Friday, May 16, 2025

Re-Dressing the Evidence: Henrietta Maria’s Wardrobe Accounts, 1627–1639

 From Edinburgh University Press:

Dress was a powerful means for displaying magnificence at the early modern court. In its intrinsic material value, meticulous craftsmanship and brilliant surface effects, the richly dressed body signalled social status, cultural discernment and gendered virtue, and could be marshalled to political ends.1 Given the low survival rate of garments, historians have traditionally looked to artworks, especially portraits, for evidence about clothing styles. Analysis of documentary sources, including inventories, wardrobe accounts and New Year's gift rolls, have also provided a wealth of evidence about dress and its central role in court display and diplomacy. In the cases of Henry VIII (1491–1547), Elizabeth I (1533–1603) and Anna of Denmark (1574–1619), the accounts have been read alongside the clothing depicted in portraits, with close correlations.2 But for Henrietta Maria (1609–1669), the French queen consort who married Charles I (1600–1649) in 1625 and created a sensation at court — sartorially, politically and confessionally — there has been limited engagement with the archival sources related to her dress after she arrived in England.3
 
Essentially, the discussion of Henrietta Maria's dress at the English court has focused on how it is pictured in Anthony van Dyck's (1599–1641) portraits.4 Emilie Gordenker has argued that Van Dyck depicts Henrietta Maria in ‘English style’ dress rather than more formal French fashions.5 She explains that this ‘typical English costume’ is characterized by a bodice-petticoat combination without a gown.6 The absence of a gown is certainly evident in most of Van Dyck's portraits of the Queen. Indeed, what Gordenker and others have stressed is the relative simplicity of the dress in Van Dyck's English portraits, especially the ones from the late 1630s. Such portraits invoke William Sanderson's (1586–1676) claim in his treatise on painting, Graphice (1658), that Van Dyck was ‘The first Painter that e’re put Ladies dress into a careless Romance’.7 It has not previously been noted that Sanderson was a well-placed source about dress at the Queen's court; his wife, Bridget (d. 1682), whom he married in 1626, was the Queen's long-serving and generously remunerated laundress.8 Notwithstanding scholarly acceptance that Van Dyck generalized elements of dress, the conclusion has been that this is ‘usually firmly based on real costume’.9 Yet there has been very little analysis of the documentary evidence of what Henrietta Maria's actual dress was.
 
Evidence — in the form of boxes of accounts — can be found in the National Archives at Kew relating to the Queen's dress from 1627 to 1639, those ‘halcyon days’ before the outbreak of the English Civil War.10 These accounts complicate the view that Henrietta Maria consistently wore specifically English dress, as they refer to a wide range of garments — including many gowns throughout the 1630s — as well as ensembles described as ‘French’ and ‘Italian’. While these wardrobe accounts have been cited by a small group of scholars, there has been no systematic study of the Queen's dress.11 This article provides the foundation for such a study. Given that the accounts are complex, extensive and cover a lengthy period, the intention is to provide a taste of their richness and significance. After a summary of the accounts, the article examines networks of supply and production, including details of major suppliers and artificers; practical aspects of fitting, mending and delivering clothing; gift-giving; and garment types. The focus is on the textual evidence of the accounts rather than the relationship between the accounts and the pictorial record or surviving garments. (Read more.)

 

From Atlas Obscura:

 Around midday on July 4, 1643, in the countryside just north of Birmingham, Queen Henrietta Maria was in her battle tent. Outside, shells exploded. Musket balls* zoomed past. Anxiously, the Queen of England waited. Taking Burton-Upon-Trent, a strategic town with a river crossing connecting northern and southern England, was her army’s first real challenge. Defeat was not an option. But the fighting had already raged for five hours—how much longer would it take to deliver a victory? Three hours later, the queen got her answer. Her royalist army had finally broken through the town’s defenses. Victory was secured.

Eighteen years earlier, the queen had arrived on English shores as a 15-year-old French bride. And now, at 34, she was a warrior queen. The queen would jokingly call herself “she-majesty generalissima.” Lines from a contemporary poem, its author unknown, portrayed her as not just defeating but unmanning Parliament’s forces, literally: “Tis here a woman leads; but one would swear, the armies did consist of women there.” Her skill garnered wide respect from diplomatic elites; the Venetian ambassador observed, “Without [the queen’s] encouragement and aid the king would never have put himself into a position to resist.” During the English Civil War, Queen Henrietta Maria was, it seems, all that stood between King Charles’s sure defeat at the hands of Parliament. (Read more.)


From Gov.uk:

Considering the lack of detailed history (until more recent works) regarding her involvement in the Civil War, Henrietta Maria was certainly a divisive figure to contemporaries. Even pre-Civil War, Henrietta Maria, being a French Catholic, was not a popular figure in England. However, her unpopularity reached new heights in 1642, as she was now seen as a meddling French Catholic, who had undue influence on the King.

Certainly, Parliamentary propaganda was quick to show her as such. It played particularly on the people's fear of a restoration of Catholicism. This was a constant source of mistrust and suspicion, with Henrietta Maria being accused – throughout the duration of the War- of being involved in a wider 'papist conspiracy'. This was not helped by the Irish rebels in 1641 calling themselves the 'Queen's Army' and claiming to be acting upon Royal orders. By 1644, a Parliamentary pamphlet ‘Great Eclipse of the Sun’ (held at the British Library), saw Parliament still claiming that

‘ …the King was eclipsed by the Queen, and she perswaded him that the Darknesse was Light and that it was better to be a Papist, then a Protestant…’.

Although Charles remained protestant, Henrietta Maria nonetheless sought catholic help in raising troops and money to defend her husband's cause. She turned to her native France for money and Ireland for troops. In a letter unveiled in the King's Cabinet Opened in 1644, Charles wrote to his wife that:

'I give thee power to promise in my name…that I will take away all penal laws against the Roman Catholics in England…I… trust in thee as if thou wert a Protestant…'

Though the extent of her influence over Charles is debateable, Henrietta Maria's own Catholicism was a genuine source of contention between the two sides, causing a greater division than there may have been otherwise. (Read more.)

 

My novel on Henrietta Maria, HERE.

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Intentional Deception

 From Newsmax:

CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson have been making the media rounds promoting their new book, which details former President Joe Biden’s mental decline and the numerous people in the media and the White House who aided in the cover up.

Kari Lake, who serves as President Donald Trump’s top adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, told Newsmax on Wednesday that Tapper, along with the rest of the mainstream media, "was part of the intentional deception of the American people."

"The mainstream media was deceiving America on so many different aspects under the Biden administration and what they were doing when it comes to the border, when it comes to policies that were hurtful to Americans, when it comes to their disastrous foreign policy, and this was their way of now coming out and just washing their hands of it and saying, Oh, we didn't know anything about it. Give us a break," Lake said during an appearance on "Rob Schmitt Tonight." (Read more.)

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Adolf Hitler's Bizarre Hunt For The Holy Grail Explained

It was not the Spanish Inquisition that dealt with the Cathars; just the Inquisition. From Grunge:

Himmler came to see through Rahn's framing the Cathars as an essentially Aryan faith, and the Holy Grail, which is usually associated with Christianity, a symbol of Aryan power. Indeed, through the Cathars' unorthodox reading of Biblical texts, it appeared possible to co-opt Jesus Christ himself into some new Aryan religious landscape. Himmler sent for Rahn to meet with him and convinced the young intellectual to enlist in the SS Ahnenerbe for the sake of research funding while actively undertaking a search for the Grail, which would then serve as a centerpiece of the Aryan cult that was slowly emerging within the paramilitary organization.

In preparation for the writing of "Crusade Against the Grail," Otto Rahn had traveled to the site of the ruined Montségur, searching the tunnel systems beneath the old fortifications for any sign of the Cathars having secreted the Holy Grail away from Catholic looters. As well as the Grail, Rahn was now charged with finding evidence of Aryan civilization, heading to Iceland to search for traces of mythical Atlantis.

At the SS-controlled Wewelsburg Castle, Heimlich Himmler constructed a Grail Room, expecting the SS to become the new Knights of the Round Table, with Wewelsburg as their Camelot. And like the Arthurian knights of legend, Himmler believed that he was destined to find the Grail or have it found for him. (Read more.)

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Thursday, May 15, 2025

An 18th-century Cottage in the Yorkshire Dales

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 From House and Garden:

Kitty bought the three-bedroom cottage, which dates to the early 18th century and is typical of the local vernacular, in 2020. ‘It was damp and dilapidated, but I needed a larger studio and wanted to incorporate its garden into my own,’ she explains. In the summer of 2021, with the country reopening after Covid and the restarting of house parties and weekends away, Kitty realised the cottage could have another function. There were, however, budgetary restrictions: ‘We’re a long way from anywhere here, so you don’t throw something away because you don’t like it. Instead, you find a way to make it work.’ Baths and basins were replaced, but the layout was retained – ‘one bedroom and a bathroom are downstairs, but this suits some people’ – along with the kitchen and woodchip wallpaper. ‘Removing it would have been a pain, so we just painted over it,’ she explains.

Then, with a blank slate and Robin staying, the idea arose of using the cottage as a canvas ‘to bring the Dales inside’. ‘There was no plan – it was quite experimental’, he says. ‘One of us would start somewhere, the other would add more – it just evolved.’ Between swims in the river, they used acrylic paints to decorate the walls with grouse moors and boxing hares, imaginatively remapping views so that village houses around the dining room table segue into the Ribblehead Viaduct over the chimneypiece. (Read more.)

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The Biggest Shake-up in American Healthcare History

 From The Vigilant Fox:

It was a moment you’ll remember for decades. Standing before reporters and his healthcare team, President Trump announced the most aggressive move on drug pricing America has ever seen. The plan? To cut prescription drug costs by up to 90%—a direct strike against the industry that’s drained American families dry for years.

“Starting today, the United States will no longer subsidize the health care of foreign countries, which is what we were doing,” Trump said. “We were subsidizing others’ health care, countries where they paid a small fraction of what for the same drug that what we pay many, many times more for.”

This wasn’t just about reining in corporate greed. Trump laid it out clearly: this was a global scam, and America was the one footing the bill.

And [we] will no longer tolerate profiteering and price gouging from Big Pharma,” he added. “But again, it was really the countries that forced Big Pharma to do things that frankly, I’m not sure they really felt comfortable doing, but they’ve gotten away with it, these countries, European Union has been brutal, brutal.”

Trump promised that would change. “So for the first time in many years, we’ll slash the cost of prescription drugs and we will bring fairness to America.”

How much cheaper? “If you think of a drug that is sometimes ten times more expensive, it’s much more than the 59%… but between 59 and 80, and I guess even 90%.”

For struggling families, this wasn’t just reform. It was real relief. (Read more.)

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Apple Pie Myths

 From Murrey and Blue:

In 1381 England, the first documented apple pie recipe was crafted without a single spoonful of sugar. Instead, this medieval masterpiece combined fresh apples, figs, raisins, and pears in a golden pastry crust tinted with precious saffron.

Medieval bakers relied on nature’s sweetness from dried fruits and honey, creating a sophisticated blend of flavors that would astonish modern taste buds. The pie was encased in a special pastry called a “cofyn,” reflecting the skilled craftsmanship of 14th-century English kitchens.

This original recipe laid the foundation for centuries of apple pie traditions across Europe and eventually America, though today’s versions bear little resemblance to their medieval ancestor. The use of expensive saffron suggests this wasn’t everyday fare, but rather a dish for special occasions. (Read more.)

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Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Marozia and the House of Theophylact

The dark days of the papacy, which some people think gave rise to the myth about Pope Joan. From Medievalists:

It was during this time that a woman named Marozia entered the scene. Born between 890 and 892, she was the daughter of the Roman consul Theophylact, Count of Tusculum, and of Theodora, a senatrix and serenissima vestaratrix of Rome. This couple had risen to dominate Roman politics and made their share of enemies. One of them was Liudprand of Cremona, a diplomat and historian. He called Theodora a “shameless harlot…whose very mention is most foul, was holding the monarchy of the city of Rome, and not in an unmanly way.”

When Sergius III became Pope in 904 Theophylact and Theodora ensured that their teenage daughter was introduced to the Pontiff – soon Sergius and Marozia were lovers, until she became pregnant and bore him a son named John. For the Pope to have any children was a serious embarrassment, but it also gave the House of Theophylact political leverage. Afterwards, Marozia was then married off to Alberic I, Duke of Spoleto. (Read more.)

 

My posts on "Pope Joan" are HERE and HERE.

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Markets Soar as Trump Clinches Major Tariff Reduction Agreement with China

 From The Vigilant Fox:

Story #1 - Markets are SOARING after Trump clinched a major tariff reduction agreement with China.

President Trump stood before reporters and announced what he called a “total reset” in U.S.-China relations, marking a seismic shift in global trade.

The deal: both countries will reduce tariffs imposed after April 2 to just 10% for a 90-day cooling-off period while negotiations continue on deeper structural issues.

Trump made it clear: this isn’t about decoupling from China. It’s about leverage, fairness, and smart diplomacy.

The result? A dramatic rally on Wall Street.

The Dow surged over 1,050 points. The S&P 500 jumped 3%. Tech stocks exploded—Meta, Amazon, and Starbucks soared more than 7%, and Tesla climbed over 6%. Even Best Buy, which had warned of tariff-induced price hikes, popped 5%.

Once again, Trump proved he’s the master of negotiation. His bold, high-stakes tactics may look chaotic at first, but in the end, he keeps delivering undeniable results.

Watch as Maria Zeee breaks down the full story. (Read more.)

 

From Tierney's Real News:

Each network, and talking head, is spinning this their own way - and I admit I haven’t spent much time on it - but it sounds to me like China caved and came to the table and Trump gave them a way to save face.

GORDON CHANG: “Trump has given China an historic opportunity to step back from a collision with much of the world. Will a hostile Xi Jinping take advantage of what could be his last off-ramp? President Trump traded relief from our tariffs for China’s promise to open up its economy. The only way Xi Jinping can honor the promise is to give up most elements of communism because predatory trade practices are inherent in that system.”

Let’s see how this plays out.

HOWEVER, what NOBODY is reporting is what I just learned today about an old default in China that Trump is likely using behind the scenes as leverage.

I need to study it more but here's what I just learned about the huge debt that Communist China DEFAULTED on years ago and still owes the American people. I didn't know any of this - did you?

I’m guessing the Trump administration is leveraging this old default to renegotiate our trade agreement with China when no previous US administration has even tried.

Communist China currently owes American investors over one TRILLION dollars. The Chinese government doesn't like to talk about it and the US government apparently doesn't want to raise it, until now. But decades ago, Beijing defaulted on debt owed to Americans, as well as investors and governments around the world.

The story begins nearly 100 years ago, in 1913, when the old government of China began issuing bonds to foreign investors and governments for infrastructure work to modernize the country. As the country fell into civil war in 1927, paying these debts became increasingly difficult and the Chinese government eventually fell into default.

In April 1938, the Republic of China (ROC) issued a large volume of long-term sovereign gold-denominated bonds, secured by Chinese tax revenues, to private investors and governments to finance the war against Japan. These "gold bonds" specified repayment in gold or its equivalent value, which was a common practice to assure investors of value stability during times of currency instability.

There were also U.S. dollar-denominated bonds issued by the ROC, but these were more prominent in the early 1940s, notably the "American Dollar Bonds" of 1942, which were intended to absorb excess Chinese currency and were to be repaid in U.S. dollars after victory over Japan.

The China we know today would not have been possible without these bond offerings - which are now in default. (Read more.)

 

From Newsmax:

Investor and "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary applauded the work of the Trump administration on its negotiations with China on a trade deal, saying the finished product will "become the hallmark" for every other country's negotiations with the U.S.

O'Leary made the comments during a panel discussion on CNN on Monday night. His remarks came amid trade talks between the Trump administration and Chinese officials in Geneva.

President Donald Trump dropped tariffs on China from 145% to 30% while China dropped its reciprocal tariffs from 125% to 10%. The countries gave themselves another 90 days to get a trade deal done. (Read more.)


Also from Tierney's Real News:

Inflation has fallen to the lowest level in more than four years as April’s Consumer Price Index smashed expectations for the third straight month. Instead of raising prices, Trump’s tariffs have already LOWERED prices - as he predicted.

Overall, consumer prices increased 2.3% year-over-year, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index. That’s the lowest annual increase in over 4 years.

You can see that during the third term of the Obama-Biden-Kamala presidency - hyperinflation kicked in (on purpose) - to destroy our country and enslave us with massive debt and interest payments. Trump has to lower prices and inflation again, while spurring growth and prosperity, to Save America! (Read more.)

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Joining Faith and Reason in Educating Catholic Children

 From Mater et Magistra:

The teaching of evolution in Catholic education requires a nuanced approach that respects both faith and reason. While some mistakenly view evolution and Catholicism as opposing forces, the Church has historically encouraged scientific inquiry, provided it does not contradict divine revelation. Catholic educators must approach this topic with clarity, ensuring that students understand both the scientific framework and the theological principles underpinning creation.

The importance of defining terms cannot be overstated. Evolution can mean different things: microevolution (small changes within a species), macroevolution (the emergence of new species over time), and philosophical evolutionism (a worldview that excludes God). Catholic educators must distinguish between scientific theories and materialist ideologies. (Read more.)

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