From The Daily Mail:<\/p>\n
\nPower, treason and the best legs in court<\/p>\n
HOUSE OF TREASON BY ROBERT HUTCHINSON<\/b><\/p>\n
What is treason? In Tudor times, as in Stalin’s, it is the charge by which anyone whom a tyrant fears as a rival can be permanently removed – by execution.<\/p>\n
The Howards, Dukes of Norfolk, were not only rich and powerful, they were extremely vain. They called themselves ‘right high and mighty princes’. They built themselves palaces with tennis courts – the indoor sort.<\/p>\n
And out of the four successive fathers and sons considered here, two were beheaded and two came within an ace of having their arrogant heads severed.<\/p>\n
There were no more regular guests in the Tower of London than the high and mighty Howards.<\/p>\n
Add to this that two of Henry VIII’s wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, beheaded for cuckolding him, were Howards – well, Anne’s mother was – and you have a full house of losers in the lethal game of musical chairs that was the Tudor court.<\/p>\n
You might say they had it coming. But you might also say they were victims of Tudor paranoia – the Howards were powers behind the throne, so no wonder Henry and Elizabeth felt insecure.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n