#the stuarts

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Tumblr Dashboard Simulator: 1670s/1680s English Court

🐶 merry-monarch

#monday motivation #motivational quote #there are indeed good thyngs and bad in this countrie #the good: women #the bad: PARLEMENT

5,112 notes

💖 mary-clorine

I have two husbands, and that causes me much trouble and torment of the soul, for I may be with childe by one, and have thus given horns to th'other, who is also a lady, and we have been married first. Now she won't writ to me as we did as girles, and my lawfull husband, I have not yett told, for my condition is not certain yet. I cannot talk in honesty whith one, and with the other husband, neither.

'Tis awkward to speak of this, but if not to your friends online, to whom can one talk of such troubles?

#personal #might remove later #aurelia I miss you

2 notes

🤴dukeofm

There are thyngs the governement, the Kinge in particular, do not wish you to know about: the Royall Successioun is all made false, for instead of the D. of Yorke, the True Heir to H. M. the Kinge shoud be the Duke of Monmouth, for he was lawfully begot by the Kinge, then married in secret to the late Lucy Walter, and must therefore be accepted as Prince before his uncle the D. of Yorke, who is a Catholick.

All ye good people should speak up against this injustice! If you cannot pledge your life (if there be a fight), or some shillings to the cause, you may help it greatly alreadie by re-bloggying, and bringing this mater to greater awareness!

#sociall justice #awareness #politick

798 notes

🎀 prettywittynell

@merry-monarch had me painted! For more content like this, and to vote which painter shoud doe me (haha!) next, please visit my OnlieFriendes account!!!

#lely #girlboss #hotter than madam carwell!! ;)))

1,723 notes

🍊 je-maintiendrai

Hans Willem et moy!

Vouz pouves nous voir en visitant Stichting Kasteel Amerongen, ou icy, en-ligne (un grand mercy au Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis): https://rkd.nl/images/126807

#meilleur amy #boy best friends #louis n'a pas d'amy si proche que j'ay

905 notes

👑 catholic-guilty666

Why cannot a man haue normall nepheues. One, @je-maintiendrai, is nigh a Puritan in his Protestant fervour, and th'other dispreads falsehoods about the monarcky (and the Roman Church).

I reported the other one, @dukeofm for his libel, in hopes he shall be deactivated, alas th'other I can but block, and not banished from this place. I also hope my daughter the Princess shall divorce him speedilye.

Tonight, I hope to forgett all about this vexing bussinesse by thinking on going a-stag hunting tomorrow with H. M. my brothere, the King.

#vent #vent post #callout post

14 notes

🇮🇹modenamarie

#poll #nicknames #mary

244 notes

💃 annieannieannie

3. The feeling One experiences when One findes out, that one's weird uncle hath a Tumblr-accountt, too 💀💀💀

do not follow him

#i thought 'twas my bad eyes but what i was seeing was real #the family #non followeres do not interact

38 notes

[scotianostra]

On October 22nd King James VI set sail for Norway to collect his bride Anne of Denmark.

The Autumn storms of 1589 were responsible for treacherous sailing conditions, but unfortunately for the women of England and Scotland, they prompted a far more dangerous consequence – a renewed fear of witchcraft.

That September, the new queen of Scotland – set sail to travel to her new kingdom. She had just married James VI via proxy, and was expected to quickly arrive in Scotland to meet her new husband.

But she did not arrive. Anne’s journey was a disaster – the fierce storms damaged her ship and she was forced to anchor in Norway for repairs. A second attempt to set sail was made, but her ship once again sprung a leak and returned to Norway. With winter setting in, the bad weather was expected to continue. The decision was made to postpone the journey until spring, and so Anne remained in Norway.

If history has taught us anything Scottish Kings were a randy lot, you only have to look at the disastrous journey Alexander III took to reach his Queen, ending up dead at the foot of a Fife cliff.

James was unhappy when he heard the news about the delay and unwilling to wait that long to see his bride. He made the decision to go to Norway himself to fetch his queen. Well we all know James survived the hazardous journey, once over there the celebrations of their wedding lasted months and it is said that during this time it ignited his obsession with witchcraft.

In Denmark, witches were blamed for the storms that damaged Anne’s ship and stopped her from travelling. A trial was held in Copenhagen in 1590, resulting in the executions of the accused women. This wasn’t unusual in Denmark – there had been a number of witch trials in the country during the sixteenth century.

In Scotland, witchcraft was against the law – although it mostly went unpunished before 1590. But when James arrived back in Scotland with Anne and heard the news of Denmark’s witch trials, he began his own witch hunt. Witches were accused of trying to kill the king and queen, by calling up the strong storms that James and Anne had encountered returning to Scotland.

One of the accused witches was a wise woman named Agnes Sampson. Under torture, she confessed to things that were so ‘miraculous and strange’ that even James found them difficult to believe. Allegedly, Agnes whispered to the king, telling him the words that he and Anne had spoken to each other in private on the first night of their wedding, removing any doubts James had. He said he ‘believed all the devils in hell could not have discovered the same’. Agnes was executed. There were around seventy people accused of witchcraft during this trial – it is not known exactly how many of them were killed along with Agnes.

In 1597, James released Daemonologie, a treatise about witchcraft – although his own fervour for witch hunting seemed to have waned, the fear of witches among the population had taken hold. Large scale witch trials took place in Scotland well into the seventeenth century, and an estimated 3,000 people – who were mostly women – were accused.

Under the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603, James’ work spread south, into his new kingdom.

Daemonologie laid out information such as how to identify a witch and how to punish them. One way to seek out a witch was in their use of charms and herbs: ‘By curing the Worme, by stemming of blood, by healing of Horse-crookes, by turning of the riddle, or doing of such like innumerable things by wordes, without applying anie thing, meete to the part offended, as Mediciners doe’. Women known as healers and midwives often came under suspicion because of their skills. Another way to identify a witch was to find the mark of the devil hidden somewhere on their bodies – James referenced Agnes Sampson’s trial directly, describing how they shaved her head in an attempt to find her mark, eventually finding it on ‘her privities’.

James explained that it was mostly women who were witches as they were ‘frailer than man is’ and so were more easily entrapped in the ‘snares of the Devil’. He used the bible to support his arguments as witchcraft was ‘plainely prohibited’, referencing Exodus 22.18: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ – the only acceptable punishment for a convicted witch was death.

These guidelines were used in trials until 1727 when Janet Horne became the last woman in Britain tried and executed as a witch.

The book series, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, uses the name Geillis Duncan for a character who is eventually involved in a witch trial, although the books are set after the last execution.

[ashiistired]

Mary II of England and Scotland. I drew this for my history class

[hussyknee]

Somewhat put off by the spoilers I've read about Mary and George. There's no doubt nearly all relationships in the British court were some level of sordid, but King James, to all intents and purposes, had genuine feelings for his three male favourites, most especially George Villiers. He was no Henry VIII. I don't know why they wanted to reduce the most famous and open homosexual relationship in European royal history to a comedy between a "cock-struck" old lech and a conniving courtier that led him by the nose and then betrayed and murdered him.

All evidence points to George at least being loyal to James (if you discount his love letters as simply sucking up to his benefactor) and even had a fond relationship with his Queen and his son Charles. He was in fact in France when James died, and reportedly cried when he heard the news.

It's even a little heartbreaking because this is right after Nicholas Galitzine played the closeted gay Prince Henry in Red, White and Royal Blue, who in the book is proud of the open and unashamed love between his ancestor and his lover, and the way even James's son Charles I honoured Villiers for accompanying him to the Spanish Court to ask for the hand of the Infanta.

“Actually . . . you remember how I told you about the gay king, James I?”

“The one with the dumb jock boyfriend?”

“Yes, that one. Well, his most beloved favorite was a man named George Villiers. ‘The handsomest-bodied man in all of England,’ they called him. James was completely besotted. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.” He clears his throat and starts to recite: ‘One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre , and it is well known that the King of England, fucks the Duke of Buckingham.’” Alex must be staring, because he adds, “Well, it rhymes in French. Anyway. Did you know the reason the King James translation of the Bible exists is because the Church of England was so displeased with James for flaunting his relationship with Villiers that he had the translation commissioned to appease them?”

“You’re kidding.”

“He stood in front of the Privy Council and said, ‘Christ had John, and I have George.’’

“Jesus.”

“Precisely.” Henry’s still looking up at the statue, but Alex can’t stop looking at him and the sly smile on his face, lost in his own thoughts. “And James’s son, Charles I, is the reason we have dear Samson. It’s the only Giambologna that ever left Florence. He was a gift to Charles from the King of Spain, and Charles gave it, this massive, absolutely priceless masterpiece of a sculpture, to Villiers. And a few centuries later, here he is. One of the most beautiful pieces we own, and we didn’t even steal it. We only needed Villiers and his trolloping ways with the queer monarchs. To me, if there were a registry of national gay landmarks in Britain, Samson would be on it.”

Henry’s beaming like a proud parent, like Samson is his, and Alex is hit with a wave of pride in kind.

He takes his phone out and lines up a shot, Henry standing there all soft and rumpled and smiling next to one of the most exquisite works of art in the world.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking a picture of a national gay landmark,” Alex tells him. “And also a statue.”

Like all white liberals, Casey McQuiston tends to romanticise the crime against humanity that is royalty and also that house built by bunch of slave owners that has since housed a progression of genocidal war criminals. There's very little to like about any British monarch. But the relationship between James and Villiers is a significant part of gay history and there's no need to smear it even more than it's already been smeared the last four hundred years, contrary to the actual known facts.

Idk man. I'm sensitive to this stuff Ig. Maybe I'd be a little more positive about it if I watched it, but the trailer gave me "tee hee they're gay" vibes so Idk if I want to.

Edit: so it seems the trailer is misleading and the story is more complex than a "tee hee gay" comedy. I might watch it after all, even if the starkly visible age difference makes me a bit queasy. How tf is Galitzine nearly thirty and a babyface with those razor cheekbones?? Perfect to show how uncomfortable it looks for a middle aged man to get with a kid of twenty.

[not-wholly-unheroic]

Imagine listening to Hook saying "Down with King George" and asking "which one?"

You know, I’ve wondered if Barrie made this purposefully ambiguous, as he often tends to do with Hook’s backstory info. If Hook was indeed Blackbeard’s bosun and lived during the Golden Age of Piracy, he very likely would have only really known about King George I of England. It also totally makes sense for him to say, “Down with King George” if you want to go with the theory that he’s actually related to Charles II (and perhaps possibly was meant to be either James Scott, Duke of Monmouth or James Francis Edward Stuart “The Old Pretender”) because the first “King George” essentially stole the throne from the Stuart line as far as they were concerned. On the other hand, Hook could just as easily be speaking about King George V, who would have been in power during the Darlings’ era. “Hook at Eton” would place him much later and closer to the Darlings’ era… Barrie tells us things about him in the novel and “Hook at Eton” that cannot possibly both be true at the same time. And this just seems to be a fun, sneaky way of him going, “Yeah, Hook could be from either time period. Pick your own headcanon. I’m not going to actually come out and tell you which one is REALLY true.”

[angevinyaoiz]

The Cradle King and his Favorite

(James VI & I and Esme Stuart)

[bullywugprincess]

You’re telling me Elizabeth I sent Mary Queen Of Scots a diamond ring and Mary sent Elizabeth a miniature of her portrait in a heart shaped ring? That’s so gay omg

[wordacrosstime]

A Diamond In The Dust

["A Diamond in the Dust - The Stuarts: Love, Art, War" by Michael Dean. 24 November 2022. Holland Park Press Ltd. Paperback. 225 pages. ISBN: 9781907320965]

The brutal murder of King Charles I was followed by the establishment of the Commonwealth of England, a brief republic. Reinstatement of the monarchy with his son Charles ll was accompanied by the execution of the judges - the Regicide Judges - who had condemned Charles I to death. Ten of them were hanged, nine of whom were hanged, drawn and quartered. The ringmaster Oliver Cromwell died naturally. His corpse was exhumed, hanged at Tyburn (in London, now Marble Arch), beheaded, and its head mounted above the building where Charles I had been tried.

They knew how to do things in those days.

Michael Dean's A Diamond in the Dust starts and ends with the show trial and execution of Charles I, with a second book - The King's Art - scheduled to take the story forward.

Shortly before his death, Charles I wrote a (very long and frankly dreadful, but yes, execution was going too far) poem titled (with capitals as written) Majesty in Misery, Or an Imploration to the KING OF KINGS. It's not known if God has read it yet, it could take a while. Mercifully Michael Dean only quotes three lines and then solely to explain the title of the book:

With my own Power my Majesty they wound, In the King's name the King himself's uncrown'd, So doth the dust destroy the Diamond.

Watch those capitals Charles. Upper Class OK, Upper Case seldom.

Michael Dean's delightful A Diamond In The Dust is a very exact account of many of the painters artists soldiers and male prostitutes who flourished around the courts of Europe. Charles emerges as worried about what he felt was his mis-shapen body until he finds he is good at something. That something, in what was perhaps his own language was f__king. And to give it context, music, sculpture, f__king, religious wars, wars, f__king, spending money he didn't have, f__king, and when at a loss for something to while away his sybaritic hours, not-surprisingly, more f__king.

This should not suggest that Charles I was promiscuous. On the contrary he and his wife Henrietta Maria seem, after a difficult start (there was a lot of religion, catholic and protestant, involved - all across Europe and all across their lives) to have been not simply in love, but profoundly in love. Charles I does emerge at times as a bit of a pr__k, but, as the English public of the time might well have said, 'at least he's our pr__k).

Art, politics, religion, shipwrecks. Michael Dean knows his controversies and A Diamond In The Dust is crammed to the gunwales with them. George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham is a superbly-drawn (he's real - all the people in the book are, and there are tons of them) character, sexually versatile on both sides, bold, generally courageous, a kind of World-War-II-We'll-Fight-Them-On-The-Beaches lad (he might well have turned up there for a cameo), hated, unfortunately by Queen Henrietta, and in the end murdered. The narrative does slump a bit when he exits, but it's coming to the end (for Charles I) when he leaves the story, and Charles is only going one way.

Michael Dean is expert with history and characters. His novel about the painter Marc Chagall, The White Crucifixion (2018) as well as being a fine novel is a smart piece of work, coming across - like A Diamond in the Dust - with the feel of historical accuracy (only God knows if it's extremely true, but He's tied up with Charles I's Majesty in Misery, possibly for eternity).

A Diamond in the Dust may be one for (1) history experts who long to pick holes in other historians' work while gloating at their superiority; (2) fanatical puritans (OK, Americans), protestants, catholics (it's got lots of all of them, entangled, not always religiously) (3) Republicans (4) Royalists (5) fans of art (yards and yards of art in 225 pages, lots of named works, very detailed biographies of big (and interestingly obscure) artists and patrons. And others who hate being categorised but read The Guardian flagrantly, with a fixed expression of disapproval.

[Image credit: book cover, with thanks to the copyright holders]

John Park

Words Across Time

19 May 2023

wordsacrosstime

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Because nobody has added any concrete historical instances of this happening, here are some excerpts from the letters exchanged between Mary II and Sophie von Hannover, a relative somewhat older than her in whom Mary confided many of her most private thoughts and feelings, especially when her husband, William III, was at war on the continent:

Mary to the Electress Sophie, Kensington, 12/2 June 1690. My cousin. Though I make use at present of the return of Mr Schütz [a courtier at Sophie's court] to write to you, I hope you will do me the justice to belie that I should not have neglected responding to your obliging letter of the 7th/17th of the last month any longer. If something I have said is of some consolation, I assure you that I have much need of such myself, the King being on his departure. I cannot boast possessing any fortitude of spirit, but I see that one gets used to afflictions. I have had those so long that they are not new to me; this current one, however, appears to me to be still greater. You may well judge that I have all the reason in the world to be in agony for a husband and dare I say such a husband, i am yet a daughter and do not know what wishes I must make for a father.

Mary to the Electress Sophie, Whitehall, 23rd/13th October 1691. From Whitehall, this 23rd/13th October 1691. My cousin. I am in the last anger against myself to see that I have had two of your letters to which I have not yet responded, and especially since I found out from one of the two that this is not the first time that I have been pained by my negligence, but you have so much consideration for me that I hope you will excuse it once more. I admit that when the King is not here, I am so overwhelmed among affairs, to which I am not at all suited, and the worry I have for him whhen he is exposed to all the mishaps that could befall him at war, that often, I forget myself and do not that which I should, to the discontent of my best friends.

Mary to the Electress Sophie, Kensington, 26th January 1692. From Kensington this 26th January 1692. My cousin. I certainly do not deserve the obliging letters you sent me, for it takes me so long to respond to them.

Mary to the Electress Sophie, Whitehall, 1st July/21st June 1692. From Whitehall, this 1st July/21st June 1692. My cousin. I always have the misfortune to appear negligent towards you, and this is presently at such a point that I don't know where to begin my letter, having one from you which, though without date, I see very well that it was written too long ago to not have received a response yet. I don't know myself why I don't make any more excuses at all, but I beg you nevertheless to do me the justice of beliving that there were many things that contributed to this fault, a bad cold, many affairs, a month in continous fears for a battle in Flanders (which god has not yet permitted).

And here, in English.

TL; DR: There you have it. Sometimes, people take time to write back because:

being Queen is hard (their job that they don't like is very stressful)

they are exhausted and worried because the King, who is "such a husband" is away to do battle against some other, less worthy king (they miss their partner/someone else in their life and struggle with that)

the less worthy king the valiant husband-king is fighting is also their dad (they have struggles in their family/private life)

they were busy

they had a bad cold (or other illness)

they just don't currently have the mental energy to reply.

In all seriousness, I can recommend reading Mary's letters to Sophie. It is evident how much Mary emotionally relied on Sophie, and how liberating it was to her that, instead of expressing annoyance, Sophie realised that Mary was not doing well and thus decided to simply not date her letters, to make it easier for Mary to reply whenever she felt up to it. As this is their private correspondence, it hightlights the personal relationship between these two women, who never met in person - they only ever knew each other through letters, and remained pen-pals, so to speak, until Mary's death.

Do you think people used to have ADHD Text Reply Anxiety back in the day. Do you think there was some girl in the 1870s going "Oh, a letter from Esther, how delightful! I must make time to write her a reply this evening!" And then later she was like "It has been 5 months since Esther wrote me, and I am yet to reply. I fear I have tarried far too long, and if she receives a letter from me now it will seem terribly rude and she will want nothing to do with me. And yet, it is ruder still to not write her at all! I fear I am the only one to blame for my current predicament, as I am most terribly forgetful. Ah, but what a fool I am! I shall pray this evening for guidance from the Lord"

[misscromwellsmonocle]

Hero by Stuart Dunkel (*1952)

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Am I doing this right?

[scotianostra]

On July 29th 1567 King James VI was crowned King of Scots at Stirling.

Mary Queen of Scot’s son was crowned only a few days after she herself was forced to abdicate, which I covered this on July 24th, more on her and James’s faither later.

James was born into a political cauldron on June 19th 1566, in Edinburgh Castle and, as a firstborn son, he automatically became Duke of Rothesay, Prince, and Grand Lieutenant of Scotland. He was baptised in a Catholic ceremony and received the name of Charles James. Elizabeth I, as godmother in absentia, sent a significant amount of gold to Edinburgh as a gift for the newborn’s baptism. It was not unusual for monarchs to use another given name for their term on the throne.

When he was only eight months old, Lord Darnley, his father, was assassinated at Kirk o‘ Field on February 10, 1567. After the death of her husband, Mary married for a third time with James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who was suspected of being the architect of Lord Darnley’s assassination.

His uncle, James Stuart, Earl of Moray, ruled in his place and became first of 4 regents, two were assassinated, a third died after a short illness, some historians point to poisoning, others say natural causes, the fourth and last of his Regents lost his head after being found guilty of playing a part in Darnley’s murder, it wasn’t a job with prospects and you wouldn’t be relying on collecting a pension from it.

From that moment onwards, the power, at least in theory, was held by the king himself rather than by a regent.

Nonetheless, James VI of Scotland did not reign directly: he relied on the advice of his closest courtiers, such as his cousin Esmé Steward, Duke of Lennox, and James Stuart, who received the title of Earl of Arran for his testimony against Morton. Since Lennox was Catholic, and Arran favoured episcopalism, the Scottish Presbyterian lords did not like the government. During the Ruthven Raid of 1582, some Presbyterian nobles, led by William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, captured James and held him captive for almost a year in Ruthven Castle (now known as Huntingtower Castle), in Perthshire. Arran was also held captive while Lennox was forced into exile in France. In 1583, the king and Arran managed to escape: Gowrie was executed whilst the rebels were forced to flee to England. The Scottish Parliament, which was loyal to the king, passed the Black Acts, which placed the Church of Scotland under the king’s control.

The acts were extremely popular but the clergy was opposed to them and denounced the king. In fact, the church was trying to keep James’ influence under control before he became powerful and bold enough to attack Presbyterianism, in the end no attack was made.

In 1586, thanks to the Treaty of Berwick, James VI and Elizabeth I became allies. James decided to continue to support the virgin queen of England, since, as a descendant of Margaret Tudor, he was a potential successor to her crown. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, feared that the English crown would fall under the sovereignty of the Stuarts. To prevent this, he excluded Margaret and her descendants from the line of succession in his will. Nonetheless, since they were Elizabeth’s closest relatives, both Mary and James were both serious contenders for the Crown of England.

There is so much more about James to read, I have covered parts here and their in the past, in particular his persecution of women as witches. He did go on to be James I of England and during his troubled reign Guy Fawkes attempted to blow him, and his Parliament up.

James did gain some favour in both Scotland and England by marrying a protestant Princess, Anne of Denmark, they had 7 children, 4 of whom died in infancy, their son Charles became King and was of course executed.

James died in 1625 aged 58 and is buried at Westminster Abbey.

[emvidal]

Among the descendants of Mary Stuart who seem to mirror her tragic destiny is her great-granddaughter, Henrietta Anne of England (1644- 1670), the youngest daughter of  King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. On her mother's side, she was the granddaughter of the great Henri IV, first of the Bourbon monarchs of France. When Henrietta Anne was a young child, her father was beheaded and his kingdom lost. The little princess was taken to the French court where she was raised a Catholic by her mother. It was hoped that the king, her cousin Louis XIV, would make her his queen.

[texaschainsawmascara]

Jennifer Tilly playing poker

[buttl0rd]

your epic!! *hands you my beloved son*

take good care of him

[holespoles]

Stuart Dunkel (1952-)

"Heaven"