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#historical texts – @elephantlovemedleys on Tumblr

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i always deserve the best treatment because i never put up with any other. — emma woodhouse
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…He has not been so discourteous to the Lady, who has presented him with certain darts, of Biscayan fashion, richly ornamented. In return, he gave her a room hung with cloth of gold and silver, and crimson satin with rich embroideries. She is lodged where the Queen used to be, and is accompanied by almost as many ladies as if she were Queen…

4 Jan. Vienna Archives. Chapuys to Charles V. from Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 5, 1531-1532
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“The fact that neither of Elizabeth’s parents attended the [christening] was customary, and though Henry had cancelled the tournament planned for the birth of a prince, there was nothing lacking in the observances paid to a princess, from the Archbishop of Canterbury as godfather to the purple velvet stole in which the baby was wrapped.”

Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince, Lisa Hilton

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Sketch of the Seventh Window which depicts Philip II of Spain and Mary I of England kneeling before the Last Supper.

The Seventh Window or The King’s Window was Donated by the royal couple to Sint Janskerk in Gouda (1557). This stained glass window holds multitalented representations : “ Philip’s marriage to Mary Tudor ; unity against the Ottomans; and political friction with France” (Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews, 2016).
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When Henry wrote his love letters to Anne and she turned the tables on him by demanding marriage, she envisaged a mould-breaking role for herself. Unlike Katherine, she never intended to sit quietly in her own apartments sewing her husband’s shirts. As early as December 1530, she hired a shirt maker. She was not prepared to while away her time in her privy chamber, to be paraded on state occasions or to be a gentle feminine presence, a foil to her husband’s masculinity. She it was who, with the help of her family, had destroyed Wolsey and propelled Henry into breaking with the pope. Now she wanted to set herself apart from her predecessors, to associate herself with everything new and to exercise power on her own account. Passionate about religion, education and poor relief, she wanted to change England.

Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and The Marriage That Shook Europe, John and Julia Fox

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The original text of this treatise on the true nobility was composed in 1440 by Hugues de Lannoy. In 1496, Quentin Poulet, Henry VII’s royal librarian, adapted it for the king in his own hand and prefaced it with the dedicatory introduction pictured above. The book was probably intended for the education of the Henry’s eldest son, Prince Arthur, and was completed at Henry’s palace of Richmond on 30th June, 1496. The historiated initial at the beginning of the preface depicts Poulet kneeling before Henry VII and offering him the book.

Source: British Library
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✧ The neglected Margaret of Scotland, Dauphine of France tried to centre her thoughts upon her own interests. She loved poetry above all things and gathered round her several women who occupied themselves with literary composition. (…) Alas, the French Court lacked the simplicity and purity which ought ever to surround a woman of Margaret's idealistic nature. Her love of the beautiful and unusual was to lead her into difficulties and suffering. She liked to sit evening after evening with the young courtiers and her maidens, reciting verse and singing love-songs, trying to keep out of her life the sordid ambitions and ugly intrigue which played a large part in the doings of others, and to bring into it some of the artistic atmosphere and culture she found congenial. – The Dauphines of France by Frank Hamel

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katharinepar

3 December 1497: Elizabeth of York, Queen of England, writes a letter to Isabella, Queen of Castile, asking after her future daughter-in-law’s health.

‘Hence it is that, amongst our other cares and cogitations, first and foremost we wish and desire from our heart that we may often and speedily hear of the health and safety of your serenity, and of the health and safety of the aforesaid most illustrious Lady Catherine our common daughter. And if there by anything in our power which would be grateful or pleasant to your majesty, use us and ours as freely as you would have all in common with you. We should have written you the news of our state, and written at length of these things to your majesties. For the rest may your majesty fare most happily according to your wishes.
From our palace of Westminster, 3rd day of December, 1497’.

Complete transcript of Elizabeth’s letter (x).

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richmond-rex
If we compare the official language that Richard used to describe not Edward V, but Edward IV, with Henry’s official descriptions of Richard, the former seem far more vituperative, after Richard had changed tack and decide to excoriate his brother. If anyone indulged in propaganda with a view to actively blackening a predecessor’s reputation, it was Richard, not Henry. Compare Henry’s bland proclamation shortly after Bosworth (fresh enough that it contained the erroneous information that the Earls of Surrey and Lincoln, as well as Viscount Lovell, had all been killed there) with Richard’s damning references to Edward. Henry refers to ‘Richard duke of Gloucester, late called King Richard’, but gives us no further description, either of the king or his rule. Richard, by contrast, happily went into details about Edward IV in Parliament, with references to Edward’s ‘ungraciouse pretensed mariage’ and the result that ‘all poletique rule was perverted’.

David Horspool, Richard III: A Ruler and His Reputation    

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“She was twenty-five years old, vibrant and lively, with an ability to spin from imperiousness to intimacy that would keep a man guessing, pleasurably. If she was not beautiful then she had, like her mother, the ability to project the idea of it. Later in life, she told an ambassador that she had never in fact been a beauty, but had had the reputation of it in her day. ‘Comely rather than handsome, ’ the Venetian envoy had reported her a year or two before; ‘tall and well-formed, with a good skin, although swarthy, she has fine eyes.’ Robert too was ‘of a tall personage’, said the Venetian, who praised his ‘manly countenance’ though regretting his ‘somewhat brown’ complexion. He had hair and beard shading dark to auburn; the legs to stand up to the trying fashion for short breeches, with their padding and pinking, and their prominent codpieces; and the physique, when they danced together the daring Volta, to twirl Elizabeth high.”Elizabeth and Leicester, Sarah Gristwood
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inscriptions in a few of anne boleyn’s books of hours

1: “le temps viendra, je anne boleyn (the time will come, i anne boleyn)” under an image of judgement day, with an astrolabe representing time drawn.
2: a love note written by henry viii to anne - (in french) “if you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as i adore you, i shall hardly be forgotten, for i am yours. Henry R forever.” - beneath a wounded and praying jesus
3: anne answers henry with a rhyming couplet - “be daly prove you shall me fynde, to be to you bothe lovynge and kynde.” - underneath an image of the archangel gabriel informing the virgin mary she will birth the son of God.
4: by anne, “remember me when you do pray, that hope doth lead from day to day, anne boleyn”, across from an image of the virgin mary’s coronation
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richmond-rex
At the end of May [1487], [Elizabeth of York] departed Kenilworth and headed to Farnham. With her husband's throne facing its gravest threat, her separation from her child must have been overwhelming. But there was more than just maternal concern. Ahead of the queen's departure, a detachment of the royal household was sent ahead to Romsey Abbey, eight miles north of the Solent. Historian David Starkey notes that they were probably under instruction to 'prepare an escape route abroad for the queen and prince if things went badly' [...] The evidence suggests that in the event of the king's death, Elizabeth was to take Arthur to the continent and establish a court in exile. As an infant, Arthur could do nothing to help his father directly. Yet, for as long as there was breath in his body, the hope of the Tudors could live beyond Henry. The fact that the perilous task of preserving the Tudor dynasty was bestowed on the queen shows how much trust already existed between the royal couple. As the years went by, it would become clear just how effective a partnership they had forged. Elizabeth's role in the crisis of 1487 shows that the foundations of the king and queen's relationship were already established.

Gareth Streeter, Arthur Prince of Wales: Henry VIII's Lost Brother

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