Tudor Times is the online repository for all things Tudor and Stewart (1485–1625)

The 5th November 1499 was an important day in the history of language. On that day Jehan de Lagadeuc’s Catholicon Armoricain was first printed at Treguier. The Catholicon was the first tri-lingual dictionary, between French, Latin and Lagadeuc’s native Breton. It had first been assembled in a manuscript version some thirty years previously. Whilst it is now a valuable source of information about the Breton language when the Duchy was being subsumed into France, at the time it was intended for badly educated parish priests to understand sufficient Latin to enable them to minister to their flocks.

On 4th November 1530, Cardinal Wolsey was arrested for treason at his palace at Cawood, Yorkshire. Wolsey had had a spectacular career, rising from the son of a townsman of Ipswich to become Lord Chancellor of England as well as Archbishop of York. For over fifteen years, from about 1514, he had been the right-hand man of Henry VIII, so powerful that he was referred to by Ambassadors as ‘alter rex’ (the other king). Nevertheless, he was completely dependent on Henry’s goodwill, and when he failed to attain an annulment of Henry VIII’s first marriage, he rapidly fell from power.

On 3rd November 1527, Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria was elected as King of Hungary. Ferdinand was the second son of Juana of Castile and Philip of Burgundy. Born in Alcala de Henares, Spain he spent the majority of his youth in Spain, where he formed a close relationship with his grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon. On his death in 1516, the older Ferdinand left him 30,000 ducats worth of land in Naples plus 50,000 in cash. Three years later, his other grandfather, Maximilian of Hapsburg, the Holy Roman Emperor, died and was succeeded by Ferdinand’s older brother, Charles. Ferdinand took over management of the Hapsburg lands in Austria.

Ferdinand had married Anna Jagiellon, daughter of the King of Hungary and Bohemia in 1515, in a double marriage between Ferdinand and Anna and their respective siblings, Mary and Louis. When Louis was killed at the Battle of Mohacs on 29th August 1526, Ferdinand was proclaimed his brother-in-law’s successor in Bohemia, with certain conditions. Hungary was an elective monarchy and Ferdinand had a rival – John Zapolya – so although he was elected by one group of the nobility, Zapolya commanded significant support. Eventually, Hungary was split, and Zapolya’s section became a vassal state of the Sultan of Turkey. In 1556, Ferdinand became Holy Roman Emperor, a position he held until his death in 1564.