Index to A Who’s Who of Tudor Women

A Who’s Who of Tudor Women

was compiled by

Kathy Lynn Emerson

to update and correct

her very out-of-date

Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth-Century England (1984)

Read This First:

These pages are not meant to be scholarly or all-inclusive. They are set up to help identify women who lived during the Tudor era (1485-1603). The information in them has been accumulated primarily from a footnote here and a paragraph there in the histories and biographies dealing with better known people and events. No complete bibliography is possible, nor was it possible to give a specific source for every single detail in every single entry. Some details had multiple sources. Some came from undocumented sources. Some I found forty years ago and neglected to make a note of my source. That said, if you go to the end of this page, you will find a bibliography of the sources which provide information (still, for the most part, in small snippits), on a great number of Tudor women.

I write the entries in A Who's Who of Tudor Women myself and make additions and corrections as needed. I don't mind sharing this information. In fact, I'm happy to have it reach the widest audience possible. But I would appreciate being identified as the author of individual mini-biographies appearing on other websites, preferably with a link to this webpage, when my words appear in substantially the same form as they do here. All material included in this Who's Who is ©2008-12 by Kathy Lynn Emerson (all rights reserved).

The women included in A Who's Who of Tudor Women lived at least part of their lives between 1485 and 1603. Each must have done something during her lifetime that I find interesting. In some cases, that something was simply having her portrait painted or an effigy made in her likeness, or holding a post in a royal household. Just making multiple marriages and having children usually isn't enough on its own to qualify a woman for inclusion here.

Entries are arranged alphabetically by the maiden name of the subject or by married surname if the birth name is unknown. Each entry is cross referenced by married surname(s). To find a subject by her husband's title, consult the list of Titles Used in Tudor Times. I add new entries and make additions and corrections to existing ones regularly, so please visit often to see what's new. To reach the section you are looking for, click on the appropriate letter of the alphabet.

A B-Bl Bo-Brom Brooke-Bu C-Ch Cl-Cy D E F G H-He Hi-Hu I-J K L M N O P Q-R Sa-Sn So-Sy T U-V W-Wh Wi-Z

How the Who's Who Came to Be:

Titles used in Tudor Times:

Lists of Women at Court:

List of Recent Additions to the Who's Who:

A Note on Dates and Why You Shouldn't Trust Them:

Select Bibliography
(sources used in creating a dozen or more individual entries)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online

Arnold, Janet, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd (1988)

Bellamy, John, Strange, Inhuman Deaths: Murder in Tudor England (2005)

Bindoff, S. T., ed., The History of Parliament The House of Commons 1509-1558 (1982) (3 vols.)

Bynre, M. St. Clare, ed. The Lisle Letters (1981) (6 vols)

Ford, David, Berkshire History

Goldsmith, Joan Barbara Greenbaum, All the Queen's Women: The changing place and perception of aristocratic women in Elizabethan England 1558-1620 (unpublished PhD dissertation, 1987)

Green, Nina, transcripts of wills and other documents at Oxford-Shakespeare.com

Harris, Barbara J. English Aristocratic Women 1450-1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (2002) (and also numerous articles written by Harris and published in a variety of scholarly journals)

Hasler, P. W., ed., The History of Parliament The House of Commons 1558-1603 (1981) (3 vols.)

Hayward, Maria, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (2007)

Merton, Charlotte Isabelle, The Women who served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth: Ladies, Gentlewomen and Maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553-1603 (unpublished PhD dissertation, 1991)

Richardson, Douglas, Magna Carta Ancestry (2011)

Sutton, Anne F., The Mercery of London (2005)

to send email to Kathy Lynn Emerson click here:
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