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The abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen, was founded by Mathilda of Flanders, Duchess of Normandy and Queen of England, in June 1066. The abbesses of Holy Trinity are the focus of this study, especially their judicial role and their power to imprison. These rarely discussed aspects of women’s authority are revealed in Manchester, John Rylands Library, GB 133 BMC/66. Produced in 1292 at the meeting of the Exchequer at Rouen, the modest parchment reveals the existence of a prison in Ouistreham, France, under the authority of the abbesses of Holy Trinity. This article engages heretofore unexamined elements of female abbatial authority, jurisdiction and the mechanisms of justice. The preservation of BMC/66 also reflects the documentary imperatives of the women who governed Holy Trinity and fits into a broader context of memory and documentary culture.
This book analyses Anna of Denmark’s material and visual patronage at the Stuart courts, examining her engagement with a wide array of expressive media including architecture, garden design, painting, music, dress, and jewellery. Encompassing Anna’s time in Denmark, England, and Scotland, it establishes patterns of interest and influence in her agency, while furthering our knowledge of Baltic-British transfer in the early modern period. Substantial archival work has facilitated a formative re-conceptualisation of James and Anna’s relationship, extended our knowledge of the constituents of consortship in the period, and has uncovered evidence to challenge the view that Anna followed the cultural accomplishments of her son, Prince Henry. This book reclaims Anna of Denmark as the influential and culturally active royal woman that her contemporaries knew. Combining politics, culture, and religion across the courts of Denmark, Scotland, and England, it enriches our understanding of royal women’s roles in early modern patriarchal societies and their impact on the development of cultural modes and fashions. This book will be of interest to upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on early modern Europe in the disciplines of Art and Architectural History, English Literature, Theatre Studies, History, and Gender Studies. It will also attract a wide range of academics working on early modern material and visual culture, and female patronage, while members of the public who enjoy the history of courts and the British royals will also find it distinctively appealing.
Anna’s collecting are particularly poorly evidenced and have contributed to her omission from the literature. What does survive are inventories of two of Anna’s main properties in England – Denmark House and Oatlands Manor – dating to the time of her occupancy. From these documents, coupled with entries found among the accounts of the pipe office, the queen’s receiver-general, and the exchequer, and commentary contained within ambassadorial dispatches, a firm image emerges of a consort who took a directorial role in the layout and furnishings of her main residences
and England) covered all maintenance and building, which was then financed through the exchequer. While several of Anna’s jointure palaces were described as being ‘reserved for her majesties access and FIELD 9781526142498 PRINT.indd 45 21/04/2020 11:54 46 Anna of Denmark pleasure’, these properties were not her exclusive domain. Indeed, several of them – Oatlands, Greenwich, Havering, Nonsuch, and Theobalds – were commonly frequented by James (with or without Anna), while the latter three received the king more often than the queen.11 Moreover, while palace
planned to proudly wear the jewel in the court space of her churching – although the possibilities are not mutually exclusive.25 The monarchy and its subjects were invested in the arrival of another royal Stuart, as the prayer ‘for the Queenes safe deliuerance’ was reissued and large bills were presented to the exchequer. The precise details of the childbed are missing, but the requirements of a royal Stuart birth were well known by now, following the pattern set by Anna’s previous six deliveries, and a continuity of care was established through the midwife Alice Dennis
demonstrated by Joussie’s accounts – one of the main suppliers of fabric to the court – which, rather than being paid through the exchequer, were settled by James with money drawn from his English annuity and borrowed from Maitland.103 Such circumvention arose from James’s knowledge that the high levels of expenditure would incur censure: on 1 February 1596, for example, Joussie recorded that in just under six years he had ‘spendit and debursit’ £71,513.14d. Scots for ‘the queins majestie for hir abulziaments [apparel]’.104 This was only one of several accounts and it
the Overseas Settlement Office and ‘to meet the possible charge that we wish to hustle people out of the country’. 76 It was estimated that a three-year programme would assist no fewer than 405,000 ex-servicemen and their families at a cost of just over £6 million. 77 But three years were too long to promise, argued the Treasury. Austen Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, thought it better to