Catherine Parr was born around 1512. She was Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife. Catherine had already been married to a man called Lord Borough. She was in her teens and he was in his sixties when they married. Lord Borough soon died but C...

Anne of Cleves was Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Anne was from the small north German state of Cleves. Her brother, William, ruled Cleves but realised that his sister's marriage to the king of England would greatly enhance his status. After...

Mary I was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her aggressive and bloody attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her pursuit...

John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, (properly The Acts and Monuments), an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferi...

Catherine Howard (born between 1520 and 1525; died February 13, 1542) was the fifth queen consort of Henry VIII of England (1540-1542), and sometimes known by his reference to her as "the rose without a thorn." Her birth date and place of b...

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley KG PC, was an English statesman, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State (1550–53 and 1558–72) and Lord High Treasurer from 1572. Albert Pollard says, "From 15...

Philip II, king of Spain and Portugal, was born at Valladolid, the only son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V and Isabella of Portugal. Philip II, the self-proclaimed leader of Counter-Reformation, assumed the throne in 1556 with a great...

John Dee was a noted British mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He also devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. Dee straddled the worlds of science and...

Admiral Sir John Hawkins was an English shipbuilder, naval administrator and commander, merchant, navigator, and slave trader. As treasurer (1577) and controller (1589) of the Royal Navy, he rebuilt older ships and helped design the faster...

Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death on 24 March 1603. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last monarch of the House of Tudor. Elizabeth was the...

Sir Martin Frobisher was an English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage. All landed in northeastern Canada, around today's Resolution Island and Frobisher Bay. On his second voyage, Frobisher fou...

Lady Jane Grey, also known as Lady Jane Dudley or The Nine Days Queen, was an English noblewoman and de facto monarch of England from 10 July until 19 July 1553. The great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter Mary, Jan...

Edward VI was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first...

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, a renowned pirate, and a politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the...

William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school), and consort music....