Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘Comparing Cromwell and the king can be misleading... While Charles indisputably still spoke for his party, despite his defeat and capture, Cromwell was only one of many speakers on his side. Indeed, the most noticeable thing about Cromwell in the first part of the process to extricate the king from Scottish control and impose mutually acceptable terms on him is how unnoticeable he was.’

Not my usual post but Jamie’s reaction to Claire waxing under her arms is hilarious!

‘Jamie looked rather wildly at the candlestick by the ewer, then back at me. “You put wax in your oxters?”
“Not that kind of wax... Scented beeswax. The grooming lady heated it, then spread the warm wax on. Once it’s cooled, you just jerk it off... and Bob’s your uncle.”
“My uncle Bob wouldna countenance any such goings-on,”’

‘For Cromwell and his fellow Puritans, as for the Scots Covenanters, opposition to the king centred on matters of religion. This was true of Cromwell from the very beginning of his parliamentary career. It is arguable that, for all the momentous issues that concentrated his mind for the rest of his life, religion remained his principal concern.’

‘Oliver Cromwell, the man who dismissed both the parliamentary assemblies that sat during this period, and the army he commanded, wielded such influence that it would be another pretence to say they power really lay with the collective. So it would be absurd to exclude Cromwell from a comprehensive discussion of English and British monarchs on a technicality.‘

‘is a useful exercise to study the reigns of Elizabeth of York and her six daughters-in-law because it provides insights into the private and public lives of royal women and into how their activities can be seen as representing both the wives’ family roles and their sovereign roles - not the ultimate authority, but extremely important secondary ones that could and often did enhance the rule of their royal husbands.’

‘The splendour of the funeral rituals for Elizabeth of York and Jane indicates the importance of the final celebration of their lives both on a religious and dynastic sense. It is interesting that when planning the funeral of Jane, Henry’s officials studied the previous arrangements for Elizabeth of York’s ritual.‘

‘’As heralds controlled all aristocratic funerals, not just those of the royal family, a principal aristocratic mourner of the same sex, but of lesser social status than the deceased, performed the prominent role at the funeral. This protocol meant, as at the christening of their infants or at the coronation of their consorts, that Henry VII and Henry VIII could not participate in the ceremonies‘

‘For I had suddenly remembered where I had seen the name of Mary Hawkins. Jamie was wrong. This was my affair. For I had seen the name, written in a copperplate hand at the too of a genealogy chart, the ink old and faded by time to a sepia brown. Mary Hawkins was not meant to be the wife of the decrepit Vicomte Marigny. She was to marry Jonathan Randall, in the year of our Lord 1745.’

‘Lists have survived of the king’s presents of plate, the ounces of which depended on the status of the gift receiver. For instance, in 1513, Henry VIII gave the following individuals, among others, a plate that was described, including its ounces: William Warsham, archbishop of Canterbury, obtained a cup with a gift cover weighing 34 ounces... Katherine of Aragon received a pair of great pots gilt of 575 ounces.’

‘clearly consorts with international relationships had more input and involvement than those without connections abroad... The consorts’ appointments as regents especially, and pleas as intercessors gave them some governmental experienced and interactions. Katherine of Aragon’s, Anne Boleyn’s, and Katherine Parr’s religious patronage and relationships with bishops attests to their pious leadership’

‘That the French ambassadors had asked Katherine in 1527, as they did not ask Anne in 1535, her opinion about her daughter’s marriage proves how much they respected the earlier queen. This respect could have arisen in part from their knowledge that the emperor, their enemy, was her nephew, but it could also have been based on their understanding of her diplomatic and political experience’

“And you were in France,” Roger murmured as though to himself, still studying me closely. The shock in his face was fading into surmise, and a kind of excitement. “I don’t suppose you knew...”
“Yes, I did,” I told him. “That’s why we went to Paris. I’d told Jamie about Culloden - the ‘45, and what would happen. We went to Paris to try to stop Charles Stuart.”

‘Normally the expectant queen entered it some four to six weeks before her expected delivery date. Usually the queen and king chose a chamber at one of the royal palaces, but in 1486, Elizabeth of York and Henry VII decided to establish her lying-in room at St. Swithun’s Priory, Winchester, a city traditionally associated with legendary King Arthur, and of course they named their heir after that famous individual.’

“In all the records that I found dealing with these men,” Roger said, choosing his words carefully, “there was a mention of a Captain James Fraser, who seems to have been their leader. But he wasn’t on your list. I only wondered; did you know about him?”
...”Yes, I knew about him... I didn’t put him on the list because I already knew what happened to him. Jamie Fraser died at Culloden.”

‘On 12 May 1842 the Queen held the magnificent, invitation-only Plantagenet Ball at Buckingham Palace. It was held to support the work of the Spitalfields silk weavers. The ball was fancy dress and all of high society was invited. With the finances of the country in dire straits, however, Victoria’s decision had been the subject of some controversy.’

‘Victoria’s family life is better recorded than that of any previous monarch - largely due to her collection of photographs, which runs to 20,000 items. The Queen placed such a high value on photographs of her family that before she died she instructed which particular images were to be buried with her. The huge collection includes pictures of royal family life, both posed and candid shots’

‘In many senses Albert’s every need was catered for and his childhood was full of lavish expense, but his bad temper and inability to apply himself point to a little boy out of his depth and sadly misunderstood. Neither Albert nor Victoria were flexible in what they expected of their son, and the battles of the nursery and the schoolroom would continue into Bertie’s adult life as he veered off the rails’

‘Henry granted Katherine of Aragon lands, fees, honours, castles, parks, and other holdings with an annual value of £4,129, 2s. 4d. Later he increased this amount to £4,751, 15s. 2d. Anne Boleyn’s jointure during her first year as queen amounted to £4,423, 3s. 1 3/4d., from English revenues. In addition, she retained £633, 13s. 10d., of her Welsh income. Jane Seymour’s revenue had a value of £4,623, 1s. 11 3/4d.’

‘After the birth of her second child, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, Victoria did not write in her diary for several weeks. When she finally put pen to paper, almost a month after he was born, she expressed feelings of despair and misery, admitting that she had been ‘feeling rather weak and depressed’... It is quite probable Victoria was suffering from postnatal depression.’

‘Elizabeth’s somewhat unruly coronation had occurred at a time of political dissension caused by the struggle for the crown, while Anne’s took place amid national and international controversies over Henry’s attack on the church and on papal authority. Finally, Katherine’s shared coronation with her husband, despite her heritage as a king’s daughter, emphasised her dependent royal status‘

‘the queens’ coronations demonstrated divine approval of their marriages and celebrated their status as the kings’ wives, but not as authority figures. The anointing and crowning of queens seems to have arisen because of the emergence of the hereditary royal succession. The coronation publicly not only designated her as his legitimate wife but also as the possible mother of his future heirs.’

‘In examining how Henry VII and Henry VIII chose and wed their consorts, this chapter points out that special circumstances, the Wars of the Roses, the death of Arthur, prince of Wales, and the controversy surrounding Henry VIII’s attempt to have his marriage to Katherine of Aragon dissolved led both kings to adopt strategies that deviated from traditional patterns of royal courtship and marriage.’

‘Victoria had only just discovered that, even before her first child, the infant princess, had been christened, she was pregnant again. She hated the idea of being tied to ‘breeding’... child-bearing felt like a trap that took her away from the life she really wanted. As far as Victoria was concerned, it was too soon to get pregnant again and it felt desperately unfair. She clearly blamed Albert’

‘one conclusion was becoming inescapable. If Princess Margaret did marry Peter Townsend, she would have little choice but to leave the country for several years, if not permanently - thus creating two sets of exiled Windsor victims of Anglican divorce dogma.’

‘Taxation had proved more arbitrary during the Commonwealth than it had been under Charles I, liberty was more restricted, and Parliament’s privileges were ignored, while the bullying reformation of manners of Puritan piety continued to be detested. Richard had little of his father’s mettle and stepped down as Protector in May 1559.‘

‘Two days earlier a High Court had been established that would for the first and only time try a King of England. This was justified on the practical grounds of preventing Charles from raising further ‘commotions, rebellions and invasions’, and on a matter of principle: that the king should have no impunity from the law.‘

‘Yet murder remained the simplest way to dispose of Charles. There was no precedent for placing a King of England on trial. The English judges of Mary, Queen of Scots, had argued that the English crown had long claimed suzerainty over Scotland, making her a subject of Elizabeth, against whom she had committed ‘treason’. Murder, dressed up as accident or misfortune, did not raise any potential legal difficulties‘

‘It was the Duke of Edinburgh who came speeding out of the chalet first, followed by his tennis racquet and shoes. Then came the Queen in hot pursuit of her husband and shouting furiously at hime to come back inside, as if she had already realised that someone might be watching. The royal tantrum depicted in Episode 8 of The Crown actually happened - on Sunday 7th March 1954’

‘In the end, it was agreed that the cameras would look away from the sacred moments of her anointing and her taking of Communion, and there would be no close-ups of her face at any time. But television would present live, on-the-spot coverage of virtually everything else.‘ - filming the Coronation