A Peek into a Tudor Duchess' Jewellery Box
While researching the life of Anne Stanhope (married name Seymour), Duchess of Somerset recently, I came across a carefully itemised inventory of her jewels, plate and money as well as some of her other goods.
The duchess was the wife of Lord Protector, Duke of Somerset, who ruled England during the early minority of Edward VI. The couple were wealthy and powerful and Anne in particular was said to have had an outspoken and dominant personality. Somerset was elbowed out of his title as Protector in 1549, when, accused of mismanagement of the country, he was forced to resign his post. He was involved again in the king’s council, but hatched a failed plot to overthrow his enemies at court and was sentenced to death. He was beheaded in January 1552.
Anne lived until 1587, when the inventory of her goods was made and attached to her Last Will and Testament. The list was made, on Elizabeth I’s request, at Hanworth on the 21 April of that year by John Wolley, a member of Elizabeth I’s Privy Council and John Fortescue, a member of the queen’s wardrobe.
The jewels owned by the ageing duchess (she was in her seventies when she died) were not surprising for a woman of status and wealth in the Elizabethan period. The men noted, as they opened up a purse of crimson velvet that inside was ‘a chain of perle, and golde, black inamiled [enamelled] with knottes’. Anne seems to have liked ‘knottes’ in her jewellery, another item described as ‘a carkenette of golde and perle with knottes, with a pendant sapphire, with a fayer perle annexed’. Love knots can also be seen on the base of her tomb in Westminster Abbey. The duchess owned a number of pearls, fashionable in the Tudor period, and many of these items show black enamelling.
She also owned pomanders, which could be filled with scented dried herbs or flowers. These could be worn on the gowns of the periods, so they swished and released their scent in a trail as the owner walked. Anne owned a ‘pomaunder chayne, with small beades of pomaunder and trew-loves of pearle, and many small pearles, to furnishe the same, with a pendant of mother of pearle, and a little acorne appendant’. The ‘true loves’ were presumably true love knots, which appear to have been a favourite of Anne’s.
One interesting item is listed as ‘a fawcon [falcon] of mother of pearle, furnished with diamondes and rubyes, standing upon a ragged staffe of fayer diamondes and rubyes’. This sounds remarkably similar to Anne Boleyn’s emblem of a falcon standing on top a tree trunk, with red and white roses sprouting from it. Could the women have been known to one another? And what could have sparked the giving of this gift? The item could also have been passed to the duchess from a Boleyn relative, perhaps Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, cousin of Elizabeth I and son of Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister.
Artichokes were another interesting decoration. Anne owned ‘a tablette of golde made like an artichoke, blacke and blew ennamyled’ and also ‘a booke of golde with artichokes, of daye worke, upon blacke vellett’.
One piece of jewellery probably relates to her first marriage with Edward Seymour. ‘A fayer pendant of mother of pearle, flourished with gold, like an S’, although this may also represent Somerset. Could this have been a gift from her husband, a keepsake she kept all her life for the man who was executed in the Tower?
Anne also owned a number of loose gems, that she may have been planning to use elsewhere. Her inventory lists 19 amethysts, 28 rubies and 3 pearls unset.
The duchess would have sparkled as she walked. She owned one ‘tablett of golde curiouslie wrought, sette with sixe fayer diamonds and three fayer pearles, wheareof one pendante’, and ‘a fayer square tablette of golde like an H, with fower diamondes, and a rocke rubie or ballast in the middeste, garnished with pearles, and a pearle pendante’. She also owned ‘sixe ringes sette with diamondes, some les and some bigger’, which she kept in a small black box.
At some point Anne’s eyesight had begun to deteriorate, and ‘a spectacle case of golde’ is mentioned’. The reason that the spectacles themselves do not appear on the list is probably because Anne was wearing them when the inventory was prepared! Henry VIII was also known to have worn glasses.
One interesting addition to the inventory is the discovery of ‘two peeces of unicorn’s horne in a redde taffeta purse’. Living in the changeable and volatile Tudor court, it’s not surprising that Anne kept pieces of unicorn’s horn with her. This was a Medieval and Tudor protection against poison, and it was believed either to render the ‘poison’ harmless when a piece was placed in the drink, or it revealed to the owner the presence of poison. These were often actually narwhal horns. The spiral pattern on the horns would have looked magical to Medieval and Tudor aristocracy, and Anne’s ownership of these two pieces reflects not only the dangerous political world she lived in, but that, as a woman of power, she considered someone might have wanted her out of the way.
Source: The Gentleman’s Magazine 1845 vol 23 ‘A Biography of Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset’ archive.org