Harlech Castle, North Wales. May 2000.
This one is only tangentially related to Tudor history, but I wanted to use another picture of a cool Welsh castle. Harlech castle is one of the ring of fortresses around north Wales built in the late 13th century by King Edward I of England. In the 15th century is was a stronghold of the Lancastrian forces during the Wars of the Roses.
It looks like Time got the same press release from the British Library that I posted back in April. 
Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Henry VIII (at Time.com)
[Thanks to Elizabeth for sending this in!]
From The Oxford Times:
This year is going to be Henry VIII’s. Imprinted on to our minds as a big rotund man, a tyrant of a king famous for having six wives and beheading two of them, and for the break with Rome and dissolution of the monasteries, with the 500th anniversary of his accession to the throne of England coming up, everywhere and anywhere with any association with this Tudor monarch is set to hold some sort of special event.
…From this April until April 18 next year, Windsor is holding in its Drawings Gallery an exhibition of treasures from the Royal Collection and the archives of St George’s Chapel.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, ‘Henry VIII: A 500th Anniversary Exhibition’ has some exquisite artworks in it. Exhibits include drawings, paintings, key religious texts, illuminated manuscripts, and objects of interest, among them pieces from the Mary Rose and the Great Seal of Henry VIII.
Henry VIII: A 500th Anniversary Exhibition – The Drawings Gallery, Windsor Castle
I received an email about Philippa Gregory’s next novel, The White Queen, which is about Elizabeth Woodville and will start a trilogy set during the Wars of the Roses. The book is due out on August 18 in both the UK and US. Amazon pre-order links below:
Sorry for the flurry of posts today (and I still have a few more draft posts that I’ll save for tomorrow). As usual, I feel behind during the week, and of course this was a BIG week in Tudor history with the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s coronation on Wednesday and Henry VIII’s birthday today.
I’ve created a Twitter account for Tudor stuff, as opposed to my personal Twitter account where I mostly post science and personal stuff. The address for the Tudor feed is http://twitter.com/tudorhistoryorg. Right now I’ve mostly been posting links when I’ve updated the blog (although I’ll refrain from posting a link to this post, since I’m pretty sure the feedback loop from that will create a hole in the space-time continuum). I’m also going to do an occasional “Today in Tudor History” once I get organized.
And for those of you eagerly awaiting the next podcast episode (I *think* there are at least one or two of you!), it’s going to be a little late. There is an outside chance I’ll have it finished before the end of the month, but if not, look for it next weekend.
That’s the update from hot and steamy Texas! Hey, it’s expected to only reach 100F (37.7 C) for most of next week, as opposed to the 105F+ (40.5 C) temps we had all last week! And it’s only June…. it’s going to be a LONG summer…
From The Times Online:
St Paul’s and St Peter’s are famed for their spectacular domes, and Florence Cathedral is regarded as a wonder of Renaissance architecture.
At Westminster Abbey, though, where kings and queens are crowned, poets are buried and martyrs commemorated, only a “stubby little tower” marks its centuries of glory.
Now the Dean and Chapter of the abbey are hoping to build a £10 million “crowning feature”. The new corona is likely to be the most dramatic addition to the London skyline since the Swiss Re building, known as the Gherkin, opened in 2004.
The corona is part of a £23 million development plan that will involve a huge fundraising campaign if it wins approval from several regulatory bodies. The public will be consulted on the design of the corona, which will replace the lantern, a small, plain concrete, pyramid roof above the crossing that stands in front of the high altar where every monarch has been crowned for the past thousand years.
Before seeing this article, I don’t think I had ever really thought about the lack of a large spire or tower above the crossing at Westminster, like you see at pretty much every other great cathedral in England. I’m curious to see the plans for the new addition.
Here’s a quick screen shot of Westminster Abbey from Google Maps, with an arrow pointing to the area they are talking about making the addition.
Update: Here’s a link to the press release from the Abbey, which includes some more information and a link to the exhibition page.
From The Independent:
The Big Question: What would have happened if Henry VIII had obtained his divorce?
By Paul VallelyWhy are we asking this now?
Because the Vatican has just announced that it will market 200 facsimile copies of the elaborately decorated parchment from 1530, which bore an appeal by English peers to Pope Clement VII asking for the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon.
The document is key, historians said, to understanding the formation of the English national character. It marks, said Professor David Starkey in Rome yesterday, the most important event in English history. “This is the moment at which England ceases to be a normal European Catholic country and goes off on this strange path,” he said, “that leads it to the Atlantic, to the New World, to Protestantism, to Euro-scepticism.”
…How would things have been different if England had remained Catholic?
“My offices might be in Rome and I might be writing in Latin,” quipped Paul Handley, the editor of the Church Times, the leading Anglican newspaper, yesterday. “And what would have happened to the bolshy individualistic Englishman on which we base all our historical mythology?”
It would have been a unique Catholicism though, not fervent like the Mediterranean kind, but not separatist like the Catholism of France which is the product of a guillotine-crazed Revolution and a secularising Enlightenment. We might just be irreligious Catholics instead of irreligious Protestants. But the world may have lost something rather special.
The British Library has posted a link to some photos from their Late at the Library night with Henry VIII. Looks like they had fun!
I’m also adding some more events at the British Library to the 500th anniversary events page that I’ve been compiling. You can see their list here.
In a follow-up to this post from last month, the reproduction of Henry VIII’s annulment request has been unveiled (seals and all):
From the BBC:
Great news!
From the BBC:
Final conservation work on Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose, is to go ahead, along with a new museum for the vessel, after a £21m grant was approved.
The Heritage Lottery Fund agreed to award the cash to the Mary Rose Trust, which has also raised nearly £10m itself towards total costs of £35m.
The grant means the construction of the new museum, in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, will now start.The trust aims to complete the work by 2012, in time for the Olympics.
And an article from The News in Portsmouth.
And here’s a link to the Mary Rose Trust for more information on the ship and the plans for the new museum.
This was posted to my Yahoo group. Loved it!
And I *think* I recognized the website on the computer in the video…
North front of Westminster Abbey. May 2003
In honor of the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, I’m posting a photo of Westminster Abbey, where they were crowned. More on the anniversary in another post!
Sorry for the slow posting on this blog for the last week or so. Things have been busy, as you might have guessed!
* The celebrations that I blogged about back in February took place this weekend. Here is an article with some photos and I’ve embedded a You Tube video of the pageant passing Blackfriars Pier:
* Just a reminder that the Royal Mint has some special commemorative coins out this year for the Henry 500 celebrations. I posted about them back in December, but here is the link to the page on the Royal Mint website. (I have several of their less-expensive collectible coins, including the one for Henry, so if you’re in to those kinds of things I’d recommend them.)
* BBC 4 is showing the program Henry VIII: Patron or Plunderer? with Jonathan Foyle about cultural artifacts from the reign of Henry VIII.
* And finally (thanks to Kathy for sending this one in!) The Forme of Cury, a medieval cookbook, has been digitized and put online by the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Here is the BBC article and here is a link to the Rylands Medieval Collection at the library.
Edinburgh Castle, Scotland. Photo May 2000.
North of the border this week, for something a little different. The temperature in Edinburgh is about half that of Texas today (in Fahrenheit) which has me dreaming of being in more comfortable climes.
From The Gazette:
A TUDOR house where Henry VIII once stayed has opened to the public for the summer season.
Acton Court, in Iron Acton, is open for 60 days until August 23 for guided tours and a programme of special events.
Lisa Kopper, resident artist and manager of the house, said: “We are open every day except Monday and when special events are planned so people can just turn up for tours or call us to make sure.”
The house offers rare examples of 16th century royal décor as the west wing was added in 1535 to welcome the king and his second wife Anne Boleyn.
It was lavishly decorated to show that the owners of Acton Court, the Poyntz family, were loyal to the king. Henry’s own en suite garderobe is still on public display.
Full article and link to Acton Court’s official site
New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon. Photo May 1998.
New Place was the house that William Shakespeare lived in after he retired and moved back to Stratford and is where he died. Unfortunately the building itself no longer exists. The building on the left is Nash’s House, named after Thomas Nash, first husband of Shakespeare’s granddaughter. Both properties are part of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
Thanks to Stephan for telling me about this!
If you have the Smithsonian Channel, they have an episode of their program “Skyview” called “The Tudor Age” with some stunning aerial imagery. I unfortunately don’t have an HDTV (yet), so I haven’t been able to watch the program (my cable company only has the HD version), but there are some clips on their website. I’ve embedded one below, but you can head over to the page for that episode to see more. A DVD of the show will be available in July.
If you’re a castle junkie like me, be sure to check out some of the other related videos!
Since I know some of you will appreciate my delight in this this – I finally managed to get a copy of Roger S. Thomas’ dissertation on Jasper Tudor! I had been trying to avoid having to order a copy, so I was very happy to finally see it turn up through the Center for Research Libraries (of which my university is a member) in digital form. Now I just need to find the time to read it.
In a follow-up to a post from last year, here is an update on the Stirling Heads. The replica set mentioned in the previous article have now been unveiled.
From the BBC:
A hand-carved replica set of 41 giant medallions that once covered the ceilings of Stirling Castle’s Royal Palace have been unveiled.
It took expert wood carver John Donaldson five years to reproduce the oak heads, which each measure a metre.
The original 16-century medallions feature vivid depictions of medieval kings and queens as well as mythological heroes.
Full article – including small set of images with a carving of Henry VIII and another possibly of Margaret Tudor.
