There is a post up at the British Library’s blog for the Henry VIII: Man & Monarch exhibition about the location for the famous Field of Cloth of Gold, including a photo of the current marker. Check it out!
Category: Tudor History news and events
Commemorating Lady Margaret Beaufort
In addition to being the anniversary of Henry VII’s death and Henry VIII’s accession to the throne (and his marriage to Catherine of Aragon), it is also the 500th anniversary of the death of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Christ’s College, Cambridge was founded by Margaret and they will be holding an event on June 27 in her honor including talks, evensong, a banquet and more.
Timeline of Anne Boleyn’s fall
Andrea was kind enough to put together this timeline of Anne Boleyn’s fall, so you can following along in “real time” as we go through the month of May. If I was more organized and had more time, I’d set these up as individual posts to come on the appropriate days!
Late January 1536 – Anne Boleyn miscarries for second time
February – Anne Boleyn recovering
4 February – Henry busy with Parliament
Mid-March – Henry has become serious about Jane Seymour (the purse of soveriegns incident)
Lent – Henry facilitates Chapuys’ snub of
British Library online documents for Henry VIII
Although I’ve linked to the exhibition stuff already, I wanted to point out this link to some key documents related to Henry VIII that the British Library has in their online galleries. They also have clips from Starkey’s “Henry: The Mind of a Tyrant” series.
Kenilworth Garden reopens this weekend
BBC News video:
Additional articles:
The Guardian: Kenilworth Castle garden reopens
The Independent: Recreated, the Tudor garden where an ambitious earl wooed the Virgin Queen
Queen honors Yeoman of the Guard and Henry VII
From The Telegraph:
Queen thanks Yeomen of the Guard on 500th anniversary of Henry VII’s death
The Queen expressed her thanks to the Yeomen of the Guard as she honoured the founder of the famous royal bodyguards.
More than 70 Yeomen – resplendent in their distinctive red and gold tunics, large white ruffled collars, scarlet stockings and flat brimmed black Tudor hats – gathered in Westminster Abbey in tribute to King Henry VII.
Henry VII created the Queen’s Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth.
To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, the Queen placed a posy at his tomb in the Abbey’s Lady Chapel.
Answers from Leanda de Lisle
Just wanted to let everyone know that the answers from Leanda de Lisle Q&A have now been posted over at the Lady Jane Grey Reference site!
Henry’s love letter to Anne at the British Library
From the Channel 4 website
Things you might not know about Henry VIII
I got this fun press release from the British Library in conjunction with the opening of the Henry VIII – Man and Monarch exhibition
They’ve also started a Henry VIII exhibition blog and a podcast!
And here is my previous post about the exhibition catalogue. I ordered mine yesterday and it has already shipped. Can’t wait to see it!
THE CREDIT CRUNCH KING
HOW HENRY VIII DIED IN DEBT AND OTHER THINGS YOU DIDN
What goes in to researching a portrait
If you’ve ever wondered what goes in to researching portrait identification, head on over to Stephan Edwards’ (a.k.a PhD Historian) website to see some fascinating work that he recently did.
Here’s the abstract:
In mid February 2009, I was contacted by a private collector in regard to a painting he had recently purchased from an estate. The painting, seen above, bears the label Princess Elizabeth (afterwards Queen) , “The Harington Portrait” and has been attributed in the past to the artist Antonio Mor (d. ca. 1578). The collector questioned the identification and requested my opinion on it. I was able to determine at first glance that it was not, in fact, an authentic portrait of Elizabeth Tudor, so the owner asked for my assistance in determining who the sitter may have actually been. Thus began a two-month period of intensive research, and the results of that investigation are now presented here for the first time.
Follow Henry VIII on Twitter
From a press release found via Google news:
The Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that cares for Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London, will send its followers updates on the events in the run-up to Henry VIII’s coronation at Westminster Abbey on June 24 – exactly 500 years after they happened.
It is believed to be the first time the website has been able to engage users in historical events from the first person perspective, and in real time over the actual period they took place, a spokesman for the charity said.
And here is the Twitter profile page for Henry/HRP
And some of you may have already seen over in the sidebar that I’m on Twitter too, although I’ll warn people now that I mostly post about science, tech and everyday life stuff, not much Tudor history. But if you’re interested – here’s my profile.
Showtime’s The Tudors: Historical vs. Hollywood
Just in case there are folks here who haven’t been over the The Raucous Royals blog lately, I wanted to post something here about Carlyn’s great analysis of this season’s episodes of “The Tudors”.
Here’s a link to the write-up for Episode 3 and the entries for previous episodes can be found at the bottom of that post.
More on the Henry VIII jousting incident
The Independent ran an interesting article about the jousting fall in 1536 that will be in an upcoming documentary:
The jousting accident that turned Henry VIII into a tyrant
Medical study uncovers turning point in king’s life. Michael McCarthy reports
Henry VIII became the tyrannical monster remembered by history because of a personality change following a serious jousting accident, according to a new historical documentary.
After the accident
The Year that Changed Henry VIII
From The Telegraph:
The year 1536 changed Henry VIII from a handsome, popular and athletic king to a corpulent tyrant who thought little of dispatching his many wives, a historian has claimed.
A new look at the life of one of England’s most famous monarchs argues that a series of calamitous events within the space of 12 months had an irreversible effect on his life.
Suzannah Lipscomb, a research curator at Hampton Court Palace and Oxford scholar, said the apparent betrayal by his wife, a dangerous fall from a horse and a religious rebellion all played their part in transforming Henry.
She said: “He did move from being the much f
Reminder about Q&A with Leanda deLisle
Head on over to the Lady Jane Grey Reference Site blog and submit them! The deadline is April 15.
[Please submit the questions at the link above, not at this site]
NY Times article on the “Vivat Rex!” exhibition
From The New York Times:
Just a King for His Time: Executions, Wives, Divorces and Bad Diets
THE Henry VIII whom Dickens called
National Archives on-line Henry VIII exhibition
The UK National Archives has an on-line exhibition for the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne: Henry VIII – Power, Passion, Parchment. The exhibition features some documents that you can zoom in on and examine up close.
And here is an article from the Telegraph on the exhibition – Salacious claims of Anne Boleyn’s incest in Henry VIII documents placed online
“Virtual restoration” of Henry VIII tapestry
AP photo
This is pretty cool… I can have both a history and tech geek-out!
From The Telegraph:
Scientists have managed to “virtually restore” the faded hues of his 28ft long tapestry using coloured light beams.
The Manchester University researchers looked at the back of the heavy wool and silk tapestry, which has been less affected by sunlight, to gauge what the original colours might have been.
They then measured the colour of every yarn on the front and used computer software to calculate how much of the original pigments of woad (blue), weld (yellow) and madder (red) had been lost.
High-definition projectors have now been used to beam two million pixels of different coloured light on to the tapestry.
Also check out the BBC story, with videos
Hampton Court Palace events this year
Hampton Court Palace‘s 500th anniversary events will start this Friday, and there is a lot going on!
Here are some highlights:
The Henry VIII talks at Hampton Court Palace
And of course, I have to link to the shopping. Here’s the web store for the Historic Royal Palaces – I love the “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” charm bracelet. There is also a neat one with each of the wives’ badges.
Rediscovered drawing at British Library exhibition
This just goes to show you how many things may still be hiding in archives, libraries, attics, etc.
From The Guardian:
A drawing of Henry VIII’s famous victory over the French at the “Siege of Boulogne” in 1544 is to go on public display for the first time in more than 400 years after lying undiscovered and mislabelled in the British Library archives.
The image, drawn by a “war artist” commissioned to record the Tudor king’s military achievements, dates to 1545 and is one of four “views” documenting Henry’s second invasion of France.
For centuries art historians have pondered why there was never a final picture showing the surrender of the city. Just three drawings survived, one showing Henry landing in Calais, another of him on the way to Boulogne, and a third of the siege in progress.
“Everybody just assumed that the end of the siege had not been done,” Peter Barber, head of map collections at the British Library, told the Observer. But due to a cataloguing error the existence of a fourth drawing had gone unnoticed. It only came to light when Barber began re-cataloguing the manuscripts of Sir Robert Cotton, which had been left to the nation by his grandson, Sir John Cotton, in 1702 and passed to the British Museum on its founding in 1753.
The drawing will be on display at the British Library’s “Henry VIII: Man and Monarch” exhibition
