At the beginning of December 1608, Elizabethan courtier Douglas Howard, Lady Sheffield, died, at approximately sixty-five years old. On 11 December 1608, she was buried at St Margaret's Church, Westminster, as requested in her will, "by my sister Dudley".

By early December 1542, Scotland was already in the midst of a harsh winter, with heavy snowfalls and cold temperatures. At Linlithgow Palace, a Scottish royal residence built in the style of a French château approximately fifteen miles west of Edinburgh, Scottish Queen Marie de Guise, had entered her confinement, in preparation for the birth of her highly-anticipated and yearned for child.

On This Day, 30 November, in 1554, poet, soldier and courtier Sir Philip Sidney was born at Penshurst Place, Kent. Detail from 'Portrait Miniature of possibly Sir Philip Sidney', ? Nicholas Hilliard, c.1600 © Victoria and Albert Museum London Philip's parents, Mary Dudley (daughter of the late John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland and his wife Jane Guildford) and Sir Henry Sidney had been married in March 1551, during the reign of Edward VI, to which the groom had been a cl

At the end of November 1558, or early December 1558, shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I, recently-widowed Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, remarried; his new bride was eighteen-year-old Margaret Audley, herself having been widowed the previous year.

On 13 November 1553, the trial of five prisoners accused of high treason was held at the City of London's Guildhall; Jane Grey, brothers Ambrose, Guildford and Henry ('Harry') Dudley, and Thomas Cranmer, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Their charges related to the failed coup earlier that summer, when, following the death of Edward VI in July 1553, active attempts were made to place the teenage Jane on the English throne.