Henry VIII went out with a bang (his coffin EXPLODED)
Today is Friday the 13th, which means you might think there’s a surplus of bad luck in the air.
However, no matter how much misfortune is swirling about, you can thank your lucky stars – today and every day – that you weren’t born in the time of the Tudors.
Whether you were a pauper, a princess or a pea, this was a pretty dreadful time to be alive.
Cruel Rue: Henry VIII condemned supposed poisoners to death by being boiled alive
In Bloody, Brilliant Tudors, Elizabeth Goff takes us on a whistlestop tour through the strangest and goriest stories of the period. It’s a rollicking rollercoaster of a book, leaving you humoured and horrified in equal measure.
Henry VIII’s hobby of having people’s heads chopped off is well documented, and when it came to executions he was nothing if not creative.
He was particularly horrified by poisoners and had them condemned to be boiled alive – in front of a crowd of eager spectators of course. The ghosts of all these unfortunate people might be pleased to know that Henry’s own death was far from regal.
By the time he died his waist measured 54in and his putrefying corpse was so gaseous that his coffin actually exploded as he was being taken to Windsor. Quite an impressive feat considering the coffin was lined with lead.
Oddly enough, the same thing happened with Queen Elizabeth I’s coffin. At least the Tudors knew how to go out with a bang!
One of the delightful things about this book is that Goff gives as much attention to the side characters in the Tudor soap opera. For example, the groom of the stool – or, in layman’s terms, the royal bottom wiper.
Extraordinarily, this was perhaps the most coveted job in the royal court, and one that often went to nobility.
Not only did you have the honour of cleaning the royal posterior, but you were seen as the person responsible for monitoring the monarch’s health (the less said about how, the better). It was a position of uncommon trust, and a surefire way of having the ear (and rear) of the King.
Catherine Carey – a niece of Anne Boleyn – held this role in the early part of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign and was an adored servant.
When she became ill, it was the Queen herself who tended her in her final hours. Elizabeth was devastated when she died, but may be glad to know that Carey’s descendant is now sat on the throne himself as Charles III.
Bloody, Brilliant Tudors is available now
The lineage passes down through Catherine’s daughter Lettice Knollys and eventually to Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, who was the mother of King Charles’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
Goff, unlike other historians, doesn’t shy away from sharing gossipy stories. For example, did Elizabeth die when she was ten, only to be replaced by a red-headed boy of the same age?
Of course not, it was a misogynistic rumour made up to account for a woman being such a fearless ruler. It’s Goff’s inclusion of these little tidbits of 16th century gossip that give you a great sense of what people felt at the time.
Divided into 100 bitesize tales, this is perfect if you want to revisit the terrible Tudors, or simply to remind yourself how lucky we are to be alive now and not then.