Tea at Trianon: The Christening of Frances Brandon

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

Saturday, September 3, 2011

The Christening of Frances Brandon

Author Susan Higginbotham reports on the lavish christening of the niece of Henry VIII, the future mother of Lady Jane Grey.

The queen and princess, of course, were Catherine of Aragon and Princess Mary. The princess, born on February 16, 1516, was not much older than her new goddaughter. But who was the mysterious “Lady Boleyn”? Walter Richardson suggests that she was Anne Boleyn–not the future queen, who was at the French court, but her aunt, the wife of Edward Boleyn. Others, like Retha Warnicke, have suggested that she was Elizabeth Boleyn, the future queen’s mother; Eric Ives, Anne Boleyn’s biographer, does not discuss the matter, but in an endnote cites the ceremony as an example of Elizabeth Boleyn’s presence at court. A seating chart for a great banquet at Greenwich held on July 7, 1517, names Lady Elizabeth Boleyn and Elizabeth Grey (and the expectant mother herself) among the prominent guests; Elizabeth Boleyn, then, might have been readily at hand to dispatch to the christening when news arrived of Frances’s birth. (Read entire post.)