Sunday, March 28, 2010

Question from mobrien - Cleves and Anne's dowry

H8's fourth wife Anne of Cleves -- where exactly is Cleves? Was any sort of dowery involved with this marriage?

3 comments:

Bettina said...

I can't answer your question about her dowry, but her home of Cleves was actually the three combined duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg, which you can see here (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Vereinigte_Herzogtuemer.JPG) in light green, as part of the mess of tiny sovereign "nations" which made up Germany at the time. To give you a bigger-picture idea of where they were located: the arrow on this map (http://www.postleitzahl.org/nordrhein_westfalen/images/karte_solingen.png) indicates Solingen, a small town near Düsseldorf, where the castle that Anne grew up in stood.

kb said...

From Letters & Papers of Henry VIII vol 14, part 2, pp. 109-10.

Anne's dowry was not to be more than her sister Sybilla's, her brother the duke was to pay for her travel to Calais, if he couldn't get her to Calais the duke agreed to pay for a convoy of ships to take her to England, the duke was to give her 100,000 florins of gold - 40,000 on the day the marriage took place and rest within the year of the marriage.

Henry gave to Anne as her dower, lands yearly worth 20,000 golden florins of the Rhine, equal to 5,000 marks sterling as long as she lived in England.

If she outlived the king but had no children and returned to her own country she would have a pension of 15,000 florins payable in 6 month installments - and she could keep her own dress and jewels. In this scenario, the king's heirs could decide if they would prefer to buy out the pension for 150,000 florins.

If the Duke of Cleves died without heirs and Sybilla (wife of John Frederic of Saxony) died without heirs, the duchy went to Anne.

There's a lot more about the succession of Cleves and Amelia and Anne.

Then on p.154 her jointure lands are specified. Henry gave her the monastery of St Margaret by Marlebergh, several more former monastery lands for as long as she lived in England.

Anonymous said...

Thank you all so much!