Abstract
According to Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Boke Named the Governor (1531), the imperial crown was the most potent symbol of Tudor authority. Second in importance were the monarch’s coronation robes because “we be men and nay aungels, wherefore we knowe nothinge but by outwarde significations.” He went on to state that “reporte is nat so commune a token as apparayle.”1 With these words, Elyot preempted the ideas of a range of more recent theorists who have seen clothes as signifying power, authority, and the right to rule.2 He also echoed ideas about clothes and the ways in which they could be used to emphasize royal magnificence that were expressed by writers such as Sir John Fortescue.3 Equally significant, but not touched upon by either writer, was the way in which the monarch could exploit the changing sixteenth-century fashions to set themselves apart from the rest of their court.
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Notes
Thomas Elyot, The Book Named the Governour, ed. H. H. S. Croft (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1880), 188, 201.
For example, Thorstein Veblen and Georg Simmel. See M. Carter, Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes (New York and Oxford: Berg, 2003).
Sir John Fortescue: The Governance of England, ed. C. Plummer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), 125.
For example, Judith M. Richards, “To promote a woman to beare rule: Talking of Queens in Mid-Tudor England,” SCJ, 28 (1997): 101–21.
Charles Wriothesley, A chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors from A. D. 1485 to 1559, 2 vols. (London: Camden Society, 1875–77), I: 93.
Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (London: Routledge, 2008), 135–7.
See J. Ashelford, A Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century (London: Batsford, 1983).
Janet Arnold, “The Coronation Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I,” Burlington Magazine, 120 (1978): 727–41.
Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (Leeds: Maney, 2007), 47.
E. Auerbach, Tudor Artists (London: Athlone Press, 1954), 96–101.
Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (Leeds: Maney, 1988), 59.
TNA SP12/1, fol. 74r; A. Harvey and R. Mortimer, The Funeral Effigies of Westminster Abbey (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), 55.
Robert Tittler, The Reign of Mary I (London and New York: Longman, 1983), 87.
Illustrated in M. Perry, Elizabeth I: The Word of a Prince (London: Folio Society, 1990), 153.
A. Carter, “Mary Tudor’s Wardrobe,” Costume, 18 (1984): 16.
The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Two Years of Queen Mary … , ed. J. G. Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1850), 167.
BL Harley MS 1419, fol. 398r; The Inventory of King Henry VIII: The Transcript, ed. David Starkey (London: Harvey Miller, 1998), entries 14177–8.
BL Harley MS 419, fol. 132; CSPVen, VI: 174. However, when she was painted by Antonis Mor he made no reference to her condition even though she was rumored to be with child. See Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630, ed. Karen Hearn (London: Tate Publishing, 1995), 54.
The Lisle Letters, ed. M. St Clare Byrne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), IV: 880.
Karen Hearn, “A Fatal Fertility? Elizabethan and Jacobean Pregnancy Portraits,” Costume, 34 (2000): 39–43.
Carole Levin, “‘We shall never have a merry world while the Queen liveth’: Gender, Monarchy and the Power of Words,” in Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, ed. J. M. Walker (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 89.
J. Ashelford, Dress in the Age of Elizabeth I (Avon: Bath Press, 1988), 34.
Roy Strong, Elizabeth R (London: Secker and Warburg, 1971), 42.
Fiona Kisby, “‘When the king goeth a procession’: Chapel Ceremonies and Services, the Ritual Year and Religious Reforms at the Early Tudor Court, 1485–1547,” Journal of British Studies, 40 (2001): 44–75.
J. Adamson, “The Tudor and Stuart Courts 1509–1714,” in The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien Régime 1500–1750, ed. J. Adamson (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 102–3.
Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners, ed. V von Klarwill (London: John Lane, the Bodley Head, 1928), 329.
Trustees of the late countess Beauchamp; see Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran (London: Chatto & Windus and the National Maritime Museum, 2003), 74, 110.
Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England (Chicago: Belford, Clark and Co., 1885), II: 555.
Viscount Strangford, Household Expenses of the Princess Elizabeth During her Residence at Hatfield (London: Camden Society, 1853), 31–3.
M. A. Hayward, “Luxury or Magnificence? Dress at the Court of Henry VIII,” Costume 30 (1996): 37–46.
H. Norris, Costume and Fashion: The Tudors 1485–1547 III: bk I (London: J. W. Dent and Son, 1938), 610.
C. Hibbert, The Virgin Queen: The Personal History of Elizabeth I (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1990), 100.
W Devereux, Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1853), I: 73–4.
TNA SP 78/7, no. 12; J. Ashelford, The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society1500–1914 (London: National Trust, 1996), 37.
Maria Hayward, “Gift Giving at the Court of Henry VIII: An Analysis of the 1539 New Year’s Gift Roll,” Antiquaries Journal 85 (2005): 139–40.
BL Egerton MS 3052; J. Nevinson, “New Year’s Day Present List 1584,” Costume 9 (1975): 28.
M. Swain, The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots (London: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1973), 82–3.
BL Harleian 2284, published as Hayward, Dress, 369–411; TNA C/115/ L2/6697 published as J. Arnold, Lost from Her Majestie’s Back (London: Costume Society, 1980).
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© 2010 Anna Whitelock and Alice Hunt
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Hayward, M. (2010). Dressed to Impress. In: Hunt, A., Whitelock, A. (eds) Tudor Queenship. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230111950_6
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