The Tudors: The Mighty English Dynasty

Elizabeth Tudor, the future Elizabeth I of England, was not quite three years old when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was taken to the Tower of London. Following the birth of her daughter, Anne had failed to provide her husband, Henry VIII, with a son. The king, therefore, had devised a way to get rid of her and so be able to marry again. The accusations against her — adultery and, scandalously, even incest — were almost certainly false. Yet they were enough to lead to her arrest. And so, on Friday 19 May 1536, Anne was led to a scaffold built especially for her in the grounds of the Tower, and beheaded. Elizabeth was too young to remember Anne but lived the rest of her life with the knowledge that her father had ordered the death of her mother.

GAME OF THRONES

The Tudors were a dynasty born in conflict. The Wars of the Roses, a long period of civil strife in the 15th century, had ended with Henry Tudor as the last man standing. When he came to the throne in 1485, the country he ruled over was, by the standards of mainland Europe, a second-rate power. Devastated by war and far removed from the cultural centres of the French, Spanish and Italian courts, England was unable to compete as a major player. By the time of Elizabeth I’s death in 1603, however, the country was living through perhaps one of its greatest periods, flourishing in terms of artistic production and taking the first steps in establishing itself as a power across the whole of the world.

Passion, Power and Politics

In 2022, a large-scale exhibition of Tudor portraits at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool told the story of the Tudors, the mighty family who reigned over England for over a century, from 1485 to 1603. The summer show brought together over one hundred objects plus almost seventy works on loan from London’s National Portrait Gallery. All of the Tudor monarchs, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I were represented, in addition to other prominent figures including Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister and a loyal servant to the king. Cromwell was one of the major architects of the English Reformation, presiding over the break with Catholic Rome and the beginnings of the Church of England. A friendship with a Tudor, however, was a dangerous thing and eventually — like many of those who displeased the king — Thomas too would go to the scaffold. In 1540 he was beheaded on the orders of the man he had served with such devotion. 
 
Kate O’Donoghue (English accent): When Henry VII became the first Tudor monarch, it really saw the end of a long period of conflict. So that really brought an end to the Wars of the Roses and what you see then unfolding over the next  century is a period of great social and political change in England. So the years that the Tudors presided over sawthe Reformation, the formation of a new Church of England. They also saw a time where England began to spread its wings and move out into the wider world, as well. But these years also saw a sort of cultural renaissance as well. This is also the time of William Shakespeare.

PROPAGANDA

It was important to the Tudors to flaunt their power and their prestige. This was one of the main drivers behind the production of so many portraits. These symbols and warnings of the rising influence of England were copied and distributed throughout the continent, as Donaghue explains.
 
Kate O’Donoghue: Relationships with European neighbours at this time was really, really important. There would have been many ambassadors at the Tudor court, as well.The art that you see as part of the exhibition was very much intended to be seen, copies of these works to be seen further afield. So, when you encounter images of the monarchs and the people and their circles in this exhibition you can also see how they wanted to see themselves portrayed to wider audiences. 

DIVERSITY

However, there is more to Tudor England than the aristocrats and members of the court. An area where recent scholarship has been particularly productive is in the issue of non-Europeans who lived in England at the time. The exhibition included a unique and intriguing example of one such case. The Westminster Tournament Roll, an illustrated document more than ninety metres long that depicts the tournament staged by Henry VIII to commemorate the birth of his son, Henry Duke of Cornwall. One of the heralds shown blowing a trumpet as the king breaks his lance over the head of an opponent, a dark-skinned man. This is John Blanke, a musician thought to have arrived in England as an attendant of Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s Spanish first wife. Here, for the first time in English history since the Roman period we have the face and the name of someone who appears of African descent. 

Kate O’Donoghue: One of the really extraordinary objects that we had as part of the exhibition is the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll. And it was made to document the great tournament of Westminster, which was held on the 12th and the 13th of February 1511 to celebrate the birth of Henry VIII’s son with Catherine of Aragon. And so, this fabulous document. Although it’s over five hundred years old, the colour is still really striking. In the centre of the document you can see a young Henry. He’s only nineteen years of age and he’s taking part in a jousting scene. You can see that he’s smashed his lance on his opponent’s head. Behind him you can see Catherine of Aragon with her ladies in waiting. She’s still recovering from childbirth, so you can see that she’s reclined and watching the tournament. On the roll, we also see a group of the king’s trumpeters. And a lot of them look very, very similar. But there’s one who’s really, really distinctive, and this is John Blanke who was a court trumpeter to Henry VIII and also to Henry VII before him. And this image is really important because it’s one of the earliest known images that we have of a named person of African descent living in England. 

HANS HOLBEIN

In this period England flourished creatively, producing some of its most revered writers, poets and artists. One of the most skilled was Hans Holbein the Younger, a German-Swiss painter and printmaker who travelled to England in 1526 in search of work with a recommendation from the Dutch scholar Erasmus. Holbein is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century and vastly contributed to the Tudor’s magnificent reputation through his work.

Kate O’Donoghue: Hans Holbein was the court painter to Henry VII, and actually when you people came into the exhibition, one of the really memorable pictures that they saw was a very imposing full-length portrait of Henry VIII from Holbein’s workshop. This is based on a mural that was made for Whitehall Palace which was painted by Hans Holbein. And the original mural sadly was destroyed by fire in 1698, so it no longer exists, but the original mural had Henry VIII also accompanied by his parents, so Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, but also his wife at the time, Jane Seymour, who was also pregnant at the time that the mural was made. And so Holbein really had pride of place at the court.