In today's Claire Chats video I talk about the tradition of gift-giving at New Year and share examples of gifts exchanged between monarchs and courtiers.
The following video is the one I mention and is a wonderful video looking at books that were given to and by Tudor monarchs at New Year - fascinating!
Sources
- http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol5/pp327-339, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol6/pp2-16 and http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol7/pp4-12
- New Year's Gifts for Queen Elizabeth - http://www.larsdatter.com/gifts/index.htm
- Gift Giving at the Court of Henry VIII: the 1539 New Year's Gift Roll in Context, Maria Hayward
- The Children of Henry VIII, John Guy
Brilliant Video Claire, and as you rightly say very informative too. It’s certainly given me a few ideas to play with.
It’s just so sad that these beautiful gifts have been lost to future generations. Cromwell certainly did a good job, of destroying over 500 years of historical actifacts. Much of the Royal regalia, and other little trinkets, were broken up melted down and sold for scrap, when he took over a protector of the realm after he chopped Charlie’s head off…I would be like a kid in a sweet shop with your books Claire LOL I’m bad enough now with my own, my book shelves are bursting at the seams at the moment. But as I said in one of my postings, books to me are the finest caviar one can have.
Forgot to say, as you mentioned the Julian/Gregorian Calenders. The calender year was in fact just 10 months. December being the Tenth month. September being the 7th month.
Martius – 31 Days
Aprilis – 30 Days
Maius – 31 Days
Iunius – 30 Days
Quintilis – 31 Days
Sextilis – 30 Days
September – 30 Days
October – 31 Days
November – 30 Days
December – 30 Days
Once the Gregorian Calender was establised of course we had an additional 2 months added, followed by a leap year added every four years.
http://www.timeanddate.com/date/leapyear.html.
The video on the royal books was absolutely wonderful, however, I was shocked that the Professor was not wearing gloves! I was cringing throughout the video thinking about him handling such precious items and how he might have accidentally torn or marked a page.
It’s actually now believed to be better not to wear gloves. Many museums and archives believe that clean, dry hands are preferable as wearing gloves prevents you from realising how much pressure you’re using when handling delicate books and manuscripts. The British Library says:
“Wearing cotton gloves when handling
books, manuscripts or fragile paper
items reduces manual dexterity and
the sense of touch, increasing the
tendency to ‘grab’ at items. The cotton
fibres may lift or dislodge pigments
and inks from the surface of pages
and the textile can snag on page
edges making them difficult to turn. All these factors increase the risk of damage to
collection items.”
See http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/collectioncare/publications/videos/whitegloves.pdf and http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/08/white-gloves-or-not-white-gloves.html
It’s interesting how policies like this change.