i have a question about those queen who beheaded. acctually i want a brief account of anne boleyn and katherin howard and lady jeny grey about their last day of life. i mean after judicial decession what are the life style of them, where they stay and what would done to them as they ware found guilty and executed by beheading. i hear that to execute a smooth decapitation some oil massagedone in the nape of a lady or a man. if they ware also treat like that way? and where i get the video series of all the queen? if any body know please help me.
samit
I never heard the story about the oil before -- fascinating! I thought they just had to put up their hair and take off their outer gown, so as not to impede the executioner.
ReplyDeleteI learned recently that Anne was executed while kneeling upright, because the French executioner used a sword and traditionally victims were executed with their heads up. Catherine got the axe, and was executed in what we think of as the more usual position, kneeling down over the block.
Last days seem to have been spent talking to government-approved clergy. Anne spent the night before with her almoner/chaplain -- I wonder if she had specific bequests to make. Catherine asked for a block to practice with.
I think they were all deprived of their title of queen by some legal maneuver or other before they were executed, which involved specific removal of the symbols of rank -- the tearing down or removal of the "canopy of estate," under which queens traditionally took their meals, always seems the most ominous to me.
The Lady Jane Grey spent her last day writing letters to her family. In a letter to her sister Katherine, she says
ReplyDelete"I have sent you, good sister Katherine, a book,which although it not be trimmed outwardly with gold, yet inwardly it is more woth than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister, of the laws of the lord;it is His Testament and Last Will, which he bequeathed unto us wretches,which shall lead you into the path of eternal joy..."
The complete letter is at Tudor Place
Jane also wrote a letter to her father, the doomed Duke of SUffolk, and sent him her prayer book with a nice little inscription to soothe his guilty conscience.
Jolie Moira Jessalyn Dawson