Giles Duwes, D'Ewes, Du Guez, Du Wes, or Dewes (died 1535) [1] was a Fleming, [2] who was a tutor and musician at the English court during the Tudor period.
He was the French tutor of Arthur, Prince of Wales, Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII of England and Henry's daughter, the future Mary I of England. [3] For the instruction of Mary, he wrote a grammar text titled An Introductorie for to lerne to rede, to pronounce and to speke French trewly, compyled for the right high, excellent and most vertuous lady the Lady Mary of Englande, doughter of our most gracious soverayn Lorde Kyng Henry the Eight. [4]
He also taught Prince Henry the lute [2] as well as being his librarian and 'keeper of the wardrobe'. [5]
Catherine of Aragon was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on 11 June 1509 until their annulment on 23 May 1533. She was previously Princess of Wales as the wife of Henry's elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.
Henry VIII was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage annulled. His disagreement with Pope Clement VII about such an annulment led Henry to initiate the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from papal authority. He appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and dissolved convents and monasteries, for which he was excommunicated by the pope. Henry is also known as "the father of the Royal Navy" as he invested heavily in the navy and increased its size from a few to more than 50 ships, and established the Navy Board.
Mary I, also known as Mary Tudor, and as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.
The House of Tudor was a royal house of largely Welsh and English origin that held the English throne from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd and Catherine of France. Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including their ancestral Wales and the Lordship of Ireland for 118 years with six monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Jane Grey, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII of England, descended through his mother from a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.
Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France. Anne returned to England in early 1522, to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken off, and instead, she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon.
Jane Seymour was Queen of England as the third wife of King Henry VIII of England from their marriage on 30 May 1536 until her death the next year. She became queen following the execution of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. She died of postnatal complications less than two weeks after the birth of her only child, the future King Edward VI. She was the only wife of Henry to receive a queen's funeral or to be buried beside him in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
Mary Tudor was an English princess who was briefly Queen of France as the third wife of King Louis XII. Louis was more than 30 years her senior. Mary was the fifth child of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the youngest to survive infancy.
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was the third son and fourth child of King George V and Queen Mary. He served as Governor-General of Australia from 1945 to 1947, the only member of the British royal family to hold the post.
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was a prominent English politician and nobleman of the Tudor era. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of his Dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.
Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset,, was the son of King Henry VIII of England and his mistress, Elizabeth Blount, and the only child born out of wedlock whom Henry VIII acknowledged. He was the younger half-brother of Queen Mary I, as well as the older half-brother of Queen Elizabeth I and King Edward VI. Through his mother, he was the elder half-brother of the 4th Baroness Tailboys of Kyme and of the 2nd and 3rd Barons Tailboys of Kyme. He was named FitzRoy, which is derived from the Norman French term for "son of the king".
A whipping boy was a boy educated alongside a prince in early modern Europe, who supposedly received corporal punishment for the prince's transgressions in his presence. The prince was not punished himself because his royal status exceeded that of his tutor; seeing a friend punished would provide an equivalent motivation not to repeat the offence. An archaic proverb which captures a similar idea is "to beat a dog before a lion." Whipping was a common punishment of tutors at that time. There is little contemporary evidence for the existence of whipping boys, and evidence that some princes were indeed whipped by their tutors, although Nicholas Orme suggests that nobles might have been beaten less often than other pupils. Some historians regard whipping boys as entirely mythical; others suggest they applied only in the case of a boy king, protected by divine right, and not to mere princes.
Succession to the British throne is determined by descent, gender, legitimacy and religion. Under common law, the Crown is inherited by a sovereign's children or by a childless sovereign's nearest collateral line. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 restrict succession to the throne to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in "communion with the Church of England". Spouses of Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. Protestant descendants of those excluded for being Roman Catholics are eligible.
In common parlance, the wives of Henry VIII were the six queens consort of King Henry VIII of England between 1509 and his death in 1547. In legal terms, Henry had only three wives, because three of his marriages were annulled by the Church of England. However, he was never granted an annulment by the Pope, as he desired, for Catherine of Aragon, his first wife. Annulments declare that a true marriage never took place, unlike a divorce, in which a married couple end their union. Along with his six wives, Henry took several mistresses.
John Skelton, also known as John Shelton, possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet and tutor to King Henry VIII of England. Skelton died in Westminster and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, although no trace of the tomb remains.
William Parr, 1st Baron Parr of Horton was the son of Sir William Parr and his second wife, the Hon. Elizabeth Fitzhugh, later Lady Vaux of Harrowden.
British history provides several opportunities for alternative claimants to the English and later British Crown to arise, and historical scholars have on occasion traced to present times the heirs of those alternative claims.
David Michael Loades was a British historian specialising in the Tudor era. He was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wales, where he taught from 1980 until 1996, and was Honorary Research Professor at the University of Sheffield from 1996 until 2008. In the 1960s and 1970s he taught at the universities of St. Andrews and Durham. From 1993 until 2004 he acted as Literary Director of the John Foxe Project at the British Academy; he subsequently became an Honorary Member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford. After military service in the Royal Air Force 1953–1955, Loades studied at the University of Cambridge. He wrote many books on the Tudor period, including biographies. He was President of the Ecclesiastical History Society (1992–93).
The mistresses of Henry VIII included many notable women between 1509 and 1536. They have been the subject of biographies, novels and films.
The education of the British royal family has changed over time, reflecting shifting ideas about education of the aristocracy and the role of the monarchy in the United Kingdom. Traditionally, heirs to the throne and other royal children were educated privately by tutors. In the Tudor era, ideas of Renaissance humanism—emphasising the liberal arts and sciences and the classics—influenced royal education. Elizabeth I of England, for example, was multi-lingual and wrote a number of translations.
The coronation of Henry VIII and his wife Catherine as King and Queen of England took place at Westminster Abbey, London, on 24 June 1509. Henry ascended the throne two months prior, following the death of King Henry VII on 21 April, and Catherine became his wife and queen on 11 June. The ceremony was presided over by William Warham, the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury, and organized by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the King's grandmother.