Dog skeleton from Mary Rose displayed in Portsmouth

A dog which sailed aboard the Mary Rose ship 465 years ago is to take up residence in the Mary Rose Museum at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

The animal’s skeleton, which has been reconstructed by staff at the Mary Rose Trust, will go on display from Friday 26 March.

The dog was discovered trapped in the sliding door of the carpenter’s cabin of the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545.

The dog, named Hatch by museum staff, was probably used as a ratter.

Full article

Lots of photos of the skeleton (and other things Mary Rose) are at the MaryRose500 photostream on Flickr.

And other articles:

* From the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard website: Lost dog returns home…after nearly 500 years!

* From The News (Portsmouth): Mary Rose chief meets Hatch, the Crufts star with historic pedigree

* From The Telegraph: Mary Rose’s dog unveiled for the first time

* From The Times Online: Riddle of an old sea dog who died in the service of her king

News release from The National Portrait Gallery:

MYSTERY SNAKE REVEALED IN ELIZABETH I PORTRAIT. NEW RESEARCH SHOWS CHANGING FACES OF THE TUDOR QUEEN

Scientific detective work has revealed a mysterious coiled serpent in the hands of Queen Elizabeth I, which was painted out by the artist shortly afterwards, in a portrait at the National Portrait Gallery. It has also been revealed that this portrait of the queen, which has not been on display at the Gallery since 1921, was painted over an unfinished portrait of an unknown sitter. The revelations about this painting and three others of the Tudor queen will form a new display, Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I, from 13 March at the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Making Art in Tudor Britain project led by Dr Tarnya Cooper.
…
Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I runs from 13 March – 26 September 2010 in Room 2 of the National Portrait Gallery.

Full text of news release

Additional articles:

Art Daily: New Research: Mystery Snake Revealed in Elizabeth I Portrait

BBC: Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I reveals secret snake

The Daily Mail Online: The Queen’s loyal serpent: 400 years on, a painted-over snake reappears on portrait of Elizabeth I

The Guardian: Portrait of Elizabeth I reveals she held serpent where a posy now appears

The Independent: The Virgin Queen, the serpent and the doctored portrait

* Shakespeare’s Kings and Westminster Abbey – RSC actors performing excerpts from the history plays in the coronation ‘theater’ of the Abbey. I wish I could attend some of these!

* Presentation on objects from Tudor and Stuart playhouses at the Museum of London on April 24

From The Guardian:

Anne Boleyn was guilty of adultery, new biography claims

Charges for which she was executed, long thought to have been cooked up, are likely to have been true, says historian George Bernard

A new biography of Anne Boleyn is set to claim that, far from being framed for adultery, Henry VIII’s second queen may not have been innocent of the affairs for which she was sentenced to death.

The widely held view among contemporary historians is that the charges brought against Anne – that she committed adultery with five lovers, including her brother – are too preposterous to be true, and were either trumped up by one political faction to do down another, or invented by Henry as a result of his desire to marry Jane Seymour, after Anne had failed to give him a son. But George Bernard, professor of early modern history at Southampton University and editor of the English Historical Review, believes that the queen could well have been guilty of some of the charges laid against her – or at the very least that her behaviour was such that it was reasonable for Henry to assume she had committed adultery.

Examining a 1545 poem by Lancelot de Carles, who was then serving the French ambassador to Henry’s court, Bernard concludes that the poem, entitled “A letter containing the criminal charges laid against Queen Anne Boleyn of England,” offers strong evidence that Anne did, in fact, commit adultery. She was accused of “despising her marriage” and “entertaining malice against the king”, with her indictment claiming that “by base conversations and kisses, touchings, gifts, and other infamous incitations” she seduced men including the musician Mark Smeaton, chief gentleman of the privy chamber Henry Norris and her brother George, Viscount Rochford, “alluring him with her tongue in his mouth and his in hers”. All five men, and Anne, were executed.

Full article

Since I obviously haven’t read the book yet I will hold off on judgement until I see his full argument, which I’m quite curious to hear. As far as I can tell, other scholars haven’t put much stock in this poem as evidence of her guilt, but perhaps Professor Bernard has come up with something new to suggest otherwise. It’s bound to get people talking though!

Amazon pre-order links below. The release date for the US is May 25 and April 30 for the UK.

* History Today has an article by Linda Porter – Katherine Parr: An Ideal Stepmother. Porter has a new biography on Parr due out in March in the UK (you can sign up to be notified for the US release at the link below).

* There are several upcoming Tudor Events at Hampton Court Palace that look interesting. As always, if anyone gets a chance to go to any of these, I’d love to hear about it!

* A new book on the death of Amy Robsart Dudley is out in the UK (article from The Times Online). UK Amazon link below (and another US “sign up to be notified”)

From the BBC (video and pictures):
New Battle of Bosworth Field site revealed

From The Daily Mail:
Is this the field where Richard III lost his kingdom for a horse? Real location of Battle of Bosworth finally revealed after 500 years

From The Guardian:
Silver badge and lead shot pinpoint site of Battle of Bosworth
Archaeologists pinpoint long-disputed site of Battle of Bosworth

And last, but certainly not least, the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Center website
(Their site appears to be down, perhaps from a large influx of traffic? – I’ll keep checking for it to come back up and add a link directly to their news on the battlefield discoveries.)
The site is back up. Here’s a link to their page on the official announcement.

From The Times Online:

For centuries it has been impossible to revisit the battlefield because its location was lost after the Civil War. Then, last October, Leicestershire County Council announced that it had found the site but would not reveal its whereabouts for fear of scavengers.

Today the wait is over. The Times can reveal that the Battle of Bosworth was settled round the back of Alf Oliver’s arable farm, just off the old Roman road from Atherstone to Leicester in a field as featureless as any in England.

To get there you drive south and west from the Bosworth visitor centre on Ambion Hill, which is now, rather awkwardly, two miles adrift of the true site. Past a farm selling “battlefield beef” you park in a lane, tramp round one small field with a dip, cross a drainage ditch and arrive at a flat, triangular ploughed field exposed to the elements on all sides.

On a viciously cold morning this month Glenn Foard, the archaeologist who led the search for the battlefield, stood on this spot looking as pleased with himself as Henry Tudor must have done when the fighting was over.

Full article

For all the previous posts I’ve had on this topic, it might be easier to just go straight to the search results, since I’ve had quite a few about Bosworth!

Here’s a PDF of the full press release for the exhibition.

And if anyone gets a chance to see the exhibition or attend some of the events, I’d love to hear from you!

* You Tube video of the commemoration service for Catherine of Aragon at Peterborough Cathedral. I never got around to posting about this year’s event, but here is a link to a past post about it.

* Rosary from the Mary Rose featured at the BBC’s A History of the World

* Reconstructed face from the Mary Rose goes on display (BBC article). This is the reconstruction that I linked to an article about last March. Additional articles from the Times Online and The Telegraph

* Stirling Castle carvings will be on display at the castle until Feb. 21 (BBC article). This is a continuation of the project that I’ve blogged about a few times (most recently here). The carvings will soon be painted and put in place as part of the project to reconstruct the renaissance royal palace inside the castle. You can learn more at the official Stirling Castle website

* Snack food of Shakespearean theater-goers (Discovery News article). I’m not a fan of seafood but the nuts and dried fruit sounds good. I’ll probably stick with popcorn and Junior Mints though.

* Help Romeo collect flowers for Juliet (appropriate for Valentine’s Day!) in the Shakespeare Game from Shakespeare Country Tourism