The ultimate sibling rivals
QUESTION Did half-sisters Elizabeth and Mary Tudor have a good relationship?
Families are complex at the best of times, but surely few can compare with the Tudors.
mary was 17 years her half-sister’s senior. Born in 1516, for the early part of her life she was described as ‘the pearl’ of her father Henry Viii’s kingdom.
Her world imploded when he divorced her beloved mother Catherine of aragon and separated from the Roman Catholic Church in order to marry anne Boleyn.
On the birth of elizabeth, mary’s status was radically altered. Her rank was downgraded from princess to merely ‘the lady mary, the King’s daughter’ and her household was disbanded.
aged three months, elizabeth was sent to live in Hatfield House under the charge of anne’s uncle and aunt, sir John and lady shelton. mary’s humiliation was complete when she was sent to be the infant’s lady-in-waiting.
When she arrived, she was asked if she wished to pay her respects to Princess elizabeth. she replied that she ‘knew of no other princess in england but herself; that the daughter of madame de Pembroke was no princess at all’.
Despite this, reports suggest she acted in a maternal fashion towards her sister, saving her ire for anne Boleyn, whom she loathed and refused to recognise as Queen.
at Hatfield, mary was subjected to petty restrictions and bullying. Her jewels were confiscated and she was not permitted to walk in the gardens, attend the parish church or the public gallery of the house lest she attract public support.
This oppressive atmosphere took its toll on her health and she remained of a delicate constitution, prone to stressrelated illnesses, for the rest of her life.
Following the execution of anne in 1537 and the birth of their half-brother edward the following year, mary and elizabeth were restored to the succession.
They occasionally met at court and mary is said to have acted cordially towards her half-sister.
However, following the death of edward Vi in 1553 and the plot to put lady Jane Grey on the throne, elizabeth’s position became precarious. mary was proclaimed Queen on July 19. On July 31, elizabeth rode out of london to escort her into the city. in the euphoria of becoming Queen, mary greeted her younger sister with great affection and, on august 3, when mary rode in state, elizabeth was immediately behind her.
This warm state of affairs cooled rapidly and mary spread rumours that elizabeth did not resemble Henry Viii, but the musician mark smeaton — ‘a very handsome man’, but also the lowest status of the five executed as anne Boleyn’s lovers.
The sisters’ relationship reached its nadir in 1554 when mary crushed a Protestant rebellion led by sir Thomas Wyatt in the name of elizabeth.
The young Princess was taken to the Tower of london suspected of treason. Her life was on a knife-edge, but the clever elizabeth survived interrogation.
Following a phantom pregnancy, on November 6, 1558, the weak and ill mary officially recognised elizabeth as her heir. On November 17, mary died, aged 42, and 25-year-old elizabeth succeeded to the throne.
Alison Thatcher, Kidlington, Oxon.
QUESTION Which part of the UK is farthest from the sea?
aCCORDiNG to the Ordnance survey, Church Flatts Farm, just outside the village of Coton in the elms, Derbyshire, is the farthest point from the sea.
The nearest place that is officially recognised as the sea is 70 miles away at the low water mark at Fosdyke Wash, near Boston, lincs. The nearest tidal water — part of the sea at high tide — is 45 miles away at Cromwell lock on the River Trent, near Newark, Notts.
However, it is Fosdyke marsh that gives Church Flatts Farm its claim to fame as there are many other places further from the sea at high tide.
The tide has a significant part to play when it comes to geographic statistics. england’s smallest county is the isle of Wight, but only at high tide. at low tide, Rutland is smaller.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton.
QUESTION Does Belarus have its own language? If so, how different is it from other Slavic languages?
slaViC refers to a group of east european tribes with related languages. The word is thought to derive from slovo, meaning word, denoting a people who speak the same language.
However, by aD 1000, separate east slavic, West slavic and south slavic languages had emerged.
Between the 11th and 14th centuries, they split into the modern slavic languages of Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukrainian in the east; Czech, slovak, Polish, Kashubian and sorbian in the West; and Bulgarian, macedonian, serboCroatian and slovene in the south.
The Belarusian language is a venerable one. it was an official language of the Grand Duchy of lithuania from 1230 to 1596. in 1517, the scholar Dr Francysk skaryna published the Bible in Belarusian — only the third nation after the Germans and Czechs to have a printed Bible in its native language.
its script is Cyrillic and the alphabet looks similar to Russian and Ukrainian. Belarusian is phonetic — most of the words are written the same way they are spoken — while in Russian the spelling and pronunciation often differ, almost as much as in english.
While spoken Belarusian sounds similar to Russian, the languages are only partly mutually intelligible.
a key difference is that Belarussian uses an ‘h’ sound that is not found in Russian. it also has ‘dz’ and ‘ts’ sounds that are closer to Polish than Russian.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.