Tea at Trianon: Greenwich

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

Friday, September 23, 2016

Greenwich

From Royal History Palace:

Over the course of the Tudor period there were marriages and many births that occurred within the red bricks walls. In the summer of 1491 Elizabeth of York retired to her chambers and on the 28^th of June that year she gave birth to her second son Prince Henry (later Henry VIII). Two of Henry VIII’s marriages took place in private in the Queen’s closet at Greenwich; the first to Katherine of Aragon on 11 June 1509 and his fourth to Anne of Cleves on 6^th January 1540.

Both of Henry’s VIII’s daughters were born and christened at Greenwich. Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and only surviving child, Princess Mary was born on 18 February 1516, but perhaps the mot eagerly awaited birth took place on the afternoon of 7th September 1533. (Read more.)