Tea at Trianon: The Last Plantagenet

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

Sunday, May 29, 2011

The Last Plantagenet

Yesterday was the feast of Blessed Margaret Pole, last princess of the royal house of Plantagenet. Accounts of her heroism and suffering, HERE, HERE and HERE.

laBiscuitnapper said...: Usually when I study history, I find myself becoming more - if not sympathetic - empathetic with some of the more unpleasant characters. Henry VIII is completely the opposite and the case of the Countess of Salisbury is one of the many reasons why.

The more I read about him and his reign, the more angry and disgusted I become with him (as if he'd care, of course. Weird as this may sound from an Anglican, one of my main gripes was upon realising that through his selfish cruelty he deprived us of having a Queen Mary minus the father issues and though we wouldn't have had Queen Elizabeth, Mary was the descendent of Aragons and as much a Renaissance Princess as her half sister).

And the fact I've come out of my lurkerdom just to say that is proof of the pudding, methinks!; May 30, 2011 at 11:40:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Thank you for commenting! I think that Mary would have made a great, great queen if her parents' marriage had lasted. Both her mother the Queen and her governess the Countess of Salsbury (Margaret Pole) were training her for the role. But the way Mary was treated by her father when he married Anne was quite damaging to her psyche, I think.; May 30, 2011 at 11:54:00 AM EDT