My Queens!

After the queen passed away, it was found in a box on her bedside and was likely collected by the Secretary of State among her other letters, and is now kept in the National Archives.

Note the two little marks above the "o"s in "poor" (last word on the top line). This was supposed to make the "o"s look like eyes, mimicking her nickname for him.

My first version of this was trash, here’s a better one.

This gown was used for the first time on Glenda Jackson in the film Elizabeth R (1971). It was then remade and worn by Imogen Slaughter in Elizabeth: The Acclaimed Saga of England’s Virgin Queen (2000), uncredited actress in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2001), and Elizabeth Rees in The Twisted Tale of Bloody Mary (2008).

This gown was used on Genevieve Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and Essy Persson in Cry of the Banshee (1970). Trim was added on to the bodice when it was used for a third time on Barbara Windsor in Carry On Henry (1971). It was used for the last time on Emily Blunt in Henry VIII (2003).

This gown was used on Anne Marie Duff in The Virgin Queen (2005) and was then used twice in The Tudors on Annabelle Wallis (2009) and Joely Richardson (2010).

This gown was used on Anne Marie Duff in The Virgin Queen (2005) and was then used three times in The Tudors on Natalie Dormer (2007), Sarah Bolger (2009) and Emma Hamilton (2010).

This gown was used on Kelly MacDonald in Elizabeth (1998), Tamara Hope in The Royal Diaries: Elizabeth I (2000) and two times in The Tudors on Natalie Dormer (2007) and on an extra (2009).

This costume was used on Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998), Natalie Dormer in The Tudors (2008), Karen Hassan in Vikings (2016), and Charlotte Hope in The Spanish Princess (2019).

This gown was used on Irene Jacob in Othello (1995), Natalie Dormer in The Tudors (2008) and Charlotte Hope in The Spanish Princess (2019).

This gown was used on Juno Temple in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Emma Hamilton in The Tudors (2009), Sarah Bolger in The Tudors (2010), and an uncredited actress in The Last Days of Anne Boleyn (2013).

This gown was used on Joanne Whalley in The Borgias (2011), Amy Mason in The White Princess (2017), and Charlotte Hope in The Spanish Princess (2019).

This gown was used on Anne Marie Duff in The Virgin Queen (2005), Gabriella Wright in The Tudors (2007), Annabelle Wallis in The Tudors (2009), and Jenna Coleman in Victoria (2016).

[Latin inscription in Princess Elizabeth’s italic hand on the reverse side of a letter, which also carried Katherine Parr’s address to Thomas Seymour]

Noli me tangere Nolito me tangere

Translation: Do not touch me Let him not touch me

Mueller, Janel ed., Katherine Parr: Complete Works & Correspondence (The University of Chicago Press, 2011), pg. 169-171

This is probably one of the most important bite-sized source I will ever share, because it has to do with Elizabeth's experience of living under the dubious care of Thomas Seymour and the sexual harassment and grooming she very likely suffered at his hands. Around June 1548, Katherine Parr pens a response to a letter her husband sent her and then appears to entrust Elizabeth to give it to the messenger. Before Elizabeth hands it off, she writes three words in Latin on the side of paper which also contained the address to Seymour. Nolito me tangere - let him not touch me. Interestingly, she originally writes Noli me tangere - do not touch me - but then crosses it out and writes Nolito instead. She takes the phrase from a direct command to a more detached third-person plea. In her book, The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor, Elizabeth Norton posits that this may have been Elizabeth’s desperate attempt to get Seymour to stop behaving inappropriately towards her:

‘Even though attracted to Seymour, she knew that his intimate behaviour was unacceptable, and she was now all but ordering him to stay away. Her first, erased phrase was bluntly addressed direct to Thomas; her second was almost a plea for someone else to relieve her of Seymour’s over-familiar attentions.’

Tudor Week Day 5: Favourite Tudor Fiction Media/s

The Tudors (2007)

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)

The Virgin Queen (2005)

Elizabeth I (2005)

The Chequers Ring is one of the few surviving pieces of jewellery worn by Queen Elizabeth I of England.

The mother-of-pearl ring, set with gold and rubies, includes a locket with two portraits, one depicting Elizabeth and the other traditionally identified as Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn, but possibly her step-mother Catherine Parr. 

The ring is presently housed at Chequers, the country house of the prime minister of the United Kingdom.

when you were into the history first and then they make a period drama about it

    There seems to be some misconceptions about the possible fate of Anne Boleyn’s jewelry, and so I decided to update this article.

    Every queen had a selection of personal jewelry which was not part of the crown jewels. These personal jewels could include gifts from her husband during their marriage, or pieces she owned prior to her wedding. Anne’s personal jewelry would not have been considered part of the crown jewels, even after her death and her husband’s acquisition of her property.

    The crown jewels were a set of gems that were handed down from monarch to monarch. You can see the crown jewels of the Tudor era in the portraits of Henry’s queens. The “consort’s necklace” is a piece which seems to have been worn by each woman after Anne Boleyn, and it appears not to have been re-set for each queen as many gems were.

    Jane Seymour’s portrait is where it first turns up (though Anne may be wearing it in her portrait medallion with a cross pendant.)

    Katheryn Howard wears it next.

After that, Kateryn Parr wore it with a different pendant.

    A particularly fabulous gem might be added to the crown jewels, but that seems to have depended on the monarch who purchased it - whether he or she wanted to “gift” it to the crown - or how it was purchased (whether with the monarch’s privy purse or with the funds of the crown.) The current queen, Elizabeth II, owns many fabulous gems - tiaras, and jewelry sets - that have been passed down through her family that are her personal property and not part of the crown jewels.

    When a queen was widowed, she was expected to turn the crown jewels over to the woman who would take her place as consort, but not the gems that were her personal jewelry. Mary Tudor Brandon caused controversy when she absconded with part of the French crown jewels, including the famous Mirror of Naples, and gave it to her brother in a bid to win his forgiveness for remarrying a man of her own choosing. When King Francis asked for the jewel’s return, Henry argued that the Mirror had been a personal gift from the dead king to his sister, and was not part of the crown jewels.

    Anne’s famous initial pendants were an example of personal jewelry. Katharine of Aragon also had personal jewels that were not part of the collection she was forced to surrender to Anne Boleyn in 1532. Specifically, she left to her daughter in her will a “gold collar I brought out of Spain.”

    The initial pendants I’ve described Anne wearing in Under These Restless Skies are featured in portraits of Anne Boleyn or her daughter. Since no portraits from Anne’s lifetime survive (with the possible exception of the Holbein sketch) it seems likely artists painted Anne wearing pieces of jewelry her daughter had inherited, or pieces that were remembered as belonging to her.

    Everyone is familiar with the famous “B” pendant, but it appears Anne had several others. 

    “AB,” is pictured in one of her portraits, pinned to her bodice in the Nidd Hall portrait.

    An “A” pendant is worn by Elizabeth in the Whitehall Family Group Portrait. 

    Anne is also portrayed wearing an “HA” pendant, her initials entwined with Henry’s, a design known as a love knot. Holbein is recorded to have designed such a necklace for her; it’s tempting to imagine this is similar to the one he created. Inventories also record Anne had items with the initials “RA" Regina Anna (Queen Anne) and a large array of rings, bracelets and other items with “HA” inscribed.

    It should be noted that some historians now claim the Hoskins miniature, used as the “pattern” for portraits of Anne Boleyn, is actually of Mary Tudor Brandon. However, most nobles of the day did not identify themselves by their surname, but by their title. If Mary wore an initial pendant, it most likely would have had an “S” for Suffolk. Charles Brandon’s next wife signed herself “Katherine Suffolk” in documents, just as Anne herself used the name “Anne Rochford” after her father was ennobled, as she signed herself in her only surviving letter to a woman friend, indicating the “B” portrait may portray Anne from a time before that date.

    What happened to Anne Boleyn’s initial pendants? After Anne died, they became Henry’s property, both because he was her widower (though he’d had their marriage annulled) and because she was a convicted traitor. The pieces went into Henry’s storage. Some of them were noted as still being in his inventories when he died, but not the initial pendants, so they must have been dispersed before his death. Nor do they turn up in the inventories of his queens.

    At some point, Henry seems to have decided to pass the jewels on to Anne’s daughter. They were not only an inheritance from her mother, but they were her Boleyn legacy.  Henry used his daughter Mary’s obstinacy as an excuse not to give her the gold collar her mother had left her, but he had no such excuse in Elizabeth’s case. Secondly, though he considered her a bastard, Elizabeth was a king’s daughter and had to be groomed and bejeweled appropriately. Giving Elizabeth her mother’s personal gems would be a cheap way of fitting her out according to her station. Some believe that Kateryn Parr may have intervened to urge him to give Elizabeth her mother’s legacy.

    He doesn’t seem to have minded her wearing them. Though he had initially tried to eradicate Anne’s memory by destroying her portraits, records, and emblems, he passed on the gems as they were, not bothering with the expense of re-setting them before he had them given to Elizabeth. Elizabeth chose to wear the “A” pendant in the Whitehall family portrait. Perhaps Henry shrugged and said if she wanted to mark herself with the name of a traitor, it was no skin off his nose. She was a bastard ineligible for the throne anyway.

    Elizabeth may have eventually had the “B” pendant remade into the one we see in her teenage portrait wearing the red gown. Historian Eric Ives notes that he three dangling pearls are nearly identical. Elizabeth is not recorded in her later years as wearing her mother’s initial pendants. Perhaps by then she felt it impolitic to associate herself openly with Anne, though she may have worn a crown made for her mother for her coronation portrait, and had a ring made which contains an image of her mother.

    So, what happened next? The Tudors were not as sentimental as we are about keeping inherited jewelry intact. Elizabeth would have done as most people and had the pieces re-made to suit the current fashion. Her mother’s pearls may have joined the long ropes she wore looped across her bodices, and the gold may have been recast into brooches or rings.

    They would have gone to James I when Elizabeth died in 1603. His wife, Anne of Denmark, likely had the pieces melted down and re-set again, as was customary with monarchs. Most of the pieces in royal hands were sold off during the civil wars and the Commonwealth era. They disappear into the mists of history.

Historical Fashion: Hanging Sleeves (Tudor Era)