#tudor

This building fool could only be Bess of Hardwicke, a woman whose name is seldom seen in print without the word “redoubtable” in front of it. I wondered if anyone ever called her redoubtable to her face. I redoubted it. ↗

— Joann Spears

#historical-fiction #six-of-one-by-joann-spears #tudors #women-s-humor #historical-fiction

I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpepper ↗

— Katherine "Kitty" Howard

#love #marriage #tudor #love

I did not worry about what a man or woman personally believed, but the nation's official religion should be outwardly practiced by all its citizens. A religion was a political statement. Being a Calvinist, a papist, a Presbyterian, an Anglican labeled a person's philosophy on education, taxes, poor relief, and other secular things. The nation needed an accepted position on such concerns. Hence the fines for not outwardly conforming to the national church. ↗

— Margaret George

#religion #tudor #education

The past is a reality that exists just beyond our reach. ↗

— Joanna Denny

#history #tudor #life

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#gestures #history #power #subtlety #tudors

Even their contemporaries felt that the relationship of Elizabeth and Robert transcended the details on practicality. There had to be some explanation for their lifelong fidelity, and those contemporaries put it down to 'synaptia', a hidden conspiracy of the stars, whose power to rule human lives no-one doubted: 'a sympathy of spirits between them, occasioned perhaps by some secret constellation', in the words of the historian William Camden, writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Theirs was a relationship already rooted in history and mythology. And that moment when Elizabeth heard she had come to the throne encapsulated much about their story. If our well-loved picture of Elizabeth's accession is something of a fantasy - if the reality is on the whole more interesting - you might say the same about our traditional picture of her relationship with Robert Dudley. ↗

— Sarah Gristwood

#love

He lives in my heart and now I must pay for the sin of my own heart. Cut it out! Cut it out! It is the offender, not my head. I have loved and I will be punished for it! ↗

— Katheryn Howard

#tudor #love

If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden chest. A simple rotation of the object solves a great many problems. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#history #practicality #tudors #men

This was dangerous talk—in these enlightened times, a wise woman would never be too clever. The accusation of witchcraft had rid many men of an ugly wife and yet more women of an attractive rival. ↗

— Joss Alexander

#witchcraft #witchcraft-trials #men

Ann Boleyn...a Renaissance Audrey Hepburn in a little black dress. ↗

— Joann Spears

#audrey-hepburn #historical-fiction #tudors #women-s-humor #historical-fiction