Tea at Trianon: The Will of Henry VIII

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Will of Henry VIII

The blog Mary Tudor: Renaissance Queen examines the will of Henry VIII as well as his funeral, especially as it pertains to his eldest daughter.

We do not know for sure whether Mary attended her father’s funeral. Katherine Parr certainly did, witnessing the burial from the Queen’s Closet that had once been constructed for Henry’s first wife, and Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon. There are records though for materials, namely yards of black velvet, needed for Mary and her household who were now in mourning. The National Archives holds the Lord Chamberlain’s account of ‘The precedente of the Buriall of oure late Soveragane lorde kynge henry the eighte’ (LC 2/2). It lists the ladies, gentlewomen, gentlemen, ushers, and other household staff attending Mary, providing all with suitable mourning clothes. Many of the individuals mentioned served Mary for many years, including Susan Clarencius, Mary Finch and Beatrice ap Rhys the laundress (who had been in Mary’s household by the early 1520s).