Tea at Trianon: The Lost Village of Cuddington

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, November 29, 2019

The Lost Village of Cuddington

From Surrey Live:

Henry VIII is best remembered for his six wives, and more brutally for beheading two of them, in his desire to produce a son to become his heir to the throne. Indeed, the infamous Tudor monarch burned a reputation into the pages of history for wielding his power in order to get what he wanted. Most notably when, with the help of his adviser, Thomas Cromwell, he got parliament to pass a law to make him head of the Church of England in order to annul his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Never one to be afraid to throw his weight around, the red-headed food-loving former king of England's greedy eyes also fell on a peaceful tiny village in Surrey. (Read more.)

From My London:

Measuring just 1,859 acres, tucked between Ewell and Cheam, once stood the tiny Anglo Saxon village of Cuddington. Thought to have originated as early as the 8th Century, by 1538 it had been built up to include a church, manor house and a handful of farms. In that same year, all that had been built before would be swept away when Henry VIII bought the manor house from Richard Codington and his wife, Elizabeth. With the birth of his first son, Edward VI, having come six months before, and wanting to outshine his rival, King Francois I of France, Henry decided he wanted to build the grandest of palaces. It was Cuddington that Henry looked to as the perfect piece of land to commission the building of what would later be known as Nonsuch Palace. (Read more.)