The Tudors Season 2, Episode 7, Matters of State, marks a turning point in Henry VIII’s court—where paranoia, power, and prophecy collide. Anne Boleyn’s fears intensify as Catherine of Aragon’s health fades, foreshadowing both her own downfall and the rise of “Bloody Mary.” Meanwhile, Cromwell’s ruthless suppression of England’s monasteries reshapes the religious landscape forever, and the Pope’s family corruption is laid bare in scenes of opulence and hypocrisy. In this breakdown, we’ll examine the historical inaccuracies, symbolic parallels, and lost opportunities that make this one of the most emotionally charged and significant episodes of the season.

Inside This Post:

• A Queen Haunted by Prophecy
• Cromwell’s War on the Church
• The Corruption of the Papal Court
• Catherine of Aragon’s Final Stand
• Minor Inaccuracies

Episode 7: Matters of State

Fearful of her position at court, Anne Boleyn experiences nightmares about her death at the hands of Princess Mary, while her brother George tells her to pull it together and act more like her predecessor, Catherine of Aragon. Sir Thomas Cromwell goes on a ruthless spree of suppressing the monasteries, Henry finds a new obsession in Jane Seymour, and Catherine dies alone and neglected but full of love for her husband.

A Queen Haunted by Prophecy

In the last episode, Anne mentioned an old prophecy about a queen of England being “burned,” and this manifests in her futuristic “vision” dream of being burned alive by Mary Tudor. First, the prophecy existed, but it was a contemporary rumor in the 1530s and probably wishful thinking by Catherine’s supporters toward Anne Boleyn. One source referenced that two bishops and a king would “burn” and set England right again, which could have been a reference to Archbishop Cranmer as well.

It’s a poetic and ominous foreshadowing of Mary I, whose reign would be overshadowed by the “burnings” of the Protestant Martyrs. (I explore the topic here, and suggest that maybe history hasn’t been kind to this vilified queen.) Anne’s behavior causes her father despair, and frustrates her brother, who delivers the ultimate insult in her eyes by telling her she ought to remember how Catherine of Aragon concealed her genuine emotions and behaved with dignity even in distress. This compounds Anne’s belief that not only can she not get pregnant while Catherine and Mary are alive, but that Catherine overshadows her life in every way possible; it’s not until the news comes that Catherine is dead that she feels relief, and as if she is on “the cusp of a Golden World.”

I don’t think the real Anne was this paranoid, although she rejoiced in Catherine’s death, since it freed her from allegations of not being the “true” Queen. She famously wore yellow in celebration the next day, though some people have tried to insist that this was to “honor” the former queen, since yellow was the official mourning color of Spain. (I haven’t been able to find any evidence of this being the case.)

I also like how the series is constantly paralleling Anne and Catherine, in a series of individual moments and scenes that reveals the distinct differences between them. In this episode, Anne tries to get political with her husband and push her agenda, only for him to grab her hand and issue a veiled threat to put her in her place. It’s a delightful contrast to an almost identical scene in the first season, where Catherine jerked her arm free and doubled down on her lineage, giving her credibility. Anne has nothing. Little to recommend or protect her, and no way to go toe-to-toe with Henry. It’s the beginning of the end for her, and she knows it.

Later, after hate-sex, Anne tells Henry she cannot conceive a son with him until Catherine and Mary are dead. Henry gives her a “this woman is cray-cray” look and demands to know if she is asking him to KILL THEM?

Cromwell’s War on the Church

Much of this episode revolves around scenes establishing Sir Thomas Cromwell’s desire to get rid of all Catholicism in England, including financially looting and closing down the monasteries. In one scene, he mentions wanting to get rid of the Catholic feast holidays, which proves his upper-class status. Saint feast days were the only holidays during harvest season that the working class received, so being rid of them would not be a popular move. During the harvest, they worked long hours (from dusk until dawn), and the Church-enforced holidays were a time to eat well and rest up for the next day’s brutal toil.

We know little about Cranmer’s wife, Margarete, but in The Tudors, she’s a fiery Reformist who thinks her husband and Cromwell should move faster and take the reforms further. This partially spurs his investigation into the monasteries, where he sends Henry’s Librarian out to harvest the best books for the royal library and to find any titles that might be “useful” to doubling down on royal authority.

In another scene, French mercenaries clear out the religious houses. This stems from a rumor, but it’s unsubstantiated. The English nobility of the time bought up the religious houses for cheap, often as the resident cleric put it up for sale, kicked out the residents, and profited off the land, animals, and buildings. The priests thought it was better to get something off the local landowner rather than be shut down by the king. Henry and Cromwell couldn’t do anything about it, so they took to extorting the landowners and the Church instead. (Good times! Daddy Tudor would be proud!)

The Corruption of the Papal Court

After waxing about celibacy being an immense relief last episode, the Pope proudly introduces all of his cardinals to his fourteen-year-old grandson, Alessandro. Most audiences won’t get the implication, but this is an example of the nepotism in the Papal family and his constant abuse of his authority in increasing his family’s wealth. Pope Paul used his position to grab properties and appoint family members to powerful positions… because being a bishop or a cardinal meant that person received an enormous amount of property and income from the tenants, investitures, and goods that came from his land. It’s one reason Henry was so keen to seize all the monasteries.

He has a line about “He will make an excellent cardinal, won’t he?” In real life, he made three of his grandsons cardinals at 14, 15, and 16 years old. It didn’t matter that the boys knew nothing and could not be an authority in divinity at that age; it was just to set them up for life, stack the Conclave in his favor, and expand all their territories and holdings.

There’s a line about hiring Michaelangelo to create a ‘Last Judgment’ for the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, which is funny, because in the last episode, he was halfway through with painting it (maybe the scenes were filmed out of order?).

Catherine of Aragon’s Final Stand

Many of the details of Catherine’s death are accurate, but there’s more to the story than The Tudors shows. The series depicts her death as happening in the spring, on the cusp of May Day, but it really happened in the dead of a snowbound winter. She died at Kimbolton Castle, not The More. And she was not alone, with only one lady-in-waiting.

In one of the more touching moments of history, her best friend, Lady Maria de Salinas-Willoughby, was at her side, despite being forbidden by the king to see Catherine. Maria, or Estrella as I call her in my novels, was at the time widowed and living with her daughter and her son-in-law, Charles Brandon. When she heard Catherine was dying, she petitioned the king for the right to visit her, but the vicious old bastard refused. So rather than ask permission again or forget about it, Maria saddled up a horse and went anyway.

Assailed by the storm, her horse slipped and fell, dumping her into a snowbank. She turned up at Kimbolton with a limp and, even though the guards had been forbidden to let anyone visit Catherine, persuaded them to let her inside the castle to warm up. As soon as she got her foot in the door, Maria bolted herself inside Catherine’s room and refused to leave until after Catherine’s death. This absolute badass best friend of history, who arrived with Catherine from Spain, sat with her until she drew her final breath, and then went home.

And Henry did nothing about it.

What could he do that wouldn’t make him look bad?

But she took an almighty risk, out of love for her best friend.

That’s a story The Tudors should have told, and a lost opportunity to tug at our heartstrings even harder. I do like that they had Mary visit her in a hallucination/dream/visitation as she lay dying. And the scene where she writes Henry a last farewell is touching, even though recent scholarship has called the letter into question.

Several historians claim it existed, but cite no sources, which means they are sketchy or it no longer exists. No copies circulated until 100 years later. Giles Tremlett calls the letter an ‘almost certain fabrication’ in his biography of Catherine from 2010. Even if it’s not true, the show reproduces most of her touching words, in which she forgives Henry for his transgressions and asks him to get right with God, ending with her desire to lay her eyes on him above all others.

Maria Doyle Kennedy has been a magnificent Catherine of Aragon since the beginning, which makes her relative absence in season two harder to bear. She was pregnant, which probably reduced her screen time; either that or Michael Hirst had too many stories to tell, and figured the most important aspects of her life were “over” within the narrative. But there is a lot of confrontations and moments they could have included, and Maria makes for one of the most empathetic yet powerful depictions of the queen. Catherine is usually shuffled off to the side and ignored as the old biddy who won’t give up her throne, but here she’s allowed to be a grieving mother, a loyal wife, a political strategist, and a heartbroken queen in exile.

Sadly, Henry did not honor any of Catherine’s burial requests. He did not pay her servants as she requested and buried her in obscurity. A radical Protestant chosen by Anne Boleyn presided over her funeral, who lied and said she had accepted the Royal Supremacy and agreed that she had never been married to Henry. BOO. Hiss.

Minor Inaccuracies:

• Thomas Wyatt shows up at the More to sweep Elizabeth Darrell off her feet, only to find she has hanged herself in despair. As I mentioned earlier in this series, she became his mistress; they had several children together, and she outlived him. But there was nowhere for this plot line to go, so they killed her off, even though a woman as religious and devout as she claimed to be would know suicide would damn her to hell. Sigh. Just… no.
• Henry and Brandon go out hunting and show up at John Seymour’s house, Wolfhall. First, his estate was seventy miles from London, so it would take more than an hour or two to get there for an impromptu visit. Second, there’s literally nobody with them. No guards, no courtiers, no companions. They meet him alone, dine with him alone, reminisce with him about France alone. The real Henry would have hunted with an entourage and had a host of servants, courtiers, grooms, dog handlers, etc., with him. And the minute he decided to drop in on an old friend, someone would have rushed up the road to warn them, so they could prepare a feast.
• It always drives me nuts that after Henry kills the deer, he wipes the blood on his sleeve. ON HIS SLEEVE. That fabric is costly, and he has just stained it. Some poor servant is going to have to try to get out that stain. But it’s also a good illustration of how careless he is and inconsiderate of everyone but himself.
• Henry meets Jane for the first time at Wolfhall in the series, but in history, she had been at court for years, serving Catherine of Aragon and then Anne Boleyn. He would have known her already.
• Mark Smeaton mentions an arranged assignation with George, who glances at his wife and says he might not make it. Mark gets huffy and asks if George has “told your wife about us yet.” WHAT??? This is not modern times, when gays have rights; this was a time in which the crime of sodomy at least would get you whipped or your property confiscated, and at worst, would get you executed. Even if they were gay (which they weren’t), they would have told no one about it.
• Young Elizabeth is blonde rather than a redhead.
• Anne and Henry dance to the Volta, which was not invented for another 20 years in Italy. Catherine de Medici made it popular in France in the 1580s. But Michael Hirst loves to use it as a scandalous dance (and it was, since it involved a crotch lift), since he also makes a big deal of it in his film, Elizabeth.