(Cover image – © Pinterest)
In an age before print, radio, television and social media, with a populace who were not all literate, fashion was the one of the most effective ways to communicate your values, status and power to the world. So powerful was fashion in the mediaeval and Tudor courts it was governed by sumptuary laws; rules which dictated who could wear what and when. Cloth of gold and purple silks were for the royal family only. No man below the status of a knight could wear velvet. A serving man must not get above himself, and use more than 2 ½ yards of cloth in a short gown. The monarchs and consorts of Tudor England understood the power of clothes very well, and utilised it cleverly.
Here are five of the finest moments of Tudor fashion, and what they can tell us about the politics of the Tudor court when you look beneath the surface of the silken gowns, furs and jewels.
Anne Boleyn's "B" Initial Necklace
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust
When you think of Anne Boleyn, this portrait, dated between 1550 and 1699, is almost certainly the image that first comes to mind. It is by an unknown artist, likely of the British school, so it is impossible to say how accurate a likeness the portrait is in terms of Anne’s physicality, but the most fascinating detail in this painting is not its accuracy, but the depiction of Anne’s ‘B’ necklace, a necklace which has gone down in fashion history, from Anne’s neck to Ugly Betty’s and into the Historic Royal Palace gift shops.
For argument’s sake, let’s say the painting is by someone who sketched Anne from life, neglected to finish the painting before Anne’s fall in 1536, and waited until her daughter, Elizabeth I, was on the throne to complete the portrait. If Anne sat for the preliminary sketches, she would have chosen very carefully her gown, her hood and her jewellery. This painting would have been her opportunity to present herself to the people, and every detail had to communicate who Anne Boleyn was.
Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne was shocking and scandalous to the British public for many reasons; setting aside the popular Catherine of Aragon and breaking from the Roman Catholic Church were deeply divisive. It was also frustrating, to say the least, for Henry’s advisors for a more pragmatic cause. If Henry had insisted on creating political enemies of France and Spain, uniting them in their defence of Roman Catholicism in order to make a sensible, politically advantageous match with a foreign princess, that would have been one thing.
After all, Catherine of Aragon was unlikely, due to her age and health, to produce a male heir and it was not that long since the turmoil of the War of the Roses. Securing the Tudor grip on the throne with a male heir and foreign allegiances was eminently sensible. But to create so many enemies, within and beyond England’s shores to marry an English gentlewoman with no significant wealth, connections or advantages for the throne, was quite another. In a play straight out of his grandfather’s book, Henry was marrying for love, just as Edward IV had with Elizabeth Wydville.
When Anne becomes Queen, she was stepping into a viper pit of hostility, but in this portrait she is not humbled, abashed or afraid. She chooses not to reference her maternal Howard family who held the Duchy of Norfolk and were one of the highest ranking families of the Tudor nobility. Instead, at her throat, she proudly wears a ‘B’, in reference to her paternal family, which could be either the Boleyns or the Butlers[1]. This confidence in her own worth is a significant reason why she remains so popular and relevant nearly 500 years after her death.
In a sweet postscript to this, some historians have suggested that Elizabeth I inherited Anne’s collection of initial jewellery, which included this ‘B’ necklace, a ‘A’ and a ‘HA’. When Henry VIII had his family painted in 1545, his daughters were included on the periphery of the portrait. A teenage Elizabeth looks out with the same defiance as her mother, and at her heart is a ‘HA’ - her parent’s initials. Henry’s attempts to erase Anne Boleyn after her execution are beautifully undermined in this brilliant act of rebellion. The painting which exists in the Royal Collection today was not recorded until 1649, so this may be the initials were added later, as it is hard to imagine Henry allowing the detail. Even if it is a later addition, it shows the enduring narrative of the shared courage, confidence and daring of mother and daughter.
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's yellow mourning
Fable / The Falen Falcon Ltd
A second famous fashion moment for Anne Boleyn comes to us through a confusion of conflicting sources and misinterpretations by modern audiences. On the 8th January 1536, the day after Catherine of Aragon died, Henry and Anne are said to have appeared at court resplendent in yellow silk.
To a modern eye, this appears callous and highly disrespectful. The matching outfits, showcasing the King and Queen as a united pair, pour scorn on Catherine as the abandoned first wife. The yellow twists the knife further - this is a man apparently dressing in the colour of joy to mark the passing of a once beloved, then despised, wife.
However, if we examine the sources, the callousness of the moment becomes less clear. Yellow is not a colour of mourning in Spain - this assertion has been used in Anne and Henry’s defence previously, but it originated in Alison Weir’s book The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and she has since corrected this as being without corroborating evidence[2]. However, neither was yellow particularly associated with celebration in the Tudor court, as it is today.
Furthermore, the only contemporary source which has Anne in yellow is Eustace Chapuys, who so detested Anne that it is worth viewing anything he writes about her with the highest level of scepticism. He does not say that Henry was in a matching outfit either, and I doubt he would have missed the chance to criticise Henry if he had been. It would appear the idea of matching outfits is a much later creation.
That Catherine’s passing would be marked at court, regardless of what was worn, can also seem cruel. Henry and Anne treat her appallingly throughout the Great Matter, Henry’s attempt to divorce her. To mark it could almost seem like gloating. But when Catherine died, she was titled the Dowager Princess of Wales. This gave her status, even if it was a title she did not recognise, insisting she was, until the end, the King’s lawful wife and Queen of England. As Dowager Princess of Wales, Henry’s widowed sister in law, Princess of Spain, her death was worthy of the respect of being marked at court.
The reason this moment features in many later depictions of Anne’s life is not because it really happened. It is the pathos it can deliver to a modern audience who are watching with the benefit of hindsight. Anne, pregnant, decked in yellow, celebrating the loss of her rival and nemesis. Anne, believing herself to be at the height of her power, not realising she has lost the one person who could have kept her safe. Whilst Catherine lived, Henry could not set Anne aside, as he would have had to admit he was wrong to have divorced Catherine and returned to her. When Catherine was dead, there was nothing preventing Henry. Anne would follow Catherine to the grave in 131 days.
Jane Seymour bans French Hoods
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust
Jane Seymour does not have many fashion moments - she was, after all, only Queen for a year and a half. But the one which is always associated with her is that she banned her ladies from wearing French hoods, insisting instead they wore the more conservative English Gable hood. The narrative around this is laced with misogyny and lack of nuance.
Jane is so often required to be the polar opposite to Anne in every way.
One dark, one fair. One sexy, one demure. One bad, one good.
They cannot possibly exist on a spectrum of complex and nuanced human experience, but must at all times be opposed to one another. As almost all female existence often is, they must be categorised into the archetypes of The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone. Anne, accused of treason and adultery, intelligent, sensual, is the Crone. Catherine of Aragon, the nurturing, pious older woman is The Mother and so Jane is left to be the Maiden. She has no choice; she cannot be understood or represented any other way.
The narrative around Jane’s choice to ask her ladies to wear the more modest English gable hood almost always is forced to fit this archetype. The gable hood is less flattering, covering more of a woman’s hair and doing very little for any one’s face shape (as a costumed interpreter I have worn both hoods and can say, with great confidence, the French hood looks good on everyone, but rare is the face which is benefitted from a gable hood). She is the Good one, dressing demurely, ensuring her women are equally virtuous, and delivering a son as required.
But to see this moment as that is to minimise Jane. Jane is a Seymour. One does not grow up at Wolf Hall and at the court of Henry VIII without gaining intelligence and political savvy. Jane was one of Anne’s ladies in waiting when Henry began to pursue her. Anne had been one of Katherine’s.
Was the decision to ensure her own ladies were not as alluring nothing to do with modesty, but instead a clever move to minimise potential rivals to her power?
It is also a subtle demonstration of her own power as their mistress - she can choose what these women wear, what they do, who they speak to, what their futures will be. She is in charge.
We know there is more to Jane than the good, demure, quiet wife history has so far remembered her as. Henry is recorded as reminding Jane sharply what had become of her predecessor when she had disagreed with him. Henry would have had no cause to chastise Jane unless she had been challenging him, which would have taken great courage after seeing the treatment of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn up close as Jane had. There is far more to Jane than history has so far recorded.
Henry VIII's Fancy Dress
Great Tudor fashion moments are not the exclusive domain of Henry’s wives and mistresses. Henry himself was a lover of fine clothes, and took pride in ensuring he was fashionably dressed.
In one of the more endearing tales about Henry VIII, he had a penchant for dressing up in costume, believing it allowed him to be appreciated for his own merits rather than the happy circumstances of his birth. This worked very well as a young, dashing man, when, in 1510 in the early happy years of his first marriage, Henry and twelve of his men dressed up as Robin Hood and his merry men. They burst into the chambers of Catherine of Aragon and her ladies, and she, in what must have been one of the sixteenth century’s finest pieces of acting, purported not to know who he was. She agreed to dance with this handsome Prince of Thieves, but only for an appropriate number of times, before insisting she and ladies depart. The image of the youthful, handsome king dressing up to amuse his wife, her ladies, and one can only imagine, flatter his own sense of himself as a romantic hero, is very sweet.
Henry was so enamoured by the romance of this gambit that he tried it again. Only this time he was not a gorgeous young king of nineteen, surprising a woman who had known him for nine years; but a vast, care worn forty nine year old tyrant meeting his new bride for the very first time. Overtaken with ideas of himself as the dashing lover, certain that his new bride would recognise him due to their mutual love, Henry decided to surprise Anne of Cleves at Rochester, rather than waiting for their arranged meeting in Greenwich. A black comedy unfolds, which spells the end for his fourth marriage before it had even begun.
He and his men arrived, disguised as servants, and surprised Anne of Cleves as she stood, exhausted and travel weary, watching a bull baiting outside the window. This imposing and probably quite alarming servant embraced and kissed the princess, and gave her a ring from the King. He then attempted to engage her in conversation. She was polite but cool, continually looking back out the window at the entertainment below. Imagine the young woman’s confusion; knowing that all eyes of the courtiers sent to bring her to Greenwich were on her and conscious of her predecessors’ fates - she would have been terrified to ensure no breath of scandal could be attached to her, nor accusations of rudeness toward her new countrymen.
Henry, for his part, was devastated that their love for one another had not allowed her to see past his disguise, and left, only to return finely dressed and reveal who he truly was. This sobering realisation of his own physical decline was not an auspicious start to his fourth marriage, and within 189 days, they would be married and divorced.
Queen Elizabeth I's Armada Armor
It is one of history’s great ironies that Henry VIII turned the world upside down to try and beget a male heir with his second wife, Anne Boleyn, only to be rewarded with a daughter, Elizabeth. Despite being female, she would possess almost all the traits Henry could have longed for in a son, and would usher in a Golden Age of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth would also be the last of the Tudors, and it is tempting to consider whether Henry’s treatment of her mother, and subsequent stepmothers, had a bearing on her decision to never marry.
The Tudor line Henry fought so hard to continue would end, perhaps in part to the actions he took in his desperation to continue it.
Elizabeth was the second woman to rule England in her own right, after her sister Mary (I’m ignoring Matilda and Lady Jane Grey here on the basis they were never crowned). She was the proof that a woman could indeed lead a country in every way a man could. The only area where she could not act exactly as a male ruler was on the battlefield. Typically, kings had fought alongside their men in wars, and would continue to do so up until George II in 1743.
In August 1588, England was under threat of invasion by the Spanish, who were sending an Armada across the waves. There was no question that Elizabeth would lead the troops, or fight in battle, but she would not allow this to undermine her power, authority and grip on the throne.
In possibly the most famous moment of her reign, Elizabeth is said to have donned armour and addressed the troops at Tilbury, stating “know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.”
In choosing to wear armour, to don herself as though she would indeed be riding out with the men to meet the Spanish force, Elizabeth made clear that her power was in no way lessened by being born female. It is an incredible moment, when Elizabeth demonstrates she is every bit a King, every bit the unquestionable and undeniable ruler of the realm.
In the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, costumer designer Alexandra Byrne dressed Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth in a full suit of armour, as though she really could have entered in the fray of battle.
The print held by the British Museum dates from circa 1625, which shows Elizabeth in a dress with an armoured corset, is likely to be more accurate to the armour Elizabeth wore. To have subverted gender expectations so completely as Blanchett’s Elizabeth does would have been a step too far for the Elizabethan public.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Still, the image of a female leader, bedecked in shining, golden armour, is an exceptionally powerful one; illustrating Elizabeth’s great political understanding of the power of optics even in a world before cameras and social media. It was a stroke of sartorial genius, and helped embody Elizabeth as Gloriana, a golden monarch for a golden age, regardless of gender.
It is no surprise that Elizabeth I was incredibly skilled in the art of communication through dress. Of all the Tudor monarchs, she is one who spent the most time in the Tudor court. She was the daughter of two of it’s finest artists when it came to expressing power through dress. The world of Tudor fashion is fascinating, and this post only scratches the surface. If you’d like to find out more, please head to our post/podcast with Eleri Lynn, Tudor clothing expert here.
References:
For more on the Butlers and Boleyns, please see my previous article: https://his-ill-fated-wives.wixsite.com/henryviii/post/what-if-anne-boleyn-edition
https://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/anne-boleyn/anne-boleyns-reaction-to-catherine-of-aragons-death/
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