The Tudors has long balanced lush storytelling with questionable accuracy, and Season 2, Episode 4 is no exception. While this episode follows the Act of Succession and the Act of Supremacy with surprising fidelity, there are still plenty of historical inaccuracies worth dissecting. From Sir Thomas More’s moral stand to Anne Boleyn’s rivalry with Princess Mary, the series blurs fact vs fiction in Tudor history. Here’s a closer look at what the show got right, what it embellished, and what it invented entirely.

Inside This Post:

• Power, Politics, & Treason
• Anne Boleyn’s Court: Piety, Jealousy, and Hypocrisy
• Princess Mary’s Defiance
• Henry VIII vs. Catherine of Aragon: A War of Wills

Episode 4: The Act of Succession

Cromwell pushes through the Act of Succession, which demands everyone agree that the king’s heirs will come through Anne Boleyn and that he is now the official head of the English Church. Sir Thomas More’s refusal to sign lands him in the Tower. The pope makes Bishop Fisher a cardinal to save his life. Anne frets over her husband’s dalliances and arranges for him to take her cousin Madge as his new mistress. Meanwhile, Princess Mary defies Anne’s wish for her to state that Anne is now the queen and suffers alienation from her father.

Power, Politics, & Treason

This episode has fewer inaccuracies than most of the others, and sticks fairly closely to the facts of the incidents that surrounded the Act of Succession, which legitimized Anne Boleyn as the Queen and made legitimate any of her children in the line of succession (and also made Mary illegitimate and removed her from the succession), and the Act of Supremacy, which declared Henry VIII the supreme head of the Church of England.

Sir Thomas Cromwell pushed both through to eliminate any potential troubles that might later arise; no one but Anne’s children could claim their legitimacy, which would undercut Mary’s ambitions toward the throne, and it affirmed England’s official break from the Catholic Church, effectively eliminating all of his Catholic enemies at court. He knew it would mean the end of those who might sway the king back to Catholicism, such as Fisher and Sir Thomas More, and intimidate and forever silence all other opposition under threat of treason and death.

Of course, this put More in the crosshairs, since he had resigned his role as Lord Chancellor over Henry’s actions, and here we see the result of his fall from grace; his financial situation is severely impacted, he cannot afford to feed and house his grown children anymore (at any time he had twelve people living in his house, between his children and orphans he and his wife took in off the street), and he warns them all that he will be imprisoned after his interview (which is true).

More is bullied, harassed, threatened, and coerced to sign, but while he will lay his pen to the Act of Succession, he refuses to sign the Act of Supremacy on spiritual grounds. The Act demanded he renounce the core beliefs of his Catholic faith. He (and all Catholics) believed the Pope was the successor of Saint Peter, as the legitimate head of the Catholic Church on Earth. To declare an English monarch into the role directly challenged the Pope’s spiritual authority. More believed that doing so would endanger his soul and risk eternal damnation. (He also did not believe man had the moral or spiritual right to dissolve a marriage.)

While he said he would fault no man who signed it, he could not, because it would violate his conscience. More thought that if he retired and kept his mouth shut, the king would allow him to live in peace without taking the oath, but Henry could allow no one to live who disagreed with him and so arrested and executed him. It’s unclear whether Henry pushed for this, or if Cromwell and his Reformist adversaries saw this to get rid of Sir Thomas More, a prolific and influential author, known throughout Europe as a defender of the faith.

During his appearance before the high council, Archbishop Cranmer viciously accuses him of bullying the king into writing the tract against Martin Luther, which Sir Thomas denies. I don’t know if this happened or not, but it’s a clever way to show the audience that Henry absolutely refuses to take responsibility for anything or to admit he was wrong or could even change his mind. His “defense” of the faith is an inconvenience that needs a scapegoat, so Cranmer picks More.

Anne Boleyn’s Court: Piety, Jealousy, and Hypocrisy

The show continues to make George Boleyn unlikable and all of the Bolyens nasty; Anne becomes jealous of the queen’s new mistress and tells her brother to “get rid of her,” so George frames her for the theft of the queen’s jewels and blackmails her out of court. (This is semi-based in truth; Anne dismissed a woman from court whom she called a thief, who is believed to have been the king’s mistress early in his marriage to Anne.) When Anne frets to her father about the king’s wandering eye, he tells her to find a mistress for him she can trust and “control,” who will be no threat to them; so she chooses her foolish cousin Madge.

Then comes yet another cringe conversation in which Madge reassures the queen she is doing her best to follow the purity instructions laid out for her ladies, and reading her scriptures, and Anne asks her to become the king’s mistress. I don’t like the false piety and hypocrisy these writing decisions lay at Anne’s feet. It implies their Reformist ideals are hollow, and the moral tenets of their beliefs have zero influence on any of their decisions. I choose to think Anne refused to become the king’s mistress on moral/religious grounds in real life.

In Tudor Times, Catholicism taught that fornication was a mortal sin. It was an offence against God because it violated a person’s sanctity as a temple of the Holy Spirit. It was a sin against one’s own body, and a potential corruption of the soul. It could be seen as an injustice to others. Basically, it was a Big Deal. It bothers me that Anne is derailing Madge’s moral behavior by suggesting she do everything she can to please the king. (Madge became his mistress, but we don’t know who started it.)

Princess Mary’s Defiance

After being removed from the line of succession, Princess Mary reports to Hatfield House to serve in her sister’s household. (Historically, Anne arranged it and said for the princess’ keepers to “box Mary’s ears” if she did not comply with her new duties.) It was a way for the new queen to assert her authority and remind Mary of her new “lower” position at court. Once she arrives, she meets Lady Margaret Bryan, but in reality, Lady Bryon had been Mary’s governess since 1516.

In a fabulous scene, Anne comes to visit her daughter and “has a word” with Mary. She offers to reconcile her with her father if she will acknowledge Anne as the Queen. Mary raises her chin with defiance and claps back, “I know of no other Queen save my mother, but if the king’s mistress would intercede on my behalf, I would be grateful.” This is historically accurate. Their relationship was famously tense, with Anne constantly demanding respect and Mary refusing to give it. At first, Anne tried to convince Mary to see her as queen; when that failed, she simply wanted Mary to defer to her, but Mary refused.

I also like that Mary’s garments are all buttoned up to her throat, and she is showing no hint of cleavage; it’s a nice visual reminder that she is “pious,” compared to the plunging neckline of the ladies at court.

Henry VIII vs. Catherine of Aragon: A War of Wills

In another lovely scene, Chapuys brings a letter from Catherine of Aragon to Henry VIII, requesting to see her sick daughter and tend to her. Henry refuses because they are not “just any mother and daughter.” He reminds the Spanish ambassador that Catherine of Aragon is a “very proud and stubborn woman, of great and high courage,” and claims that he cannot allow them to meet lest they conspire against him. He says that she could raise an army against him and wage war against him as “fierce as any her mother Isabella waged in Spain.”

Historically, Henry called her “proud and intractable” and said she would “carry on a war against him” for her only child. I don’t think Henry had any reason to fear his first wife, who was in poor health, and was simply punishing them both for not submitting to his authority; but… it’s also politically helpful to keep them apart. Theoretically, if Catherine and Mary were in the same place, the Catholic lords could rally around them in support and march against the king, whose deeply unpopular marriage might make the populace turn against him. It could cause another “War of the Roses” between two households, divided in their view of the line of succession.

Still, it’s a bit of a breadcrumb to Catherine’s fans in the audience, to have Henry admit she is a powerful woman who could take him down if she wanted to, even if she would not “violate her own conscience.” I also feel that the series is severely lacking in Maria Doyle Kennedy and in Catherine this season, probably because she was pregnant with her son.

Minor Inaccuracies:

• George Boleyn and Smeaton start an affair. There’s no evidence of this, and George was widely considered a “ladies’ man” at court.
• Brandon now has a 10-year-old son out of nowhere.