LGBT History in The United Kingdom - Prior To 1600

Prior To 1600

• 117 to 138 Roman Emperor Hadrian ruled Britain. Best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain, Hadrian was the first Roman Emperor to make it clear that he was homosexual. Hadrian uniquely made Antinous, a beautiful young Bithynian youth his "official consort" and Antinous accompanied him throughout the Empire. Hadrian was so distraut at the death of Antinous when he drowned in the Nile in AD 130 that he named a city in Egypt, Antinopolis, after him and deified him into a god.

• 797 During the Carolingian Renaissance, Alcuin of York, an abbot affectionately known as David, wrote love poems to other monks in spite of numerous church laws condemning homosexuality.

• 1102 The Council of London (Roman Catholic church council of the church in England) took measures to ensure that the English public knew that homosexuality was sinful

• 1327 The deposed King Edward II of England is killed. The popular story that the king was assassinated by having a red-hot poker thrust into his anus has no basis in accounts recorded by Edward's contemporaries. Edward II had a history of conflict with the nobility, who repeatedly banished his former lover Piers Gaveston, the Earl of Cornwall. The Annales Paulini claims that Edward loved Gaveston "beyond measure", while the Lanercost says the intimacy between them was "undue". The Chronicle of Melsa states that Edward "particularly delighted in the vice of sodomy", without making special reference to Gaveston. Chroniclers called the King's relationship with Gaveston as excessive, immoderate, beyond measure and reason and criticised his desire for wicked and forbidden sex. It was hinted at by medieval chroniclers, and has been alleged by modern historians, that the relationship between Gaveston and Edward was homosexual.

• 1395 John Rykener, known also as Johannes Richer and Eleanor, a transvestite prostitute working mainly in London (near Cheapside), but also active in Oxford, was arrested for cross-dressing and interrogated.

• 1533 King Henry VIII passes the Buggery Act 1533 making all male-male sexual activity punishable by death. Buggery related only to intercourse per anum by a man with a man or woman or intercourse per anum or per vaginum by either a man or a woman with an animal. Other forms of "unnatural intercourse" amounted to indecent assault or gross indecency, but did not constitute buggery. The lesser offence of "attempted buggery" was punished by two years of jail and often horrific time on the pillory.

• 1541 The Buggery Act 1533 only ran until the end of the parliament. The law was reenacted three times, and then in 1541 it was enacted to continue in force "for ever".

• 1547 King Edward VI's first Parliament repealed all felonies created in the last reign of King Henry VIII.

• 1548 The provisions of the Buggery Act 1533 were given new force, with minor amendments. The penalty for buggery remained death, but goods and lands were not forfeit, and the rights of wives and heirs were safeguarded.

• 1553 Mary Tudor ascends the English throne and repeals all of Edward VI of England's acts.

• 1558 Elizabeth I ascends the English throne and reinstates the sodomy laws of 1533, (not 1548) which were then given permanent force.

• 1580 King James VI of Scotland, made his formal entry into Edinburgh and began a relationship with Franco-Scottish Lord Esmé Stewart, 6th Lord d'Aubigny. The influence his favourites had on politics, and the resentment at the wealth they acquired, became major political issues during his reign. Scottish nobles ousted Lennox by luring the young king to Ruthven Castle as a guest but then imprisoned him for ten months. The Presbyterian nobles forced King James I of England to banish Lennox to France. Lennox and James remained in secret contact and after Lennox died in 1583, William Schaw took Lennox's heart back to James in Scotland. James had repeatedly vouched for Lennox's religious sincerity and memorialized him in a poem called "Ane Tragedie of the Phoenix", which said he was like an exotic bird of unique beauty killed by envy.