Ten Tudor Anecdotes
Did you know…..?
Such was the celebrity power of the Virgin Queen that one in four girls born during her reign was named after her.
In latter years of her reign, Elizabeth’s maids were forbidden to wear bright colours in order that the Queen should seem more dazzling and jewel-like.
Elizabeth had the first known example of a wristwatch - given to her by her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
Entertaining Elizabeth for 19 days at Kenilworth Castle cost Robert Dudley £19,000 in 1575 - a staggering £3.4 million at today’s prices.
When in a bad mood, the Virgin Queen was known to swear, spit and throw things at her courtiers (not to mention threatening to send them to the Tower).
Elizabeth may not have been afraid of the Spanish Armada but she was afraid of mice.
Lacking photography or film, Elizabeth commissioned many portraits in order to impress her subjects; The National Portrait Gallery alone has 76 associated portraits.
Shakespeare’s original Globe Theatre burnt to the ground after a cannon fired during a performance of Henry VIII set fire to the roof.
Bitterly divided in life, Elizabeth and her half-sister Mary I lie together in Westminster Abbey. "Partners both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of the Resurrection"
The innocuous-sounding nursery rhyme Goosey Goosey Gander, refers to the persecution of Catholics (and to the hiding of priests in ‘priest holes’), and who ended up thrown ‘down the stairs’.