Tea at Trianon: Tombs of Henry VIII's Queens

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, November 5, 2016

Tombs of Henry VIII's Queens

From English Historical Fiction Authors:

Queen Katherine's lead coffin was not identified until 1782. When it was opened, her corpse was well preserved. Drunken grave robbers ravaged the site ten years later, and what was left was buried in the tomb of one of the castle’s subsequent owners. Gothic architect George Gilbert Scott restored the site in the early 19th century and commissioned John Birnie Philip to create a tomb effigy for Katherine Parr. It seems a suitable resting place for a woman who understood the concept of duty but was never bound to silence and who appreciated beauty. She was a competent scholar and the first female English writer to publish under her own name in England. She was a gifted woman who deserved better of the men in her life. (Read more.)