsed and then wrecked by storms.

Which mysterious disease, first recorded in England in 1485, the year of Bosworth, could kill within hours?

Sweating sickness returned in outbreaks up to 1551 and then vanished for good; its cause is still unknown, and a victim could go from the first shivers to death inside a day.

Which ship, renamed from the Pelican mid-voyage for a patron's crest, carried Francis Drake around the world?

The Golden Hind took its name in 1578 from the crest of its patron Hatton, a female red deer, and Elizabeth I had Drake knighted aboard her at Deptford in April 1581.

Which royal house took over in 1603, when the childless Elizabeth I left England's throne to the Scottish king?

The Stuarts came in through Henry VII's elder daughter, married into Scotland's royal line in 1503; her great-grandson James VI rode south as James I, uniting the two crowns under one king.

Which playhouse, built in 1599 from the timbers of a dismantled Shoreditch theatre, became Shakespeare's home stage?

The Globe was raised on Bankside by Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and it burned down on 29 June 1613 when a cannon fired during a performance of Henry VIII set the thatch alight.

Which word, carved on a post, was the only clue to Roanoke's vanished colonists when a relief ship arrived in 1590?

Croatoan was the name of a nearby island and its people, so governor White read the carving as a sign that the settlers had moved there, yet what became of the colony is still unknown.

Which Welsh courtier married Henry V's widow, Catherine of Valois, and passed his surname to a royal dynasty?

Owen Tudor was beheaded at Hereford in 1461 after the Lancastrian defeat at Mortimer's Cross, and his grandson Henry, raised by Owen's son Jasper, took the crown at Bosworth twenty-four years later.

Which heiress, who bore the future Henry VII at Pembroke Castle aged thirteen, passed him her claim to the throne?

Margaret Beaufort went on to found Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1505 and to begin St John's College, which her executors finished in 1511 after her death.

Which boy pretender, crowned in Dublin in 1487, was pardoned by Henry VII and put to work in the royal kitchen?

Lambert Simnel had been passed off as the Earl of Warwick; his Yorkist backers were crushed at Stoke Field in June 1487, he turned the spit in the royal kitchen and, when he grew older, became a falconer.

At which castle did Arthur, Prince of Wales, die in 1502, less than five months after marrying Catherine of Aragon?

Ludlow was the seat of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which Henry VII had set up for Arthur to govern; the illness that killed him spared Catherine, who married his brother Henry seven years later.

Where was Perkin Warbeck, the pretender who claimed to be the younger Prince in the Tower, hanged in 1499?

Tyburn, the gallows site near today's Marble Arch, was where Warbeck read out a confession before he was hanged; Henry VII had kept him at court after his 1497 surrender until he tried to escape.

Which Scottish king wed Henry VII's daughter in 1503, the match that later put his great-grandson on England's throne?

James IV died ten years later at Flodden, invading the realm of his brother-in-law Henry VIII, but the marriage carried Tudor blood into Scotland's royal line and, in 1603, that line onto England's throne.

Which catch-22 of Henry VII's chancellor held that thrifty nobles must have savings and lavish ones must have cash?

Morton's Fork took its name from Archbishop John Morton, Henry VII's Lord Chancellor, and the phrase survives for any dilemma in which every option leads to the same unwelcome end.

Which royal bodyguard, formed by Henry VII just after Bosworth, is the oldest British military corps still existing?

The Yeomen of the Guard still attend the monarch on state occasions and ceremonially search the cellars of Parliament before each State Opening, a ritual recalling the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Which family, headed by Henry Tudor's stepfather, held back at Bosworth before charging in to kill Richard III?

The Stanleys hedged their bets: Lord Stanley had married Henry's mother in 1472, yet kept his force out of the fight until his brother Sir William's charge surrounded and cut down the king.

Which Venetian navigator sailed from Bristol with Henry VII's backing in 1497 and reached the North American coast?

John Cabot crossed in the Matthew, a 'little ship' of about 50 tons, and his landfall on 24 June 1497 was the first known European visit to the North American coast since the Norse voyages to Vinland.

Which bride, chosen by Henry VIII from a Holbein portrait, saw her marriage annulled unconsummated after six months?

Anne of Cleves agreed to the annulment and, with a generous settlement, came to be known as the King's Beloved Sister; the match had been pressed on Henry by Thomas Cromwell, who fell from power that same year.

Which 1516 book by Thomas More, later Henry VIII's chancellor, describes an imaginary island and coined a word?

Utopia, written in Latin and taking its name from the Greek for 'no place', came from a man later beheaded for refusing to accept Henry as head of the English Church, and canonised in 1935.

Which monastery's last abbot, Richard Whiting, was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1539 on the hill above his church?

Glastonbury had drawn pilgrims since its monks announced in 1191 that they had found King Arthur's tomb; Whiting, who had signed the Act of Supremacy, was executed when he resisted the surrender of his house.

Which archbishop wrote the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, then was burned under Mary I after withdrawing his recantations?

Thomas Cranmer, who had declared Henry VIII's first marriage void, held the hand that had signed his recantations in the flames first, calling it 'that unworthy hand'.

Which novelist won the Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, her novels about Thomas Cromwell?

Hilary Mantel finished the trilogy with The Mirror & the Light in 2020, and the BBC filmed Wolf Hall with Mark Rylance as Cromwell, a role he returned to for the final book in 2024.

Which Tudor king, the only surviving son of Henry VIII and his third wife, was crowned at nine and died at fifteen?

Edward VI was the first English monarch raised a Protestant; he died at Greenwich Palace on 6 July 1553, having named a Protestant cousin as heir to shut out both his half-sisters.

Which 1549 uprising, led by a Wymondham yeoman, camped 16,000 men on Mousehold Heath outside Norwich over enclosures?

Kett's Rebellion ended on 27 August when the Earl of Warwick's army broke the rebels at Dussindale, and Robert Kett was hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle that December.

Which title did Lord Protector Seymour, uncle of the boy king crowned in 1547, hold when he was beheaded in 1552?

The Duke of Somerset had created the title for himself within weeks of Henry VIII's death; the rival who toppled him, John Dudley, then took the dukedom of Northumberland and backed a nine-day queen.

Which warship of Henry VIII sank in the Solent in 1545 as he watched from Southsea Castle, and was raised in 1982?

The Mary Rose went down leading an attack on French galleys; her wreck was located in 1971, raised in 1982 in one of the most complex salvage projects ever attempted, and is displayed with her artefacts in a purpose-built museum.

Which object, painted as a distorted smear across the floor, hides in Holbein's 1533 double portrait The Ambassadors?

A skull in anamorphic perspective, a memento mori, snaps into shape only when the viewer stands high on the right or low on the left; the painting has hung in London's National Gallery since 1890.

In which city were bishops Latimer and Ridley burned at the stake in 1555, Latimer urging his friend to 'play the man'?

Oxford's Broad Street still has a cross set in the road at the spot, and the Victorian Martyrs' Memorial nearby also honours the archbishop who was burned there five months later.

Which cardinal, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, died barely twelve hours after Mary I on 17 November 1558?

Reginald Pole was a Plantagenet on his mother's side, the Countess of Salisbury whom Henry VIII had beheaded in 1541; he died in London during an influenza epidemic at about seven in the evening.

How many Articles of Religion, finalised in 1571 and printed with the Book of Common Prayer, define Anglican doctrine?

The 39 Articles grew out of a chain that began with the Ten Articles of 1536, Henry VIII's first attempt at a doctrine after the break with Rome, and passed through the Forty-two Articles of his son's reign.

Which monarch, Henry VII's great-granddaughter, was beheaded at Fotheringhay in 1587 for plotting against Elizabeth I?

Mary, Queen of Scots had been forced to abdicate in 1567 in favour of her one-year-old son and fled into England the next year; Elizabeth signed the death warrant, and the Privy Council dispatched it without telling her.

Which game, legend says, was Francis Drake playing on Plymouth Hoe when the Spanish Armada was first sighted in 1588?

Bowls on the Hoe is the most famous Drake story and probably a later invention; what is certain is that the English fleet was based at Plymouth and sat trapped in harbour by the tide as the Spanish approached.

Which Elizabethan astrologer, with England's largest library at Mortlake, is credited with coining 'British Empire'?

John Dee advised the voyages of discovery on navigation from the 1550s and pushed for colonies in the New World, but he came home from six years abroad to find his library ransacked and his instruments stolen.

At which castle did Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, stage his lavish reception of Elizabeth I in 1575?

Kenilworth was Dudley's own castle, and its 1575 festivities were later reinvented by Walter Scott in a novel built around the death of Dudley's first wife, Amy Robsart.

Which peer was beheaded in 1572 for the Ridolfi plot, which would have married him to the captive Scottish queen?

The Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, pleaded his innocence through a trial that lasted twelve hours and was led to a specially built scaffold on Tower Hill at sunrise on 2 June 1572.

Which local unit did the Poor Relief Act of 1601 make responsible for its own poor, a system that lasted until 1834?

The parish raised a compulsory rate to support the 'impotent poor' and set the able-bodied to work, with overseers of the poor appointed to run it; the 1834 New Poor Law shifted relief into workhouses.

Richard Chancellor sailed in 1553 seeking a north-east passage to China and ended up at which ruler's court in Moscow?

Ivan the Terrible invited the 'exotic guest' to Moscow and sent him home with letters promising trade privileges, and in 1555 Mary I chartered the Muscovy Company to exploit them.

Which palace, begun by Henry VIII to rival Chambord, was pulled down in the 1680s to pay a mistress's gambling debts?

Nonsuch was begun on 22 April 1538, six months after the birth of Henry's longed-for son; Charles II gave it to Barbara Palmer, who had it demolished in 1682–83 and sold off the building materials.

Which palace, taken from Wolsey as York Place in 1530, grew to 1,500 rooms, Europe's largest, before burning in 1698?

Whitehall was the monarchs' main London residence from 1530 to 1698, and almost the only structure to survive the fire was Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622, which William III ordered the architect Wren to save.

Which 'prodigy house', built by Robert Smythson in the 1590s for the Countess of Shrewsbury, is 'more glass than wall'?

Hardwick Hall went up between 1590 and 1597 with its chimneys tucked into the internal walls so that nothing would interrupt the vast windows, a luxury at a time when glass was still costly.

Which material, laid in twisted patterns at Hampton Court, did early Tudor builders use for their showpiece chimneys?

Brick was an exotic and expensive rarity when the dynasty began, so a tall chimney stack of it in ornamental patterns flaunted wealth; by 1603 it was in general use across eastern England, which lacks good building stone.

Which London bourse, founded by Thomas Gresham on Antwerp's model, did Elizabeth I formally open in January 1571?

The Royal Exchange took its name from the queen's visit, which also brought a licence to sell alcohol and valuable goods; Gresham's building burned in the Great Fire of 1666, and a grasshopper from his crest still tops its successor.

Which playwright, author of Doctor Faustus, was stabbed to death in a Deptford house in 1593 after a row over the bill?

Christopher Marlowe died in the house of the widow Eleanor Bull, where witnesses said he and Ingram Frizer quarrelled over the 'Reckoning'; Shakespeare seems to allude to the killing in As You Like It.

Which screenwriter created Showtime's The Tudors, which starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII from 2007 to 2010?

Michael Hirst wrote the series for the American premium channel Showtime, where it premiered on 1 April 2007 as the channel's highest-rated show in three years; it was filmed in Ireland and earned its star two Best Actor nominations.

Which two composers did Elizabeth I grant a 21-year monopoly on printing polyphonic music in 1575?

Tallis and Byrd marked the grant with a joint collection of Latin motets, Cantiones sacrae, dedicated to the queen; Byrd grew ever more involved with Catholicism from the 1570s and later wrote music for the Catholic rite.

Which church's Lady Chapel, begun by Henry VII in 1503 as his own tomb, also holds Mary I and Elizabeth I?

Westminster Abbey's chapel cost Henry VII more than £14,000 and holds his tomb with Elizabeth of York; Mary I and Elizabeth I lie in a single monument to the north, both coffins inside Elizabeth's tomb.

Which port got Europe's first recorded dry dock, commissioned by Henry VII in 1495?

Portsmouth's dock launched its first two ships, the Sweepstake and the Mary Fortune, in 1497, part of Henry VII's push to strengthen the navy and trade.