Will true Elizabeth I stand up?

Horrible Histories:

Turpitudinous Tudors (b, 2):

Will true Elizabeth I stand up?

 

“Only in Wales was anything made of the Tudor name. Bards featured Tudor genealogy in their praise poems. This tradition broke surface in English in 1547 when Arthur Ketton, a Welshman and a citizen of Shrewsbury, published A Chronycle with a Genealogie”.

Clifford S. L. Davies

 

 

 

 

Cliff Davies (RIP) wrote:

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-tudor-delusion/

 

The Tudor delusion

 

….

 

“The Tudors” and “the Tudor Age” are among the staples of English history. How can we do without them? Not only are the monarchs themselves referred to, individually and collectively in books, articles, plays, films, television series and exhibitions by their patronymic, but their subjects become Tudor men and women. In fifty years of studying sixteenth-century England, it did not occur to me to question the convention. Nor, apparently, did it occur to other historians. But how much was the Tudor word used at the time? Did the monarchs from Henry VII to Elizabeth I think of themselves as a Tudor dynasty?

Did their subjects think of themselves as Tudor people living in Tudor England?

 

In spite of the linguistic turn, historians cannot avoid some anachronistic use of terms. It is impossible to discuss, say, economic development meaningfully while only using language comprehensible to Shakespeare. But contemporary vocabulary imposed limitations on sixteenth-century people attempting to discuss economic affairs; their efforts to formulate even the straightforward connection between the quantity of money in circulation and price levels, for instance, were painfully slow. Tudor is a term too deeply entrenched to be banished from our vocabulary, but we should be aware that it, too, is an anachronism, creating a similar barrier to our understanding of contemporary thought.

 

The Tudor name made an unlikely journey from the fastnesses of Anglesey into English high political discourse. About 1430, Queen Catherine, the still young widow of Henry V (she was born in 1401), born a French princess, married a member of her household, Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur. (The Tudors could equally well have been the Merediths.) The marriage was an embarrassment to the council which ruled in the name of her young son, Henry VI, and it was kept quiet, but nobody seems to have queried its legitimacy.

….

Outside Wales, the Tudor name was not used by Henry. The red dragon badge was certainly Welsh, but not specifically Tudor. Descent from Cadwaladr could equally well be claimed by Elizabeth of York; a Mortimer ancestor had married into a Welsh princely house, and Welsh bards had been as enthusiastic for Edward IV as they were for Henry VII. Henry is said to have commissioned an investigation into his Welsh genealogy; it may be too cynical to see this as pre-emptive action against those who would deny Owen Tudor even his gentry origins. Henry did provide a new tomb for his father at the Franciscan house at Carmarthen (moved to St David’s Cathedral when Henry VIII suppressed the house), and, as Leland reported, commemorated his own birth at Pembroke Castle. But Owen Tudor’s tomb at the Franciscan house at Hereford was provided by his bastard David Owen, and nothing was done to preserve it at the Dissolution. Certainly, no ancestral Tudors were allowed to sully the dignity of the Henry VII chapel at Westminster, although Lady Margaret Beaufort was given a place of honour.

Polydore Vergil, the first historian to provide a full account of 1485, at royal instigation, was also notable for his demolition job on the whole British history tradition, from Brutus to Cadwaladr. If Henry VII was less keen than is sometimes thought about his Welsh origins, Henry VIII apparently showed no interest in them at all. (Family piety seems to have been conspicuously lacking in his case.) After 1485 no Tudor monarch seems to have crossed the border into Wales, although Prince Arthur and, later, Princess Mary, were sent to Ludlow and Bewdley respectively to provide a nominal headship to what became the Council of Wales and the Marches.

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Only in Wales was anything made of the Tudor name. Bards featured Tudor genealogy in their praise poems. This tradition broke surface in English in 1547 when Arthur Ketton, a Welshman and a citizen of Shrewsbury, published A Chronycle with a Genealogie. This traced the descent of Edward VI from Osiris, first King of Egypt, through Brutus, Arthur, Cadwaladr (the hundredth King of Britain and the last), and Tewdr Mawre who chased the Saxons, Danes, and Picts from the borders of Wales. Edmund, Earl of Richmond was, he claimed, of lineal descent from Tewdr Mawre and Cadwaladr, by eleven and twenty-one generations respectively. Ketton’s purpose was to praise Henry VIII, whose gentleness was especially demonstrated in his freeing the Welsh from bondage by giving them, through the Acts of Union, the status of Englishmen; an argument which would surprise modern nationalists. The theme was taken up by the Welsh humanists, the circle of William Salesbury and Humphrey Llwyd, who were responsible for translating the Bible into Welsh. As the historian Steven Gunn reminds me, George Owen of Henllys, in his Description of Pembrokeshire (1603), talks of her Majesty whose name is Tyder. ….

 

Taken from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/rest.12258

 

Elizabeth I as Judith: reassessing the apocryphal

widow’s appearance in Elizabethan royal

iconography

 

…. Historians and literary scholars have long noted and analysed the appearance of biblical analogies as part of Tudor and Stuart royal iconography. Using the example of a biblical figure, monarchs demonstrated the divine precedent for their decisions, and subjects in turn could counsel their monarch to emulate the actions of a divinely favoured biblical figure. Queen Elizabeth I of England was the subject of the greatest number of biblical analogies drawn in the early modern period: analogies were drawn both by apologists and by Elizabeth herself throughout the entire span of the queen’s reign, and for almost a century after her death. …. Elizabeth’s comparisons with Deborah the Judge, Queen Esther, Daniel the Prophet, King Solomon, and King David have all received varying levels of attention in the existing scholarship: but the analogy to Judith, the chaste widow of the Apocrypha, has generally escaped detailed analysis. …. Judith was invoked in various ways throughout Elizabeth’s reign, and the diverse analogies reflect the changing religio-political climate of the time. This article offers a re-examination of the comparisons drawn between Elizabeth and Judith during the queen’s life. In doing so, I argue that contrary to claims in some of the existing scholarship, Judith was routinely and consistently offered to Elizabeth as biblical precedent for dealing with Roman Catholics – with violence, not just diplomatic rhetoric – and for the providential sanctioning of female rule; and that Elizabeth, in drawing the parallel to Judith herself, inserted her own voice into these debates. ….

Judith’s story can be found in the eponymous book of the Apocrypha. A prophecy was brought, foretelling that Bethulia, Judith’s city, would be lost to the invading Assyrians because of the Jews’ disobedience. Judith attempted to prevent this happening, and prayed to God that he would give her a ‘sworde to take vengeance of the [invading] strangers’. …. She and her handmaiden allowed themselves to be captured by the Assyrians, claiming that they had deserted. The Assyrians took her to Holofernes, the General of the Army. Judith lied to Holofernes that God had forsaken the Jews because they ate his offerings before the requisite time had past, and that he would not defend them until the sacrifices were re-offered, which would take many days to organize. Holofernes was pleased with this news, and allowed Judith to stay in the camp. On the fourth night at the camp, after a banquet, Holofernes passed out, drunk. His servants left the tent, and Judith remained inside, alone. She picked up Holofernes’ sword, grasped his hair, prayed, ‘Strengthen me,

O Lord God of Israel, this day,’ and then ‘shee smote twise upon his necke with all her might, and she took away his head from him.’ …. She stowed the head in her handmaiden’s bag, and the two left the camp. She returned to Bethulia, and showed the head, saying, ‘Beholde the head of Holofernes the chiefe captaine of the army of Assur . . . the Lord hath smitten him by the hand of a woman.’ …. Without their general, the Assyrian army fell into disarray, and the attack was abandoned.

In the existing scholarship, the most comprehensive study of Elizabeth as Judith remains England’s Eliza, by Elkin Calhoun Wilson. The first chapter of Wilson’s book is called ‘Judith in the Broadsides’, which, despite its title, focuses on ‘the concept of Gloriana taking form’ throughout Elizabethan literature, including pamphlets and dramatic productions. …. Rather than systematically analysing Elizabeth as Judith, Wilson used the concept of the widow Judith – the chaste, God-fearing woman who saved her people – and attempted to trace this theme in depictions of the queen. Wilson ends his discussion of Judith, however, by noting the familiarity the English felt for Judith: ‘in the study of Elizabeth idealized as Elisa [sic], Diana, and Gloriana, it is always to be remembered that the Judith . . . is an elder cockney cousin of these court ladies; in her homely style she testifies to their honest English stock.’ ….

John N. King’s study of Tudor iconography remains the key work that argues for Judith’s potency and longevity. King observes that, ‘Judith, in her victory over Holofernes (now considered a type for militant Catholicism) . . . embodies triumphal power conventionally relegated to kings.’ …. By arguing that Judith’s gender did not prevent her from saving the Israelites, Elizabeth’s apologists were able to assert that God’s defence of England would continue, even with a female king on the throne. …. The analogy to Judith thus asserted Elizabeth’s position as England’s providential monarch, who would be given the necessary strength by God to overcome England’s enemies.

While I do not argue that Elizabeth was the first English monarch to be paralleled with Judith … the examples assembled here demonstrate that Elizabeth was both the first monarch to be compared to Judith in a sustained and systematic way for religio-political purposes, and also the first monarch to affirm the analogy in her own words. The importance of these two facts is often sidelined in the scholarship that does discuss the Judith analogy. Helen Hackett’s study of Elizabeth and the cult of the Virgin Mary is excellent, but dismisses Judith’s longevity by claiming, ‘biblical heroines like Deborah and Judith dominated early Elizabethan royal iconography.’ ….