In Discussion Of The Bill, Members Of Parliament Raised No Objection To This Dual Status Of Elizabeth

In discussion of the bill, members of Parliament raised no objection to this dual status of Elizabeth as illegitimate heir, and the result, as Commendone reported, was that Mary was proclaimed 'the legitimate and true successor...and consequently all other women of Henry concubines and not wives, and their offspring bastards.' In her Queen's Title Act, Mary [...] [took] advantage of a public opportunity to settle old scores against those who had harmed her family.

The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I

There is no extant evidence for the queen's reaction to his death, although after a poisoning episode at Fisher's home in 1531 the Imperial envoy had, without any evidence, accused her of causing the tragedy that had killed two of the bishop's servants but had left him untouched. Despite Chapuys' earlier charge, he did not blame her for the bishop's execution, perhaps because the king's angry reaction to Fisher's elevation to the College of Cardinals had been so well publicized. The Imperial envoy also did not blame her for the death of Thomas More that same summer.

The rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, Retha Warnicke

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was the youngest son of Richard, Duke of York and Cecily Neville. By the time his brother became King Edward IV, when Richard was just eleven, he had already endured many hardships, including the deaths of his beloved father and eldest brother Edmund, and foreign exile. However, he soon proved himself to be a young man of character: he was a valiant warrior and a fiercely loyal subject. Though he (likely already) had two illegitimate children when he married Anne Neville, he seems to have been faithful to her—highly unusual for the time. Richard was, of course, hardly a saint. Yet while questions remain concerning his actions following Edward’s death in 1483, the fact remains that he was a remarkably successful and socially-conscious king despite his his brief reign. He died bravely in the summer of 1485 and remains the last English king to have fallen in battle.

It’s oddly reminiscent of how some historians speak about Anne Boleyn, and like, not in a good way-- I’m thinking here of how Starkey wrote about how she “wheedled, pleaded, and cried” to effectively berate~ Henry into exiling Katherine from court/his presence.

I find it weird when Katherine of Aragon biographers try to shoehorn in her being ‘Machiavellian’, like…I think she was politically gifted, I think she used her networks well, I think she knew how to utilize her public moments for public sympathy/approval (famously, like Blackfriars) but sometimes I feel like biographers apply this…weirdly, to private moments?

“The early sixteenth century was a time when prophecies were popular and prophets were confident: men and women puzzled over ancient rhymes which might (or might not) be held to have predicted such mighty topics such as the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the split from Rome, and the dissolution of the monasteries. But no one ever predicted the King would marry six times and, if they had, he would not have believed it. Nor for that matter would any of his six queens have believed the various densities which lay in store for them, if predicted at birth: not one but two princesses were to die cast off; equally surprising, four women of modest enough birth were to become royal consorts; most astonishingly of all…two of these apparently unexceptional women were to die a traitor’s death.” Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII.

Pictured in order: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr