Historical Inaccuracies - 'The Tudors', Series 2, Episode 2

• The first thing to point out is that the timeline in this episode is horribly mixed up. At the beginning, you see that it is snowing, and that the court is exchanging Xmas gifts (which were actually exchanged during New Years). We surmise that it is Xmas 1532. However, this scene precedes those where Anne is created Marquess of Pembroke (happened in September 1532), and where Henry tells Anne about the trip to France (happened autumn 1532 after she became Marquess). Thomas More is also still the chancellor, when he had already resigned because of the submission of the Clergy.
• As above, the scene where Cromwell and Cramner are talking is marred by confused timeline. If it was during the winter of 1532, then the old Archbishop Warham would already have died, in August, and Cranmer would have been named as Archbishop, although it took him some time to come back from his post abroad.
• When Anne finds the cards in her rooms, she is finally wearing the right sort of costume! Not an inaccuracy, I know, but worth mentioning as the costumes in the series have tended to be inaccurate when it would be so easy to have just made them properly.
• When Henry confronts the church members about their oath, Cromwell and Boleyn are shown standing on the raised platform that holds Henry's throne, under the canopy of estate. They never would have stood there, as this area was reserved for the King only. 
• Henry and Anne attend a sermon by a friar, William Peto. Firstly, Henry is not in his private closet, as he would have been. Secondly, the sermon was given at Easter 1532, not Xmas.
• When Anne is made Marquess, she is given lands worth £100,000 a year. This was an unbelievably large sum for that time, and the actual figure would have been £1000.
• Mark Smeaton talks to Mary Boleyn whilst they are in France, and she mentions that her husband is dead. Her first husband, William Carey, had actually died of the sweating sickness in 1528, several years before this episode is set.

Historical Inaccuracies - 'The Tudors', Series 2, Episode 1

• Parliament is shown meeting at Westminster, but they use the same set as they did for the Legantine trial at Blackfriars. Parliament itself looks very small; I'm sure it was made up of more members than are shown in this scene.
• During the Parliament scene, it looks like the members for the House of Commons and the House of Lords are all in the same room, when they would have met seperately. Henry is not sitting under a canopy of estate, which he would have been. There are also several men seated behind him on a raised platform when, in reality, no one would have sat higher than the King.
• Warham says he will put Henry's new title to Convocation (parliament of the church), but then conducts a vote right there. Convication actually met seperately from Parliament so there was actually a lot of running back and forth with messages etc, and many delays.
• The arial view of Rome apparently shows buildings which were not built until much later.
• The pope suggests assasinating Anne Boleyn. No such plot was ever concocted, so the following scenes about it through the series are complete fabrication.
• Cranmer is introduced to George Boleyn when the two would have known each other already, as Cranmer was a friend of the Boleyn family.
• Boleyn is shown hiring Bishop Fisher's cook to poison him. There was actually an incident where poison was put into soup at the Bishop's household, and several poor people supping there died. The Bishop became ill but survived. Thomas More was not dining there at the time, as the series depicts. However, there was no proof that the Boleyn's were behind it. The cook said he'd put it in as a joke. 
•  Thomas More was not present when Katherine left the palace.

Historical Inaccuracies - 'The Tudors', Series 1, Episode 10

• The King's council is shown meeting in the Great Hall of the palace when I think they avtually met at Westminster.
•  The protestant reformer, Simon Fish, is arrested for heresy by Thomas More and burned. Fish was indeed arrested for heresy but died of plague before he could stand trial, in 1531.
• Anne Boleyn is shown dining with Henry in the great hall, and again she is wearing a rediculous head-dress which would not have been fashionable or seemly at the time. 
• Henry tells Anne that he is giving her Wolsey's old palace of York Place. This did indeed become a royal residence, and was re-named Whitehall. The series has consistently shown Whitehall to be Henry's palace from the start, even though he did not aqcuire it until the 1530s, and he had many palaces which he lived in on a sort of 'rotation' basis.
• Wolsey is shown being forcibly arrested by guards and the Duke of Suffolk He was actyally arrested, very civily, by the young Duke of Northumberland, acting on behalf of the King. Wolsey questioned Northumberland's authority and initially refused to go with him.
•  Katherine tells Chapuys (who wasn't leaving, just having a few months break) that she could not condone a war to help her. Chapuys actually spent the next few years constantly pestering both her and the Emperor to agree to a war to overthrow Henry. Thankfully, the Emperor was never interested.
• Wolsy commits suicide whilst a satirical play about his life is performed. The play 'On the Cardinal going to hell' was actually performed as depicted, but Wolsey did not kill himself. He died of what is believed to be dysentry whilst staying at Leicester Abbey on his way to London to stand trial. 

Historical Inaccuracies - 'The Tudors', Series 1, Episode 9

• Henry's sister Mary (not Margaret) did in fact die of tuburculosis. However, she died in 1536, not in 1529 when this episode was set. 
• Wolsey is removed from office by Norfolk and Brandon, and told to go to the house at Jericho. He actually went to one of his own houses at Esher, which was in a state of some neglect.

Historical Inaccuracies - 'The Tudors', Series 1, Episode 8

Firstly, I did not find anything majorly wrong with episode 7, as it was focussed on Henry's fears about the sweating sickness. In fact, the portrayl of Henry's worries about illness and death, and his ametuer efforts to prevent them, was very good. Below is a summary of the innacuracies in episode 8.

• In the first scene, Henry and Katherine are sitting for an artist. No joint painting of Henry and Katherine exists. Of course, this does not mean that one wasn't produced but, during the time when this episode was set, Henry would not have agreed to be painted alongside Katherine as he no longer thought of her as his true wife and Queen. 
• The scene where people are dancing in the great hall brings up a point about costume. The dresses the ladies wear are more Elizabethan than Henrician in their design. The most notable thing about this is that they do not have long, flowing sleeves. Henrician dresses had sleeves which were so long they almost touched the ground and, which for the richest, contained many layers of sumptuous fabric. It's a shame that little details such as this, which are not hard to do, were ignored during the making of the series.
• Katherine is visited by Bishop Tunstall and Archbishop Warham, and accused of perhaps plotting against the King. In reality, she was visited by a large delegation of Bishops and other notable figures, and this was not the only time Henry attempted to intimidate her in this manner.
• Anne Boleyn makes a new motto, which should have read 'that's how it will be, grudge who likes'. She only kept it for a short time, after she learnt that it was part of a motto for the court of Bourloigne, part of the Emperor's territory, and people were mocking her for it. 
• Thomas More brings Bishop Fisher to Queen Katherine. Fisher was actually already a part of the Queen's legal team, and she had known him for many years. She had written to him asking for advice when the issue of the divorce first arose, to which he publicly replied that she should obey the King, but he privately begun reading arguments against the King's case. He would always remain an increadibly steadfast supporter of the Queen.
•  Henry and Anne play cards, and Henry remarks on Cromwell's mission to the Pope. It was actually Gardiner who wrote the lines about paster-noster and creed when he was sent to the Pope to persuade him to act on the divorce.
• A small matter, but in the records of the Legantine trial it states that Katherine was wearing a red gown, not the purple/blue in the series. 

Historical Inaccuracies - 'The Tudors', Series 1, Episode 6

• Thomas Boleyn talks to Henry about things he found out in his post as Comptroller of the Household. This is set after Boleyn is made Lord Rochford. In reality, he had to resign his post as Comptroller when he was elevated to the peerage, as it was not seemly for a Lord to have a 'proper job'. He complained about it endlessly, as he had derived substantial income from the office.
• Wolsey is shown walking into the throne room and past the throne without doffing his hat. Everyone was meant to doff their hat and bow at the throne, even when the King was not there, and the throne room was strictly guarded and off limits to all but a very few people.
• In the final scene, Anne Boleyn is shown wearing a rediculous head-dress, which certainly would not have existed at the time. Women did wear head-dresses, but these were meant to be demure and certainly not as elaborate. The most common types in England at the time were the 'gable hood' (worn by Jane Seymour in her portrait) and the 'French hood' (worn by Anne Boleyn in her portraits).

Historical Inaccuracies - 'The Tudors', Series 1, Episode 5

• George Boleyn calls Anne his 'little' sister. In reality, George was actually the youngest of the three Boleyn children, with Mary being the eldest, then Anne. 
• Henry was indeed angry with his sister Mary (not Margaret) for marrying Charles Brandon, but this did not take place as the same time as he was beginning to seek his divorce. The whole episode with Mary and Brandon actually occured before 1520. By the time this series was set, they had been married some years and had children.
• The scene where Henry and Anne are dancing whilst Katherine is in the room brings up an interesting point, which is that Katherine and Henry continued to live together for the first few years of their divorce proceedings, as if nothing was happening. This got more and more bizarre as Anne gained influence and was given her own suite of rooms at court, where people would come to visit, and the situation only ended when Henry finally sent Katherine away in 1531.
• At the end of the episode, little Henry Fitzroy is dead of the sweating sickness. In fact, Henry Fitzroy lived until 1536, when he died of what was believed to be tuburculosis. He was a teenager and, after the downfall of Anne Boleyn, starting to look like the only possibility of a male Tudor inheriting the throne. He had been married to the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, but the marriage was probably never consumated as they were both teenagers. Henry's 'nutiness' at the time is illustrated by the fact that he ordered Norfolk to bury Fitzroy without ceremony, but then flew into a rage when Norfolk carried out this order.