I received a little more information on the upcoming book on Arthur Tudor edited by Steven Gunn and Linda Monckton. [Previous post, with pre-order links]
Click the image below for a larger version (sorry if it is hard to read, that’s the largest size image I have). You can also read the information on the publisher’s website.
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In the literal sense, of course:
From the Oxford Mail:
FOR more than 400 years she has been soaking wet, but Oxfordshire scientists are looking for a hi-tech way to allow the Mary Rose to dry out and remain intact.
…
Initially, the ship was sprayed with chilled, fresh water to rinse out harmful salts and acids and, since 1994, has been continually sprayed with polyethylene glycol, a water-soluble wax.That stabilises the wood structure and prevents shrinkage during drying.
Researchers are now working on developing a treatment for the wood to extract compounds within it where it was in contact with iron, such as bolts or artefacts like cannons. If they can do that then it will mean the ship will not have to be continually sprayed.
First of all, I have to recommend that everybody interested in Tudor times visit Gainsborough Old Hall. It’s a bit off the beaten tourist path, but just a short train ride from Lincoln. I don’t think their website does them justice, but check it out, especially their amazing list of events and speakers — Gainsborough Old Hall.
I took the train up to Lincoln, checked into my hotel, and after a leisurely tour of the cathedral, took the train to Gainsborough. Marilyn R from the boards here met me and, after coffee, drove me to the Old Hall, where I got a private tour, and she pointed out various aspects of the history. I won’t go into detail, but I was very much impressed with the restoration work they had done there. A lot of extensive restorations end up looking very slick and modern like a faux antique. But they have avoided that at Gainsborough, and the Old Hall is the better for it.
I had a chance to shake hands with Steven Gunn briefly before we all filed into the great hall for the lecture complete with a powerpoint presentation of pictures. I would have picked him out as an academic (in the very best sense of the word) in a crowd – he just had that air about him. But he was also relatively young, enthusiastic about his subject, and happy to share his knowledge. And nicest of all, he had a sense of humor.
The first picture that went up on the screen was the portrait of Brandon in his later years. “If I tell you that this is Charles Brandon, you will expect to be in for a dull lecture about a dull old man this evening,” Gunn began. “But he looked much different than that in his younger years.” And up went a picture of Henry Cavill in The Tudors. That got a hearty laugh.
And just how does somebody like Charles Brandon come from being an obscure squire to become one of the most powerful nobles in the kingdom and and the king’s brother-in-law? That was the question of the evening.
Gunn answered it by tracing Charles’s early life through his arrival at court and subsequent career.
I don’t mean to write a biography of Charles Brandon here, so I’ll just hit the highlights as Gunn wove them into a compelling portrait of somebody who was seemingly lucky as he was talented.
How to get ahead at the Tudor court:
1. Be friends with the king. This, of course, is the quickest and surest way. Henry VIII was very generous to his friends. And Brandon was in a unique position to achieve this.
2. Have a dead hero for a father. Charles’s father, Sir William Brandon, was Henry VII’s standard bearer and died at the battle of Bosworth, killed by Richard III himself as he tried to shield Henry. Nothing will endear you to a Tudor more than unquestioned loyalty.
3. Have a relative in a position to get you to court. In Charles’s case, it was his uncle Sir Thomas Brandon, who was very well-positioned and could easily get his nephew a place, which it is believed that he did, though the details are a little murky.
4. Share an interest with the king. In this case, it was jousting. Charles excelled at all things athletic and was probably better than the king, though he quite obviously let Henry win on most occasions.
(A brief aside here. There is a debate on whether or not Henry was allowed to joust in his teens. He may have been prevented from it. The only evidence hinges on the interpretation of one word in a Latin text. David Starkey insists Henry was forbidden to participate, but Gunn believes he was allowed and said he would disagree with Starkey as a general principle. I got the very strong impression he does not view Starkey favorably.)
5. Be friends with everybody. Charles seems to have a knack for getting along with people. Some people, notably the Boleyns, did not like him, but that was based mainly on jealously because of his close relationship with the king. Other than situations like that, he got along very well with most people. Gunn thinks he cultivated and practiced this ability.
6. Have a talent the king needs. Henry VIII had a very good eye for spotting talent and putting people in positions to use their talent to further his own reign. Gunn believes Charles’s main talent was military command. He was considered an excellent leader and was especially good at making divergent elements of the military follow him.
7. Marry well. Charles married Henry’s sister, Mary, the Dowager Queen of France. You can’t marry any better than that. The details of the match are a bit murky, but it was clearly a love match, neither being forced into it. In the eyes of the church, that marriage made Henry and Charles brothers.
8. Build up your land and your wealth. This Charles set about doing very assiduously the entire time he was a duke.
And finally, 9. Display power. This involved making sure you looked the part you aspired to, including have the proper clothes, servants, manors, etc. Again, Charles did this very well, though he doesn’t seem to have been interested in wealth for its own sake.
I can’t say I really learned anything new about Charles Brandon that I wasn’t aware of before. But I have spent years studying him, so I didn’t really expect to. Gunn made some very minor errors during the lecture, but I think those were done in the interests of expediency, so I won’t fault him for that. And it was a treat hearing somebody else’s take on a person I have been studying for so long.
After the lecture I had the opportunity to talk to with Gunn and asked him to autograph my copy of his book on Brandon, now out of print. He seemed delighted to be asked for an autograph and willingly signed it. I told him how difficult it was to obtain a copy of the book, and how ridiculously priced they were on the net. He was unaware of this and said he was going to check into it. I think he’s at the mercy of his publisher — much as Alison Weir is — but it would be nice if they reissued it. I hope he can talk them into it.
In return for the autograph, I offered him a bit of information I didn’t think he knew, mainly because nobody seems to have noticed this before except me: the date of Charles Brandon’s death, August 22, 1545, was the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth. Gunn looked absolutely stunned and said slowly, “You know, I do believe you are right!”
We then retired for coffee to an adjoining room — the same room that Henry VIII occupied when he was at the Old Hall in 1541! I would love to have talked to Steven Gunn some more but decided I really shouldn’t be monopolize him. I ended up talking to the vicar of the nearby All Saints Church. I had seen the church on the way into the Old Hall and wondered if that was the church Henry would have attended when he stayed in Gainsborough. The vicar says unfortunately it isn’t the same one as several have built on the site over the years. Henry would certainly have attended whichever one was there at the time though. The vicar did mention other interesting item. The original church from back in the Middle Ages was built by Templar Knights, so it would have been round. I think they should get Time Team in to look for that one and to see if they can find any remains from the Tudor era as well.
After that, the lovely evening ended, and Marilyn and her friend Joy drove me safely back to Lincoln. I am profoundly grateful to them and to all the Tudor fans (most of them from this site!) who took me under their wing while I was in England, making sure I didn’t get lost on the train system, getting me into places that tourists normally don’t see, and just being there for scintillating Tudor conversation. It was definitely Pastime With Good Companye.
Wordia is featuring Words of Henry VIII as their current theme for their Words of the Day. So far we have “marriage” with Philippa Gregory and “beefeater” by, well, a Beefeater!
I blogged about the first part of the papers going online back in November. Libraries (particularly at universities) might have subscriptions where you can access the content. They still haven’t set up a method for individual subscriptions, but if you think you might be interested in one, please send an email to their contact listed on http://gale.cengage.co.uk/statepapers/
Here is the press release:
Jul 10, 2009
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
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
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.
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 d
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!
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.
Spotted at The Anne Boleyn Files blog – head on over there for links to two programs from BBC Radio 4.
If you haven’t played with the British Library’s “Turning the Pages” site before, it is definitely worth a look if you love old books. They just added Henry VIII’s Psalter, which is currently on display in the Henry VIII: Man and Monarch exhibition.
(Spotted at the British Library’s Henry exhibition blog)
Sorry I have been a little quiet on this blog over the last week or so! I’m just going to do a quick round up of a few things that I wanted to post about this week but got behind on.
From the London Evening Standard, an article about one of the winners at the Chelsea Flower show, which grew plants used in a recipe to create perfume for Elizabeth I.
Here’s another article about Henry VIII’s annulment request document that I blogged about previously.
Sent to me through Twitter – News on Alison Weir’s upcoming book launch at the Tower of London for her new bio on Anne Boleyn and details for a tour of Tudor England she’ll be leading in 2010, as well as news on other upcoming books (including a sequel to “The Lady Elizabeth”).
And finally, from Pop Tudors (the blog for the Showtime series “The Tudors”) – Ask a Tudor!. Your chance to ask Mark Hildreth, the actor playing Cardinal Reginald Pole, a question. You can submit them in the comments on the page linked to above.
Just in case some of you haven’t been following the British Library blog or subscribed to their podcast for the Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, here is a link with the hour-long talk by David Starkey on the young Henry (1491-1509) (scroll down to get to Starkey’s talk).
If you’ve got about US$68,000 to spare.
From the New York Times:
The Vatican has opened its Secret Archives, the repository of centuries worth of documents pertaining to the Holy See, to let the world get a closer look at a document presaging England
