New image of Henry VIII discovered

One of the earliest and most remarkable depictions of the prince who was to become England’s King Henry VIII has been discovered at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. Poignantly, he is shown as a mourning 11 year old boy, weeping at the empty death-bed of his mother. 

A detailed re-interpretation of clues in a manuscript donated to the Library by philanthropists Miss Gwendoline and Miss Margaret Davies of Gregynog in 1921 led Manuscripts Librarian Dr Maredudd ap Huw to conclude that the volume was a long-lost treasure from the royal library of King Henry VII.

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Is ‘Tudor England’ a myth?

The term ‘Tudor’ was hardly used in the 16th Century and its obsessive modern use by historians and writers generally gives us a misleading impression of the period, an Oxford historian has found.

 Cliff Davies of Oxford University’s History Faculty and Wadham College scoured official papers, chronicles, poems, plays and pamphlets for the ‘Tudor’ name but found it hardly used as a designation of the monarchy until the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, and even then sparingly.

 Of the many poems written to mark the death of Elizabeth and the accession of James I in 1603, only one talks of a change from ‘Tudor’ to ‘Stuart’.

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Scholar discovers 16th-century love poem written by an Englishwoman

A previously unknown poem dating from the mid-1500s has been discovered pasted into a rare edition of works by Geoffrey Chaucer. The erotic-love poem seems to have been by a Roman Catholic woman and sent to a Protestant scholar who was the tutor to Edward VI.

The poem was discovered by medieval scholar Elaine Treharne during a guest lecture at West Virginia University last summer .

She took several students to the Rare Book Room on the University’s main library where Treharne happened to open a 1561 edition of works by Geoffrey Chaucer that includes The Canterbury Tales. As Treharne opened it, she saw a Latin poem pasted in the back of the book.

The name in the front pages of the book and at the base of the poem is Elizabeth Dacre. And Treharne’s translation of the poem revealed another name – the person for whom the poem was written: Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward VI, son of King Henry VIII.

So Treharne searched for Elizabeth, from the U.S. and in England, and came up with a surprising story.

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Treasure hunters on verge of finding Sir Francis Drake's watery grave after locating two ships off Panama coast

A team of international treasure hunters is close to finding the final resting place of British Naval hero Sir Francis Drake. They have found two of his ships which were scuttled off the coast of Panama over 400 years ago following the adventurer's death.

The team believes Drake's lead-lined coffin could be near to the location of the two ships 'Elizabeth' and Delight' and have begun a search for the historical artefact.

The ships were scuttled by Drake's crews in 1596 after the English captain was buried at sea following his death at the age of 55 from dysentery. Drake is considered one of Britain's greatest naval heroes having led the English fleet in victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 as they prepared for an invasion of Britain.

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Scholar examines alchemy mystery from 16th-century England

It involves a printer, the far-reaching power of a monarch, possible censorship, three English alchemists dedicated to uncovering the secret of transmutation and a whole lot of unanswered questions. Earlier this summer, Dr. Teresa Burns, University of Wisconsin-Platteville Department of Humanities professor, presented a paper at the Western Michigan University International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo that helps to unravel a 16th-century mystery.

Burns’ topic, which examined the link between the 1591 publication and suppression of the first English printing of George Ripley’s “Compound of Alchemy” and what may have ended a planned long-distance partnership between John Dee and Edward Kelley just a few weeks after it began, was sponsored by Societas Alchimica, a society affiliated with UW-Platteville and led by Burns and colleague Dr. Nancy Turner as vice president and president respectively.

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Work begins on Mary Rose Museum

Work began yesterday on the most ambitious heritage construction project seen in Europe this decade. On the 28th anniversary of the raising of the Mary Rose, work to secure the future of King Henry VIII’s favourite ship has started as part of a £16.3 million contract to build the new Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Warings, a member of the international construction and services group Bouygues, is delivering the construction phase of the £35 million project for the Mary Rose Trust, the charity responsible for the conservation of the Tudor flagship which sank in action in 1545.

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The man who could have been Henry VIII

This year has seen the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession, and the start of the third television series of The Tudors – yet we might so easily have been celebrating King Arthur I instead of arguably England’s most famous monarch.

When Henry VII died 500 years ago, he should have been succeeded by his eldest son, Arthur, who was born 523 years ago this month. Arthur died in 1502, Henry married his brother’s widow, and the rest is history.

But what kind of king would Arthur have been and what do his life and death tell us about the Tudors? Dr Steven Gunn, Lecturer in Modern History at Merton College, is one of the editors of Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales: Life, Death and Commemoration, a new book published this week by Boydell Press.

'There would not have been the problem of the king’s debatable marriage and subsequent divorce, for one thing, so maybe no break with Rome and no Church of England,' Dr Gunn said. 'There might also have been a less confrontational, less metropolitan style of rule.

'As Prince of Wales, Arthur lived at Ludlow and was surrounded by servants from Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and the Channel Islands. He had a much better sense than Henry, who once described Warwick as in "the most distant quarters of our realm", of what most of his territories were like and what he could and could not get away with. So he might have been less prone to revolutionary and provocative change.'

However, Dr Gunn says Arthur’s reign might not have been perfect by any means. He said: 'The same brand of hard-faced lawyers and taxmen who gave his father Henry VII a bad reputation worked for Arthur, so maybe he would have found it harder than his brother did to start his reign in a blaze of generosity by disowning his father’s style of rule.'

With the The Tudors back on our screens, combined with the celebrations, Henry VIII is certainly back in the limelight. But Dr Gunn and his colleagues believe his family, such as Arthur and Henry VII, should not be forgotten. Particularly because as well as the anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession, it is also the 500th anniversary of Henry VII’s death.

Dr Gunn concluded: 'Arthur living was the hope of the Tudors, glorified in pageantry and poetry. But Arthur dead was rather an embarrassment. What did that say about God’s providential favour to the new royal family that joined York and Lancaster to end the Wars of the Roses? Perhaps that is why he was buried not at Westminster or Windsor but at Worcester Cathedral, in a chapel covered in Tudor badges, but apparently unfinished and rather neglected from that day till this.'