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

On This Day (10 July) in 1553, Jane Grey, eldest daughter of Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, the niece of Henry VIII, and her husband Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, was publicly proclaimed Queen of England.

On 13 March 1555, John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, Lord Privy Seal, died at his Westminster home, 'Russell House'.

In December 1643, after an almost 40 year struggle, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery...

On 13 February 1542, Jane Parker, Viscountess Rochford, was led to a scaffold that had been erected on Tower Green...

Anne Askew's name has long been associated with martyrdom in Henry VIII's Protestant England. However, her early years were not necessarily indicative of a woman who would grow up to be at the forefront of rebellion and heresy in the religiously turbulent 1540s.