State Papers go online next week

The article from the Telegraph focuses on Henry VIII’s letters to Anne Boleyn, but I’m sure a lot of you know what other treasures are in those papers. Being able to search them in this way is going to be wonderful. (Not to mention the book versions are darn heavy!)

From the article:

King Henry VIII’s passionate love letters to Anne Boleyn are to be made available to the public online for the first time.

The letters, penned by the King in 1527 when he was still married to Catherine of Aragon, reveal him to be besotted with the woman who would eventually become his second wife.

The private correspondence is among tens of thousands of Tudor documents which will be made available on the internet this week.

The documents, which are known as the State Papers and which were collected by the all-powerful Secretaries of State, provide a unique insight into key historical events such as the Reformation, the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the execution of Anne Boleyn.
…
Visitors to the site, which goes live on Tuesday 18 November, can draw up material by typing any word into its search engine. Key royal documents include those relating to the funeral of Henry VII and the succession of Henry VIII, love letters from Henry VIII, and the Dispensation by Archbishop Cranmer which allowed Henry VIII to marry Jane Seymour, who became his third wife.
…
State Papers Online, which is launched on Tuesday, contains thousands of original documents as well as summaries and translations known as calendars which were compiled in the nineteenth century.

At the moment only the papers for the period 1509 to 1603 are available. But by 2010 the site will be expanded to cover the years leading up to 1714.

Full article

State Papers Online site

The “request a free trial” implies that this will be a subscription service (presumably along the lines of the OED and ODNB), so I hope my university subscribes!

Possible coffin of Richard III?

From This Is Leicestershire:

Mystery surrounding one of the county’s medieval legends has been reignited after an ancient stone coffin linked to Richard III was unearthed on a building site.

The solid stone sarcophagus was discovered in the grounds of a property in Earl Shilton, by the home’s former gardener Reg Colver, where it had formed part of a water garden built in the early 1900s.

Archaeologists believe it dates from the time Richard died and could have been buried in the same church, Greyfriars, which once existed near Leicester Cathedral.

Richard Knox, of the county council’s archaeological services, said: “It is an important medieval artefact in its own right, it also shows the strength of the Bosworth myth which makes all local medieval finds somehow relevant to Richard and the Battle of Bosworth.”
…
Archaeologists have said they are confident the coffin unearthed yesterday is not that of Richard, but would never be able to rule out the possibility.

Mr Knox said: “It is also quite possible that Richard’s coffin is still buried at the church at Greyfriars and was never dug up at all.”

Full article (with photo)

Seems like a tenuous link to me, but it is an interesting discovery regardless.

Previous post on the search for Richard’s bones (the news link in the post is no longer active)

Update: November 25, 2008 – Coffin to be donated to Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Center

From 24dash.com:

Ernie White, Leicestershire County Council

Another property for sale

Since I just posted a story yesterday about a property for rent, I was going to pass by this one for sale, until I read the following sentence:

It is run as a hotel for part of the year, with visitors able to enjoy a 17th century medieval experience and six-course banquet along with typical medieval housekeeping staff.

So, what is a 17th century medieval experience? Is that anything like the 21st century renaissance experience I had last weekend? And I’m kind of scared of what a ‘medieval housekeeping staff’ would be like. (Apologies to my friends and any readers who hate hearing the word ‘medieval’ used as a colloquial term for all things bad.)

All snark aside, it is an amazing-looking house. I’m a sucker for black-and-white timbering.

Original article

Property listing (with more photos)

House next to Hever Castle for rent

Yet another one of those neat properties … although this one is only for rent, not for sale.

From The Times Online property pages:

Renting a country house is in. Potential buyers biding their time for further price falls are in need of a stopgap home, and are renting from those who are holding off from selling. Stables House, in Kent, is to let – for

The King’s Daughter by Sandra Worth

Sandra Worth, who has written several novels set in the period of the Wars of the Roses has a new book coming out in December on Elizabeth of York, the first Tudor Queen.

Here is a link to more information about the book on Sandra’s website.

And as a special treat, I will be hosting a thread here on the blog where readers can ask Sandra questions and she will respond. We haven’t set an exact day for it yet, but keep your eyes open!

Last but not least, here are the Amazon links (US on the left, UK on the right) to pre-order the book:

Totally off-topic

But I couldn’t let another big spam milestone go by without a note:

So, I moved the blog to WordPress in April and hit 1000 spam comments in August. Now I’ve hit 5000 in November. This doesn’t bode well for the future.

Actually, one of the reasons that I posted this is to apologize in advance for any delays in the appearance of real comments. The spam-catcher is actually quite good at getting the spam, but unfortunately it also catches some non-spam from time to time. I try to check the spam queue at least twice a day, but sometimes I get a little behind and then I find that I have to wade through a couple hundred comments checking to see if there is a legitimate message buried in between the ads for drugs, pics of naked celebs and other things that I won’t mention but will leave to your imagination. (I personally I don’t care what people’s private fetishes are, but really, I don’t need some of those mental images.)

One quick additional note – I’m going to be working at a science conference for the rest of the week, so things might be a little spotty. I usually find that my days at meetings like this are quick bursts of activity sandwiched between lots of equations and plots (which is when I usually check my email since these conferences are rarely on the topics that I’m most interested in).

Exhibition on Henry VIII’s 500th anniversary in New York

The Grolier Club in New York will be holding an exhibition from March 4 to May 2, 2009 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne. This is the first big exhibition I’ve heard about to celebrate the anniversary here in the States, so I hope some of you get a chance to see it. They are going to have some really neat things there!

I have three PDFs with information about the exhibition, which you can download at the links below:
Press Release
Exhibition Highlights
Image Sheets (2.3 MB file)

Open thread – Suggestions for future book discussions

After the success of Foose’s “live blogging” of Starkey’s new book on Henry VIII, I’ve had a couple of folks suggest we do some more. If you have a suggestion for another book that we can do as a group discussion, please post it in the comments and I’ll work out a proposed schedule. To start with, I’d like to stick to NON-fiction books, although if this is successful and we continue it for a while we can certainly branch into fiction.

[The discussions will actually take place on the Q&A blog]

Update on Kenilworth Gardens

As most of you probably know by now, I’m a big fan of the project to recreate the Elizabethan gardens at Kenilworth Castle, based on archaeology and the accounts from Elizabeth’s famous visit in 1575.

Here’s an article from Building Design online about the architecture firm doing the gardens and the project in general, including some neat pictures (small version of one of them above).

In 1575, Elizabeth I

Telegraph article on Syon monastery and Katherine Palmer

From the Telegraph Online:

Among the eminent people added this month to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (that endless labyrinth stuffed with curiosities) is a woman from the Tudor age who stands out for the strength of her perseverance against calamities. Her name was Katherine Palmer.

She was born early in the reign of Henry VIII. Her mother’s family had lived at Ightham Mote, the stone, timber and moated house in Kent, now in the care of the National Trust. Katherine gave up life among the gentry to join the monastery of Syon at Isleworth, on the Thames, where the Duke of Northumberland’s house now stands.

Syon was unusual because it was ruled by a woman, as a double foundation of 60 nuns, and a separate house of 24 brothers, some of whom acted as chaplains to the nuns. At this abbey, each half walled around in its own cloisters, nuns and monks lived a life of contemplative prayer.

…

These houses of prayer, trusted by successive kings and least in need of reform, were among the first targets for Henry VIII’s resentment over the matter of the divorce of Katharine of Aragon and his desire for plunder. Richard Reynolds, a monk of Syon, was hanged, drawn and quartered along with the Prior of the London Charterhouse and his fellows on May 4 1535.

Syon held together until 1539, when it was suppressed through Thomas Cromwell’s energy. Alone among English nunneries of which we have records, the sisters continued to live as best they could under the rule of their foundress in small groups, at first in England, then abroad. Katherine Palmer was a leader in these attempts.

Full article

Tip o’ the wimple to Foose for the recommendation of the article