Category: Tudors

A fun one-hour look into the biggest question that everyone was asking – who should Queen Elizabeth I marry?

In these early months of her reign, the court buzzed with suitors eager for the queen’s hand in marriage.

European ambassadors tried to boost the chances of their masters or their relatives. By 1558, Elizabeth was the most sought-after bride in Europe.

She received overseas offers of marriage from kings and princes and earls and knights of the realm at home.

Despite her reputation as one of England’s longest-serving monarchs, Elizabeth’s reign was a turbulent one. She was the target of an almost endless series of rebellions, conspiracies and assassination plots designed to drive her from the throne.

In this book, you will learn:

• England at her succession
• Strengthening a weakened realm
• The dazzling Robert Dudley
• The suitors raise their hands
• Elizabeth’s religious challenges
• The romantic scandal and the death of Amy Dudley
• The coma at Hampton Court
• Mary Queen of Scots moves to France
• The succession petition on 1563
• Mary and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley
• The murder of David Rizzio
• The death of Darnley
• Bothwell and the ‘casket letters’
• The midnight of the Rising of the North
• The Ridolfi Assassination Plot of 1571

The key political issue of the time was the legitimacy of the sovereign. The Tudor dynasty had a weak right to rule. Its founder, Henry VII, was a usurper with only a dubious claim to the throne. Blue-blooded aristocrats and religious challengers waited in the wings as they engineered her death.

How would Elizabeth deal with the problem?

Rather than scroll on social media, why not spend an enjoyable hour thinking about these royal conundrums.

Prepare to be entertained and educated with this short-read history.

Also available in the Tudor series
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Elizabeth I The Princess: The First Twenty-Five Years
Henry VIII’s Court: Ambition, Betrayal and Death in Tudor England
Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIIIs fixer

This short read is perfect for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth I, was anointed monarch over England and Ireland in the first month of 1559.

Until her death in 1603, the fifth and final Tudor to hold the throne, she was a brilliant queen who impressed both the English and the rest of the world.

Most stellar performers of this calibre quickly burn out, but Elizabeth still shines brightly almost five centu-ries later, and it’s not a mystery why.

She ruled for four and a half decades over a kingdom that had been beset by years of troubles, bringing a more pragmatic and steadying hand to the helm.

Her English navy humiliated the Spanish Armada and explored the four corners of the globe. During the Elizabethan era, William Shakespeare penned many of his famous plays and poet Edmund Spencer scribbled epic, fantastical verse about ‘The Faerie Queene’.

In a position of incredible power, she was courted by a string of princes and nobleman, but Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen had only one true love—the people of England.

This book covers

• Princess Elizabeth arrives
• The King’s Disappointment
• The downfall of her mother
• The arrival of Jane Seymour
• The death of Henry VIII
• Thomas Seymour’s pursuit of Elizabeth
• Elizabeth’s valuable lesson
• Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day queen
• Mary I is proclaimed queen
• The Wyatt Rebellion
• Elizabeth’s imprisonment and house arrest
• Mary’s religious persecutions
• Mary’s phantom pregnancy
• Elizabeth’s succession

Why not spend an hour to educate and entertain yourself in the splendour and horror of the Tudor Dynasty.

This short read is perfect for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

Henry has gained notoriety since his death in 1547.

Famed for his six wives, brutal outbursts, separating from the Roman Catholic Church and his dissolution of the monasteries, but what about the men who made up his court.

How did the interplay between Henry and his courtly factions shape those events?

• Why did Henry choose the advisors he did?
• How did commoners and aristocrats benefit from Henry’s erratic behaviour?
• Why did his aides frequently outlive their usefulness?

Inside you will read about…

• Day-to-day life as a courtier
• Why the monarch needed a court
• Henry’s ascent to the throne over a nation still feeling divisions from the Wars of the Roses
• Anne Boleyn’s ambition to be supreme at court
• The courtly alliances formed and shattered as each queen came and went
• The rise and fall of Wolsey and Cromwell
• How the dissolution brought about rapid social mobility for the time (and what happened to all the money it raised)
• Henry’s war-mongering desires and alliances on the continent
• How King Henry VIII died and the aftermath of his reign

Henry’s belief in his supremacy as head of the English Church and his desperate need for a male heir led to some perilous choices in his lifetime, and to question or disagree with those choices fuelled his craving for executions to maintain his control as monarch.

Unyielding, gallant, tyrannical, paranoid, trusting, inspired, it is plausible that King Henry VIII was all of these things and yet however you view his place in the Tudor Dynasty and British History, his reign was, quite simply, breathtaking.

Find out all this and more in just one hour.