No abstract
The elaborate pageantry and festivities of grand public processions have proven to be of great interest to historians writing on late medieval and early modern Europe. The more limited ceremonies and protocol at court have attracted somewhat less attention, although on occasion they have been adopted as evidence of a monarch's personal feelings about his attendants and family members. A study of royal protocol and the social and political framework in which rulers fulfilled their roles as sovereigns is timely, for it will surely lead to a new and fuller understanding of how monarchs's public roles, such as those of the Tudors, related to their private motivations.Greeting ceremonies, which were one aspect of the “law of hospitality,” require special attention, because they offer insights into the interactions of people of varying status who were of fundamental importance to the hierarchical communities of Europe. As Esther Goody points out, “Greeting becomes a mode of entering upon or manipulating a relationship in order to achieve a specific result.” How monarchs privately greeted their brides, the topic of this essay, not only offers insights into the complexity of the relationship of individuals who were wed by proxy before they had become acquainted, but also offers evidence of how the greeting ritual performed by monarchs differed from that enacted by their royal and noble relatives.
In the Tudor century both queens consort and queens regnant presided at court. The role of consorts reflected that of noblewomen, who were expected to produce a male heir to continue their husband's line, to oversee some household functions, to supervise their female attendants, and to support religious enterprises deemed appropriate to women. In addition, their royal status offered consorts opportunities to engage in court politics and to influence patronage. Because giving birth to a male heir defined the success of their reign, their inability to reproduce or to protect their honor sometimes endangered their position as consort, as Henry VIII's wives discovered. By contrast, in addition to marrying and securing the succession, Mary and Elizabeth Tudor were expected to rule as monarchs. The perceived inability of women to govern led to demands that they heed their male councilors’ advice. Concerns about whether her husband would dominate royal decision‐making raised questions about Philip II's role in Mary's reign. Elizabeth compensated for her singleness by devising strategies for dealing with her male councilors and through representations of her public persona as male.
Since the publication of Paul Murray Kendall's sympathetic biography of Richard III in 1955, scholars have been debating with renewed intensity the fate of that monarch's two young nephews, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. In addition to numerous books and articles on his reign, including a study by Charles Ross in 1981, Alison Hanham published a volume in 1975 on the contemporary or near-contemporary historians of Richard III. Since the appearance of these publications, two original sources, which were almost certainly unknown to them and to other Ricardian scholars, have been identified. In a 1981 article in the English Historical Review, Richard Firth Green described one of these documents as a merchant's commonplace book, written between 1483 and 1488. The second relevant source, “Account of Miracles performed by the Holy Eucharist,” is a collection of religious anecdotes written by Henry Parker, Lord Morley. It has remained in manuscript although several excerpts, including one about Richard III, were printed in the introduction of Hubert G. Wright's 1943 edition of Morley's version of De Claris mulieribus by Boccaccio.The “Account” is now Add. MS. 12,060 at the British Library. A small quarto with a leaf missing at the end, it was a New Year's gift to Queen Mary, probably in 1554. In its next to last anecdote, Morley made a revealing remark about Richard III. Early on the day this king died at Bosworth Field, he wrote, God would not permit him to “se the blyssed sacrament of the Allter, nor heare the holy Masse, for his horrible offence comytted Against his brothers children,” a statement that surely reflected Morley's belief that this monarch was punished at Bosworth Field for the deaths of his two nephews. Any consideration of the author's negative comments must necessarily take into account two facts. First, they occur in only one of several anecdotes in the manuscript, the purpose of which was to venerate the Holy Eucharist. The inclusion of the Ricardian story was not essential to the author's primary goal of detailing the miraculous efficacy of this sacrament, for the Holy Eucharist, not Richard III, was the primary focus. Secondly, the anecdote was written in a low-key and matter-of-fact style. Morley made no reference to the many Tudor embellishments of the king's personality and appearance, including the infamous stories of his withered arm and hunched back.
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