Today in Tudor history...

20 May 1535 - The imprisoned Bishop John Fisher was made a Cardinal by Pope Paul III.

20 May 1536 – Betrothal of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour.

Chapuys to Granvelle.

Wrote yesterday very fully to the Emperor and Granvelle. Has just been informed, the bearer of this having already mounted, that Mrs. Semel came secretly by river this morning to the King's lodging, and that the promise and betrothal (desponsacion) was made at 9 o'clock. The King means it to be kept secret till Whitsuntide; but everybody begins already to murmur by suspicion, and several affirm that long before the death of the other there was some arrangement which sounds ill in the ears of the people; who will certainly be displeased at what has been told me, if it be true, viz., that yesterday the King, immediately on receiving news of the decapitation of the putain entered his barge and went to the said Semel, whom he has lodged a mile from him, in a house by the river. Cannot write to the Emperor for the haste of the courier, but will send particulars to him shortly. London, 20 May 1536.

1609 - Shakespeare's Sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.