House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty (41 page)

1537: 12 October
Birth of Prince Edward, legitimate son and heir of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, at Hampton Court.

1537: 24 October
Death of Jane Seymour at Hampton Court from complications after birth of Prince Edward.

1537: 31 October
Lord Thomas Howard, half-brother of the third Duke of Norfolk, dies inside the Tower of London. He is buried ‘without pomp’ at Thetford. His love Lady Margaret is pardoned and freed.

1539: 28 June
Royal Assent granted to the Act Abolishing Diversity in Opinions - the so-called Statute of Six Articles - against Protestant practices.

1539: July
Dissolution of major religious houses begins.

1540: 6 January
Henry VIII marries, as his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, at Greenwich Palace.

1540: 24 February
Birth of Henry Howard, second son of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and his wife, Lady Frances de Vere, at Shottesham, Norfolk.

1540: 10 June
King’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, arrested by third Duke of Norfolk at meeting of Privy Council at Westminster Palace.

1540: 9 July
Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves is annulled by Clerical Convocation. The annulment is confirmed by Parliament on 13 July.

1540: 28 July
Cromwell beheaded at Tower Hill. Henry VIII marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, another niece of the third Duke of Norfolk, at Oatlands, near Weybridge, Surrey.

1541: 22 December
Third Duke of Norfolk’s half-brother, Lord William Howard, and his wife, Norfolk’s half-sister, Katherine, Countess Bridgewater, found guilty of misprision of treason over Queen Catherine Howard’s adultery with Thomas Culpeper and of not disclosing her earlier affair with Francis Dereham. The Howards are sentenced to imprisonment in perpetuity and their possessions confiscated - but are later released. The queen’s brother, Charles, is banished from court.

1541: 10 December
Execution of Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham, lovers of Queen Catherine Howard, at Tyburn, for treason.

1542: January
Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, found guilty under Act of Attainder, of misprision of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, but later released with the other jailed Howards.

1542: 13 February
Execution of Queen Catherine Howard by beheading on Tower Green, witnessed by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.

1542: July
Earl of Surrey imprisoned in the Fleet Prison for challenging John Leigh to a duel but released on 7 August on sureties for good behaviour.

1542: 22 October
Third Duke of Norfolk leads English forces in a punitive expedition to lay waste Scottish lands just north of the border.

1542: 24 November
English victory over the Scots at Solway Moss.

1543: 12 July
Henry VIII marries his sixth and final wife, the twice-widowed Katherine Parr, at Hampton Court.

1543: 4 October
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, joins the English contingent with Imperial Emperor Charles V’s forces besieging Landrecies, which had been captured by the French the previous month.

1544: June
Third Duke of Norfolk appointed Captain of the Vanguard of English forces in France. Surrey is also appointed Marshal of the Field and both are sent to capture the French fortress of Montreuil. Surrey is wounded on 19 September during an unsuccessful attempt to breach the town’s gates.

1545: late August
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, appointed Lieutenant of Boulogne and aims to subdue the French fortress of Chatillon.

1546: 7 January
Earl of Surrey is defeated at a skirmish with French forces at St Etienne and is replaced as lieutenant general by the Earl of Hertford. He is summoned back to court on 21 March.

1546: June
Third Duke of Norfolk proposes a series of marriages between the Seymours and Howards.

1546: 2 December
Sir Richard Southwell makes allegations to the Privy Council about a conspiracy involving Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Howard is arrested as he finishes dinner at the Palace of Westminster and held at the Lord Chancellor’s house at Ely Place, in Holborn, on the outskirts of London.

1546: 12 December
Third Duke of Norfolk is summoned to London, is arrested, stripped of his offices and taken to the Tower of London by river. The same day, his son is led on foot through the streets of London to the Tower.

1547: 13 January
The Earl of Surrey is found guilty of treason at a commission of oyer and terminer at the Guildhall, London, after a day-long trial, and is beheaded six days later.

1547: 24 January
Bill of Attainder for treason passed against third Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey by Parliament.

1547: 28 January
Henry VIII dies at 2.00 a.m. in his Palace of Westminster only hours before the third Duke of Norfolk is due to be executed in the Tower. The king’s son, Edward, is proclaimed king at the Tower on 31 January.

1547-53
The third Duke remains a prisoner in the Tower.

1553: 6 July
Edward VI dies at Greenwich Palace of pulmonary tuberculosis after an attack of measles. Sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey proclaimed queen 9 July.

1553: 18 July
Mary, Edward’s half-sister, proclaims herself queen at Framlingham Castle and marches on London.

1553: 3 August
Mary enters London and greets third Duke of Norfolk, and other prisoners, kneeling before her at the Tower of London. They are freed.

1554: 25 January
Sir Thomas Wyatt raises his standard at Maidstone, Kent, in a rebellion against Mary’s planned marriage with Philip of Spain.

1554: January
Third Duke of Norfolk sent in command of a force of royalist troops from London to subdue rebels but they desert, forcing him to flee back to the capital. Wyatt’s rebels defeated after a running battle along the Strand and Fleet Street at the gates of the city of London on 7 February. Lady Jane Grey executed on 12 February.

1554: 25 August
Third Duke of Norfolk dies at Kenninghall, Norfolk. His grandson, Thomas, becomes fourth Duke of Norfolk.

1557: 28 June
Birth at Arundel House, in the Strand, London, of Philip Howard, only child of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and his first wife, Mary, second daughter and co-heir of Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl of Arundel. He is baptised on 2 July in the Chapel Royal in the Palace of Whitehall. Among his godfathers is Philip of Spain.

1558: 17 November
Elizabeth succeeds Mary as Queen of England.

1559: 16 January
Mary Queen of Scots (daughter of King James V of Scotland and his second wife, Mary of Guise) and her husband, Francis, the Dauphin of France, assume the style of title ‘Francis and Mary, by the Grace of God, of Scotland, England and Ireland, King and Queen’ and include the arms of England in their heraldry.

1559: 10 July
Mary Queen of Scots’ husband becomes Francis II, King of France, but he dies on 5 December 1560.

1563: July
Marriage of Charles Howard to Katherine Carey, eldest daughter of Lord Hunsdon, second cousin of Elizabeth I.

1565: 29 July
Mary Queen of Scots marries her second husband - Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, son and heir of the Earl of Lennox. He is proclaimed ‘King of Scots’. Her only child James (later James VI of Scotland and from 1603, James I of England) born in Edinburgh Castle on 19 June 1566. Darnley is murdered on 10 February 1567 and Mary marries James, Earl of Bothwell, according to Protestant rites, on 15 May.

1567: 24 July
Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, James, who is crowned James VI at Stirling five days later. Her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, is appointed Regent of Scotland.

1568: 13 May
After escape from imprisonment, Mary’s forces are defeated at the Battle of Langside, near Glasgow, by an army led by the Earl of Moray. Three days later, she crosses the Solway Firth and enters England as a refugee.

1568: 16 October
Scottish Secretary of State William Maitland suggests to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, that he should marry Mary Queen of Scots.

1569: October
Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is arrested on suspicion of treason and imprisoned in the Tower. Francis Walsingham writes a propaganda pamphlet, attacking any marriage between Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots.

1569: 14 November
The Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland rise in revolt, backed by a 7,500-strong army, with the twin aims of overthrowing Elizabeth I and re-establishing the Catholic religion in England. The rebellion is brutally suppressed, with 750 insurgents executed by royalist forces.

1569
Philip Howard betrothed to Anne Dacre, daughter of Thomas Dacre, fourth Baron Dacre of Glisland, and one of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk’s stepchildren by his third marriage in 1567. Philip’s marriage was solemnised after September 1571 when he and his wife had reached the age of fourteen, then the age of consent.

1570: 25 February
Pope Pius V excommunicates Elizabeth I by the Papal Bull
Regnans in Excelsis
, depriving this ‘pretended queen’ of her throne and absolving her subjects of any allegiance or loyalty to her.

1570: August
Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is released from the Tower of London but kept under house arrest at his London home in Charterhouse Square. The Florentine banker Roberto Ridolphi visits him within days, asking him to write to the Duke of Alva, the Spanish Captain General in the Low Countries to solicit funds for the Scottish queen.

1571: 7 September
Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is re-arrested and imprisoned in the Tower.

1572: 16 January
Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is tried by his peers at Westminster Hall on charges of treason.

1572: 2 June
Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk: beheaded at Tower Hill.

1574-85
Henry Howard, second son of beheaded Earl of Surrey, arrested five times during this period on suspicion of involvement in various conspiracies. The former Spanish ambassador to England, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, paid him an annual salary of 1,000 crowns in 1582-4, to send him ‘confidential and minute accounts twice a week’ of events at Elizabeth’s court.

1580: 24 February
Philip Howard becomes the thirteenth Earl of Arundel on the death of his Fitzalan grandfather, but his title is questioned and he is not restored in blood until 15 March 1581. His uncle, John Lumley, Baron Lumley, makes over to him his life interest in the castle and honour of Arundel in Sussex.

1583-4
Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, is placed under house arrest, on suspicion of harbouring a Catholic priest and involvement in the Throgmorton conspiracy.

1584: 30 September
Philip Howard, eldest son of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, received into the Catholic Church by the fugitive Jesuit priest William Weston at Arundel Castle.

1585: 15 April
Arrest of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, after he flees England in a ship from Littlehampton and is intercepted at sea. He is committed to the Tower on 25 April.

1585: May
Charles Howard appointed Lord High Admiral of England.

1586: 15 May
Arraignment of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in the Star Chamber at Westminster on charges that he tried to leave England without royal permission; that he had been converted to the Church of Rome and was also plotting to be restored as Duke of Norfolk. He is fined £10,000 and is imprisoned in the Tower ‘during the Queen’s pleasure’.

1586: 11 October
Elizabeth’s commissioners arrive at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, to try Mary Queen of Scots for high treason. After further hearings in the Star Chamber at Westminster, she is condemned to death on 25 October.

1587: 18 February
Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.

1587: 15 December
Charles Howard appointed to command English naval forces against the expected Spanish invasion of England.

1588: July-August
Defeat of the Spanish Armada.

1589: 14 April
Trial of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in Westminster Hall, for arranging a Mass in the Tower for the success of the Armada. Attainted and condemned to death for treason. Elizabeth I does not sign his death warrant.

1595: 19 October
Death from malnutrition - some claim he was poisoned - of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in the Tower of London and his body buried in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. His remains were reburied in 1624 in the Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel Castle and again in the Catholic cathedral at Arundel in 1971. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929 and canonised by Paul VI on 25 October 1970.

1597: 22 October
Charles Howard created Earl of Nottingham.

1599
Charles Howard appointed Lieutenant General of All England and responsible for England’s defences.

1601
Henry Howard, second son of beheaded Earl of Surrey, works with Robert Cecil in secret correspondence with James VI of Scotland to ensure his acquisition as King of England on Elizabeth’s death.

1603: 24 March
Death of Elizabeth I at Richmond Palace, probably from broncho-pneumonia and septicaemia from tooth decay. James VI of Scotland succeeds unopposed as James I to the English throne.

1603: 21 January
Thomas Howard, son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, created first Earl of Suffolk.

1604: 6 January
Henry Howard appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

1604: 13 March
Henry Howard created baron of Marnhull, Dorset, and Earl of Northampton.

1604: 18 April
Thomas Howard, heir of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, restored in blood by Act of Parliament and estates granted him.