Christmas crowning

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imagesThere are twelve days until Christmas so I thought I’d turn my attention to a few festive posts and where better to start that with William, Duke of Normandy.

The Orderic Vitalis recounts events. Given that the dates for the Orderic are 1075-1142 the chronicler could hardly be accused of penning his words from the front line but it’s the best historians have to go on and it is a reliable source.

 

So at last on Christmas Day… the English assembled at London for the king’s coronation, and a strong guard of Normen men-at-arms and knights was posted round the minster to prevent any treachery or disorder. And, in the presence of the bishops, abbots, and nobles of the whole realm of Albion, Archbishop Ealdred consecrated William duke of Normandy as king of the English and placed the royal crown on his head. This was done in the abbey church of St Peter the chief of the apostles, called Westminster , where the body of King Edward lies honourably buried.

 

But at the prompting of the devil, who hates everything good, a sudden disaster and portent of future catastrophes occurred. For when Archbishop Ealdred asked the English, and Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances asked the Normans, if they would accept William as their king, all of them gladly shouted out with once voice if not in one language that they would. The armed guard outside, hearing the tumult of the joyful crowd in the church and the harsh accents of a foreign tongue, imagined that some treachery was afoot, and rashly set fire to some of the buildings. The fire spread rapidly from house to house; the crowd who had been rejoicing in the church took fright and throngs of men and women of every rank and condition rushed out of the church in frantic haste. Only the bishops and a few clergy and monks remained, terrified, in the sanctuary, and with difficulty completed the consecration of the king who was trembling from head to foot. Almost all the rest made for the scene of conflagration, some to fight the flames and many others hoping to find loot for themselves in the general confusion. The English, after hearing of the perpetration of such misdeeds, never again trusted the Normans who seemed to have betrayed them, but nursed their anger and bided their time to take revenge.

 

Source: The Ecclesiastic History of Orderic Vitalis, translated by Marjorie Chibnill (Oxford University Press, 1978)

 

Now I ask you – you’re a man at arms; your man Bill is getting crowned, you hear a loud noise inside the abbey where the coronation is going down. You panic because of the loud noises. Fair enough, you’re probably aware that you’ve not won friends and influenced people during the last three months but then- and this is the bit I struggle with- instead of checking that Bill isn’t being brutally murdered by some very cross Saxons you set fire to random buildings…why exactly would you do that? It’s not really a terribly logical thing to do – but then I’m not a Norman.  There again, perhaps if you set fire to the buildings on either side of the narrow streets it would prevent anyone else getting to the abbey?

Every monarch since William the Conqueror has been crowned in Westminster Abbey apart from Edward V and Edward VIII who weren’t crowned at all- the first because he disappeared whilst in the Tower and the second because he became sidetracked by a divorced American.  Other monarchs had themselves crowned elsewhere to be certain of the job but had themselves re-crowned at Westminster in due course.  Henry I on spotting that brother William Rufus had expired due to a nasty arrow related injury in the New Forest on 2nd August 1100 took himself off to Winchester, secured the treasury and  had himself crowned there the next day.  The procedure was repeated in Westminster on the 6th.  It was normal for medieval kings to hold more than one coronation – it helped remind people who was in charge.

 

Anyway, that’s the first of my festive posts – William the Conqueror being crowned on Christmas Day 1066 followed, not with the first edition of the King’s speech,  by a good old-fashioned medieval riot.

Mrs Jane Small and Hans Holbein

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Holbein,_Hans_(II)_-_Mrs_Jane_Small,_formerly_Mrs_Pemberton_-_Google_Art_ProjectIt’ll come as a bit of a shock if you don’t already know it but this portrait is only five centimeters in diameter. She’s a miniature or as the Tudors would have known it – a limming or limning.  The image is one of the first minatures produced in England and was painted by Holbein. She’s been painted on vellum and stetched over a playing card (Denyer-Baker: introduction) which can clearly be seen if the mount, a later addition, is reversed. The miniature was designed to be worn a bit like a jewel.

 

Mrs Jane Small, as we now know her to be, isn’t a great courtier. She’s the wife of a merchant, Nicholas Small. Originally art historians thought that Jane was actually Mrs Robert Pemberton from Northamptonshire, which was problematic. Mrs Robert Pemberton was a Throckmorton so she would have had links to the court but certainly it seemed unlikely that Holbein who worked from London would have painted her. Mrs Jane Small on the other hand, lived just down the road from Holbein.

 

The black gown she is wearing is wool but because her husband is prosperous there is a faint possibility it may be silk. She’s wearing a linen smock with collar and cuffs decorated in black work – another reason I like the image. Katherine of Aragon made blackwork, or Spanishwork, popular in England. She embroidered Henry’s shirts even after he sought a divorce. Expert stitchers ensure that the work is the same on both sides of the fabric. Women like Bess of Hardwick employed embroiderers (usually men) for important pieces of work but in this portrait it is likely that Jane embroidered the blackwork pattern on her own collar and cuffs, as a bride she would seek, perhaps, to demonstrate her prowess as a housewife and capability with the needle was an essential skill.  She would undoubtedly be wearing her best clothes for the occasion of the portrait.

 

There’s a flower pinned to her bodice – the iconography is important. Holbein’s subjects often hold a carnation whether they’re male or female and this is the indicator that they have become betrothed. So Jane hadn’t yet married Mr Small, certainly the coat of arms, of a later provenance, that accompanies the trinket is that of the Pembertons. Jane Pemberton was in her twenty-third year and married in 1540.  She’s not important to Tudor dynasties, she hasn’t done anything particularly noteworthy but she is the face of an ordinary woman looking out at us from Holbein’s crisp blue background – she could be you and she could be me.  She reflects changing and growing affluence within society.  Ordinary people can now have their portrait painted to celebrate a special occasion – marriage.

 

But back to the iconography.  She’s depicted with two ears of corn and holding what looks like a sprig of lavender – they must have meaning but your guess is as good as mine as to what message Holbein is conveying. The corn could be representative of fertility. She did go on to have several children. Equally, though perhaps unlikely, it could be a reference to her virgin status. Yates references Elizabeth I being compared to the goddess Ceres be depicting her holding corn – virginal but fruitful (Yates: 78) Culpepper writing in 1653 saw lavender as good for colds and a symbol of virginity. In folklore lavender was supposed to be loved by the Virgin Mary.  The problem with foliage is that the meaning can shift depending upon the context.

 

Jane would marry again in 1567 after the death of Nicholas to another Nicholas called Nicholas Parkinson. She outlived him as well and seems to have reverted to the name Small.

 

Denyer-Baker, Pauline. Painting Miniatures

 

Yates, Francis A. (1999) Astraea – Yates London: Routledge

 

Erasmus and Holbein

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Holbein-erasmusErasmus and humanism go hand in hand. And it was through Erasmus that Holbein was able to make his way to England with a letter of introduction. He travelled from Basel to the Low Countries and from there to London and the household of Sir Thomas More. Later Erasmus would write that Holbein coerced the letter; outstayed his welcome in Holland; played fast and loose with the truth to gain admittance to More’s household.

 

Young Desiderius, a Dutchman, was born in1466 or 1467, the illegitimate son of a priest. In 1492 after both his parents died of plague and he and his brother were sent to a school that Erasmus remembered for its discipline rather than its nurturing of learning. Both Erasmus and his brother took monastic orders and then Erasmus was himself ordained as a priest before going to Paris to study.

 

As his reputation as a scholar became known he began to correspond with the likes of Sir Thomas More whom he’d met on his first visit to England in 1505 and Dean Colet. Letters travelled across Europe as ideas were shared. He challenged ecclesiastical abuses, drew on the classics to expand his humanist philosophies, wrote against Luther and he sent pictures to his friends – except in an age without the polaroid a competent painter was required if you wanted to send your likeness as a gift – not a new idea if you were a monarch but very new for an ‘ordinary’ person like Erasmus. Holbein was just the man, not least because Erasmus travelled to Basel and had been impressed by Holbein’s illustrations of the Dance of Death.

 

As a consequence of his illustration work Holbein received his commission to paint Erasmus.  His studies of Erasmus’s head and hands remain as does the portrait and many copies ‘in the style of.’ The most learned groups in Europe saw the picture and the drawings that Holbein executed. Holbein’s reputation became international and entry to the English court must have become much easier – after all Henry VIII was a Renaissance king…who needed a Renaissance artist.

Personally I love the fact that Erasmus is depicted with ink stained hands.  Holbein has also place some Greek in the picture as well as Latin.  Erasmus translated the New Testament into Greek.  There’s a reference to the classics and Erasmus’s use of the classics – which the monastery of his youth disapproved of- through the pillar in the background.

 

Archbishop Wareham

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Hans_Holbein_d._J._066William Wareham left Oxford in 1488 to follow a career in the ecclesiastical courts. His reputation was such that he was soon being sent abroad on diplomatic missions. In 1502 he became Bishop of London, then in 1503 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. The following year Henry VII made Wareham his chancellor.

 

In his capacity of Archbishop of Canterbury he crown Henry VIII and his new bride Katherine of Aragon. Initially he maintained his role of king’s advisor but Henry became increasingly reliant upon Wolsey who received his cardinal’s hat from Wareham in 1515. That same year Wareham resigned in part because he disagreed with Henry VIII’s anti-French policy but in 1520 he was part of the Field of Cloth of Gold where Henry and Francis I of France declared undying friendship.

 

Wareham was loyal to Henry even though he didn’t always agree with him. At the time of the King’s Great Matter in 1527 it was Wareham who was appointed to represent Katherine, which was not particularly helpful to the queen as he refused to give her any advice based on the principal that the king’s wishes should not be opposed. In fact he signed a petition to the Pope Clement VII requesting that the divorce should be granted. It was even suggested that as Archbishop of Canterbury he should try the case but fortunately for him this idea fizzled out. He was doing his best to maintain the Church in the face of Henry’s growing hostility towards it and the Pope.

 

In 1531 he was in charge of the Convocation that handed £100,000 over to Henry in order to avoid the charge of praemunire (obeying a foreign authority). He also accepted Henry VIII as the supreme head of the church with the caveat that allowed most men to accept the oath “so far as the law of Christ allows.” Perhaps he realised that Henry would never be satisfied and tried to pursue the rights of the Church but it was too late – he was old and tired. He died on 22 August 1532.

 

The painting of Wareham is after the style of Hans Holbein – a sketch of Wareham’s head by Holbein is in the Royal Collection which was executed (okay perhaps not a good word to use in the context of anyone alive during the reign of Henry VIII) during Holbein’s first visit to England in 1526-28.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frances Brandon

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frances-tombFrances Grey nee Brandon is another ‘not quite Tudor princess.’ She was the elder daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary Tudor the Dowager Queen of France and her second husband Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk- based on modern rules she would not be defined as a princess but her nearness to the crown at a time when there was a shortage of Tudor heirs created tragedy for her three daughters.

Frances was born at Hatfield on July 16, 1517. Interestingly, like her cousins there was some legal wrangling as to her legitimacy. Charles had been married to Margaret Neville before marrying Mary – unfortunately Margaret was still very much alive at the time. Charles had to get the marriage annulled on grounds of consanguinity by which time Frances had arrived so his legal paperwork had to declare her legitimate.

 

Mary Tudor was close to her sister-in-law Catherine of Aragon so inevitably Frances spent time with her cousin the Princess Mary meaning that the arrival of Anne Boleyn made family gatherings a tad tricky.

 

In 1533, Frances married Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset. He was the great-grandson of Elizabeth Woodville through her first marriage. Soon after the marriage Frances’ mother died. By 1551, Frances’ half brother was dead and Henry Grey became Duke of Suffolk. Frances was also third in line for the throne, the Tudor lack of males making her more important than she might otherwise have been. By the time she was nineteen she’d already lost a daughter and more importantly, in the minds of folk wanting male Tudors, a son. In 1537 another daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was born. Roger Ascham, her one time tutor, recorded Jane’s views of Frances’ parenting strategy –

 

“For when I am in presence either of father or mother; whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else; I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr Elmer; who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him…”

 

No wonder then that numerous writers have suggested that the greys were disappointed that Jane was not a boy – although expectations of learning amongst the Tudor children was undoubtedly high.

 

Unlike Eleanor Brandon who seems to have been unambitious, perhaps because of her poor health Frances appears to have been much more determined to shin up the Tudor powerlist. When Henry VIII died in 1547 they handed Jane over to Thomas Seymour as a ward in the hope that he might arrange a match with her cousin the new king Edward VI.

 

But by 1553 it was clear that Edward was dying. Jane leapfrogged over her cousins Mary and Elizabeth bypassing Henry VIII’s will when Edward named her his heir. She was married off to Guildford Dudley. Novels suggest that Frances beat Jane in order to ensure compliance but there are no historical sources to support this.

 

Frances’s husband Henry Grey was executed on February 23, 1554 for his part in Wyatt’s rebellion against Mary- he outlived his daughter by ten days. His involvement in the rebellion cost Jane her life.

 

Frances went on to marry her Master of Horse, rather suggesting she wasn’t as ambitious as all that the following month. By marrying Adrian Stokes she lowered her rank so significantly that William Camden believed that she distanced herself and her surviving children far enough from the throne to make them less of a threat. Leanda de Lisle’s book about the Grey sisters reveals that Katherine and Mary remained at risk because of their closeness to the throne but that during Mary’s reign they were welcome at court, as indeed was their mother Frances.

 

Frances’ health deteriorated in part from late pregnancies- she gave birth to a daughter who died the same day – had she visited Henry Grey in the Tower after his arrest there might have been some doubt as to whether or not Adrian Stokes was the father. And there were also two sons who died in infancy. Frances died in the Charterhouse at Sheen in 21 November 1559. She was given the burial of a princess in Westminster Abbey and was described as such by the heralds at the funeral demonstrating that the term princess was a moveable feast during the Tudor period.

 

Lady Eleanor Brandon

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Brandon,Eleonor01The Act of Settlement in 1701 ensured a Protestant succession upon the deaths of King William III (That’s the William in William and Mary) and his niece Princess Anne who would become the last Stuart monarch dying in 1714. Since then, the title of princess has been clearly designated. The daughter of a monarch is a princess. The daughter of a prince is a princess. The daughter of a princess on the other hand is not a princess unless her father is one of the above.

 

Before the advent of the Hanoverians the title was less regularly used and it was not always clear how diluted royal blood was deemed to have become. Mary Tudor was undoubtedly a princess being the daughter of King Henry VII of England. She was also the Dowager-Queen of France having been married off for political reasons to the elderly Louis XII of France who expired three months after the wedding – the moral here being don’t marry a bride more than thirty years your junior… perhaps. However, although Mary was known throughout her life as ‘The French Queen,’  and whilst her daughters Francis and Eleanor were important in terms of the Tudor dynasty they were not, by Hanoverian standards princesses because their father was neither a prince nor a king.

 

After Louis XII died Mary batted off a number of suitors and married the man she’d fallen in love with whilst she was a princess back at home in England. Charles Brandon was the Duke of Suffolk. His father had been Henry VII’s standard-bearer at the Battle of Bosworth. Following the death of his father at Bosworth Charles was raised at court. He was a favourite of young Henry and was described in one letter as a ‘second king.’ Even so the pair of star struck lovers had enough common sense to undergo a private ceremony in France before returning home and then to get Cardinal Wolsey to break the news to Henry VIII that his sister, whom he had promised could marry whosoever she wished, was married to Brandon. He was not amused. The pair ended up giving the grasping Henry all her dowry and plate as well as agreeing to pay £1000 each year for the next twenty-four years.

 

Eleanor was their second daughter and at that time was so unimportant that her birth was not recorded accurately – so sometime between 1518 and 1521. In 1533 she was contracted to marry, Henry Clifford, First Earl of Cumberland who was also a second cousin through the maternal line. An account is given in that same year of Eleanor and her sister Frances as mourners at their mother’s funeral.

 

The marriage between Eleanor and Henry Clifford, like most noble matches was about land and power.  The pair, who spent much of their married life at Brougham Castle, seem to have been genuinely fond of one another – she refers to him as “dear heart” in her letters. As for Henry Clifford, he celebrated his marriage into the Tudor family by extending Skipton Castle with the addition of a tower and a gallery.  After all, its not everyday you marry into royalty.

 

In 1536, Eleanor acted as chief mourner at Catherine of Aragon’s funeral, as her cousin the Princess Mary was refused permission to attend because of her intransigence in the matter of her personal beliefs and her determination to uphold her mother’s wishes. It suggests that Eleanor was as close as her mother had been to Catherine of Aragon. This is confirmed by the circumstantial evidence that she does not seem to have had any role in the households of any of Henry’s queens apart from Katherine Parr – perhaps it was the northern link.

 

Alternatively it may be that Eleanor was not in robust health. We know that she bore three children – two of whom, Henry and Charles, died young. There are letters from her father, her husband and one from her which contain information about her own poor health:

Dear heart,
After my most hearty commendations, this shall be to certify you that since your departure from me I have been very sick and at this present my water is very red, whereby I suppose I have the jaundice and the ague both, for I have none abide [no appetite for] meat and I have such pains in my side and towards my back as I had at Brougham, where it began with me first. Wherefore I desire you to help me to a physician and that this bearer my bring him with him, for now in the beginning I trust I may have good remedy, and the longer it is delayed, the worse it will be. Also my sister Powys Anne Brandon is come to me and very desirous to see you, which I trust shall be the sooner at this time, and thus Jesus send us both health.

At my lodge at Carlton, the 14th of February.
And, dear heart, I pray you send for Dr Stephens, for he knoweth best my complexion for such causes.
By your assured loving wife, Eleanor Cumberland

 

 

In the same year that Catherine of Aragon died Eleanor was staying in Bolton Priory with her infant son, when the Pilgrimage of Grace erupted around her.  Skipton Castle was besieged and the pilgrims threatened to use Eleanor as a hostage. To ensure that Henry Clifford did what they wanted of him – the message, according to Stickland, was that if Clifford failed to comply  with the pilgrims demands then Eleanor would be handed over to ‘ruffians.’ Being a Victorian lady writer Agnes Strickland passes over the terror of that particular fate.  Fortunately for Eleanor there was a knight errant at hand. Robert Aske, leader of the Pilgrimage of grace, had a brother called Christopher. It was he who offered Eleanor protection.   Along with the Vicar of Skipton he escorted Eleanor and her son through the camp and across the moor to safety under cover of darkness.

 

The religious uncertainites of the period seem to have haunted Eleanor once more at a later stage of her life when she was mentioned as having a connection to Anne Askew. Fortunately for Eleanor it would appear that Anne approached her but nothing came of it.

 

Henry VIII died in 1547 as did Eleanor who passed away whilst residing in Brougham Castle. She was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Skipton. It is interesting the at the wording of Eleanor’s epitaph gives her the title “Grace” – a reminder, perhaps, that to her family and to her people she was a princess.  Henry Clifford was, apparently, bereft for months afterwards to the point that his household thought that he had died and set about laying him out.  He recovered sufficiently to remarry. Henry VIII, as might be expected of a man who turned his kingdom upside down, wrote a will which identified the order in which his children would inherit the throne. If they did not survive he identified the children of Lady Frances Grey, Countess of Dorset and then those of Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland to follow after him- bypassing the children of his other sister , Margaret Tudor, completely. It was perhaps fortunate that Eleanor did not live long enough to know the fate that befell her niece Lady Jane Grey or the difficulties that her only surviving child, Margaret, would face as a result of their Tudor blood and Henry VIII’s will.

Nicholas Kratzer

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NPG 5245; Nicholas Kratzer after Hans Holbein the Younger

after Hans Holbein the Younger, oil on panel, late 16th century (1528) – click on picture to open a new window in the NPG catalogue.

Nicholas Kratzer, born in Munich in 1487, was a friend of Hans Holbein. In fact, Kratzer’s was one of the first portraits that Holbein painted when he came first to England. But who was Kratzer?

 

He was a mathematician and astronomer  who invented the polyhedral sundial. He arrived in England in 1516 from Cologne to teach mathematics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was about thirty at the time. He went on to be employed by Henry VIII as Court Astronomer in 1520 to make clocks and sundials. The clock at Hampton Court is is work. Wolsey also gave commissions to Kratzer for similar items. Both men were demonstrating that they were renaissance men. It wasn’t enough to know languages (both ancient and modern) it was also essential to be seen as a man of science. Inevitably Henry’s courtiers also sought out Kratzer to demonstrate their own learning and to keep up with the Tudors and their cronies. One of Kratzer’s sundials was uncovered at Iron Acton Court near Bristol which is now in the hands of English Heritage but once belonged to Nicholas Poyntz – demonstrating that the trend for horology spread far beyond the court setting.

 

Kratzer moved in the England’s leading intellectual circles. He tutored Sir Thomas More’s children and this was where Holbein seems to have first met him. More writes of Kratzer in a letter to his family:

 

But I think you have no longer any need of Master Nicholas [Kratzer], since you have learned whatever he had to teach you about astronomy. I hear you are so far advanced in that science that you can not only point out the polar star or the dog star, or any of the ordinary stars, but are able also…to distinguish the sun from the moon! Onward then in that new and admirable science by which you ascend to the stars!

 

Holbein’s original portrait of Sir Thomas More’s family no longer survives but the original sketch which was presented to Erasmus as a gift by More is still in existence. Each member of the family is carefully annotated in a hand that is not Holbein’s – it is Kratzer who not only knew More, Erasmus and Holbein but also Durer who wrote that Kratzer has provided invaluable assistance in technical matters. Kratzer also knew Thomas Cromwell who was an astute man of business with many German links.

 

Kratzer provided Holbein with technical information. Experts believe that the mathematical instruments and dials depicted in Holbein’s The Ambassadors were provided by Kratzer. The men worked together for the décor of the Banqueting House at Greenwich in 1527. It was a temporary building designed to allow the king to show off his wealth, splendor and just how learned he was – iconography was incredibly important in the sixteenth century so Kratzer’s advice was essential.  They collaborated in the making of maps.

It is interesting to note that his death is written as circa 1550 and even his birth is based on guesswork derived from how old he looks in Holbein’s portrait which was painted in 1528. The painting in the National Portrait Gallery is not Holbein’s original, that hangs in The Louvre.

 

 

 

Hans Holbein and the mystery lady

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anne_ashby_largeThe catchily titled Lady was a Squirrel and a Starling  was painted, experts believe, on Holbein’s first visit to England (1526-28). She is sometimes supposed to be Margaret Giggs, Sir Thomas More’s step-daughter on account of the fact that her unusual fur hat is very similar to a drawing of Margaret held at Windsor in the royal collection but evidently a pointy hat was a fashionable item – because who would want to be painted in clothes that weren’t their very finest?

Another, and more likely, suggestion made by the National Portrait Gallery is that the lady may be Anne Lovell nee Ashby. The rationale for this suggestion comes from the presence of the very perky pet squirrel in the portrait. Holbein portrayed monkeys and even a marmoset as well as falcons in his portraits.  Not that there was anything new about being painted with your pet – think of Leonardo Da Vinci’s portrait of the girl with her pet ermine. The squirrel may indeed just be a pet in the picture for a bit of foreground interest. Apparently they were popular from medieval times onwards but this is a sixteenth century portrait and symbolism was important.

east_1aAlternatively, and more likely, the squirrel is an allusion to the Lovell family of Norfolk  who had three squirrels on their coat of arms. If this is the case then it is also suggested the starling is a rebus for the East Harling Estate in Norfolk which Anne’s husband Francis inherited from his uncle Sir Thomas who had fought at Bosworth on the side of Henry Tudor. There is a squirrel lurking in the stained glass at East Harling.

Anne and Francis were only recently married when Holbein came to England.  It is possible that the picture is one of a pair of husband and wife but that the husband has gone astray.  So is the portrait a celebration of marriage? Of inheritance? Or something else?  Once again history in it’s many guises offers some tantalising insights but leaves much of the story untold.  We do know that Anne was dead by 1539 and that Francis remarried to a woman called Elizabeth but of Anne we know very little other than what she looked like.

According to Time Out this picture is number thirty-one on the hundred best paintings to see in London. It is certainly an opportunity to admire the way that Holbein creates texture not only in the textiles but also in the squirrel which looks as though it is about to leap off the oak board upon which it is painted.

King John Crossword

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knigh2King John has been much talked and written about in this eight hundredth anniversary of Magna Carta.  The British Library held an exhibition. It’s website still has videos, interviews and documents.  What more could you want?  Click here to open a new window http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/videos/800-years-of-magna-carta.  His effigy, along with various bones and his will, can be viewed at Worcester Cathedral whilst one of the original copies of the Magna Carta is on display in Salisbury.  There have been articles about him in History Today and several of the broadsheets have considered just how bad John actually really was…the conclusion being not as bad as Shakespeare might have liked.  Marc Morris’s book Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta offers a clear oversight into the derailment of Henry II’s youngest son from monarch to man who lost his baggage. For younger readers of history, much to my delight, the Ladybird Adventure from History about King John is once again available – although possibly not presenting him in a particularly balanced light.

Lack of balance is certainly true of the Jean Plaidy novel about King John entitled ‘The Prince of Darkness’ which gives an unfortunate hint of the direction of John’s character as interpreted by Ms Plaidy. John was undoubtedly a much more complex man than that of out and out villain.  Those complexities and ambiguities can be found, for those folk who like their history in novel form, in Sharon Penman’s books about Justin de Quincy – the first in the series is called The Queen’s Man.  Inevitably novels containing Robin Hood feature John somewhere along the line – for fans of the outlaw, Angus Donald books are not to be missed.  I know that there are many more – there is something about John that draws writers in, perhaps because he is much more than a cardboard villain.

The Angevin monarch is not without a future either.  King John, is taught at Key Stage Three in schools and is also currently part of the AQA A level history syllabus (HIS3A: The Angevin Kings of England: British Monarchy, 1154–1216) as well as an OCR A level history qualification which will be examined for the first time in 2017.

Having recently taught a day school on King John I finished with a crossword.  Here it is along with the answers:  Click on the word puzzle to open up a new window.  Some of the clues are straight forward, others require slightly more knowledge.  None of them are too difficult.

puzzle

Across

2) Pope who tore up Magna Carta and triggered civil war (8).
6) Adrian IV’s surname before he became pope (10).
9) Fine issued by the court at the will of the king (10).
10) Chronicle which probably tells the tale of the death of John’s nephew accurately (6).
12) Keep where Eleanor of Aquitaine was besieged by her grandson (8).
13) Powerful Lower Poitou family (8)
14) Niece from Castile to be married to Prince Louis and fetched for that purpose by Queen Eleanor (7).
15) Prior sent by Canterbury monks to Rome as archbishop. (8)
17) John’s tutor (9).
18) John had two daughters by this name (4).
20) Place of John’s birth (6).
29) Scottish king who joined with the barons (9).
30) John sent ship loads of corn to Norway in return for these (7).
31) John was prone to demanding these of his enemies and his barons (8).
32) The son of John’s brother Geoffrey (6).
33) Count who dined with John on the same day that he switched to the french (7).
36) One of the causes of the dysentery said to have killed John (5)
41) As a consequence of the fall of the Angevin Empire John built one of these (4).
42) There was a Bishop of Durham and a Bishop of Lincoln who played active roles in John’s life (4).
43) Nickname of John’s early years (8).
44) What did Roger de Cressi do that earned him a fine of 12,000 marks and 12 palfreys in 1207 (7).
45) Matilda FitzWalter is said to have been poisoned by one of these having spurned John’s advances (3).
46) Town where John died (6).
Down

1) Abbey founded by John (8).
3) Castle where 22 Bretton captives were starved to death (5).
4) Castle given to John by Henry II and where Welsh hostages were executed (10).
5) Bishop of Norwich selected by John as Archbishop of Canterbury (4, 2, 4).
6) 1214 battle that saw John defeated in France (8).
7) Chronicler writing many years after John’s death who was hostile to John (5).
8) Gossipy chronicler who travelled with John to Ireland (6).
11) Unfortunate chap called Henry whose wife was John’s mistress and who was used as an excuse to fine another man for the same offence.
12) Castle where John married his first wife (11).
16) Earl of Essex who paid 20,000 marks for his second wife (8, 2, 10)
19) Ambitious Justiciar (9).
21) Abbey where John stayed after losing his baggage in The Wash (10)
22) Castle besieged by John in 1215 (9).
23) Isabella of Angouleme’s father (5).
24) Cathedral where John is buried (9).
25) John’s daughter who married Simon de Montfort (7).
26) Eustace d’_ _ _ _ _ substituted another woman for his wife when John demanded her in his bed (5).
27) Hugh de Neville was responsible for administering it and it extended during John’s reign until Magna Carta (6, 3).
28) Another word for excommunication when applied to a region or country (9).
31) Anglo Norman baron granted kingdom of Meath (4,2,4).
34) 1200 treaty that saw John accept the overlordship of the French (2, 6).
35) 1209 treaty that saw peace between England and Scotland on John’s terms (6).
37) Lands in Normandy by which John was known after Richard’s accession (7).
38) Marcher earl who was often the victim John’s paranoia about treachery in 1203 and 1204 (7).
39) Dacus, danish merchant, who sailed tax free on condition he bring one of these whenever he came to England (4).
40) King who succeeded John (5).

To reveal the answers click on the word puzzle below.

puzzleanswers

Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan

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In October 1537 Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died from complications following childbirth. Henry, a man notorious for divorcing his first wife and beheading his second was in need of a new wife – or at least that was the view of his chief minister Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell’s attention initially fell upon Marie de Guise a young widow with a son – so a proven track record for the production of heirs. She was also purported to be a tall woman, something that Henry liked the sound of when he Marie was described to him. Marie however declined the offer of marriage explaining that she only had a little neck. She went on to marry James V of Scotland.

Henry next suggested that all the eligible women in France on Cromwell’s list of suitable brides make like to meet in Calais – think of it as a Tudor hen night where the king could choose his next wife on the grounds that Henry didn’t trust his ambassadors and he was determined he didn’t want to marry an ugly princess. Unsurprisingly the prospective brides and their families were not terribly impressed with the idea – the French ambassador explained that diplomatic marriages were not horse markets . There was also the small matter of the fact that Henry had been excommunicated- which rather put off the Catholic brides.

Ultimately Cromwell sent Hans Holbein on a fact-finding trip with his paintbrush and easel. One of the most striking portraits that Holbein painted at this time was that of sixteen-year-old Christina of Denmark. Christina was the younger daughter of Christian II of Denmark and Isabella of Austria (sister of Charles V). Christian was an early follower of Luther – even if Charles V was very Catholic.  Christian was a bit of an unfortunate king – his wife died, his children were effectively confiscated by their Hapsburg uncle and then he managed to get himself toppled and imprisoned – so Christina of Denmark was actually more Christina of the Netherlands. In some ways she was already part of the English royal family because her great-aunt was none other than Katherine of Aragon.

In addition to being a Hapsburg she was also, as this picture shows, a very pretty girl. She’d been married by proxy at the age of eleven to the Duke of Milan who was a mere twenty-six years older that her. He died two years later – hence the deep black of mourning- Christina returning to her uncle in Brussels so that he could arrange the next advantageous diplomatic marriage. Like Marie she was a tad concerned about the English King’s way with the ladies. She is supposed to have said that if she had two heads one of them would be at the disposal of Henry. Charles V who was looking for allies against the French seems little bothered about the way in which his aunt had been treated and was quite prepared to send his niece across the Channel…unless a better offer came along.

As a consequence of the initial negotiations Holbein visited Brussels in 1538. Christina sat for a portrait but only for three hours.  Holbein did his preliminary drawings, came home and whipped up the portrait.  And what a portrait! This is the only full-length female portrait that Holbein made (I think if memory serves me correctly). The colours and the simplicity of the picture concentrate the viewer on Christina’s hands and face as does the beautifully executed fur collar.  There is a hint of a smile on Christina’s face – perhaps she knew she wouldn’t have to marry Henry!  Henry liked the portrait so much that he announced that he was in love.

For some reason the negotiations did not continue. Christina married François, Duc de Bar in 1541, who succeeded his father as Duc de Lorraine in 1544 and died in 1545, leaving Christina Regent of Lorraine with three children. She died in 1590. As for the portrait – well Henry liked it so much he kept it.

The image for this post was accessed from http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-christina-of-denmark-duchess-of-milan 08/11/2015 @ 23:26