If you want to explore a Tudor ‘house of secrets’ then the subject of today’s blog, Harvington Hall in Worcestershire, is going to be right up your street. As you will hear, this incredibly raw and authentic Elizabethan moated manor house was designed with the utmost subterfuge in mind. In exploring the history of the house, we dive into the dark and dangerous times of Elizabethan England when Catholics, and the priests who served them, had to risk their lives to practice their religion.
Today’s blog accompanies this month’s Tudor Travel Show podcast. We will be enjoying an introduction to the house from House manager, Phil Downing. A link to listen to the rest of our adventure in time will follow at the end of this blog. So, let’s get going!
Introducing the Enigmatic Harvington Hall
Sarah: Today, I am at Harvington Hall. While COVID has slowed down progress, I’ve finally got here! Let me introduce our guide today: Phil Downing, House Manager here at Harvington.
Phil Downing with Sarah (The Tudor Travel Guide)
Phil:
Hello, Sarah! Welcome to Harvington Hall!
Sarah: Thank you so much. Phil, we are standing in front of a beautiful, Elizabethan, moated manor house. Would that be an accurate description?
Phil: Yes, the house that you can see today is predominantly a 1580’s manor house, although we do think that the centre section of Harvington Hall actually dates back to the fourteenth century. Behind the brickwork that you’re looking at here, you will find lathe and plaster and some medieval walls. However, it is, arguably, a unique Elizabethan house. It is rare because it is still largely in its original, Elizabethan state. It has seven remaining priest hides (which is more than any other house in England); a plethora of Elizabethan wall paintings that are pretty much intact; a lot of wood panelling, which is original. Some of the floorboards are also original, which makes it a very higgledy-piggledy house.
Phil shows sarah one of the most ingenious priest holes at Harvington, hidden underneath a set of steps
Sarah: It looks it from the outside, so I can’t wait to get in and explore! Let’s go inside the courtyard and maybe you can tell us a little bit about the history before we start exploring those priest holes. Perhaps you can tell us about the early house, how it evolved and who owned it?
Phil: The original, medieval house was owned by the de Harvington family. Adam de Harvington, who lived here back in the 1300s was the Chancellor of the Exchequer for a few years. When he died, the land then passed into the hands of the Earls of Warwick. Eventually, the house was bought by a wealthy man during the reign of Henry VIII; his name was Sir John Packington (or John Packington as he wasn’t knighted at that point). He was a wealthy lawyer of the Inner Temple. He didn’t live here but he owned the estate together with another thirty estates across the Midlands, so clearly this man had a lot of money. It is said that he was given the special privilege of being allowed to wear his hat in Henry VIII’s presence!
Sarah: Oh, wow! A privilege indeed!
Phil: Yes, interesting. Moving forward a couple of generations, his great-nephew, Humphrey Packington, inherited the estate in 1578. He’s the man who built the house that we can see today. However, Humphrey Packington was a Catholic at the time of Elizabeth I which, as I’m sure people will know, was a very dangerous time for Catholics. This is where you have to hide priests in your house because the Catholic Mass was outlawed.
So, Humphrey Packington built this house and built a series of priest hides as well. Now, Humphrey Packington was what they called a recusant. In Latin, that’s recusare, which means to refuse. Humphrey Packington refused to attend the Church of England service on a Sunday and was fined a whole £20 a month for not going to Church.
Another Nicolas Owen priest hole in the library at Harvington Hall
Sarah: Every month?
Phil: Every month! He wasn’t fined every single month although some Catholics were having to pay the fine every month. Unsurprisingly, families were finding themselves in financial difficulty, but Humphrey was a bit shrewder than that. He was clearly attending the Church of England service but, nevertheless, was fined on a number of occasions. Now, £20 pounds a month doesn’t sound a great deal to us but in those days it was the equivalent of £4,000.
So, this guy is basically forking out £4,000 when he’s not going to church. Consider the fact that you can be fined from the age of 16. Imagine being a 16-year-old and trying to find the equivalent of £4,000 a month – you’re going to struggle a little bit. So, some Catholics at that point, known as the ‘Papists’ or the ‘Church Papists’, did attend the Church of England service, but they would often try to do anything to not to hear what was going on in that service. So, one man was known to plug his ears with wool. One lady was known to spit the bread out on the floor and tread on it. Some of them would leave their hats on etc. Afterwards, they would then go to houses, such as Harvington Hall, and hear Mass there, which was illegal.
Sarah: Well, we’re going to explore those priest holes and hear much more about the Catholic history of the house in a moment, but we have now come into the central courtyard and there is what appears to be the entrance range behind me and on my left, there’s the main block. Was this how it originally looked?
Phil: As you rightly said, you walk in through under the gateway room and into the courtyard. You have the main building on the left. In front of you, you can see a brick wall and trees on the other side of it. However, in those days you would have had a building directly in front of you. We think that this was probably the great hall with a long gallery above, alongside the family bed chambers. While the tower to our left survives, there would likely have been another building directly opposite that on our right. This measn we would have been standing in a courtyard which was surreounded by four ranges: a typical single courtyard house
However, this particular courtyard would have probably been very dark, because the surviving tower is a tall building, comprising effectively of four storeys. So, yes, in around 1600 it would have been very dark in here but we know the house was definitely finished in 1595; at the time, it became known as ‘Humphrey’s Mansion House of Harvington’.
One of the rooms in the hall, decorated with Elizabethan wall paintings
Sarah:
Let’s now talk a little more about the history of religion in England at the time; a history in which Harvington Hall is so inextricably entwined. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how there came to be so many priest holes here?
Phil: You could be here all day talking about this topic, but I’ll do my best to cut a long story short! We need to start with Henry VIII’s break with the Church of Rome. Then you have his son and heir, Edward VI, who is a staunch Protestant. Under his influence and that of the Regency Council, England becomes, for the first time, a Protestant country. Edward, of course, dies young, leaving his Catholic half-sister, Mary to inherit the throne. Mary does everything she can to bring England back into the Catholic fold. But we are not done, because, as we all know, when Mary dies in 1558, her half-sister, Elizabeth, is protestant and undoes much of the changes Mary has tried to reintroduce! However, initially, she tries to create a ‘middle way’ in terms of religion under the now flourishing ‘Church of England’.
Thus, the first 10 years of Elizabeth’s reign are peaceful. Then everything changes with the arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots in England in 1568. As we know, she is swiftly placed under house arrest. Whether she wants it or not, Mary soon becomes a figurehead for English Catholics, who seek to see the restoration of a Catholic monarch upon the English throne. This forces the government’s hand; they have to become more strict with them. This only gets worse with the arrival of the seminary priests in the 1570s. Then, in 1580s, the Jesuit priests begin to arrive.
Now, the Jesuit priests are the ones that the government are really scared of. These are young, enthusiastic priests: anti-protestant, anti-Elizabeth. Naturally, Elizabeth’s government respond by enforcing tougher sanctions on English Catholics. So, from 1585 it’s illegal to be a Catholic priest or even for one to set foot in England. The Catholic Mass, of course, has already been outlawed at this point. But families like Humphrey Packington’s, here at Harvington Hall still need to hear Mass. Therefore, they have to house priests in the house secretly, but if the priest hunters come knocking, then there’s trouble. They could be here searching from as little as four hours to as long as 12 days. So, you’re going to have to have a well-concealed priest hide that’s not going to be found if the searchers linger for more than a couple of days.
Sarah tries out one of the more ingenious priest hides at Harvington, originally hidden behind the wall of a bookcase
Sarah: So, were the priest hunters appointed by the central council and that was their full-time job to move around the countryside, searching known Catholic houses for hidden priests?
Phil: Not entirely. Of course, the signed warrant would come from the government in London originally, but it would normally be the local sheriff (in our case likely the Sheriff of Worcester) that would come to a house like Harvington Hall. However, it is oftentimes tricky for the priest hunters, because a lot of them are local neighbours and would have been known to the family. Consequently, some of them are a bit reluctant to search the house thoroughly – or they might simply turn a blind eye.
Having said that, there was a priest hunter called Richard Topcliffe. He was basically a sadist, who really enjoyed his job. He liked to torture priests. Incidentally, we also know for a fact that Elizabeth I agreed to the torture of priests. In fact, under Elizabeth I, around 130 Catholic priests were executed. The number varies when it comes to the recusants or the refusers, but probably around 60 or so recusants were also executed, three of which were female.
Sarah: I find that surprising because we associate torture and religious persecution most frequently with Mary I; but 130 priests? That’s a lot of people! So Elizabeth is not untainted by accusations of religious persecution, even though I think generally we tend to see her as being much more tolerant.
Elizabeth wall painting at Harvington
Phil: And the tolerance was there, particularly at the start. But, as things went on, there were plots to assassinate Elizabeth. History, as we know, is always written by the victors and this tends to paint all Catholics in the same light when, in actual fact, that’s not strictly true. A lot of Catholics were peaceful, loyal subjects but, unfortunately for them, they followed the Catholic religion.
Sarah: Well, I think with that, we should go inside and start exploring some of these priest holes. So, let’s make our way in and you can show me where you would like to take me first.
Let the Adventure continue…
If you would like to go on that adventure with me and Phil, as we explore the priest hides of Harvington Hall, you can tune into the podcast here. If you want to find visitor information on Harvington Hall check out their website here.
Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, was a force of nature. The youngest daughter of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, she was at odds religiously with most of the rest of her Howard family, went head-to-head with Henry VIII in a battle for money and flatly refused to be pressured into remarriage when three of the most powerful men in the land plotted her future with Thomas Seymour. Mary, came alive for me when I was writing my novel about Anne Boleyn. She served Anne and was probably deeply influenced by the queen’s reformist leanings. If you are unfamiliar with her story, read on to find out more about this fascinating woman.
Note: This blog is based on an interview with Nikki Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Chichester, made for my podcast, The Tudor Travel Show.
Mary Howard: Birth and Early Years
Sarah: So today, it’s all about Mary. For people who perhaps don’t know that much about Mary Howard, maybe you could outline who she was and who were some of her key Tudor relations?
Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond
Nikki: Yes, absolutely. Mary Howard was the younger daughter of Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk and his second wife, Elizabeth Stafford. That made her the granddaughter of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who was executed in 1521. She’s the sister of Henry Howard (who’s often called ‘the poet Earl’). He was the Earl of Surrey; he was executed in 1547. She is the first cousin of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, Henry VIII’s second and fifth wives, respectively.
She married Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, which made her the King’s daughter-in-law. This related her by marriage to the Tudor dynasty itself. His niece, Margaret Douglas, who’s the daughter of his older sister, Margaret Queen of Scotland, is Mary Howard’s best mate at court. Through the Howards as well, she’s more distantly related to a lot of other courtier families like the Shelton’s, Francis Bryan, the rest of the Boleyns and so on.
Sarah: Why are you so interested in her?
Nikki: I wrote about her in my book on the Howard women because she’s a bit of a force of nature! Unlike some of her other female relatives, especially her mother, she does serve in her cousin, Anne Boleyn’s, household and she’s part of that contemporary crowd at court. She gets widowed unexpectedly in 1536, and then started a bit of a fight with her father-in-law, the king, over money – and eventually won. She manages to circumvent a second marriage when all the powerful men around her are trying to marry her off for a second time. She refuses and gets away with it.
Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk
Then, as the 1540’s progress, she also starts to hold very different religious beliefs from some of her immediate family. Her father, the Duke of Norfolk, is known for having been a strong, religious conservative, but Mary Howard began to follow the reformed faith. So, I was interested in her because she did things differently to some of the rest of her family. I was also interested in the way that family functioned in the Tudor court. We have this image of girls doing as their fathers told them, with the whole family coming together as a coherent political force, but that’s not always the case.
Sarah: I love the fact that you use the phrase ‘force of nature’ because that’s how she seems to me, as well. She was a woman who knew her own mind. So, maybe we could go back to the beginning and try and understand a little bit more about Mary’s early life. Do we know much about it, where she was brought up and with whom – and did she receive that classic humanist education which was being introduced at the beginning of the sixteenth-century?
Nikki: We don’t know a huge amount about Mary Howard’s early days, as is so often the case with early modern women. We do know that she’s born sometime in 1519 – the same year as Katherine Willougby, who later became Duchess of Suffolk. Interestingly, we do have a few details about her birth that may or may not be true and are a little bit harrowing.
Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, a contemporary of Mary, born in the same year: 1519
Sarah: Oh, dear, go for it!
Nikki: According to Mary’s mother, Elizabeth Stafford, Elizabeth was physically assaulted by her husband, the Duke of Norfolk, during her labour with Mary. Apparently, when she’d been in labour with Mary for two nights and a day, he dragged her out bed and around the house by her hair and wounded her in the head with a dagger.
He wrote later to Cromwell specifically to deny this. Norfolk said that Elizabeth had put this story about just to slander him. He said that he could prove by witnesses that she’d had the scar on her head months before she gave birth to Mary; he thought no man would treat a woman in labour that way and he would not have done so for all that he was worth. So, we just don’t know whether that is true, whether it’s partly true, or what was going on really, but it does suggest that Mary Howard’s entry into the world wasn’t necessarily smooth.
Mary Howard Arrives at Court…
Sarah:
When does Mary Howard first come to court?
Nikki: She probably made the odd visits to court as a child. She would have spent most of her time in childhood in the family’s houses in East Anglia. So Tendring Hall in Essex, Kenninghall a bit later and probably Framlingham Castle after her grandfather’s death in 1524. She would have been there with her older sister, Catherine, and her brothers, Henry and Thomas, at least for some of that time.
Framlingham Castle: ancestral home of the Howards in Suffolk
We don’t know anything about her education, really. We do know that her older brother, Henry, was well educated but that’s probably because he was part of her future husband’s, Henry Fitzroy’s, household, and the two were educated together along humanist lines at Sherrif Hutton Castle in North Yorkshire. The few letters that we have from Mary Howard from a little later, show that she’s able to read and write, which is usual for a noblewoman at this point. There are sources that suggest she read scripture in English herself and she also had books dedicated to her. It’s also reasonable to suppose that she probably knew some French, but beyond that, we just don’t know about her education, unfortunately.
She probably comes to court as a child here and there, but her first recorded appearance as being in service at court is not until September 1532. That’s when she attends Anne Boleyn, at the point that Anne is made Marquis of Pembroke at Windsor Castle. By that point, Mary is already betrothed to Henry Fitzroy and she’s about 13 years old.
Sarah: That’s where I got entangled with Mary when I was writing about Anne Boleyn. I was curious about the relationship between the two women because, as you pointed out there, Mary was very prominent in the ceremony that elevated Anne to become Marquis of Pembroke. Obviously, she was an important person from an important family, but I kept coming across her being present in Anne’s household. What do we know anything about the relationship between Anne and Mary?
Anne Boleyn: possibly influence Mary’s reformist leanings.
Nikki: Not a lot. It’s normal for her to have entered the court at about that age as a maid of honour. We don’t know a lot about the relationship between the two women. We do know that Mary later gave John Foxe, the martyrologist, information and anecdotes about Anne that he used in his book of martyrs. For instance, information about Anne apparently always carrying money that she gave to the poor in alms everywhere she went. That anecdote came from Mary Howard and that does suggest at least that Mary has positive memories of Anne.
Sarah: So we simply don’t know whether Anne had an influence on her or on her later reformist beliefs?
Nikki: We don’t have any direct evidence, but it is entirely possible that Anne does influence Mary religiously. Anne is said to have been of a reformist leaning. Her household is the most likely place for Mary to have encountered those ideas. Anne supposedly kept an English Bible in her privy chamber for anybody to go and read, for instance. So that’s something Mary would have found when she was there. It is also the case that Anne apparently arranged Mary Howard’s marriage for her before Mary came to her service.
Sarah: Do tell us more about that. How involved was Anne in putting her forward as a potential wife for Henry Fitzroy?
Nikki: It was a bit of a muddle to be honest, partly due to plague. Mary is the younger daughter. She has an older sister, Katherine, who was forgotten about by historians for many years because the records get a bit confused. Her older sister, Katherine, got married to the Earl Derby in 1529. The Earl of Derby was still a minor at that point; he was under 21. So Norfolk had bought the last year of Derby’s wardship and then, slightly illegally or at least questionably, because he didn’t get Royal permission, he swiftly married him off to his oldest daughter, Katherine.
Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby and briefly brother -in-law of Mary Howard
That is a really lucrative match for the Howards – politically, socially and economically. So it’s like, yeah, good, we got this! Great! At that point, Mary Howard was betrothed to the heir to the Earldom of Oxford which, again, was a good match. The Howards and the De Veres had married before, but that betrothal got broken in 1529 when the king seemed favourable to her marrying Henry Fitzroy instead, which was a better match politically and socially.
Her older sister, Katherine, who’s married to the Earl of Derby died very unexpectedly in March 1530, only a few weeks after the marriage of the plague. This is no doubt devastating for her parents, and for her whole family, but it also creates a political issue because that marriage that she had to the Earl of Derby was too valuable to lose. So, as well as grieving the loss of their daughter, Norfolk and Elizabeth are immediately wondering how can we hold onto this?
Mary Howard’s mother, Elizabeth, thinks the obvious choice is for Mary to take Katherine’s place and marry Derby in her stead. But, because there have been talks going on about her marrying Henry Fitzroy, Norfolk is keen to carry on with that. Anne Boleyn then gets involved. Anne is very keen to cement her own position in the royal family, by creating other connections to the Tudors by marriage. If the Howard family is already part of the Tudor dynasty, then it bolsters Anne’s own position, because it looks less bizarre when she marries the king. So she sticks her nose in and insists that Mary should marry Henry Fitzroy and not the Earl of Derby. Anne and Mary’s mother, Elizabeth, seem to have a bit of a fight about it. High words are exchanged and Elizabeth nearly gets dismissed from court, but Anne eventually gets her way. Mary’s mother, Elizabeth, later said that they didn’t even have to pay any dowry because Anne got the marriage for them by persuading the king.
Henry Fiztroy – Mary Howard’s only husband
Sarah: So that’s an interesting relationship between Elizabeth and Anne, as well. So they didn’t get on so well?
Nikki: No, they are not mates. Elizabeth has been a lady waiting to Katherine of Aragon for 16 odd years, off and on.
Sarah: Anne, of course, at this time was still very much in her ascendancy. So it’s not surprising really that she probably got her way by wrapping the King round her little finger.
Nikki: Yes, I think so. Anne is also, I think, very anxious and quite afraid. Yes, she’s in the ascendancy, but it’s by no means a done deal in 1529/1530. So, I think anything that she can do to help herself and help her own position, she’s going to go for – and woe betide anyone who gets in her way!
A Royal Marriage Arranged…
Sarah: So when and where did Henry Fitzroy and Mary Howard finally marry? What do we know about that?
Nikki: They married in 1533 at Hampton Court Palace. Mary herself probably didn’t have much of a say in the matter, but we don’t need to assume that she’s doing it against her will either. Daughters mostly do want the same economic and social things that their parents want for them. Romantic love isn’t usually considered part of the equation for aristocratic marriages. So, we don’t really know whether it’s a good match temperamentally. It’s really hard to know what they’re like, especially because Fitzroy died so young and they marry when they’re still teenagers, so it’s hard to tell.
Mary Howard was married to Henry Fitzroy in the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court in November 1533.
Sarah: They didn’t get a chance to live together, did they? Obviously, there were fears about Mary conceiving too early and the perils of childbirth?
Nikki: Yes, pretty much. They never did co-habit as both of them were considered too young. It was normal for marriages to be arranged or even formalised, between teenagers, because Church law stated that girls can get married at 12 and boys at 14. But generally, by that time, it’s thought to be a bad idea for them to actually crack on with married life and having sex and kids and so on. Yes, it’s partly because they don’t necessarily want 13-year-old girls giving birth (by this point they’ve moved on a little from the Margaret Beaufort scenario), but it’s also because they think it’s bad for boys to be doing that too young, partly in memory of Prince Arthur, I think.
A Duchess in Hot Water…
Sarah: So, now should we fast forward a little bit because Henry Fitzroy doesn’t last too long. What happens to Mary when he dies in 1536?
Nikki: Well, her life hadn’t really changed much up to that point, except that she now had the title of Duchess of Richmond. Thus, she had status outside of being the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter. But because they’d never lived together and they weren’t supposed to do that until the age of 18, I think life for both of them had continued as it had before. So when Fitzroy died, it’s really hard to know whether Mary was sad. Possibly she was not all that sad; she knew him, but there’s no surviving evidence that they had a very strong, close, personal relationship.
Margaret Douglas: Henry VIII’s niece and ‘best’ friend of Mary Howard
He gets ill and he dies quite unexpectedly in July, 1536. We don’t know what he dies of; we rarely do in this period and it’s too difficult to diagnose over a 500 year distance. But it’s safe to say people didn’t expect him to do that. This is yet another bad event in a year of awful events for Henry VIII. It’s been a month or so since Anne Boleyn’s execution, and it ties in with another event that involves Mary in a really interesting way. July 1536 is the same month that Henry VIII’s niece, Margaret Douglas’s secret marriage to Lord Thomas Howard is discovered and that’s relevant because Mary and Margaret are best buddies.
Sarah: Can you tell me a little bit more about when they became friends and were there any particular ties that bound them together?
Nikki: We don’t really know, but probably not until the early 1530s, once both of them were at court. Margaret, I think, is a little older than Mary Howard. Margaret is the daughter of Henry VIII’s older sister, Margaret. The latter Margaret is, or was, Queen of Scotland and Margaret Douglas is her daughter. The two of them were in service to Anne Boleyn and they, along with Mary Shelton, make a little trio of ‘Ms’. There’s a whole crowd of them and some of the boys as well; Thomas Wyatt, Mary’s brother Henry, Earl of Surrey. The whole crowd is like the bright ,young things of the 1530’s – they’re really sharp and witty and clever.
We know this because Mary Howard owned a blank manuscript book that she used to pass around the whole circle for them to write their favourite poems into, including original prose. Then they would annotate it and write banter to each other in the margins. We know this because that manuscript still survives. It’s called the Devonshire Manuscript and it lives in the British Library. Also, there’s a whole Wiki book of it online. Somebody has transcribed the whole lot and included discussion about the different handwritings, who they belong to, the links between everyone involved and things like that – it’s an amazing source.
The Devonshire Manuscript
Sarah: I can just imagine that. It’s so clear and vivid; these bright, young things taking the court by storm. It’s wonderful! Now, let’s move the story on to the end of Mary’s life. What happens then to Mary? She doesn’t remarry, does she, but she does get embroiled in a few ‘situations’. As you hinted at at the beginning of our discussion, life doesn’t get dull for her at this point at all, does it?
Nikki: No! Right before her husband dies in 1536, Margaret Douglas has a secret affair with Mary’s half-uncle, although he’s not much older than her; it’s a bit of a complicated family tree. His name is Lord Thomas Howard. The only way that the couple can meet is in secret, otherwise, they’d be noticed, but it is really hard to meet people secretly at court. So, you need a helper – and Mary is that helper. So, she and Margaret wait until everyone else is out of the room and then they’ll let Thomas in. Mary is there when Margaret and Thomas married secretly at Easter 1536. And she knows this is not a good idea; it is technically illegal but, you know, Margaret’s her mate and hey, Margaret’s marrying a Howard and that helps the Howard family out, right? I’m sure it’s fine. Well, reader, it was not fine!
Sarah: What happens next?
Nikki: It gets discovered in July 1536 and the king is predictably furious. The big problem with this is that Anne Boleyn has literally just been executed. That means her daughter, Princess Elizabeth has been made illegitimate. So, the king now has two illegitimate daughters and no son; the succession is not looking great. So, for his niece to go and marry some Howard younger son is not cool. But, they can’t legally undo it because Church law upholds even clandestine marriages. So, instead the couple get imprisoned in the Tower and then Margaret gets moved to Syon Abbey. In the meantime, Lord Thomas gets attainted for high treason.
Henry VIII: Mary’s father-in-law
They spin some kind of charge saying, well, he was obviously trying to get at the throne. He is not executed, but he does die in the Tower a year later and Margaret remains in Syon Abbey for some time. Now, Mary Howard should have got into some quite serious trouble for being their go-between and the fact that she didn’t is probably because, at about that time, there were rumours that the king is about to make her husband, Henry Fitzroy, his heir to the throne. Now he can’t do that and simultaneously imprison his daughter-in-law without looking a bit daft. Unfortunately, Fitzroy then dies very unexpectedly, slightly later that month. So, that plan is scuppered and by that point, it seems that there’s so much else going on that the will to do anything to Mary seems to have just disappeared. So she gets away with it.
Mary Howard: An Independant Widow
Sarah: Quite incredibly, Mary chooses to never remarry, as might have been expected of her, despite the fact she came under a lot of pressure to do so. Can you tell us more about the circumstances surrounding that episode in her life?
Nikki: Yes, indeed. So, Fitzroy dies and I’m sure the King is really grieving, but it’s very difficult to know whether Mary is. It’s hard to know how much and how well she really knew him. What she does immediately is to go back to her father’s house at Kenninghall, because she doesn’t, at this point, have anywhere else to go. By that time, her mother isn’t there anymore because her parents’ marriage has broken down. So, Mary is at Kenninghall with her brother’s wife; her father’s mistress, and maybe also her youngest brother. What happens next is a fight over money.
Again, this is very Tudor; they like to do this. Normally aristocratic marriages are made with a kind of pre-nup agreement. The bride brings a dowry with her, which is usually cash, and in return the groom’s family agree a number of estates and say that the income from those will be hers if she gets widowed. That is called a jointure. Mary ought to be entitled to jointure from the king, who is her father-in-law, but we know that Henry doesn’t like to pay money if he doesn’t have to – and this jointure would have been about a thousand marks a year, which is not a small sum.
So, he claims that he doesn’t have to pay her anything because the marriage was never consummated. Now that sounds like a nice, handy get out clause, but by law he’s wrong and plenty of lawyers and clerics gradually start telling him so. Mary is also not prepared to just give this up without a fight. She expects her father, the Duke of Norfolk, to fight her cause for her at court. However, she doesn’t seem to appreciate that that’s tricky when you really don’t want to annoy the king!
Thomas Cromwell gets involved in a plan to marry off the widowed Mary to Thomas Seymour
Sarah: Yes, that’s a dangerous plan, isn’t it?
Nikki: Yes, it is and a bit unfairly, she thinks he’s just not doing his best for her. But we know that he is trying because every letter he writes to Thomas Cromwell over the next few years has a line in it about his daughter’s cause. So he is trying, but nothing really happens. We know at this point that her father is nervous about her future. He complains that there’s no one of decent status for her to marry next.
Around the beginning of the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion in the autumn of 1536, he expects that he’s going to be sent North to deal with it. This is because when you have a rebellion, you need a Howard because he’s a first-rate good soldier. At that point, he writes to Thomas Cromwell that he’s worried about leaving Mary behind with the question unresolved in case “she should bestow herself other than I would she should”. Basically, he’s worried that she might run away and marry someone unsuitable. That is quite an admission of lack of patriarchal control!
Sarah: Yes, you’re right!
Nikki: Yes. It’s basically an admission that ‘I can’t control my daughter’.
Sarah: I guess that also shows how headstrong Mary must have been at that stage?
Thomas Seymour: potential suitor roundly rejected by Mary as a second husband
Nikki: Yes, I think it does. It doesn’t actually happen, but the fact that he fears that it seems to say quite a lot. So, she carries on consulting her own legal counsel and then she starts emotionally blackmailing her father into letting her go to court to sue the king herself. He writes to Cromwell rather anxiously in a tone of ‘I’m not sure if this is a good idea, but she’s weeping and wailing and she won’t shut up’ and at the end of the letter he said he’d never communicated with her in any serious matter and he didn’t expect to find her as he does: ‘too wise for a woman’.
Sarah: Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! What happens next?
Nikki: Well, behind her back, Norfolk, Thomas Cromwell and the king cook up another plan. They realise that if they can marry her off again, then the question of that jointure can be quietly forgotten because any finances of a widow become her new husband’s. If they choose this new husband carefully, he will never pursue the matter and so it can just die a quiet death. So, they decide on Thomas Seymour with his agreement. He is the younger brother of Edward Seymour and of Jane Seymour, who is the next queen. He’s not a bad match, although he doesn’t have the same level of status that the Howards do. Still, Mary comes to court and it’s unclear exactly what exactly happens, but it seems that they present her with this plan. She says, “No, I think not!” and leaves, going straight back to Kenninghall. Norfolk is left embarrassed and having to apologise for her.
Sarah: Do we know why she objected to Thomas Seymour?
Nikki: No, not exactly. My guess would be that it’s partly a status thing. He’s a younger son; he has no title and she’s just been Duchess of Richmond. I think it’s that this is a step down for her. I think also that she simply didn’t want to remarry again at all and, particularly, I think she wouldn’t want to give up that fight over her jointure and just let it die. In addition, I suspect she doesn’t appreciate being so tightly controlled by the men around her for all that she accepts that a degree of that is going to be normal. It’s not that she’s a kind of proto-feminist or anything, but being a widow generally is often a better bet than being a wife.
Henry Howard: Mary’s ill-fated brother
The Interrogation of Mary Howard
Sarah: So where are we now in our story with Mary? At some point, at the end of Henry VIII’s reign she very bizarrely gets embroiled in the downfall of her brother. I always find that very intriguing. Can we talk a little bit about that?
Nikki: Yes, absolutely. She does win the jointure fight. In 1538, the king does cave in and gives her estates to pay her jointure. So Mary wins that fight and she doesn’t remarry. By the end of the reign, things get rather odd. Mary’s Howard’s other, Henry, is arrested on a charge of treason, swiftly followed by her father, the Duke of Norfolk, in December 1546. In January 1547, her brother is executed and the charge is of treason but it’s really odd. It’s related to the heraldry that he’d been using.
So he’d been using royal arms that he wasn’t entitled to, and that gets quite bizarre and heraldically complex. Henry VIII is not in great health by this point and it’s becoming obvious that there’s going to be a minority reign of Edward VI. So, everybody is shuffling into position for Regency. In this atmosphere, Henry Howard had been walking around, talking about how powerful his father was going to be in the next reign and then using royal arms he wasn’t entitled to. Now, if you are a very paranoid king or, indeed, you’re somebody who’d quite like to get the Howards out of the way, it’s not difficult to persuade the king, that this is a bid for the throne and that they should really be locked up. It’s not a smart move on the part of Henry Howard.
The Tower of London: Thomas and Henry Howard Imprison here in 1546/7
Sarah: No, and I guess the Seymours might have been behind that? I imagine they had the most to gain from getting the Howards out of the way?
Nikki: Yes, among others. The court is pretty divided over religion at this point. Norfolk is known as a staunch conservative, although Mary Howard and her brother are known as reformers. So it’s not 100% ‘let’s get the conservatives out the way’, but it is true that some of the other powerful reformers do want Norfolk and his Catholic influence gone. He is the real target here. Henry Howard is a kind of distraction.
Sarah: Is she called to testify against him or does she give evidence against her brother in some way?
Nikki: They get arrested. The next step is to get witness statements or testimonies, and these are known as ‘depositions’. Who else do you ask about somebody’s heraldry but their family? Annoyingly, those depositions don’t survive anymore. They got burned in the Cotton fire in the eighteenth-century, but they were seen in the seventeenth-century by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Henry VIII’s first biographer. He wrote about them so we do have a sense of what they said and there is some other evidence that tells us how this went.
A couple of days after the arrests in December 1546, some of the King’s commissioners, who Mary Howard will have known, arrive at Kenninghall early in the morning. They found Mary and the Duke’s mistress, Bess Holland, only just got up and not yet dressed. They’ve been sent to bring news of the arrests, to search the house and to question the people who were there. Mary’s reaction shows that she knew immediately that this was really serious. In their report they described her as ‘sore perplexed, fumbling, and likely to fall down’. The women are told they’d be questioned and advised to cooperate. Mary very sensibly says something along the lines of, ‘alright, I won’t hide anything from you’, especially if ‘it be of weight’ and that she would tell them everything as she remembered it. What else do you do in that situation?
All that remains of Kenninghall: the Howards stately Norfolk residence
Sarah: Yes, quite. It’s very sensible.
Nikki: She seems to have grasped pretty quickly that her father is the real target here, but she is asked about a lot of stuff to do with her brother. So, according to Cherbury, a key point of her deposition was the way she told the story of her father’s second attempt to marry her to Sir Thomas Seymour in 1546 and her brother’s reaction to that. She had declined that match again, apparently because ‘her fantasy would not serve to marry with him’.
Surrey had apparently told her that instead of refusing outright, she should have prevaricated, used that time to get into the king’s affections and become his mistress, and then ‘bear as great a stroke about him as the French king’s mistress. That’s a pretty big deal! Surrey’s apologists say that was a sarcastic suggestion and that Mary shouldn’t have taken him seriously, because he’s essentially suggesting that Mary should start sleeping with her father-in-law – and that will really help the family. That’s incest and, of course, she is appalled. She also said that she had recently quarrelled with her brother, Surrey, on religious grounds because he had discouraged her from going too far in reading the scriptures, which suggests to me that she’d be reading them in English – and he’s not sure that is okay for women.
On the basis of this, some historians have said that for that reason they hated each other and that they were enemies and so on. I think that’s going too far. I think they’re both passionate characters and just because they quarrel sometimes, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that brother and sister hate one another.
The Tower where both Mary’s father and brother were imprison in 1546/47
Sarah: Do you think that she believed at that stage that her brother would be executed? Or do you think she thought these charges wouldn’t stand or that they wouldn’t be as serious and that she could therefore get away with recounting some of these very honest conversations and he’d still be okay? And at the same time that perhaps she could help her father?
Nikki: It’s really hard to say. To be questioned by the King’s counsellors is not a very pleasant experience. It’s difficult to keep your cool and not give them some kind of information under those conditions. Cynically, there are reasons for her to try and protect her father. She is still a single widow. She seems, by this point, not to be very well off, despite having won the jointure fight. She continually sells land through the 1540s. So if her father is executed, she would lose her source of financial support; she would lose the house and she might have to marry Thomas Seymour after all.
She does know which side of the bread is buttered. She is also questioned directly about her brother’s heraldry because they’re zeroing in on this. She responds in quite vague terms. She thought that he had more than seven rolls of arms and that he had resumed the Stafford arms of their grandfather and that the crown above them, in her judgement, looked like a close crown. That’s been taken as evidence of her complicity with the government in trying to destroy her father and brother. But it’s quite vague; saying that something looked so in her judgement, doesn’t say that it was so.
Sarah: Yes, indeed.
Nikki: Mary’s not daft, she’s a noblewoman. She knows about heraldry and she could have been a lot more specific if she wanted to be. So, I think she is trying to do her best to steer a course through this. She’s in a really difficult position and she recognises that she’s not going to be able to save them all because Surrey has done enough stupid things. None of her descriptions of things that Surrey said was used to convict him. They probably don’t help his case, but they don’t form part of the final trial. It’s not fair to say that she causes her brother’s execution, or that she’s trying to do so because there were also plenty of other depositions that do condemn him.
Sarah: So her brother is executed; her father by the skin of his teeth gets away with it only by the death of Henry VIII. What happens next to her? How much longer did she live? What happens after this episode?
The tomb of Henry Howard in framlingham Church
Nikki: After this, she takes, custody, of her nieces and nephews; her brother’s children. She hires the reformer, John Foxe, as their tutor; something Norfolk would have hated. Actually, the first thing he does when he’s released in 1554 is to sack Foxe. I really wish I’d been a fly on the wall for that conversation! During this time she petitions the council saying, look, if you want me to look after these kids, you need to give me the money to do so.
She also petitions the council a lot on her father’s behalf. He recognises this later in his will saying, leave her some money because she tried so hard to help me. So she doesn’t just forget about him. The other thing she does through Edward’s reign is to really crack on with religious reform and with patronage in that regard. So, she has John Foxe, the famous martyrologist in her household; she’s also the patroness of John Bale, who is another reformist writer, and several others. She seems to work with the printer, John Day, to print reformist texts and get the word out to people who can read in English. Mary Howard is a big part of that reformist circle of noblewomen.
Sarah: At the same time, she’s looking after her nieces and nephews. So, she’s in charge now of the future Duke of Norfolk, is that right?
Nikki: Yes, absolutely. And some of her teaching, or Foxe’s teaching, does seem to go in and take root because it is clear that later on Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, is a Protestant. He is not Catholic like his father was. The Howards are often assumed to all be Catholic, and many of them are very strong Catholics – even to this day, the Dukes of Norfolk are still Catholic. It’s a strong part of their identity, but actually, during the Tudor period, it wasn’t quite as clear cut. Not everybody followed that same path. So, yes, she does seem to have encouraged the future fourth Duke of Norfolk to follow a reformist path.
The Protestant John Foxe, employed by Mary Howard to tutor the future 4th Duke of Norfolk
The Death and Burial of Mary Howard
Sarah: What about the end of Mary Howard? Where did she die? Do we know from what and where was she buried?
Nikki: She dies at some point in, or before 1555, but probably in that year. We don’t know exactly where, and we don’t know exactly when. We only know she’s died because some of her lands start to be parcelled off to other people. She doesn’t leave a will, and that’s really unusual for a widow in her position. That suggests to me that her death was sudden or unexpected. It’s possible that she died in the influenza epidemic that raged during those years.
The historian, Barbara Harris, has said that the number of noblewomen who die in those middle 1550’s years is quite extraordinary and might suggest that they were hit pretty badly by that epidemic. We don’t know for certain. It’s a bit sad; though; Mary kind of fizzles out. This might also be because by 1555, Mary I is on the throne and, of course, for someone of reformist beliefs like our Mary, you would want to keep your head down during that time.
Sarah: Her tomb is at Framlingham Church, where she apparently lies alongside the body Henry Fitzroy. Whether she’s actually in that tomb or not, we don’t really know, do we?
Tomb of Mary Howard and Henry Fitzroy in St Michael’s Church, Framlingham. mage via Wikimedia Commons: Evelyn Simak / St Michael’s church in Framlingham – Henry Fitzroy tomb / CC BY-SA 2.0
Nikki: No, it’s not certain but St Michael’s Church, Framlingham is usually given us her burial place, alongside her husband Henry Fitzroy.
Sarah: So, if people are interested in following the footsteps of Mary Howard that’s one place to go and see. Are there any other places that are specifically associated with her or have they all been lost?
Nikki: Unfortunately, most of them have been lost. You could go to Framlingham Castle; she would have spent time there, or to Hampton Court Palace, because she would certainly have spent time there as well. Because most of Henry’s palaces have been lost and sites like Kenninghall don’t really survive either, there isn’t a huge number of places that are directly associated with Mary.
Sarah: Well, that’s is a shame but that was such a fascinating chat! I always really loved her and was intrigued by her, but now that we’ve spoken, I’m even more blown away by how interesting and formidable a character she was; as a woman of her time and as a force of nature.
This month sees the launch of a special celebration of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, here, on The Tudor Travel Show. Throughout September, I will be publishing one episode a week, as I follow ‘In the Footsteps’ of this legendary Scottish queen, visiting some of the most historic locations associated with her time in Scotland. Along the way, I will be meeting up with local guides, (many are members of the Marie Stuart Society), who will share their knowledge and passion for Mary and her story.
In this week’s episode, I travel to Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. In the first half of the episode, I walk down the Royal Mile with my guide, Jerry Ozaniec, as together we follow in Mary’s footsteps as she made her formal royal entry into the city after her arrival back in Scotland in 1561.
In the second half of the show, I carry on down the Royal Mile to Holyroodhouse, where I catch up again with Liz Manson, President of the Marie Stuart Society and talk about Mary’s eventful life at the palace. If you want to read more about the history of Holyroodhouse and the murder of David Rizzio follow this link to read the blog which accompanies this podcast. To see more images of the palace, join my private FB group, which accompanies this podcast, The Tudor Travel Show: Hitting the Road.
Credits:
Presenter: Sarah Morris
Guest: Jerry Ozaniec and Elisabeth Manson
Produced by Cutting Crew Productions
Resources
For more information on The Tudor Travel Guide’s ‘In the Footsteps of Mary, Queen of Scots’ tour next June, click here.
For up-to-date visitor information on Holyroodhouse, follow this link.
If you want to keep up to date with all the Tudor Travel Guide’s adventures, as well as top tips for planning your own Tudor road trip, don’t forget to subscribe to the blog via www.thetudortravelguide.com.
This podcast now has an accompanying closed Facebook group, dedicated to discussing the places and artefacts discussed in each episode. it is also a place to ask your fellow Tudor time travellers questions about visiting Tudor locations or planning your Tudor-themed vacation or sharing your top tips to help others get the most out of their Tudor adventures on the road. Go to The Tudor Travel Show: Hitting the Road to join the community.
PART FOUR: Edinburgh Castle with Donal Ferrie and ‘An Audience with Marie Stuart’
This month sees the launch of a special celebration of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, here, on The Tudor Travel Show. Throughout September, I will be publishing one episode a week, as I follow ‘In the Footsteps’ of this legendary Scottish queen, visiting some of the most historic locations associated with her time in Scotland. Along the way, I will be meeting up with local guides, (many are members of the Marie Stuart Society), who will share their knowledge and passion for Mary and her story.
In this week’s episode, I travel back to Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. In the first half of the episode, I visit the castle with our guide for today, Donal Ferrie. Join me as we get a private viewing of Mary’s bed chamber and the closet in which she gave birth to her son, James. To see more images of the castle, join my private FB group, which accompanies this podcast, The Tudor Travel Show: Hitting the Road.
In the second half of the show, I am granted a private audience with Marie Stuart herself. As a friendly English Ambassador, I put some challenging questions to the Scots queen. Tune in to hear her reflections on the dramatic events crashing through her life. It turned out to be an ‘interesting’ conversation!
Links and Resources
For more information on The Tudor Travel Guide’s ‘In the Footsteps of Mary, Queen of Scots’ tour next June, click here.
For up-to-date visitor information on Edinburgh Castle, follow this link.
For more details on becoming a member of Historic Environment Scotland, follow this link.
If you want to keep up to date with all the Tudor Travel Guide’s adventures, as well as top tips for planning your own Tudor road trip, don’t forget to subscribe to the blog via www.thetudortravelguide.com.
This podcast now has an accompanying closed Facebook group, dedicated to discussing the places and artefacts discussed in each episode. it is also a place to ask your fellow Tudor time travellers questions about visiting Tudor locations or planning your Tudor-themed vacation or sharing your top tips to help others get the most out of their Tudor adventures on the road. Go to The Tudor Travel Show: Hitting the Road to join the community.
Welcome to this month’s Great Tudor Bake Off! Once again, Brigitte Webster takes us on a culinary journey through Tudor England. last month our seasonal ingredient was the plum and we learned to make a fabulous Tudor Plum Tart. As it is September, this month, our seasonal ingredient will be the humble apple. Make sure you read to the end to watch Brigitte in her outdoor sixteenth-century kitchen making delicious Tudor apple fritters over a real fire – yummy!
The History of Apples in Tudor England
The Biblical claim that God planted apples “eastwards in Eden” was geographically correct because the genetic ancestor of the domestic apple grows wild in what today is known as Kazakhstan.
Apple blossom Malus : Bourdichon Hours, French, early 16th century: (Add 35214 f.67)
In England and northern Europe, apple cultivation may go back to Neolithic times. The Romans are thought to have introduced some varieties of apples to this country, while others were brought by the Normans, returning Crusaders and, in the fifteenth-century, by Huguenots. The first named apple on record was the Pearmain in 1204.
The name ‘apple’, from the Anglo-Saxon ‘appe’l is similar in Celtic. The original meaning of the word is unknown but it has been suggested that in Sanskrit, ‘ap’ means water and ‘p’hala’ means fruit. The Latin name ‘pomum’ is from the verb ‘poto’ meaning “I drink”.
Malus Libri Picturati, sixteenth-century
Apples were not just used as food. There are several cases of apples being used as payment in kind as, for example, from 1315 at the Runham estate in Norfolk where the annual rent was paid with 200 pearmain apples.
Apple Trye, Manuscript Ashmolean, 1504
In his 1597 description of the apple, John Gerard names the fruit the “Pome Water tree’. He also informs us, that the skin can be red, green or yellow and the taste sweet as well as sour. He mentions, that ‘grafted’ apple trees are found gardens and orchards. It was the Greeks that learnt the oriental technique of grafting the steams of improved varieties of apples onto the rootstock of native trees, such as the quince in England. There is a record of Queen Eleanor of Castile, first wife of Edward I, who in 1280 bought grafts of the French “Blandurel” apple for her garden at the King’s Langley Estate in Hertfordshire.
Apple Picker, Pietro Crescenzi
Medieval records also give us an insight into the value of the apple. In a fruiter’s bill of 1292, ordinary apples were 3 pence and a hundred apples of the costard type set you back 1 shilling.
The monks of Reading Abbey were entitled by an agreement to an annual payment of one costard apple, possibly as some kind of ‘peppercorn’ payment. It is believed that it was a cooking apple.
The costard apple is said to resemble a head and hence the term costard head, which was used in Shakespeare’s play “Love’s Labour’s Lost’. Costard is an archaic term for apple or, metaphorically, a man’s head, therefore, in the play the character Costard is a comic country man.
The British word ‘costermonger’, a person selling fruit from a street cart, might come from the name of this apple. Some historians dispute this and suggest instead that cost-monger is the Saxon-English ‘ceaster-mangere’, a town trader.
Image of a Costard
William Lawson, a Tudor age botanist and garden adviser said in 1597, “ Of your apple trees you shall finde difference in growth. A good pipping will grow large, and a Costard tree: syead them on the north side of your other apples, thus being placed. The least will give sunne to the rest and the greatest will shroud their followes.”.
Poma Apples Peter Treveris 1526, woodcut & text
In Platins’s (1421-1481) On right Pleasure and Good Health, he advises that it is safer to eat sweet apples before a meal and sour ones afterwards. He also notes that sweet apples move the stomach and the bowels. The sweet variety which keeps over the winter would also take away inflammation and induce appetite. He also has an explanation for why the apple is ‘cold and damp’ – both properties considered dangerous for sick people – the juice of the apple turns to vinegar when pressed out. However, a healthy person has nothing to fear, as apples ‘moisten the belly and cool the inside’, something especially desired on a hot summer’s day!
William Turner, botanist and Dean of Wells cathedral, gives us the names of the apple in Greek, English, Dutch/German and French in his The Names of Herbes, published in 1548. Thomas Hill recommends in his The Gardener’s Labyrinth of 1577, that apples are best gathered near the ‘ful of the Moon’.
John Gerard in 1597, also goes on to tell us that in Hereford, there was a master whose servants drink nothing but apple juice. He also mentions the process of making ‘Lambes Wooll’, being the pulp of roasted apples mixed with wine and fair water. Apparently, this, drunk before going to bed, will help you empty your bladder. Gerard clearly prefers the ‘corrected’ boiled or roasted and spices added version of the raw, naturally cold and moist apple.
Pome Water Tree, John Gerard, 1597
Shakespeare mentions various apple varieties such as Apple John, Bitter Sweeting, Codeling, Pippin, Pomewater and Costard but often uses the apple as a metaphor.
Here at the Old Hall, we grow over 50 fruit tree varieties, all known before 1700 and a good number of apple trees familiar in Tudor England such as:
Costard
Pearmain (oldest recorded apple in England dating to before 1200)
Crab apple
Codling
Golden Harvey
Pippin
Winter Queening
Decio (Italy)
Edelsdorfer (Germany)
Francatu (French)
Couer De Boeuf (French)
Rambour Franc (French)
Early Ripe Apple – Tradescant’s Orchard
Recipe: Tudor Apple Fritter Recipe
From ‘The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the kitchen‘ from 1588/1594/97 Thomas Dawson:
Old Recipe for Apple Fritters
TO MAKE FRITTERS (Original Recipe):
‘To make Tudor apple fritters: ‘Take a pinte of Ale, and foure yoalkes of Egges, and a faire little Saffron, a spoonful of Cloves and Mace, and a little salte, and a halfe a handful of Sugar, put all this in a faire platter, and stirre them all together with a spoon, and make your batter thereof. Then take ten apples, pare and cut them as big as a groate, put them in your batter: then take your suet + set it on the fyre, + when it is hot, put your batter + your Apples to your suet with your hand one by one, and when they be faire and yellow, take them cut, and lay them in a faire platter, and let them stand a little while by the fyre side Then take a faire platter, and lay your fritters therein, and caste a little sugar on them, and so serve them in.’
TO MAKE FRITTERS (Modernised Recipe):
Tudor Apple Fritters
Ingredients:
Half a pint of ale
Two egg yolks
1 strand of saffron,
¼ teaspoon each of ground cloves and ground mace
A pinch of salt
Approx. 20-50g sugar (to taste)
Enough flour or bread crumbs to produce a fairly thick batter (this ingredient is missing from the original)
Note: if you use breadcrumbs to make these Tudor apple fritters, you need to let the mixture soak in the fridge overnight to achieve a smoother texture.
METHOD:
Mix all ingredients in a bowl with a whisk.
Wash, peel and cut 5 apples (I cored them and sliced them into rings).
In a frying pan, heat enough oil (or animal fat, such as lard or suet). Cover the apple pieces in batter and fry when the oil is hot. When they begin to get golden brown turn them and fry on the other side. When ready, remove and let most of the fat drip off by laying them flat on some kitchen paper towel.
Place the ready Tudor apple fritters, or rings, on a serving dish and sprinkle with icing (powder) sugar. I added some fresh corn flowers for decoration.
Serve and enjoy!
Brigitte’s Tudor Kitchen: A Demonstration
Click on the image below to watch Brigitte make Tudor apple fritters in her outdoor kitchen.
Sources and Further Reading:
A good huswifes handmaide for the kitchen, by Dawson (edited by Stuart Peachey)
On Right Pleasure and Good Health, by Platina (translated by Mary Ella Milham)
Food in Early Modern England, by Joan Thirsk
The Gardener’s Delight, by Thomas Hill, 1577 (edited by Richard Mabey)
Botanical Shakespeare, by Gerit Quealy
The Names of Herbes, by William Turner, 1548
Medieval Gardens, by John Harvey
Herball, by John Gerard, 1597/1633
Ashmole MS 1504, Bodleian Library
The Medieval Flower Book, by Celia Fisher
Each month, our Tudor recipe is contributed by Brigitte Webster. Brigitte runs the ‘Tudor and 17th Century Experience‘. She turned her passion for early English history into a business and opened a living history guesthouse, where people step back in time and totally immerse themselves in Tudor history by sleeping in Tudor beds, eating and drinking authentic, Tudor recipes. She also provides her guests with Tudor entertainment. She loves re-creating Tudor food and gardens and researching Tudor furniture.
Each month, our Tudor recipe is contributed by Brigitte Webster. Brigitte runs the ‘