On This Day - Monarchy Forum (2024)

1540 - Emperor Dawit II of Ethiopia is killed in battle at Debre Damo, defending his country from Islamic incursions. He is succeeded by his son, Emperor Gelawdewos.

1753 - (Above) In Turin, within the walls of the Royal Palace, the queen-consort of Sardinia, Maria-Antoinetta of Spain, gives birth to her husband, King Vittorio-Amedeo III's, second daughter. The child is christened Princess Maria-Giuseppina-Liugia but is better known by her French name of Marie-Josephine under which guise she married the grandson of King Louis XV of France, then the comte de Provence. It was a miserable marriage, with one courtier acidly observing that the princess had more hair on her face than her hair, but nonetheless following the death of King Louis XVII in custody in 1795, Marie-Josephine became de jure queen-consort of France and Navarre as her husband became Louis XVIII, king-in-exile. Reconciled with her husband, she passed away at Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire four years before the de facto Restoration of the monarchy in France. Her funeral in Westminster Abbey was a magnificent affair, attended by the Royal Families of France and Great Britain, during which Napoleonic spies reported back the names of the hundreds of loyal exiles who had also come to pay their final respects.

Photograph: Various shots of Quebecois actress Geneviève Bujold as Anne Boleyn in the motion picture Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)

476 - The last Roman Emperor in the West, an adolescent fittingly called Romulus Augustus, is deposed and the direct line of the Caesars comes to an end when the Germanic general, Odoacer, declares himself "king of Italy."

1199 - Joan, comtesse de Toulouse, widow of the late King of Sicily, Guillaume II, and younger sister of the King of England, John, dies at the age of thirty-four in the abbey-complex of Fontevrault, one patronised by her mother, the Queen-Mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, and where the remains of her late father, King Henry II of England lay interred.

1241 - The Picardian-born consort of the King of Scots, Marie de Coucy, gives birth to the future King Alexander III, who will reign from 1249 until 1286.

1532 - (Above) At her new summer house of Hanworth, a gift from the bishop of Winchester, the unofficial first lady of the English Court, Anne Boleyn, the newly-created Lady-Marquess of Pembroke, hosts a dinner party for her old friend and political ally, Guillaume du Bellay, sieur de Langey, the incoming French Ambassador Extraordinary. Du Bellay brings with him a formal invitation from the French Royal Family for the all-important summit at Calais in the autumn, which Anne has assiduously worked to engineer through her meetings with the French Ambassador in residence, de la Pommeraye. The visit will mark the final countdown to Anne's elevation to the queenship, with rumours immediately circulating in the aftermath of dinner party that Anne and King Henry VIII will be married either on French soil or in the Pale of Calais.

1948 - Aged sixty-eight and after a reign of fifty-eight years, Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands, a hero of the anti-Nazi Resistance, abdicates the Dutch throne for reasons of health. The Queen abdicates in favour of her thirty-nine year old daughter, Juliana, and is known as the princess of Orange-Nassau and duch*ess of Mecklenburg. The former Queen dies in 1962, aged eighty-two.

1187 - In Paris, Isabelle of Hainaut, seventeen year-old queen-consort of Philippe II Auguste, King of France, gives birth to her only son, the future King Louis VIII, who will earn the sobriquet of "the Lion," during a short reign which will last from 1223 until 1226. He has the distinction of being the royal father of two saints - St. King Louis IX and Saint Isabel of France.

1548 - At Sudeley Castle, one of the homes of her fourth husband, Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral, Katharine Parr, Queen-Dowager of England and Ireland, and widow of the late King Henry VIII, dies at the age of thirty-six of post-natal complications. A sympathetic modern historian narrates the queen's passing: - "Hours after the birth, she was laid low with puerperal fever, that scourge of medieval and Tudor childbeds, and remained delirious for almost a week. With each passing day, it became more obvious that she was not going to recover. In her delirium, she spoke of her anguish over her husband's faithlessness and betrayal, which was to trouble her to the end, and which she no longer had the strength or wit to conceal. On 5 September, Lady Tyrwhitt went into the Queen's bedchamber to bid her good morning and see if there was any improvement in her condition. Katherine was half-lucid, and asked Lady Tyrwhitt where she been for so long, saying 'that she did fear such things in herself that she was sure she could not live'. Lady Tyrwhitt replied, with feigned confidence, 'that I saw no likelihood of death in her.' But Katherine was not listening ... the Admiral was by the bed, and she grasped his hand, saying, 'My Lady Tyrwhitt, I am not well handled, for those that are about me care not for me, but stand laughing at my grief, and the more good I will to them, the less good they will to me.' There was shocked silence, then the Admiral hastened to reassure her saying, 'Why, sweetheart! I would you no hurt!' To which Katherine replied, with heavy irony, 'No, my lord, I think so.' Then, as he leaned over her, she whispered, 'But, my lord, you have given me many shrewd taunts.' ... The Queen's tirade against the Admiral continued for more than an hour, and was heard by the ladies about her bedside, though they did not leave accounts of it for posterity. Later that day, Katherine's fever subsided, leaving her with no recollection of what she had said. She was very weak, and realised, with her usual common sense, that she was dying, and that it would be best to make her will now, while she was in possession of her senses. Writing materials were brought by her secretary, and the Queen dictated, "I, Katharine Parr, etc., lying on my death-bed, sick of body but of good mind and perfect memory and discretion and perceiving the extremity of death to approach me, give all to my married spouse and husband..." The will was then signed by the Queen and witnessed by Dr. Huicke and her chaplain, John Parkhurst, who gave her the last rites soon afterwards. We do not know if the Queen asked to see her baby daughter before the end, nor are her last words recorded, nor are any details of her death, which occurred ... between two and three in the morning."

1638 - After years of agony over her lack of child, Anne of Austria, queen-consort of Louis XIII, King of France, is safely delivered of a Dauphin at the royal château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The infant, the future King Louis XIV, is given the second Christian name of "Deodatus," translating as "God-given." A modern historian reflects on the future monarch's birth: - "How miraculous was this birth, so unexpected and so awe-inspiring for the mother? Certainly a great deal of prayer had been applied to the subject as the years passed. There were pilgrimages to shrines, as befitted a Queen who throughout her life liked nothing so much as to visit convents and holy places... The Queen was fast approaching the age at which child-bearing itself was felt to be unlikely [and] the sexuality of the husband of this romantic and unfulfilled woman was what would now be called troubled... A nun, a former favourite of Louis XIII, Angélique de La Fayette, was said to have asked her priest to choose a great feast of the Church - presumably the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December - to remind her platonic patron of his conjugal duties: the result was the conception of a more earthly sort. One story however does have the distinction of being believed by Queen Anne herself, and later by her son. This was the prediction in a Parisian monastery of a monk named Brother Fiacre, to whom the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in a vision on 3 November 1637 ... It was evident that Brother Fiacre's sincerity had made a great impression on Queen Anne when they met. Six years later, she called the monk to her presence again with the words: "I have not forgotten the signal grace you have obtained for me from the Blessed Virgin who gave me a son. I have had a great picture made where he is represented in front of the mother of God to whom he offers his crown and sceptre.' ... A more down-to-earth explanation was provided by a story involving Louis XIII, a hunting expedition near Paris cut short by an unexpected storm, and given that the King's separate apartments at the Louvre were not prepared, the need to take refuge in those of his wife on the night of 5 December 1637. The result of this unscheduled propinquity was Louis, born exactly nine months later ... It was on Sunday 4 September that the Queen finally went into labour at the royal château of Saint-Germain. This wondrous castle, adjacent to the small town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, ten miles from Paris, was raised high over the curving banks of the Seine. The air was pure. There were gardens and terraces going down to the river, in which it was fashionable for both ladies and gentlemen of the court to swim. Close by lay the forests so vital to the main royal leisure pursuit of hunting ... The labour took place in public, or at any rate in the presence of the court, as was the royal custom of the time, so as to prevent the possible substitution of a living baby for a dead one - or a son for a daughter... It was 11:20 a.m. on Sunday morning 5 September 1638 that the Queen's ordeal came to an end and hats were hurled violently, joyously, into the air. 'We have a Dauphin!' declared Louis XIII. It was 'the time when the Virgin was at her greatest strength', wrote an anonymous pamphleteer in Le Bonheur de Jour the next year ... And so the child who had been mature enough to be born with two teeth - auspicious in a male, less so for his wet-nurses - embarked on his life with cries of joy ringing in his ears: first of the court, then in the little town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, gradually spreading through all France."

1666 - The Great Fire of London comes to an end, revealing the devastation that it has wrought in the old city. The most famous casualty being the medieval splendour of Saint Paul's Cathedral. Climbing to the top of All-Hallows-by-the-Tower church to Saint Mary the Virgin, Samuel Pepys, his shoes singed from the smoldering ruins of the capital, surveyed the scene, calling it "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw." 13,200 private residences and 87 churches had vanished in the fire, although the royal palaces had more or less been spared since the fire failed to reach the chief administrative and aristocratic quarter of Westminster. Both the King and his brother, the duke of York, who has apparently been named "S

1698 - In attempt to push through further Westernisation of his Empire, Tsar Peter the Great introduces a punitive tax on long beards, a distinctive cultural marker of the old Muscovite boyar classes.

1725 - At Versailles, the fifteen year-old Sovereign, Louis XV, marries the 21 year-old daughter of the deposed King of Poland, Maria Leszczy?ska. Maria is plain, demure and pious and many of the courtiers at Versailles are outraged that a princess of insufficient grandeur had been chosen to be the First Lady of Versailles. However, the reasons for the marriage were sound - although of royal lineage, the princess's family were deposed and thus presented no foreign entanglements to the foreign policy of Cardinal Fleury, the king's premier and mentor. She had been chosen from a list of ninety-nine princesses and grand ladies, but her royal ancestry, Catholic faith and the fact that her family had no previous blood-ties to the French royal house made her the most desirable candidate.

1771 - (Above) In the city of Florence, in modern-day Italy but then part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, María-Luísa of Spain, Grand duch*ess-consort of Tuscany and wife of Leopold, future Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, gives birth to her third son, Charles, named in honour of his maternal grandfather, Emperor Charles VI. The child will eventually duke of Teschen but, despite his epilepsy, he will receive most of his fame as being a valiant opponent of Bonapartism, and as a courageous field-marshal and reformist of the Austrian military. He will marry the lovely Princess Henrietta-Alexandrine of Nassau-Weilburg and father seven children, including Maria-Teresa, future queen-consort of the Two Sicilies. He died in 1847.

1793 - Although it had long been the practice, on this day, almost a year to the day since the September Massacres and the martyrdom of the princesse de Lamballe, the leaders of the French Republic announce an official policy of Terror to govern the nation.

1816 - Faced with an unexpected landslide electoral victory for the ultra-royalists, which sees them win 350 of the 402 available seats, King Louis XVIII of France panics their refusal to accept any form of compromise and to try and push the clock back to pre-1787 will topple the social balance of Restorationist France. Heeding the advice of his premier, the duc de Richelieu, and the duke of Wellington, the King disbands the Chamber, which he himself disparagingly dubbed the "La Chambre introuvable." In the following elections, the Ultras refusal to compromise on anything, even when faced with disbandment, cost them the election. Liberal royalists, the Doctrinaires, carry the victory and it is not until 1823, under the leadership of the comte de Villèle, that the Ultras re-take the Chamber.

1905 - In New Hampshire, President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States of America, successfully brokers the Treaty of Portsmouth, bringing to an end the Russo-Japanese War, which had raged since the previous year. In an eerie and tragic pre-echo of what was to be-fall the United States thirty-six years later, the Japanese Navy had initiated the conflict by striking on the Tsarist fleet at Port Arthur in a pre-emptive movement, before declaring war on the Russian Empire. This, coupled with the scattered nature of the Russian Imperial Navy versus the sheer size of the Empire, meant that Emperor Nicholas II's government had suffered a humiliating defeat at Japanese hands. American negotiations, prompted by fear of what a clash of the two Empires would do to peace in the Pacific, managed to avoid too humiliating a peace being imposed upon the Russian Empire. Both empires were forced to evacuate Manchuria and hand sovereignty back to Imperial China and although the Japanese were allowed access to the vast Russian-built railway network in Manchuria and were granted control of the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, their victory was nowhere near as punitive or conclusive as they had expected. When details of the Treaty are published, Japan is convulsed by the Hibiya Riots. Russia, too, is left in a serious state of civil unrest, as 1905 was to turn into the nightmare year for the Tsarist monarchy, thus-far. However, thanks in part to President Roosevelt, who was awarded the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize, and the brilliance of Sergei Witte, future Russian premier, at the negotiating table, Russia had avoided the worst of the damage that they had feared at Japanese hands.

1918 - As a grotesque tribute to the French Revolution, the Bolshevik government in Russia announces the implementation of a policy of Red Terror to secure the Revolution and the dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Extract taken from: The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir; Love & Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King by Lady Antonia Fraser; the diary of Mr. Samuel Pepys.

394 - The forces of the Christian Emperor of the East, Theodosius I, defeats the armies of the pagan emperor, Eugenius, in the Battle of Frigidus, in a military skirmish which will largely ensure the survival of Christianity as an official religion.

1666 - Within the walls of the Kremlin Fortress-complex, Tsaritsa Maria Miloslavskaya, wife of Alexei the Just, Tsar of All the Russias, gives birth to her youngest son, the disabled Ivan Alexeivich, the future Tsar Ivan V, who will reign as co-tsar with his half-brother, Peter the Great, from 1682 until his own death in 1696. (Above)

1948 - At the New Church in Amsterdam, following the abdication of her mother Queen Wilhelmina, Queen Juliana is formally inaugurated as the Queen of The Netherlands.

1533 - In the Queen's Apartments at Greenwich Palace, London, Anne Boleyn, 26 year-old queen-consort of England, gives birth to her first child, the future Queen Elizabeth I (above.) Eerily, given the fact that Elizabeth is later known as "the Virgin Queen," her mother Queen Anne allegedly took as a fortuitous omen various circ*mstances of her daughter's birth - she was born on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, in a room hung with tapestries of Saint Ursula and various other virgin-saints and martyrs. Moreover, the queen's patron-saint, Anne, was the mother of the Virgin according to patristic accounts. Had it not been for the fact that the King's daughter with Katherine of Aragon already bore the name, the Queen would have preferred to christen the baby princess "Mary." However, after so much political intrigue surrounding the child's conception, the gender causes much comment, as a modern British historian writing on Elizabeth's childhood reflects: - "Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, was born on Sunday, 7 September 1533 at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It was an easy birth: mother and daughter were well and the child took after her father with his fair skin and long nose. But she had her mother's coal-black eyes. These were the ordinary, human details that might characterize the birth of any baby. But Elizabeth was royal. That meant her entry into the world was vested with ceremony and hopes that went far beyond the ordinary. Indeed, as far as the hopes were concerned, they went far beyond what was usual even for a royal birth... The preparations had got underway in earnest in early August when it was decided that the birth would take place at Greenwich. This was the lovely, Thames-side palace where, forty-two years before, Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, had been born. It was the favourite palace of his mother, Elizabeth of York, and it was to become his and his daughter's favourite too. First, the Queen's bedchamber was prepared for her confinement. The walls and ceiling were close hung and tented with arras - that is, precious tapestry woven with gold or silver threads - and the floor thickly laid with rich carpets. The arras was left loose at a single window, so that the Queen could order a little light and air to be admitted, though this was generally felt to be inadvisable.... The Queen's richly hung and canopied bed was to match or be en suite with the hangings, as was the pallet or day-bed which stood at its foot. And it was on the pallet, almost certainly, that the birth took place. Carpenters and joiners had first prepared the skeleton by framing up a false ceiling in the chamber. Then the officers of the wardrobe had moved in to nail up and arrange the tapestry, carpets and hangings. At the last minute, gold and silver plate had been brought up from the Jewel House. There were cups and bowls to stand on the cupboard and crucifixes, candlesticks and images for the altar. The result was the cross between a chapel and a luxuriously padded cell... The Queen's confinement could now begin. The Victorians used the word as a euphemism, but the etiquette of the English court confined a pregnant queen indeed in a sort of purdah. Thenceforward, until the birth and her 'churching' thirty days after, she dwelt in an exclusively female world, attended solely by women. These ceremonies were ambivalent. They emphasized that childbirth was a purely female mystery. And they paid the tribute of the dominant male world to that mystery. But they did so on strict conditions: the queen, literally, had to deliver. They also underscored how inconceivable, how monstrous, even, was the notion of an unmarried and childless queen. For a queen was a breeding machine, or, as the Spanish ambassador put it only a little more elegantly, 'the entire future turns on the accouchement of the queen'. Elizabeth's career was to mount a magnificent challenge to this received wisdom; her mother's, on the other hand, was to be an awful example of its truth. But at least on this occasion, Anne Boleyn did deliver, going into labour less than a fortnight after having taken to her chamber... [but] everybody, including her own father and mother, agreed that [Elizabeth] was the wrong gender. What made it worse was that all the best astrologers and doctors had predicted a boy. Henry VIII had spent the last anxious days of his wife's confinement pondering whether to call his forthcoming son Edward or Henry and organizing the celebratory tournament. The Queen herself had the letter announcing the birth written in advance. Confidently, it gave thanks to God for sending her 'good speed, in the deliverance and bringing forth of a prince'. In the event, the King had to choose another name (he opted for his mother's). The joust was canceled. And the letter was hurriedly altered by the addition of an 's', so that God was thanked for the birth of a 'princes[s].' Nobody was deceived. It was not for this, for a daughter, that Henry VIII had risked his kingdom by divorcing his first wife, and imperilled his immortal soul by breaking with Rome. It was for a son."1683 - Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, and his empress, Eleanora-Magdalena of Neuberg, celebrate the birth of their third daughter, Maria-Anna of Austria. The Archduch*ess will later become queen-consort of Portugal through her marriage to King John V and Regent of the Portuguese Empire for the last eight years of her marriage, following her husband's debilitating stroke in 1742.

1708 - Whilst on a tour of the provinces, Tekle Haymanot I, Emperor of Ethiopia, is assassinated after a reign of just over two years when he is stabbed by various hostile courtiers. He is succeeded by his uncle, Emperor Tewoflos.

1817 - Prince Wilhelm of Hesse and his wife, Princess Charlotte, celebrate the birth of their third daughter, Louise. The Princess will later become queen-consort of Denmark through her marriage to King Christian IX and she will be known by the sobriquet of "the Grandmother of Europe," through her children - who will include Frederich VIII, King of Denmark; Alexandra, queen of the United Kingdom and empress of India; George I, King of Greece and Maria Fyodorovna, empress of All the Russias.

1822 - Brazilian independence is called for on the banks of the Ipiranga River, when the former Portuguese Regent of Brazil, Dom Pedro, son of King John VI, receives news of yet more curtailments of Brazilian autonomy in the wake of the return of central government to Portugal after the collapse of Bonapartism on the European continent. Furious, Dom Pedro - who will in time be both Emperor of Brazil and King of Portugal - unsheathes his sword, removed the crest of Portugal from his cloak and cried, "Independence or death!"

Extract taken from: Elizabeth: Apprenticeship by Dr. David Starkey

214 - In modern-day Serbia, then the province of Dacia ripensis, the future Roman Emperor Aurelius, born Lucius Domitius Aurelianus, is born to an obscure Roman family of what would now be described as 'gentry' origins.

1087 - Following a recent fall from his horse whilst on campaign, during which he seriously injured his abdomen on his pommel, William the Conqueror, King of England and duke of Normandy, dies at the convent of St.-Gervaise in Rouen, the capital of his duchy. On his deathbed, the duchy is bequeathed to his eldest son, Richard, the kingdom of England to his son William Rufus and the enormous sum of five thousand pounds to his youngest son, the future King Henry I. The late monarch is buried in the Men's Abbey he founded (Abbaye aux Hommes.) Twice over the course of the centuries were his bones defiled - once during the Wars of Religion and again during the desecration of royal tombs during the French Revolution.

1513 - (Above) The English armies, under the command of the earl of Surrey (later to have his family's duchy of Norfolk restored to him), inflicts a devastating defeat on the invading Scottish armies, led by King James IV, who is himself amongst the slain at the battle of Flodden. Queen Katherine of Aragon, installed as Regent during her husband's military campaign in France, wants to send the king's corpse to her husband as a gesture of victory, but she is over-ruled by public sentiment and instead sends the deceased monarch's blood-spattered cloak. A Tudor historian writes of Flodden: - "On 22 August 1513, James IV crossed the border with a force of 30,000 men, including a small contingent provided by his French ally. (In his reports, Surrey inflated this figure to more than 80,000.) Surrey had been energetically recruiting and had around 20,000 troops to face the invasion but this was only part of the national response. Catherine and the council had reacted industriously and intelligently to the threat. Sir Thomas Lovell, a seasoned Tudor servant who held various offices including Constable of the Tower and Steward of the Household, was ordered to gather men in the Midland counties as a second line of defence. For her part, the queen became a veritable Boudicca, riding from Richmond to the muster-point at Buckingham at the head of a third army behind bravely fluttering banners, some of which she and her ladies had sewn themselves. In the event, the queen's mettle was not tried in battle because the Scots were halted some 2.5 miles south of the Tweed on the heights above Flodden Field. The English victory at the Battle of Flodden on 9 September was the result of a rare flash of tactical brilliance on the part of the Howard leadership, combined with the rash incompetence of the Scottish king. It may also indicate the gulf between chivalry and the bloody reality of war. According to legend, James refused to allow his artillery to blast the enemy to pieces as they struggled across the marshy terrain on the grounds that it would be 'dishonourable' ... By the time the Scottish standards were captured, the king, several of his nobles (the 'flowers of the forest' long-remembered in minstrelsy) and some 10,000 soldiers lay dead on Flodden Field. It was one of the major turning points of Anglo-Scottish relations. For the rest of Henry's reign, the demoralised Scots were in no position to intervene effectively in affairs south of the border. James was succeeded by an infant son who regency was vested in Queen Margaret, Henry's sister. The result of Flodden was therefore much better than the king could have hoped for. It removed one irritating chess piece from the complex board of foreign policy. It was obvious to anyone who calmly assessed the recent military activities that the Howards' achievements had put Henry's in the shade. No one, of course, said as much openly. Quite the contrary. When Catherine forwarded to her husband a fragment of James'' bloodstained surcoat (tunic), she was careful to affirm that the triumph was Henry's, carried out in his name and for his glory."1543 - One of her modern biographers relates the story of Mary, Queen of Scots' first coronation - as queen-regnant of Scotland, at the age of nine months. It does not simply a ceremony, but a cunningly timetabled ruse by the Queen Mother, Marie de Guise, to assert Scottish monarchical independence from the dynastic ambitions of Mary's great-uncle, King Henry VIII of England, who has recently imposed a treaty aiming to marry Mary to the Prince of Wales, thus subjugating Scotland through their future marriage: - "By a delicious irony it was the thirteenth anniversary of the battle of Flodden - Mary was carried in procession from her nursery at Stirling and crowned Queen of Scots in the adjacent Chapel Royal. The coronation was the most solemn ritual known to the Church and state: its symbolism was sacramental and conferred religious as well as civil legitimacy on her. In the course of the ceremony, a nine-month-old child was transformed into an anointed Queen, possessed of those sacred powers of majesty that God alone could bestow or call to account. In the procession, the earl of Arran bore the crown, Lord Lennox the sceptre and the earl of Argyll, the most powerful of all the Scottish Lords and Arran's brother-in-law, the sword of state. These regalia, known collectively as "the honours of Scotland," are still on display at Edinburgh Castle - they had been obtained by James IV and his son in their tireless efforts to trumpet their own prestige. They were first used together on this day. The crown, originally worn by James V at the coronation of Marie of Guise, was far too big and heavy for a child. It was held over Mary's head by Beaton, who was dressed in the full panoply of a cardinal. He blessed her and anointed her with holy oil. She howled volubly, and kept it up while every bishop and peer present knelt in turn to recite his oath of allegiance... The pro-English Lords were conspicuous in their absence, but otherwise the day passed 'with great solemnity', and was rounded off with banquets, masques, dramatic interludes and other entertainments in the great hall, followed by 'great dancing before the Queen with great lords and French ladies'. Mary's coronation concluded a remarkable interlude that had begun when her mother first turned her attention to Henry VIII's ambassador. It signified a complete reversal of the balance of power. The pro-English Lords had been marginalized and Arran reconciled to Beaton, who was reinstated to office as Chancellor. The treaty of Greenwich was all but renounced: the pro-French faction was ascendant in Scotland. Henry VIII had played his opening hand and lost. He had also learned an important lesson. He would never again, as he told almost anyone who would listen, trust the Scots. Under the watchful eye of her mother, Mary had ascended the throne. And if she was now Queen, her mother was indisputably queen-maker."1585 - In Paris, the future Cardinal Richelieu, the great political premier of King Louis XIII's government, is born into a courtly family - his father is the Grand Provost and a loyalist of King Henri III.

1596 - Formerly co-monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the 72-year old "Infanta of Poland," Anna the Jagiellonian, the last of her line, a great patroness of the arts, Polish culture and a savvy political manipulator dies in Warsaw, the city she so loved. The throne is already occupied by her nephew, Sigismund III Vasa, at the time of her death.

1700 - The future duch*ess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield is born in modern-day Germany as Anna Sophie, princess von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.

1801 - The liberties and ancient privileges of the Baltic Provinces (modern-day Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) are confirmed by Emperor Alexander I of Russia.

Extracts taken from: A Brief History of Henry VIII: Reformer and Tyrant by Derek Wilson; My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots by J.A. Guy