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

On 12th October 1537, Queen Jane Seymour gave birth, after a long and arduous labour, to a boy. It was St Edward’s Day, so the little prince was named after him. His father, Henry VIII, was beside himself with joy – it was more than 25 years since his first-born son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, had been born and died within a few weeks. Prince Edward was born at Hampton Court Palace, but would spend much of his childhood at Hertford Castle, considered healthier, because further away from London.

A strict regimen was designed for the care of the child, to try to prevent any childhood illness carrying him off. He was not to be approached by anyone not in the very best of health, all his clothes were to be aired before he was dressed and his food was carefully tasted. He seems to have been a healthy baby, but his mother, sadly, did not recover from his birth.

On 11th October 1537, the Lincolnshire Rising, which had begun some 10 days before, collapsed. Faced by a royal army, gathered at Stamford, over half the rebels fled the field, having been promised the King’s Pardon. The leaders made the local gentry who had been coerced into joining them, swear that should the pardon not be honoured, they would lead them in the field again. Richard Cromwell, (Thomas Cromwell’s nephew) wrote to his uncle ‘My lord admiral is so earnest in the matter that I dare say he would eat them with salt. I never saw one triumph like unto him.’ Another group of men, ordered to muster at Ampthill, were dismissed. But the government had relaxed too soon – a far bigger and more dangerous threat was already massing in Yorkshire.

Picture of William FitzWilliam, 1st Earl of Southampton

On 10th October 1530, Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, died. He was about 53. Dorset was the grandson of Queen Elizabeth Woodville by her first marriage, and thus half-nephew to Elizabeth of York. One of Dorset’s early tutors was Thomas Wolsey, later Cardinal, and many of the men associated with Wolsey, and later Thomas Cromwell were Dorset’s friends and associates. Dorset’s mother was one of the richest women in England – Baroness Harrington and Bonville in her own right.

She and Dorset quarrelled over his inheritance – she insisted on her right to manage the Dorset estates as widow of the first Marquess, even after her remarriage. Her son, angry at her second marriage to a man nearly twenty years younger than herself, tried to obtain control of it. Although an arbitration was made by Henry VII, mother and son continued to argue over money for the rest of her life. In an attempt to bring Dorset fully into the Tudor fold, he was married to Lady Margaret Beaufort’s half-niece, but had no children. By his second marriage, he was grandfather to the tragic Grey sisters – Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey.

Picture shows ruins of Dorset’s home, Bradgate, in Leicestershire