For those of you interested in Scottish history -

From the BBC:

An online archive of the proceedings of the original Scottish Parliament from its first surviving act of 1235 to its dissolution in 1707 has been launched.
…
Dr MacIntosh said: “Parliament was a pretty rowdy place back then - members were allowed to take a sword in, and there are records of duels and arrests being made after punch-ups broke out in the debating chamber.”

That last line amused me.

Full BBC article

And here is the official website for the records

Coming June 10 for the US and June 30 for the UK!

Here are the US Amazon links (regular and Blu-ray):

And the UK Amazon link:

And here is a .doc file of the Press Release for those who are interested!

I meant to post a reminder about this a week or two ago, but totally forgot. I originally posted about Alison Weir’s next Tudor novel, this time about Elizabeth before she was Queen, back in February. Here are the links again if anyone is interested (and again, full disclosure - I get a small commission off each sale)

Also, Alison Weir has been on a tour giving talks on the book and other related topics and will be coming to the US soon. If she’s going to be in your area and you’d like to meet up with other Tudor fans, leave a comment below!

Here’s the schedule: http://alisonweir.org.uk/events/index.asp
Thanks to TudorRose for the link for the tour!

Yet another reason I need to be back over to the UK!

From The Telegraph:

Prepare to be dazzled - after years in storage the V&A’s jawdropping collection of jewellery from the past 3,000 years is about to go on permanent display.
…
On 24 May the William and Judith Bollinger jewellery gallery will open at the V&A, displaying 3,500 items from the museum’s collection, which is one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world and tells the story of European jewellery over the past 3,000 years.
…
Chadour-Sampson pulls out another drawer and places in the palm of my hand a small locket, the Armada or Heneage jewel made about 1595, a gift from Elizabeth I to her vice-chamberlain, the poet and secret-service agent Sir Thomas Heneage. The locket depicts a profile portrait in gold of the queen up to her neck in a giant gold ruff, her head weighed down by wig and pearls, encircled by diamonds and Burmese rubies. Turn it over and there is a gold and enamelled portrait of an ark, representing the English church, riding through stormy seas, a cloud above raining down lightning on the frail vessel. Open it up and there’s a portrait of a much younger, more girlish Elizabeth, the real woman behind the symbol, or how she wanted to be seen - a wistful love token sent by an old woman.

Full article

Website of the Victoria and Albert Museum

And here are some images of the Elizabethan jewel described in the article (from the V&A website…. you can see larger images if you go to their image collection page and search for “Armada jewel”):

To mark the 400th anniversary of the death of Bess of Hardwick, the public is being given the chance to see areas of her famous building. I’d love to be able to see it myself!

From The Yorkshire Post:

As part of the events to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of Bess of Hardwick, Hidden Hardwick tours will take place at the hall, near Chesterfield, on May 13 and 19.

They are an opportunity not only to have a tour of the hall with an experienced guide but also to go off the normal visitor route and explore previously hidden areas.

“From the hidden floor which cannot be seen from the outside to the secret door between the High Great Chamber and the Long Gallery, visitors love the fact they are in places that others are not normally allowed into.”

The tour will also include areas of the roof space where visitors will be able to see the timber frame with the wattle and daub lining of the rooms and the secret servants’ floor.

Full article

Harwick Hall’s page at the National Trust

I got an email from Showtime asking me to pass along the link for “The Tudors” at Metacritic:
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/shows/tudorsseason2?q=the%20tudors#users

You can add your own rating by clicking on “rate this tv show” under the Users rating button on the right hand side of the page.

If you have a spare £1.5 million (approx. US $3 million). Regular visitors know that I love it when these old properties show up for sale.

Here’s an article from The Telegraph about the sale:

A 700-year-old castle which once belonged to King Henry VIII has been put on the market for only the second time in its history for £1.5 million.

Sheriff Hutton Castle, which was built in 1382, comes complete with a hooded ghost and bat cave but it is almost totally ruined.

Just four crumbling 100ft stone turrets and the corners of the keep remain and it has no roof or walls.

However, it boasts an impressive list of former royal owners, including Richard III, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

One thing I find interesting is that the castle was built in the 14th century and was owned by the Neville family that played a big part in the Wars of the Roses, but the title of the article is: “For sale: King Henry VIII’s haunted castle”. Playing to the popularity of the Tudors perhaps?

Including the ring with portrait miniatures of Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn (one of my favorite pieces from the period!).

From The Daily Mail:

A large group of paintings from the prime ministerial retreat Chequers, including a pair of Van Dycks and a locket ring owned by Elizabeth I containing portraits of herself and Anne Boleyn, is to go on public view for the first time.
…
Individual works have been loaned over the years but this is the first group loan and the 10 works will go on display at another country mansion, Compton Verney in Warwickshire, from June.
…
ther loaned works include portraits of Mary I, James I and Lady Mary Grey, a younger sister of Lady Jane Grey, who was confined to Chequers by Elizabeth I.

The special display at Compton Verney, Portaits from Chequers: Kings, Queens and Revolutionaries, will run from June 21 to September 7.

Full article

Website of Compton Verney

From the BBC:

A rare portrait, believed to be of Shakespeare’s only known patron, has been discovered using X-ray technology.

Art historians from Bristol University have found what they believe is a picture of Henry Wriothesley which was painted over in the 16th Century.

To the naked eye, it is a portrait of his wife Elizabeth Vernon, dressed in black and wearing ruby ear-rings.

The hidden picture was uncovered when the work was X-rayed in preparation for an exhibition in Somerset.

Radiography revealed that underneath the oil portrait of Elizabeth I’s maid of honour was a ghostly male figure - an older work which had been painted over.

Full article with picture

And here is an article from the Daily Mail with a larger photo.

Until recently, an oil painting of Queen Elizabeth I had been hanging, unprotected and barely noticed, in the gift shop at The Elizabethan Gardens gatehouse.

It is believed that the portrait was painted in 1592, when Elizabeth would have been about 60 years old. It is one of the few portraits of the queen in her declining years.

If it is authentic, it could be worth millions.
…

“Since we do not have full documentation on the provenance of the portrait, there will need to be fuller examination of the portrait, its paints, its underneath surface, and other data that can be gleaned from careful analysis,” East Carolina University history professor Larry Tise said in an e-mail.

The Elizabethan Gardens, founded and supported by the Garden Club of North Carolina, opened in 1960 as a tribute to the 1584- 87 English voyagers who came to Roanoke Island. The final voyage was the ill-fated Lost Colony – 117 men, women and children last seen in August 1587.

Horace Whitfield, the gardens’ executive director, said that the portrait, along with various antiques, was acquired at a New York auction house in the 1950s by Mrs. Charles Cannon, one of the gardens’ first benefactors. It has recently been returned by the North Carolina Museum of History, where it had been on loan for an exhibit about The Lost Colony.

Full article (with picture)

I first saw this article come through my news alerts a couple of weeks ago, but I was hoping some more information would show up. Unfortunately all of the articles since then have just been quoting the first one. But, if and when anything else turns up, I’ll be sure to update!

Hello all! Due to the upcoming sale of our house and move (back in to Austin proper - we’re out in a rural area near Elgin right now) my weekends are going to be completely eaten up soon. So, I’ve decided to put the podcast on hiatus for the summer. We’re hoping to take a vacation to Maine again this year too, so I’ll probably just aim to start back up in September or October. This will also give me a little time to think some more about a few format changes that I’ve been considering. And this will allow me to finally get on a schedule to put the podcast out at the beginning of a month instead of the end!

I apologize to all the folks who have emailed me telling me how much they look forward to the podcast every month since they’re going to have a bit of a wait for the next one now! But I’ll still be updating the website and news blog as time allows, so you can still get your “Tudor fix”.

Until the fall, fare thee well!

Just a little warning that I’ll be upgrading WordPress, so the blog might be unavailable for a short time (at roughly 3 p.m. CDT). Maybe this will fix that RSS issue!

Update: 3:05 p.m. - Upgrade complete! Seems to be working okay, but it didn’t fix the Firefox RSS issue… bummer.

It’s official.. we’ll be on to wives three and four next year! Filming will begin in June.

There are a ton of articles out there about it, so here is a just a sampling:

Showtime Press release

USA Today - Showtime orders more tales from ‘The Tudors’

Most of the rest of the articles seem to basically be excerpts from the press release, so I won’t bother linking to more… yeah, I’m lazy tonight.

If any of you were reading on the RSS feed and stumble back here wondering why nothing has shown up lately, it’s because WordPress doesn’t publish its feeds the same way Blogger did, so you will have to resubscribe to the site with the link at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Sorry about that!

And if Blogger ever does start to publish correctly again, I’ll try to get a post out on the old feed to tell people to come over to the new one. I have no idea if or when that will ever happen though, the way things are going!

Just in case anyone wanders over here from the Q&A blog, I thought I would post something about the problems that are continuing with publishing from Blogger.

Sometime on Friday, things just stopped working and nothing would publish from Blogger to my site. So, I popped over to the Blogger discussion forums and discovered that lots of other people were reporting the same issues. A similar thing happened last September, but it only lasted for about 3 days that time. We’re now up to 6, and I’m very, very frustrated - and quite disappointed with the lack of response from the Blogger folks (on their own forums!). I’m still not sure why two posts have been able to squeak through since the problems started, but since the issues are continuing, it certainly hasn’t been fixed.

So, I’m going to give it another few days and if it isn’t fixed, I’ll migrate that blog over to WordPress too. Things will be down for a few hours, but considering that they haven’t been working properly for 6 days, a few hours shouldn’t be a problem!

Since Blogger still hasn’t managed to fix the publishing problem that I (and many others) have been having for almost a week now, I’ve decided to start migrating all the blogs over to WordPress, which comes with my web hosting package. I’ve managed to get over the posts and comments from the old blog, but I’m going to have to re-link all the pictures. There will probably be some kinks for the next week while I tweak things here and there. For those of you reading on the RSS feed, hopefully there won’t be any interruption.

I think the switch is going to be a good thing since it will allow me more flexibility in what I can add to the blogs in the future.

If anyone comes across any problems, please email me: lara@tudorhistory.org

Every once in a while a property listing will come through on my Google News alerts (like the one for Rochford Hall about this time last year) and I just melt when I see them. It also reminds me that I should probably buy at least one lottery ticket a week…

This one is called West Stow Hall and is near Bury St. Edmunds. It’s not as grand as some houses I’ve seen up for sale, it just grabbed me when I saw it. The full listing is here, with several more pictures, including interiors (with a bunch of wonderful beams!!).

When I used to look through picture books of England as a child, one of the things I remember noticing in the old photos (probably mostly taken in the 60s and 70s) was the dark coating from pollution on some of the buildings, in particular the Tower of London (the White Tower) and Westminster Abbey. By the time I saw these buildings in person for the first time (May 1998), the Abbey and the south face of the White Tower had been all cleaned up and were strikingly bright compared to their previous condition. Now, the other three faces of the White Tower are setting cleaned and conserved in preparation for the 2012 Olympics in London.

You can find out more about the project and follow the project manager’s diary at the project website at the Historic Royal Palaces site. There is also information on a new display at Hampton Court about the young Henry VIII, since we’re approaching the 500th anniversary of his accession to the throne.

From “The Independent”

Shakespeare’s “lost” local church in London may have been found – beneath some flower beds and cracked paving stones. New research has pinpointed the site of the old church of St Leonard, which was the centre of worship and burial for many of the leading actors and personalities of the Shakespearean stage, including the Bard himself. A study of archive material has revealed that much of the building may still exist, buried underground in an extraordinary time capsule.

… The church was also local for the playwright-spy Christopher Marlowe, and later Ben Jonson, the Bard’s friend and rival. Edmund Shakespeare, the playwright’s infant nephew who died when only a few days old, was baptised at the church.

… Among those buried at St Leonard’s were many of Shakespeare’s friends and associates, including Richard Burbage, who first played the roles of Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.

Full article

[I thought I had posted this over a week ago, but I just noticed it sitting in my post list as a 'draft'!]

I was looking through some folders on my laptop to see if I could weed some stuff out, and I found the folder that had the last version of my personal website before I moved it and the Tudor section over to their own respective sites at Simplenet. Above is the graphic that was the “gateway” from my main page to the first Tudor webpages I ever made, somewhere in late 1994, I’m pretty sure… I know I definitely had it going by the time I moved to my current job in 1995.

I still can’t believe how far the internet and my website have come since those early days!

(Thanks for indulging me in a little reminiscing!)