February 13th in the Lords’ year of 1542, Katharine Howard and Boleyn were executed. Katharine is thought to have been 17 and Jane, 36. Both were buried at Saint Peter ad Vincula alongside of the bodies of Jane’s late husband, George Boleyn and Katharine’s cousin, Anne.
January 15th in the Lords’ year of 1559, Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, had her coronation. After a strategically long wait since Mary’s death and burial on the 14th of December, 1558, Elizabeth’s celebrated accession began on the 14th of January. In a series of pageants, Elizabeth boasted about her strictly English genealogy (as opposed to Mary who was half Spanish through her mother) along with several other demonstrative pageant meant to display Elizabeth’s current and future greatness. Her actual coronation took place the next day and was a clever combination of Old Catholic Rituals and New Protestant Regulations to accommodate both Elizabeth’s personal beliefs and England’s Catholic population.
Today, January 7th in the Lords’ Year of 1536, Katharine of Aragon died in Kimbleton Castle. Katharine had been removed from the King’s household around 4 years earlier and after a brief stint at the More Castle, moved to Kimbleton where she lived almost as a recluse. She was unable to see her beloved daughter Mary during this time and received very few visitors though in this time of unimaginable, her piousness reached new heights. In December, a month before, Katharine had apparently sensed her own demise and wrote to her nephew, Charles V, asking him to look after Mary after her death. He would stay true to this promise and more in later years. She also wrote a final letter to the King, who she called her husband to the literal day of her death. She passed on January 7th and though many suspected Anne Boleyn’s involvement or that she had even been poisoned, the court infamously donned the color yellow the following day, The Spanish color of mourning. Rumors were numerous of poisoning, especially when the embalming process revealed that Katharine’s heart was discolored though modern sources would remark that Katharine had cancer. 
oh henryyy
(via snow-on-the-throne)
The Nun of Kent was executed.
ELIZABETH BARTON, “the maid of Kent,” was, according to her own statement, born in 1506 at Aldington, Kent. She appears to have been a neurotic girl, subject to epilepsy, and an illness in her nineteenth year resulted in hysteria and religious mania. She was at the time a servant in the house of Thomas Cobb, steward of an estate near Aldington owned by William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury. During her convalescence she passed into trances lasting for days at a time, and in this state her ravings were of such “marvellous holiness in rebuke of sin and vice” that the country folk believed her to be inspired. Cobb reported the matter to Richard Masters, the parish priest, who in turn acquainted Archbishop Warham.
The girl having recovered, and finding herself the object of local admiration, was cunning enough, as she confessed at her trial, to feign trances, during which she continued her prophecies. Her fame steadily growing, the archbishop in 1526 instructed the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, to send two of his monks to hold an inquiry into the case. One of these latter, Edward Bocking, obtained her admission as a nun to St Sepulchre’s convent, Canterbury. Under Bocking’s instruction Barton’s prophecies became still more remarkable, and attracted many pilgrims, who believed her to be, as she asserted, in direct communication with the Virgin Mary. Her utterances were cunningly directed towards political matters, and a profound and widespread sensation was caused by her declaration that should Henry persist in his intention of divorcing Catherine he “should no longer be king of this realm… and should die a villain’s death.” Even such men as Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, corresponded with Barton.
On his return from France in 1532 Henry passed through Canterbury and is said to have allowed the nun to force herself into his presence, when she made an attempt to terrify him into abandoning his marriage. After its solemnization in May 1533, her utterances becoming still more treasonable, she was examined before Cranmer (who had in March succeeded to the archbishopric on Warham’s death) and confessed. On the 25th of September Bocking and another monk, Hadley, were arrested, and in November, Masters and others were implicated. The maid and her fellow prisoners were examined before the Star Chamber, and were by its order publicly exposed at St Paul’s Cross, where they each read a confession. In January 1534 by a bill of attainder the maid and her chief accomplices were condemned to death, and were executed at Tyburn on the 20th of April. It has been held that her confession was extracted by force, and therefore valueless, but the evidence of her imposture seems conclusive.
The condition of Anne Boleyn’s infamous portrait even surprised me, especially considering that it is the ONLY portrait of the woman done during her lifetime and the most easily recognizable but would you believe that it is in such terrible condition? The Anne Boleyn portrait is in sore need for restoration and donations which will bring that restoration to reality. As a history buff myself and under the assumption that I am speaking to history buffs also, is it not our obligation to protect the only true resemblance of the woman who has captured many of us? We must protect this precious portrait for future generations so our children and their children may look upon this only true imagery we have left of such a spectacular woman who forever altered the history of the world as we know it.
(Source: facebook.com)
