The Tudors 01/02/2008 15:46:00

← Biography of King Henry VIII:

← Henry VIII was born in 1491 at Greenwich palace. He was the
second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Henry had a very spoiled
childhood as you would expect from a royal prince, in fact so spoiled he
even had is own whipping boy who was punished every time Henry did
something wrong! Henry came to the throne at 18 and left at 56, he was
one of Britain’s most powerful rulers. He married six times and left three
children whom was considered his legitimate heir at the time of Henrys
death. He reigned from 1509 till 1547 and died on the 28th January 1547.
After his brother Arthur died, Henry was next in line to be the king. His
farther died in 1509 and the young prince became king just before his
18th birthday.
← Henry had six wives and betrayed five of them but loved one. They
were Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves,
Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr. You can remember what happened
to them by ‘ divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. ‘
← Catherine of Aragon was first married to Henrys older brother,
Arthur, but after six months, he died and Henry swiftly became engaged
to Catherine. She was 17 and Henry was only 12! They were married
when he became king in 1509. Catherine was older and wiser than Henry
and often gave him advice on how to rule. She was a good and faithful
queen for over twenty years. She had many children, but only one
survived, Mary, who would later become queen. When Henry spotted
Anne Boleyn, he wanted to divorce Catherine as quickly as he could so he
could marry Anne. Unfortunately, the head of the Catholic church, the
pope, wouldn’t allow a divorce so Henry declared himself as the head of a
new church of England where the divorce took place. Henry fell in love
with Anne when she was a servant in the queens household in 1522. He
married Anne in 1533, and later that year she gave birth to a girl,
Elizabeth, who would grow up to become a strong queen for England.
Henry soon got fed up with Anne, ( apparently she was really grumpy! ).
He also accused her of meeting other men, so he had her executed while
he was playing tennis!
← 11 days later Henry married his third wife.
← Jane Seymour was from an old and noble family. She was kind and
gentle and not grumpy like Anne. She gave birth to a son in 1537,
Edward, who would become king after his farther. Sadly, she died 12 days
after she gave birth. Henry loved Jane the most out of all his wives and
waited to years before marrying again. Apparently, Henry was calling for
Jane when he was on his death bed.
← Henry wanted to make a good marriage this time so he sent
painters all over Europe to paint suitable brides. Henry was shown a
painting of a young lady called Anne of Cleves and he agreed to marry
her without even meeting her! When she arrived in England, Henry was
very keen to meet her but she didn’t speak English and ignored Henry so
he stormed out shouting ‘I like her not!’. He found her horribly ugly and
called her a horse because of her nose! He couldn’t break his promise to
marry her but it only lasted six months.
← 20 days after his second divorce, Henry married his fifth wife.
← Katherine Howard was a cousin of Anne Boleyn. N one knows her
real birth date but she was still a teenager when they were married and
Henry was 49! She was pretty, kind and a bit of a bird brain but Henry
thought she was perfect. However, she was also secretly engaged to two
other men. When Henry found out he chopped both of the men’s heads of
followed by Katherine’s.
← The following year he married for the last time.
← Kathryn Parr had already been married twice before, but both her
husbands had died. Henry was fat and ill by now and Kathryn was as
much as a nurse as a wife. She was kind and generous and did everything
that Henry asked. She nursed him until 1547 when he died so Kathryn
quickly married Thomas Seymour (her 4th husband.) But he didn’t love
her as much as she loved him so they were very unhappy. Sadly Kathryn
died while giving birth a year later in 1548.
← What did Henry like and do?:
← Well, when he was a young boy his school interests were writing
books and music and had a wonderful talent of arts. He played many
instruments and was a great composer. Henry spoke good French, Latin
and Spanish. He was fond of hunting, ( usually for feasts. ) and he was
also fond of tennis.
← Henry had loads of feasts a day, no one knows how he could
manage them all! He would invite all of his royal friends to come and sit
round a huge table crammed with meat, fruit and who knows. ( Henry
and his friends know! ). In those days table manners were very different,
when people were finished with meat or anything with bones, they would
throw the bones over their shoulder! The other manners were not so odd,
do not scratch your head at the table, do not pick your teeth and cough or
sneeze in to a napkin and there is a few more.
←
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← Tudor Clothes: The wealthy would have fine wool, linen and silk and
some had Egyptian cotton. Linen is made from a plant called flax. They
take strands from the stem that are taken to spin the linen. Linen was
used for all the underwear of both Tudor men and women. ( Henry would
have had huge ones! ). Linen was also used for bedding, sheets and table
covering. The poorer you were the rougher linen you wore, but you would
still have at least two pairs of underwear. It was important to keep them
washed and clean. The thicker the material would have lasted longer and
would have kept you warm when working out on the fields on cold days
and nights.
← People used to sheer sheep for wool. They sheered them in early
summer so the wool would have grown back to keep them warm by
winter and so they don’t become hot in the summer. The wealthy would
wear wool. It was used for mattresses as well.
← Poor people wore simple loose fitting clothes made from woollen
cloth. Men wore trousers made from wool and a tunic that came down to
their knee. Women wore a dress of wool that went down to the ground.
They often wore a apron over this and a cloth bonnet over their heads.
← Tudor food: This is a Tudor food menu.
←
← First course
← Brawn (boar meat)
← Roast tongue
← Leg of pork
← Roast beef
← Roast Venison (deer)
← Meet pie
← Vegetables in season
← bread
←
← Second course
← Roast lamb
← Rabbit
← bread
← Tarts and custard
← Most people ate well, the main part of the meal was meat. This
could be beef, lamb, pork, rabbit, deer, goat or wildfowl, and rich people
ate swans. Tables were made of oak and the dishes were made from
earthenware which was a kind of rough pottery.
← Facts about Tudor food
← The poor Tudors usually ate vegetables and soup, meat was too
expensive.
← There was no fresh drinking water so they had ale with a meal
instead.
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Tudor towns: There were only 4 million people living in Tudor England and
the Towns were not very big. London was the largest and that’s where
Hampton Court is.
Houses: The Tudors built many thousands of new houses. A few were
grand palaces made of stone but most were smaller. Most buildings were
made of wood and plaster.
← Life at home: Everything had to be done by hand so the housewife
was a busy person. Washing would only be done once a month in a big
house, there might only be one wash day in three months. People often
did most
← of their washing outside in a stream or from a well. Only important
people had proper chairs, the rest had to sit on stools. Rich people had a
big wooden four poster beds, beds like these were very precious and
would be passed down to families when people died.
← Tudor schools: Not many children went to school in Tudor times.
Only rich people could afford to send their sons to school. Girls were
either kept at home with their parents to do housework or sent out to
earn some money for the family. Boys were taught to work and the girls
were taught to do the housework. The richest families hired a tutor to
teach the boys at home. At school children used to have to speak Latin,
they were also taught Greek, religion and maths. The boys practised
writing in ink by copying the alphabet. The wooden boards had the
alphabet pinned to them. Children went to school six days a week so they
only got one day of, we now have only five so we get two days off. School
started at 7:00 am in the winter and 6:00 am in the summer. It finished
about 5:00 pm.
← Teaches were very strict, often beating their pupils with a special
cane called a birch if they missed behaved. Teaches used to give 50
strokes of the birch. Children were sometimes to scared to go to school
because of the punishments.
← There were two different types of schools. The petty school which
taught children to read and a grammar school which taught children Latin.
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Pictures:
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