Tea at Trianon: New Insights Into Elizabeth I’s Reign

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

Monday, July 31, 2023

New Insights Into Elizabeth I’s Reign

From Smithsonian:

Twelve years after Elizabeth I’s death at age 69 in 1603, the English antiquarian William Camden published the first official account of the Tudor queen’s reign. Commonly nicknamed Camden’s Annals, the text laid the groundwork for future scholars’ assessments of Elizabeth’s 45 years in power. As historian Hugh Trevor-Roper argued in 1971, “It is thanks to Camden that we ascribe to Queen Elizabeth a consistent policy of via media,” or a middle way between two religious extremes, “rather than an inconsequent series of unresolved conflicts and paralyzed indecisions.”

In the Annals, Camden acknowledged the personal bias that shaped his account, writing, “Things doubtful I have interpreted favorably; things secret and abstruse I have not pried into.” Yet modern scholars have largely treated the text as an impartial record. Now, reports Dalya Alberge for the Guardian, new enhanced imaging reveals how much self-censorship went into the Annals’ creation, suggesting Camden reworked his biography to win the favor of Elizabeth’s successor, James VI of Scotland and I of England. (Read more.)