I'm very late to this but I have to stick my oar in on the Tudor stuff as there is so much false information floating around - largely due to Philippa Gregory's peddling of anecdotes as straight-down-the-line FACT. I find it totally maddening. I get that her books open up history to people and that's fantastic, but so much false information and hearsay is now taken as gospel and it drives me mad.
Firstly, Henry VIII had only one recognised illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy. The surname was commonly given to all recognised royal bastards (meaning literally son of the king). He was later given the title of Duke of Richmond, which some have seen as a sign of Henry intending to legitimise him but I find that unlikely. The Tudors were a relatively new monarchy and certainly Henry's father, Henry VII, had struggled with establishing the credibility of his claim to the throne during his reign. Henry VIII would have recognised the importance of having a legal son and heir. I think he ennobled Henry Fitzroy as he would be useful in the marriage stakes in spite of his illegitimacy. He could have gone down the John of Gaunt route later down the line, and legitimised him but removed his right to succession, but Henry needed, and was looking for, a legitimate son, born in wedlock, as heir. You only need to look at the marital carnage of his reign to realise how important this was to him.
Phillippa Gregory presents it as gospel that Mary Boleyn's children were Henry VIII's, resulting from her affair with him. I think this is unlikely as Henry did not recognise them and would have had no precedent for not doing so. He recognised his illegitimate son by Elizabeth Blount (Henry Fitzroy). You could suggest a tendency to not recognise royal bastards that were born within wedlock (Mary was married to her husband from 1520 & her daughter & son were born within that marriage) as they already had their father's name, but the blank on gossip /mention in primary sources is telling. I think it would have been well-known and discussed at court and that would have found its way in mention, not least as both children, as cousins of Elizabeth I, had positions of favour in her household and were not unknown and without mention. I also think Henry would have liked it to be known were it true as it would have promoted his virility. Sons/children were a sign of male potency and a sign of God's blessing. Henry had one living daughter and one illegitimate son to show for 11 years of marriage by 1920. I think he would have acknowledged more if he could.
In terms of Anne Boleyn's guilt my take is that the charges were wholly trumped up to enable Henry to marry Jane Seymour, whom he was already having an affair with and had marked as wife number 3. He was with Jane on the day of Anne's execution and married her three or four days later. Anne never saw the execution coming. There was just no precedent for the execution of a queen. Her assumption would have been divorce, removal from court and probably being sequestered to a nunnery. I doubt she would have signed away her daughter's legitimacy if she thought she was going to die anyway. But Henry went for the jugular. Death for treason (which adultery against the king was) was burning at the stake so Henry's commutation to execution by axe (and later to death by sword), was a sign of mercy. Personally I think it was his guilty conscience talking. Katherine Howard, wife number 5, who WAS guilty of adultery and admitted as such (again, that fear of eternal damnation of the soul), got the axe, but Henry knew the charges against Anne were false. Or perhaps by the time he got to wife number 5 he was truly poisoned by his own power and pain? There is no evidence, other than trumped up charges, that George Boleyn and she were guilty of incest and plotting to kill the king. Anne's final confession before she went to the scaffold was to the Constable of the Tower (who was reporting back to Cromwell). She took the sacrament and swore that she had never been unfaithful to the king. I think that's convincing of her innocence.
Speeches on the scaffold were bound up in ritual. They were to be short, acknowledge the mercy and right of the king and to commit themselves to God. Sin was mentioned, not because they were necessarily guilty of the crime they were accused of, but because this was a religious society and confession was seen as your release from eternal damnation; so any sin mentioned was generic. It was all very ritualistic. Anne Boleyn never confessed to adultery, in spite of facing eternal damnation for not doing so. The same with her brother and other gentlemen. Only Mark Smeaton confessed after torture, which frankly was a given (if you ever get cranked on the rack or have your nails pulled out and hot pokers applied to your feet then you'd probably admit to shagging Anne Boleyn to make it stop). A lot has been made about the fact that Smeaton did not rescind his confession (Anne Boleyn is reported to have said "Did he not exonerate me...of the public infamy he laid on me? Alas! I fear his soul will suffer for it") but it's likely that he confessed to make the torture stop and his 'reward' was not a standard traitor's death of being hung, drawn and quartered, but the block and axe. He would have known that to rescind that confession would be to assure his death by HD&Q. As for rescinding his confession on the scaffold, as I mentioned earlier, that just wasn't done. There was a standard protocol and you didn't deviate from it. It seems strange to us but we're not bound by the same social and religious codes.
As for Tudor periods, historians have found mention of some black silk girdle-type structures in Elizabeth's wardrobe inventory that they think was relating to sanitary protection; presumably something to hold a piece of flannel in place. Having said that, Elizabeth's periods were known to be erratic; her washerwomen and serving women were bribed by ambassadors to discover her fertility and the reports ; a lot was riding on whether Elizabeth was able to bear an heir.
I could talk about this stuff for hours.