Tea at Trianon: Wings Place: A House Henry VIII Gave to Anne of Cleves

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, June 8, 2024

Wings Place: A House Henry VIII Gave to Anne of Cleves

From House and Garden:

As far as ‘annulment gifts’ go, Wings Place might be up there with the very best of them. Given to Anne of Cleves in 1538 after she consented to end her marriage to Henry VIII, it is considered one of the finest Tudor houses in Britain. After Anne's death in 1557, the property reverted to the Crown, then under Elizabeth I, before being occupied by Lord Abergavenny.... One of the few Grade I listed properties in private ownership in Sussex, ‘Anne of Cleves House’ first appears in written history in 1095 as part of the Priory of St Pancras at Lewes. It is believed to have been surrendered to Henry VIII after the dissolution of the monasteries, and then handed on to Thomas Cromwell–though an alternative history suggests it was used for secret Catholic services too. (Read more.)