Jane Was Also An Expert Needlewoman And Well Over A Hundred Years After Her Death, Her Embroidery Work

Jane was also an expert needlewoman and well over a hundred years after her death, her embroidery work was still preserved in the royal collection. In 1647, during the reign of Charles I, the king passed a number of items connected to the Seymour family back to William Seymour, Marquis of Hertford, including 'a bed of needlework with a chair and cushions, said to be wrought by the queen, Lady Jane Seymour.'

Elizabeth Norton

chapter five: anne boleyn in nineteenth-century historical fiction

[citation: rosemary sweet, antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century britain (london: hambledon and london, 2004), 2]

[citation: elizabeth fay, romantic medievalism: history and the romantic literary ideal (basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 2002), 2]

[citation: stephen bann, romanticism and the rise of history (new york: trayne publishers, 1995), 4; 5]

[citation: thea tomaini, the corpse as text: disinterment and antiquarian enquiry, 1700-1900 (woodbridge: the boydell press, 2017), 12]

[additional citation: peter mandler, “revisiting the olden time: popular tudorism in the time of victoria,” in tudorism: historical imagination and the appropriation of the sixteenth century, ed. tatiana c. string and marcus bull (oxford: oxford university press, 2011)]

“I am your Queen, to whom at my coronation, when I was wedded to the realm and laws of the same (the spousal ring whereof I have on my finger, which never hitherto was, not hereafter shall be, left off), you promised your allegiance and obedience to me…. And I say to you, on the word of a Prince, I cannot tell how naturally the mother loveth the child, for I was never the mother of any; but certainly, if a Prince and Governor may as naturally and earnestly love her subjects as the mother doth love the child, then assure yourselves that I, being your lady and mistress, do as earnestly and tenderly love and favour you. And I, thus loving you, cannot but think that ye as heartily and faithfully love me; and then I doubt not but we shall give these rebels a short and speedy overthrow’.”

Queen Mary I’s speech at the Guildhall, 1554

Dr de Puebla provided a convenient scapegoat for Catherine at all times when the real culprit, apart from Henry VII, was her own father for failing to deliver the dowry. Given Catherine's adoration for Ferdinand [...] blaming Dr de Puebla provided a useful safety valve.

Antonia Fraser

Europeans thought the English were a lusty race and Spanish visitors to London in the 1550s were shocked to see women bare their ankles as they crossed puddles or kiss men on the lips as a form of greeting. Engaged couples were allowed to start having sex with each other before marriage, because their commitment had apparently created a ‘pre-contract’ of commitment. However, the Tudor parliaments also instituted the first laws which made sex between two adult males a capital crime and one aristocrat, Lord Hungerford, was even executed under the terms of the Buggery Statute. Contraception was rudimentary, with the favourite being the imperfect withdrawal method. Or, as the Tudors colourfully called it, ‘hard pissing’.

— An Illustrated Introduction to the Tudors, Gareth Russell

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