16th Century Historiography - Tumblr Posts

“a woman of the utmost charm in both character and appearance.” 

-Polydore Vergil

Jane Seymour in Anne of The Thousand Days (1969)

More on this ballad , here

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sigynofasgard replied to your post: ID THIS LOSER

ooc: Googled it - maaaan what a load of - well “propaganda” is a nice term. :-p

I know, that is putting it kindly.

Though I’ve been doing some reading up on the concept of “Tudor Propaganda,” and have come across some pretty convincing stuff that argues that the notion that the Tydder’s admin promoted an active agenda of propaganda blackening Richard III’s legacy is largely false. This really surprised me!

But even more interesting is the point that this author made that Henry’s policy was basically “we don’t talk about that shit” and was more devoted to obscuring the known facts rather than actively manipulating them. Which was its own kind of propaganda, I guess. So a good example is the fact that when Henry’s first parliament repealed the Titulus Regius act of 1484, not only did they not read the act aloud, or even refer specifically to the contents of it, but every copy of it was ordered to be destroyed, or turned in to the authorities for destruction, on pain of serious fines or forfeiture.

A lot of other interesting stuff in the article as well, especially wrt the complete non-treatment of the missing sons of Edward IV during Henry’s reign. The ref: C. S. L. Davies, “Information, Disinformation, and political knowledge under Henry VII and early Henry VIII” Historical Research 85:228 (2012), 228-53.

It’s really pretty fascinating, and makes the point that the Polydore Vergil and Thomas More versions of the events of 1483-85 didn’t gain wide circulation until the 1530s and 1540s.

My mind was pretty blown. I may even have done the dramatic forehead slap a couple of times.

“He was thirty-two years old, had reigned two years, one month, twenty-eight days. The only language, it turned out, in which he had been able to communicate himself successfully to the world was the terse idiom of courage, and the chief subject he had been given to express was violence. It had begun for him as a child in violence and it had ended in violence; the brief span between had been a tale of action and hard service with small joy and much affliction of spirit. If he had committed a grievous wrong, he had sought earnestly to do great good. And through his darkening days he had kept to the end a golden touch of magnanimity. Men did not forget how the last of the Plantagenets had died. Polydore Vergil, Henry Tudor’s official historian, felt compelled to record; “King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies.””

— Paul Murray Kendall

Anne Boleyn was the daughter of the wife of Thomas Boleyn, a leading knight; I say that she was the daughter of his wife, because she could not possibly have been his daughter, for his wife conceived and bore Anne while he was away from home for the space of two years as the king's ambassador to France, during which his wife conceived and bore Anne. The reason for this was that, lusting after Boleyn's wife, he sent her husband to France, under the pretext of honoring him with the office of ambassador, in order to enjoy her without danger or suspicion.

Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s 'Ecclesiastical History of the Schism of the Kingdom of England’

Footnotes by the editor:

Though Thomas Boleyn did serve as ambassador to France, this was not until 1519. His wife, Elizabeth Boleyn, gave birth to Anne c.1501.

Henry was around nine years of age at the time of Anne’s birth, neither king nor even heir apparent.