Book Recommendation
Unnatural Murder: Poison At the Court Of James l
Anne of Denmark at the V&A
Inigo Jones on my blog
Read the Tudor Times Feature:
http://tudortimes.co.uk/person-of-the-month/anne-of-denmark
Very Rough Transcript of Tudor Times on Anne of Denmark
Speaker 1: (00:00)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (00:09)
Welcome to the Renaissance English history podcast. I’m your host, Heather Tesco. And I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe and our connection to our own humanity. This is episode 59, another joint episode with Melita Thomas of Tudor times on Anne of Denmark. Just to note that the Renaissance English history podcast is a proud member of the Gora podcast network and the gaura podcast of the month is the history of Islam prod podcast, which is available at history of Islam, podcast.blogspot.com or all of the general podcasts, these sorts of places like iTunes and pocket casts. So again, the history of Islam podcast, we also have a really special giveaway going on for the next week. So tutor times has just launched a brand new shop filled with all kinds of cool stuff, inspired by tutor architecture, and there’s a great quotes range as well.
Speaker 2: (01:07)
So if you go to England cast.com and check out the giveaway post, there’s also an image on the page. We’re doing a giveaway to be entered, to win a set of four Elizabeth, the first quote mugs. So these are mugs, a set of mugs that have quotes by Elizabeth the first, and they are a fantastic way to start your morning with your coffee or in your day with your camomile tea or whichever you prefer or both. So go to England gas.com to enter, and you can enter until next Friday, the 11th. Yeah, the ninth 10th, 11th of November. So if you’re listening to this after that, I’m sorry. You’ve missed out the early bird catches the worm. Okay. So moving on from the admin bit, let’s talk about Anne of Denmark. Now, let me first introduce you to Melita. Melita is a co founder and editor of Tudor times a website devoted to tutor and Stuart history in the period from 1485 to 1625, you can find it@tutortimes.co.uk Melita, who has always been fascinated by history ever since she saw the 1970s series, Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson also contributes articles to BBC history, extra and Britain magazine.
Speaker 2: (02:23)
We started the interview with me asking her why Ann was special and why she chose her as the person of the month.
Speaker 3: (02:29)
Very interesting cultural influence, uh, not so much in Scotland because Scotland was, um, quite a, quite a poor country, but once she became queen of England, she really raised the cultural tone of the English court or, um, they called it, um, great Britain by then because James was very keen to be known as King of great Britain. So he and Anne called themselves canned queen of great Britain. And she, she sort of put it culturally back on the map after Elizabeth, who, although, you know, they’d been a great deal of cultural innovation in Elizabeth’s reign with Shakespeare and Ben Johnson and all the rest of them, her court wasn’t quite so cultured as than interests were so, so that’s why Ann’s interesting. Also she was, um, she was the daughter of the King of Denmark and he was King of Denmark and Norway and her brother Christian of Denmark was, became quite an influential King in the early 17th century. So again, it was, it was a time when great Britain was, was moving back into a relationship with Europe after the sort of 40 or 50 years of the, after the reformation, when it was, you know, much more isolated. So, so she she’s interesting actually, and her domestic relationships, they seem curiously modern in some ways, her relationship with her husband. So that’s, that’s all proved quite.
Speaker 4: (03:57)
Tell me about her life. What was her early life like before she came to Scotland? And she seems to have been really close to her family. How did that influence her relationship with her own children? You mentioned her court being, or her relationships being kind of modern. Tell me about that.
Speaker 3: (04:13)
Yeah, she, she was the second daughter of Frederick. The second he was, he was King of Denmark and Norway as a set. And his wife was so feat of Mecklenburg Christophe, which is one of those many, many small German principalities that are in Northern Germany and Queens, Sophie. She was a very influential figure in Denmark all there. She was only 17 when Ann was born, but she was unusually close to her parents who frequently visited the Danish court, the Danish Royal children’s spent and including, and spent some of their childhood at their grandparents’ home in Germany. And there seems to be in a much more frequent visiting backwards and forwards of the families. Much more time spent together than is, is normal with Royal families of the period because frequently a daughter would marry and she’d never see her parents again, but, but queen Sophie’s parents, you know, went backwards and forwards.
Speaker 3: (05:10)
And Sophie herself was very attached to her children. She breastfed them herself, which raised a few eyebrows at the time. Yes. And this, this obviously influenced and in that she, she seems to have a good relationship with her brother who later came to visit her in England when she was queen of England. And in fact led to one of the biggest quarrels she ever had with her own husband about the upbringing of her children. She wanted to keep them very close to her and bring them up as, as she’d been brought up in this sort of family. But the customer in Scotland was certainly for the oldest son to be brought up quite separately from, from the court, mainly for his own protection because the Scottish monarchy had been quite troubled over the last hundred years. Obviously, um, Mary queen of Scots had become queen as a baby and there were threats of kidnapping.
Speaker 3: (06:03)
Then when James himself became King as a baby, he was, he was the potential for him to be abducted. So it was thought to be very important that the air be kept, kept very safe, but, and was completely horrified when James said that her little boy was going to be taken from her and, and brought up separately, she, she was distraught, had, had a miscarriage, had a complete, almost, almost a breakdown. Um, yeah, no, I mean, it’s all for, cause you, you can see James’s point of view. He wants to keep the child safe. But, um, it was just so outside her experience and she was only, you know, she was still quite young when, when her first child was born, James did relent and not in relation to their oldest son, but their younger children where she had much more influence and, and, uh, control of their lives and of her oldest son. But yeah, no, quite, quite sad for her that, yeah.
Speaker 4: (06:58)
Well, what was her relationship like with James and how did it change throughout the years? And once they got to England,
Speaker 3: (07:06)
There was about eight years difference in their age group in their age, she was about 14 or 15 when they got married and he was in his early twenties, but they had both in inline with the customer at the time. They both decided before they got married, that they were very much in love and they sent each other formal letters. And when it was rumored that the marriage wouldn’t take place, it was said that Ann would, would die of grief if it didn’t take place so that they framed their minds to be in love. And that was, that was a good thing. You were supposed to love your spouse. So, so they tried to do that and certainly to begin with, they seem to have been, um, you know, very fond of each other. They had, they had 10, 10 pregnancies and had, so although James, his sexuality has been the subject of questioning.
Speaker 3: (07:53)
And I think we talked about it on a previous occasion, you know, he, he did manage to give his wife 10, 10 babies, which would suggest, um, you know, he wasn’t as averse to women’s company as all that she had. She had three sons. Um, unfortunately one died as a baby and her eldest ditis at 18 and they had five, five daughters who were born and there were some miscarriages. So they had, they had a big family. So to begin with, they, they were, they were quite close, but there wasn’t an age gap between them. James was very highly educated and although go, and we don’t know much about her actual education. She spoke French, which she learned, especially so that she and James could converse when they first met her first language was probably Danish or German. And she learned Scott’s after, after she married, but she didn’t have the academic education that James had had.
Speaker 3: (08:46)
So they probably weren’t intellectually that close. What makes me say it’s kind of like a modern marriage, is that when he talked about marriage, the book he wrote for his son, he said that marriage is the greatest earthly, Felicity or misery that can come to a man. And he complained when she became queen of England and pointed new ladies in waiting. He complained that he didn’t like her choice. He didn’t like her friends. She complained that he drank too much, you know, and, and, and sort of neglected her. And then her chaplain said that they did love as well as man and wife could do after they stopped sleeping together, which seems to have been about 1606. So they robbed along pretty well, but, you know, there were quite frequent Raul’s and then they’d make up and he’d give her a present and then they’d have another Raul and, you know, a bit like, um, you know, Darby and Joan. Right.
Speaker 4: (09:38)
Okay. Interesting. When she got to England, how was she received? And did she have any kind of power over policy or over James by the time they got to London?
Speaker 3: (09:54)
Not really. I mean, in the 1590s in Scotland, she had, I mean, Scottish politics was very factional. And in that period, and with her dislike of the Earl of Mar who was the guardian of, of the young Prince, she really took against him. Uh, she was, she did become slightly involved in politics. She disliked James as chancellor, um, Maitland. So John Maitland, partly because he had tried to block the marriage. He didn’t want James to Marianne. So when, and found out she, she seems to, she seemed to have been able to bear a grudge a bit. She never forgave Marsh. She never forgave Maitland. Also Maitland tried to hang on to some property that James had given on and he refused to hand it over. But when Ann fell pregnant, she put pressure on James to put Maitland in his place. So he did. And then the biggest political issue was the belief that she converted to Catholicism.
Speaker 3: (10:54)
Now it’s never been definitively proved that she, she did actually formally become a Catholic, but in Calvinist Scotland, this was not, you know, not a good thing. And James himself seems to have had no interest in forcing other people’s religious beliefs. He was born and brought up a Protestant as, as Ann had been. And he never wavered in that. But, you know, for him to become a Catholic was definitely a bad, bad publicity for him. So she didn’t make an open declaration about it, but there was some disquiet in England when she refused to take communion, according to the Anglican, right. That her coronation. So, so people weren’t very happy about that. Um, but she didn’t have much political power, partly possibly the age gap. Also James James thought very well of his own opinions and he wasn’t necessarily going to be influenced by it by much younger wife.
Speaker 3: (11:50)
So she turned her attention really to what you might call soft power. She was very, very interested in cultural matters. She was, she was interested in architecture and painting and music and dance. And her role sort of became to make the English or the great British quarter as they thought themselves a sort of cultural icon rather than get involved in political power. She did have some influence in regard to the marriage of her sons when brides were being looked for first for, for Henry, the Prince of Wales who died in 16, 12, and then for Prince Charles, there are letters in the European archives that suggests that, and was very much in favor of a, of a marriage to a Catholic princess for, for either of her sons. And the European monarchs seemed to think she was worth influencing if they could. So she was obviously felt to have some power over James, but it wasn’t.
Speaker 3: (12:51)
Wasn’t huge. So tell me about her patronage of the arts and you mentioned architecture, I know Indigo Jones and all of that. Yes. Yes. Indigo Jones was, was her protege. Definitely. Um, she, she worked with him, not just in architecture on the large scale refurbishing white hall. I mean, sadly, the banqueting house that is there now, host States Ann’s life, the first banqueting house, which was built just after she died, burnt down. So, so what we see now isn’t tans, but you know, probably there is some of her influence in it. And also the, the original Queens house at Greenwich was built for Anne. But again, it was remodeled later for her to offer and, or Henrietta Maria, but Indigo Jones didn’t just build buildings. He was right hand man for the sets and scenery and stage settings for the great masks that the queen favored.
Speaker 3: (13:49)
And these were enormously sumptuous productions of dance and music and play acting costumes were, were created, you know, quite extraordinary extravagance and beauty and, and scene scenery was built and music written and dances were choreographed. And Indigo Jones created a number of the different costumes. You can see pictures of them at, in the, in the VNA collection, really, really fabulous, um, costumes, then her another great interest she had was jewelry. She loved, she loved jewelry. And I think that was a taste she got from her mother who, uh, when she first married, gave her an enormous amount of jewelry, particularly pearls. And James also gave her quite a bit of jewelry when she inherited Elizabeth the first massive wardrobe. Uh, you can see she’s, she she’s permanently draped in pearls as most of the 16th century women loved pearls ladies, and, and she’s, she’s got them all over the place.
Speaker 3: (14:52)
And if you look at some of her portraits, you can see rather interesting jewelry. So she spent quite a, quite a bit of money. She had a, a jewelry maker, a Goldsmith called George Harriet from Edinburgh, who she brought to England with her to keep, keep manufacturing stuff for her. She also painting the visual arts, three of the great painters whom she patronized were Marcus Gearharts, who painted some very, very large full-size portraits of her, of James, of their children. And he was her, her official Queens painter and was in her funeral procession as, as the Queens painter. Uh, she also patronized psoriasis Oliver who the right of the other end of the scale did the tiny, tiny little miniatures on ivory that we associate with the end of Elizabeth’s reign in the beginning of, uh, you know, the Jacobean period. She patronized Paul Von summer, another Netherlandish painter.
Speaker 3: (15:47)
She seems to have liked the Dutch and Netherlandish styles, which became increasingly popular. And you can see this taste transfer to her son, Charles, the first, it was also, um, you know, one of the greatest art collectors in, in British Royal history. He created a fantastic collection. I would suggest that he was heavily influenced by, by his mother and in this. And then there was the other painter who, uh, who was considered to be James painter. So she had Gearhart’s and James had Daniel mittens, mittens, and other another less Netherlandish portraitist. But that, there’s an, there’s a lot of portraiture from the Jacobean period that I think, and it’s probably responsible for, because of course, once the queen thinks it’s fashionable, everybody’s everybody’s following suit outside the masks, there was also the more ordinary plate plays and so forth. She and James both enjoyed plays and they had their own unit, the King’s men who had once been shaped the Shakespeare’s company and the queen had her own players. She was good friends with Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, who was a noted author herself, and also the, the center of a large group of sort of cultural of poets and playwrights and so forth. And she introduced the queen to Ben Johnson. There was a whole, a whole sort of cultural Malay of things that Dan and was interested in.
Speaker 5: (17:09)
Has her reputation changed throughout the years? I can, you can definitely see it on the gang chat. She was metal.
Speaker 3: (17:16)
She talked about in the past. And then when the, you know, the great 19th century and 20th century historians, you know, the weak tradition of, of history, they’re all very, very interested in, in Wars and treaties. They’re not really interested in wider social history. And I think in the last 15, 20 years, as we’ve become much more interested in what I call before soft power and a cultural history and material culture, and is now being seen as having a more important place than just, you know, James is James, his wife, who was supposed to be delivering children from time to time. Uh, so there, there is much more interest in the kinds of things that she did and that she promoted. Um, sadly that doesn’t seem to be a modern biography author. There is a cultural biography of her that was published in 2000 by somebody called leads barrel, which is an unusual name and have come across before.
Speaker 3: (18:17)
But it very much looking at the cultural aspects rather than her as a, as an individual. But yeah, so she was frequently written off as frivolous and extravagant and, you know, money wasting. And again, the, the sort of traditional week historian, you know, they’re pretty ambivalent about her Catholic leanings to say, say the best. I think she’s going to come into her own. Actually, I think I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a biography of her or more interest in her as, as people become much more interested in how people lived rather than just the politics and the high politics at the time, her time has come.
Speaker 2: (18:58)
And you’re contributing to that.
Speaker 3: (19:00)
Well, hopefully, yes. Um, um, yeah, the more I read, I mean, one of the other aspects of it, that’s not, not so attractive, although I haven’t any evidence about Ann’s thoughts on the matter was the whole witchcraft piece, James became very concerned about witchcraft and it was partly based on his experience of his marriage to Anne, because when, when she was, she was married by proxy,
Speaker 2: (19:25)
That was the storm, right? Yeah. Tell me about it.
Speaker 3: (19:29)
Yeah, so she, she was married by proxy and James was back in Scotland and the plan was that she would, she would sail to Scotland and all would be well, but she set off later in the year for a, for a trip from Norway to Scotland in a large fleet, she traveled with 18 huge ships full of horses and Jules, and it, she had a silver coach. Well, I mean, the coach wasn’t literally made of silver, you know, like Cinderella, but the coach, which was a very modern invention, never seen in Scotland before had, uh, instead of being the metalwork being ironed, it was all silver. Uh, so she sat off with his enormous train of 18 ships and ran into storms and was beaten back to the coast of Norway, at least at least twice. So she, she ended up in all Paul Paul saying, you know, second traumatized is proposed that she would set out in light of vessels that they’d be able to make it.
Speaker 3: (20:24)
And there was a bit of argument. The Scott said, yes, yes. Just get into a small ship. And her Danish train said, no, no, wait til spring. But on that, no, she would, she would go on, she’d go to Scotland. But James decided that it’d be much safer if he went to Fetcher himself. So off, he went to being somewhat romantic in his, in his view, he thought he was in love and he was dying to see, as new bite went off to a Norway where, um, landed and then they traveled to Denmark together, and then they got married and so forth. But when he came, when they came back, he became too, he came to believe that the storms have been whipped up by witches because it wasn’t just the ships that on was traveling in that had been damaged by storms. But another small boat crossing the third, the fourth with lady Kennedy in it, who was, who was appointed to wait on the new queen, that same cause, well with, um, you know, 40, 40 passengers and plate and jewels and furniture, all being prepared for him.
Speaker 3: (21:23)
And he became convinced that it was witchcraft, partly because the Danish Admiral whose name was Peter monk gave out that he thought the storms had been brewed up by the wife of somebody he had quarreled with who was reputed to be a witch. So this all, when you, you know, literally was a perfect storm. So with the loss of lady Kennedy, some of the ships, the rumors that it was witchcraft, another rumor that one of James is Noble’s yell of Bothwell was considered to be, or his family were considered to be been dabbling in witchcraft led to, to the great witch hunts. And we have to remember that people did believe in witchcraft. And some people really did believe that they themselves were witches. It wasn’t necessarily that it was just other people, accusing people. Some people genuinely thought that they could brew up storms and do do things like that. And which obviously we don’t tend to think nowadays, so this, this, you know, really got quite out of hand and now there were huge witch hunts, which might have happened anyway, but certainly where this was sort of a catalyst for James taking an interest in the whole witchcraft thing.
Speaker 2: (22:31)
So where can we go to learn more about her?
Speaker 3: (22:34)
There isn’t much published about Anne herself. She mostly just comes, comes through as a character in biographies of James or sort of general histories of Scotland. One of the sidelights on an occurs in the book on natural murder about the famous murder of Thomas Overbrook. Huh.
Speaker 2: (22:52)
Interesting. And now you’ve got my interest, right?
Speaker 3: (22:55)
Pete, I’m surprised about that sometime it’s it’s most peculiar. Yeah. On that one. It’s by Anne Sommerset. She’s, she’s quite a heavy writer, but she’s certainly got a lot of detail in that.
Speaker 2: (23:05)
Thank you again to Melita Thomas for taking the time to tell us about Anne of Denmark. For more information on her, go to tutor times.co.uk. You can also see the resources available on the England cast site@englandcast.com. And also remember to go there by the 11th of November to enter the giveaway for the quilt mugs. I will be back next week with an episode on another Anne Anne of Cleves. This is a listener request from Hannah. So I’m working on that for you, Hannah. All right. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, have an awesome week. You guys. Bye. Bye. [inaudible].
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
