Henry VIII (Penguin Monarchs): The Quest for Fame by John Guy

Author:John Guy [Guy, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141977133
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

5

A Second Solomon

Like King Solomon, the most famous of the Old Testament patriarchs, who was said to have sat in majesty on an ivory throne and who completed the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem, Henry regarded magnificence as a political weapon. His father was the earliest English ruler to employ Italian sculptors on royal building projects, such as his dynastic mausoleum in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey, but Henry was the first to drag the monarchy kicking and screaming into the mainstream of the European Renaissance.

He dressed to impress, spending up to £4,000 a year on clothes at a time when his personal tailor, John Malt, earned as little as 12 pence a day (in old, pre-decimal currency). Apart from robes of state, his wardrobe contained 79 thickly bejewelled gowns, many with collars of lynx, sable or squirrel fur, 86 coats and 134 doublets made from 29 types of fabric, including 25 of velvet, 23 of ‘tilsent’ (a prohibitively expensive silk cloth interwoven with flat gold or silver metallic strips) and 17 of satin. Sometimes he wore contrasting colours, at other times the same, as on May Day 1510 when he burst into Katherine of Aragon’s bedchamber, dressed all in green like Robin Hood and clutching a bow and arrow, or the day the news of Katherine of Aragon’s death broke, when he and Anne Boleyn put on matching yellow satin.1

A compulsive purchaser of accessories, he got through in a single year 200 shirts, 37 hats, between 65 and 146 pairs of hose, 60 pairs of socks and 175 pairs of satin shoes, velvet slippers and leather boots. His finest embroidered shirts were given as New Year’s gifts and his daily linen sewn for him by the wives of humbler courtiers. Katherine of Aragon lovingly made him shirts – even after he had told her that their marriage was over. Anne Boleyn refused, hiring a shirt maker instead.2

Henry was a conspicuous consumer of art and culture rather than a genuine connoisseur like Francis I of France. He accumulated things chiefly because he could – and he did so indiscriminately, acquiring the costliest items more as stage props than for their intrinsic appeal. Visiting dignitaries would be given conducted tours of his treasures. Occasionally he showed them off to the public. In 1527, he threw open the doors of a temporary banqueting house at Greenwich for three or four days, so that ‘all honest persons’ could admire a display of his most prized tapestries, along with two gigantic cupboards stacked high with his finest gold and silver plate.3

Henry kept smaller collectors’ objects in his private studies or in cabinets in the privy galleries at his palaces. Among them were exotic items such as pietre dure cups and jugs, Venetian glass, alabaster figures and table ‘jewels’ created as conversation pieces. These might include fish, birds, boats, scallops or snails made of rock crystal or mother-of-pearl, set with gold or silver, rubies, diamonds and pearls. Also kept in cabinets were

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