Learn the truth behind popular beliefs surrounding Henry VIII's divorce, the sinking of the Mary Rose, the fanaticism of Bloody Mary, the fate of the Lost Colony, and other key figures and events of the Tudor era.
The Tudor monarchs and the events of sixteenth-century England are subjects and settings for many popular films, television programs, novels, and plays of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Viewers or readers of The Tudors, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Wolf Hall, Elizabeth R, The Other Boleyn Girl, or A Man for All Seasons see compelling and dynamic depictions of the people and events of the Tudor period that are often entertaining but usually inaccurate. Was Sir Thomas More a religious saint or a religious zealot? Was Thomas Cromwell a principled reformer or the brutal agent of a ruthless tyrant? Was the English Reformation initiated by the king's lust for Anne Boleyn, the gentry's greed for land, or a genuine desire for religious reform? Was the Spanish Armada defeated by the English fleet or the winds and waves? These and other Tudor myths and misperceptions will be discussed and clarified in the 10 chapters of this volume, offering high school students, college undergraduates, and other readers fascinated by Tudor history accurate fact-based insights into the period and its people.