The Chateau Vert Entertainment of 1522
If Mary Boleyn was "kindness" and Anne Boleyn was "perseverance", which rolls were played by the other ladies? I am thinking mainly of Jane Parker and possibly Jane Seymour or anyone else for that matter?
I have always wondered how much contact Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour would have had during the time they were both single ladies.
Many thanks
Elizabeth
5 comments:
According to Ives - "Beauty" was Mary Tudor (the king's sister), "Honour" was Gertrude Blount, Countess of Devonshire and "Constancy" was Jane Parker. He doesn't say who portrayed "Bounty", "Mercy" and "Pity" though.
Anyone else know those?
Alison Weir doesn't list any more than Ives does, but she does say name her sources as Edward Hall (presumably Hall's Chronicle) and state Letters and Papers, so it's possible that more are listed in the original sources if you can get access to those.
Barbara J. Harris, in her English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550 lists the other female performers as "Mistress Brown" (she suggests that the first name was Anne, and that she was probably a maid of honor; in a footnote the author identifies her as a "daughter of Sir Matthew [Brown]; her mother was Sir Henry Guildford's half-sister") and one "Mistress Danet."
Regarding the latter, Harris notes "I have not been able to identify Mistress Dannett [sic], but she was almost certainly related to Gerald Dannett, a squire of the king's body. An eighth woman whose name was left blank in the revels accounts also participated in the disguising."
I don't think that Jane Seymour shows up in the court records this early; she is usually associated with the court later in the 1520s. Harris' notes on the queen's maids-of-honor at this stage do not indicate she was among them.
Julia Fox, in her biography of Jane Boleyn, states that "Mistress Brown represented Bounty and Mistress Dannet, Mercy."
I don't know the source for her assertions as to the roles; Fox cites, generally, Hall's Chronicle, Letters & Papers, and Sydney Anglo. The first does not specify the ladies, just the parts they played. Letters & Papers identifies the ladies (leaving a blank for the eighth woman); Anglo I will have to check.
The index to Letters & Papers lists Mistress Dannet as having the Christian name Elizabeth. Fox asserts that she, along with Jane Parker, was at Calais during the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
Nope, it's not in Anglo either (Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy). Fox may have made a reasonable guess by matching the sequence of roles listed in Hall ("...Beautie, Honor, Perseuerance, Kyndnes, Constance, Bountie, Mercie, and Pitie ...") against the sequence of women listed in the 1522 Account for the Revels who received costumes for the masque and apparently kept some elements of them: " ...the French queen, the Countess of Devonshire, Mistress Anne Boleyn, Mistress Karre [Carey], Mistress Parker, Mistress Browne, Mistress Danet and Mistress ____".
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