05/08/2026
🧻 HISTORY BITE 3- MANOR LODGE
Join Bess at Manor Lodge- the prison of both Mary, Queen of Scots, and Cardinal Wolsey.
In 1530 Cardinal Wolsey was imprisoned at Manor Lodge. He had been Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, and was highly influential in the Tudor court (just ask Hilary Mantel!).
He was slow to react to the annulment of the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, so Henry VIII imprisoned him and sent him to Manor Lodge for 18 days.
Cardinal Wolsey started to display symptoms of what he would later die of- dysentery. This is key, as we still have the toilet which would have been in his tower.
I can’t help putting two and two together...