Tea at Trianon: Old St Paul’s: The Tudor Rose and the Spanish Pomegranate Entwine

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, April 26, 2019

Old St Paul’s: The Tudor Rose and the Spanish Pomegranate Entwine

Arthur, Prince of Wales and Katherine of Aragon

From The Tudor Travel Guide:

We begin our journey in Lambeth on Friday 12 November, 1501. Katherine was meant to set out for the city from Lambeth Palace on the south bank of the Thames, home to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Deane. However, the palace had been ‘dismantled’ after the recent death of Archbishop Moreton. With the new Archbishop unable to prepare the princess’ lodging in time, she was apparently put up at La Place, the Bishop of Rochester’s residence, also in Lambeth. It was from here that Katherine began the final leg of her eventful journey, which had begun in Spain on 27 September, some six weeks earlier.

According to The Receyt of the Ladie Katheryne, having dined at La Place, the Princess assembled her Spanish retinue and set out along the south bank, towards Southwark, which lay to the east of Lambeth. She is described as having ‘a rich apparel on her body after the manor of Spain’, i.e. Katherine was dressed according to Spanish fashion. Most of the description of her attire, though, is focused on her head; the princess sported a carnation coloured coif beneath a ‘little hat’, fashioned ‘like a cardinal’s hat’; her hair was worn loose, ‘hanging down about her shoulders’, and described as being ‘fair auburn’ in colour. (Read more.)