Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016

Henry VIII and English Cosmopolitanism .

“The Kyng caused the Quene, to kepe the estate, and satte the Ambassadours and Ladyes as they were marshalled by the kyng, who would not sit …. sodaynly the kyng was gone. And shortly after, his grace with the Erle of Essex, came in apparelled after Turkey fashion, in long robes of Bawdkin, powdered with gold, hates on their heddes of crimosyn velvet, with greate rolles of Gold … Next came the lorde Henry, Erele of Wilshire …. in two long gounes of yellowe satin … after the fashion of Russia…and after them, came syr Edward Haward and Thomas Parre …. they were apparlyed after the fashion of Prusia … the torchbearers were apparyled in crymsoyn satyne and grne, lyke Moreskoes…”

– From Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and York, 1548, pp. 15-16.

On Shrove Tuesday 1510 the young King Henry VIII of England put on a sumptuous

entertainment for his court, which, as his chronicler Edward Hall recounts, was filled with

ambassadors from ‘diverse realms and countries.’1 What these men were witnessing was a

carefully constructed performance designed to express Henry’s wealth and power and to

show him as a monarch with intimate knowledge of, and interest in, the world. Henry

entered the court dressed in clothes of the ‘Turkey fashion,’ which included a vibrant

crimson turban. He was followed by a procession of courtiers dressed in the attire of

Prussia, Russia, and the Middle East. This parade of material and visual splendour

underscored Henry’s access to the spoils of the world far beyond ‘the sceptred Isle’ of

England. This was a worldly display of cosmopolitan kingship performed for an international

audience.

This is not the typical image of the king we see presented either in the scholarly

literature or popular culture. It is not hard to conjure up the classic image of Henry. The

depiction of him – face on, legs apart, hands on hips, dominant codpiece - sketched by Hans

1Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and York, 1548 (reprinted by T.C and E.C Jack: London, 1904 pp. 15-16.

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016Holbein for his 1537 Whitehall Mural, continues to pervade the public’s view of the

monarch, as it did in the sixteenth century. This commanding representation of virile

masculine kingship was designed as a statement of powerful national dynasty. In the mural,

which was painted both to legitimize Henry’s break from Rome just three years prior and to

celebrate the birth of Prince Edward, Henry’s only male heir, that same year, he is presented

as the rightful heir to the Tudor crown destined to guide the country to even greater heights

than his father.

The argument that Henry consciously presented himself as an inherently national

monarch is an obvious one. As Kevin Sharpe has recently made clear, the break from Rome

presented Henry with a significant ‘crisis of representation.2’ The passing of the Act of

Supremacy in 1534 separated England spiritually and culturally from Catholic Europe and

created a new English church. This meant that the sovereign needed to forge a completely

new image of himself as head of that national church, and he did this in part by presenting

himself as the personification of the English state.3 This dissertation will argue, however,

that this was not the only image Henry wished to project. Although the Reformation forced

him to formulate a more nationalistic discourse of king and country, this did not cause

Henry to give up on the more cosmopolitan elements of his royal persona. Henry had to

argue his positon as a national king, but he was also a head of state operating in an

increasingly global world; and to be considered a powerful part of the latter, his royal image

had to reflect this cosmopolitan attitude.

2 Kevin Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and image in sixteenth century England, New Haven: Yale University press, 2009; p. 683 Sharpe, ‘Selling the Tudor Monarchy ’ pp.70-73

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016

Throughout his reign (1508-1547) Henry would construct and promote himself as a

monarch intimately engaged with the global. This dissertation will explore these

constructions in an attempt to place Henry and his court more firmly into the growing

discourse on early modern globalisms. Its goal is to challenge the continually prevalent

perception of early Tudor England as inherently insular and provincial. I will demonstrate

that Henry harnessed multiple communicative media - especially material culture - to create

a program of representation that performed and presented an image of both national and

cosmopolitan kingship. This project will explore how the global and the national interacted

and coexisted in the person of Henry and his court - much as I believe they continue to do so

in contemporary discourses of British identity - and will suggest that the break with Rome

has unfairly skewed our understanding of the King’s royal image as essentially national.4

These are important themes to think about in our own global world that continues to

grapple with the relationship between nation and globalization.

Looking at Henry’s royal image provides an unrivalled opportunity for this kind of

research because Henrican England actually faced unique questions of identity in the early

modern world. Henry’s court was just one of many in the west coming to terms with the

ground-breaking repercussions of the discovery of the Americas and the establishment of

direct trade links between West and East at the close of the fifteenth century. At the same

time, Henry’s Reformation forced him to separate politically and culturally from a huge

4 The continued discourse of England being both independent and sovereign, but also an outward looking nation was prevalent in many of the recent debates over Brexit. For example, in his speech to the conservative party on October 1st 2016 the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, claimed that by being ‘liberated from the EU’ the UK would ironically now be ‘more active on the world stage than ever before.’ This is clearly a very different discourse on Britain’s relations with the global than that presented by the remain campaign, but what is significant about this for my interests is that the idea of the global still figured prominently on the leave side and was an important element of their argument that was predicated on the reassertion of British nationalism and individuality.

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016portion of Europe. Until that point, Catholicism had been the cornerstone of English culture

and identity. I believe that it is of great significance that Henry’s engagement with the global

coincided with one of the biggest cultural breaks in English history. This project will argue

that Henry’s performance of cosmopolitan kingship was not created apart or alongside his

performance of Englishness, but actually needs to be read as a constitutive part of that

discourse. Henry’s royal image was forged in response to the unique political circumstances

of the time and this manifested into a performance of royalty that was both cosmopolitan

and national. Henry’s astrolabe, now housed in the British Museum, provides some clues to

how this process was expressed visually and materially.5 It is an item clearly representative

of the king’s international knowledge and is marked with Arabic script. However, this script

exists alongside Latin, and more importantly the astrolabe is branded with Henry’s national

arms and the motto of the Order of the Garter - an order dedicated to England’s national

saint, St. George. This is at once a cosmopolitan and a national object.

The culture of Henry’s court can be read as cosmopolitan on a number of levels. He

was a strong advocate of the new humanist learning that promoted the study of geometry

and astronomy which were arts intimately associated with international trade and

discovery. His libraries were populated with books from these disciplines, and his court was

filled with such worldly men as Nicolas Kratzer, a German mathematician who was

employed as his personal astronomer, and Jean Rotz, a French explorer and cartographer

who was made Henry’s official map-maker in 1542.6 All of this can be seen as part of a

conscious effort to promote himself as a worldly wise, cosmopolitan monarch. Even the

5 The British Museum, number: 1878,1101.1136 Helen Wallis, The royal map collections of England, (Lisbon: The University of Coimbra press, 1981); p.30.

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016Holbein mural, that enduring image of English dynasty, gives us a sense of the King’s

relationships with the wider world. In it the figures all stand on a beautifully depicted

oriental carpet, which most likely originated in the Ottoman Empire.

By displaying himself in this way Henry was not necessarily doing anything unique,

and it can be said that promoting a worldly and cosmopolitan image was an essential part of

‘keeping up appearances’ with other princes, European and non-European, who were also

intimately engaged with the global. Henry’s cosmopolitan image, however, was different

for two main reasons; firstly, because it coincided with the development of a new kind of

English identity, and secondly, because Henry’s cosmopolitan expressions were not backed

up by significant expeditions overseas. Unlike the most powerful early modern rulers, the

Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman I, Henry could not claim

to be a ‘universal monarch.’7 By the mid sixteenth century they had empires that spanned

three continents. This literal engagement with a broad portion of the globe unsurprisingly

had a big impact on how the Spanish and Ottomans viewed their place in the world. It goes

without saying that this was a place of dominance. In comparison, Henry’s cosmopolitan

performances were cultural and discursive rather than reflective of global political power.

Exploring these constructions therefore allows for the study of a relationship between the

West and the East that was not solely driven by dominance. As such may shed light on more

positive cross cultural relationships that were developing in the shadow of imperialism. 7 Charles V’s brand of universal monarchy and its effects on later Spanish Imperialism has been a cornerstone for scholars interested in the impact of the first global age on Europe. For some studies see J.H Elliott, Imperial Spain, (London: Penguin Books, 2002.), Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the world: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500-c.1800, (New Haven: Yale University press, 1998.), Harald Kleinschmidt, Charles V: World Emperor (London: Sutton, 2004.), Chad Gasta, Imperial Stagings: Empire and Ideology in Transatlantic Theater of Early Modern Spain and the New World, (Chapel Hill: The university of North Carolina press, 2013.) For a comparative study on Western and Eastern manifestation of Universal monarchy see, Peter Fibiger Bang and Dariusz Kolodziejczyk, Universal Empire: A Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian History, (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2015.)

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016

It is not surprising that it was to performance and material display that Henry turned

to construct this royal persona. Visual and material items will therefore form a significant

part of my source base. Early modern kingship was a commanding visual spectacle built on

an ideology that linked power to conspicuous consumption.8 As Kevin Sharpe has argued,

“Henrys government rested its authority on conspicuous consumption and display” and in

his court “the political was visual.”9 In ways akin to our own modern culture promoting

one’s wealth was a clear indication of an individual’s standing in society, and the king, as the

most powerful in the realm had a political responsibility to express that power visually and

materially. This was particularly true for the Tudor monarchs who held the crown by a very

tenuous link to the throne. Henry, in consequence, had a pertinent need to perform his

kingship and he used sumptuous displays of power to mask over the tenuous reality of the

Tudor royal claim. The amount of time his chronicler Edward Hall devotes to describing the

visual impression of the king and court indicates how politically effective these displays

were.10 When it came to performing a more global image, it was especially important that

this was presented through visual and material display. The most conspicuous and

impressive evidence of cosmopolitanism was access to the spoils of the first truly global

trade routes forged in 1498 by Vasco De Gama’s discovery of a direct sea route to the

Indies. In this context, to be seen as cosmopolitan was a statement of power in and of itself, 8 The centrality of conspicuous consumption to renaissance culture was forcefully argued by Lisa Jardine in, Worldly Goods: A new history of the Renaissance, (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.) For some other scholars who have looked at the importance of visual and material displays to effective rule see Kevin Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and image in sixteenth century England, (London: Yale University Press, 2009), Jonathan Brown and J.H Elliott, A palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the court of Phillip IV, (New Haven: Yale University press, 2004), Peter Burke, The fabrication of Louis XIV, (New Haven: Yale University press, 1994), Gülru Necipoğlu, “Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 71, 1989, pp. 401-427 and Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial image: paintings for the Mughal court , (Washington D.C: Freer gallery of art, 1981.)9 Sharpe, ‘Selling the Tudor monarchy,’ p.16010 In the chronicle almost every page mentions the splendor and luxury of the king and his court and the impression of power this left on those who witnessed it. See ‘ Halls chronicle.’

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016and it was best performed by visually expressing access to, and knowledge of, the early

modern globe and its goods.

Although my source base will be largely material, Henry did use words in addition to

spectacular objects, to perform his kingship; his material displays were also informed by a

number of important theories. I will therefore be consulting both textual and visual

materials for this dissertation. For texts, I will be looking at English works on the ideal king,

humanist theories on the potential of man and the ideal relationships with others, titles in

Henry’s possession that were linked to expanding exploration and cross cultural contact,

and proclamations related to trade and foreign policy. Visually, the main focus will be on the

material items Henry used to display himself domestically and internationally, many of

which came from the farthest corners of the globe. I will also be investigating the worldly

men Henry brought into his court and his relationships with merchants and enterprising

individuals who were making their living by way of contact with others.

It was in the court where the majority of this display took place and this project is

interested in how Henry performed an image of cosmopolitan kingship within this space.

However, by focusing on the court I do not mean to suggest that Henry’s cosmopolitan

persona was only intended for an elite audience (domestic and international.) The image of

the king reached far beyond the courts walls. Henry knew that if his visual messaging was to

be successful it needed to be experienced by a broad swathe of society. This was clear when

the king took the unprecedented move of opening up his temporary banqueting house at

Greenwich to the public in 1527, so that ‘all reputable persons’ could witness the beauty of

his tapestries and cupboards of plate.11

11 Sharpe, ‘Selling the Tudor monarchy,’ p.151.

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016

In the staging of unprecedented international events, the patronage of leading

astronomers, map-makers, and cosmographers, and through the visual display of luxurious

items from all over the early modern globe, Henry presented himself as a cosmopolitan king

even if politically he was not able to sponsor the global expeditions of his rivals. Henry’s

cosmopolitan persona thus needs to be recognized as a fundamental part of the king’s

highly constructed performance of monarchy. Henry has always been viewed as a monarch

of seeming contradictions – a pious Catholic turned heretic, a chivalric lover turned wife

killer, and now perhaps a national emblem and a cosmopolitan king. Reimagining Henry in

this way challenges our understanding of the relationship between the early Tudor court

and the early modern world. It also asks us to question what English identity may owe to the

global.

Historiographical significance

For many years Henry’s court has been painted not only as behind in developing

international connections and cross cultural exchanges but also as a continually isolated,

provincial backwater that paled in comparison to the luxuriously cosmopolitan courts of his

rivals.12 This idea was proposed by J.J Scarisbrick as far back as 1968 and has been reinforced

time and time again in subsequent republications of his work.13 Although published nearly

fifty years ago Scarisbrick’s book remains the canonical biography of the king, and it also

remains as the text for Henry in the well-known Yale English Monarchs series.14 Since

Scarisbrick, and considering the centrality of the reformation and dynastic issues to the

King’s reign, the majority of works on the period have tended to focus on domestic issues -

12 J.J Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (New Haven: Yale University press, 2011); p. 6713 The latest re-printing of Scarisbrick was as recently as 2011. 14 This is especially surprising as the majority of texts in this series are no more than twenty years old.

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016from the institutions of Tudor government and faction, to the lives of Henry’s many wives –

reinforcing the insular image of early Tudor England. A sample of titles released in the last

five years reveals this trend. In 2015 alone there were new scholarly works on the rise of

Thomas Cromwell, the influence of Henry’s close friend Charles Brandon and Henry’s last

will and testament.15 In more recent years, Henry’s relationship with Europe has become a

popular topic, and in many biographies he now comes across as a man obsessed with

making a name for himself amongst Europe’s greats.16 The more global interests of Henry

and his court, however, have been little discussed.

The domestic has also remained dominant in studies interested in Henry’s court and

royal image, which have become increasingly widespread in the last few years, no doubt

fuelled in part by popular culture’s continued fascination with the king.17 Even Kevin

Sharpe’s work, dedicated solely to exploring the Tudor royal image, builds an argument

around Henry’s performance of Englishness and national monarchy. Studies on Henry’s

royal image nevertheless give this work a lot to build on. It is due to work in this field that

the idea of Henry’s court as cultural backwater has been rejected. Scholars now emphasize

15 See, John Scofield, Rise & Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant (London: The history press, 2011), Steven Gunn, Charles Brandon: Henry VIII's Closest Friend (London: publishing, 2015) and Suzannah Lipscomb, The King is Dead: The Last Will and Testament of Henry VIII (London: Pegasus books, 2016) 16 For some recent works on this topics see, Doran, Susan, and Richardson, Glenn (ed.) Tudor England and its neighbours (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), John Guy, Henry VIII and the pursuit of fame, (London: Penguin, 2014), David Loades, Henry VIIl: Court, church and conflict, (London: The National Archives press, 2009) and Catherine Fletcher, Henry VIII and His Italian Ambassador (London: Bodley head, 2012)

17 See, Sharpe, ‘Selling the Tudor Monarchy,’ 2009, Tatiana C. Sting, Art and communication in the reign of Henry VIII, (London: Routledge, 2008) and David Howarth, Images of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485-1649 (Los Angeles: University of California press, 1997.) Henry’s reimagining in popular culture has become so dominant that the topic of his legacy is now its own branch of scholarship. See the upcoming work by Jonas Takors, Henry VIII in Twenty-First Century Popular Culture, (London: Lexington books 2017) or Mark Rankin and Christopher Highley (ed.), Henry VIII and his afterlives: literature, politics and art (Cambridge: Cambridge university press. 2013)

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016the beauty of the king’s palaces and his masterful use of the arts of royal display.18 My work

is greatly indebted to historians who have focused on the central importance of visual and

material culture in Renaissance politics and the fundamentality of display to early modern

ideals of power. The biggest influence comes from scholarship that has argued against the

idea that early modern displays of majesty constituted no more than literal expressions of a

ruler’s wealth. Instead they contend that the trappings of royalty formed part of a

deliberate political program designed to win authority and support.19 It will be argued that

Henry’s cosmopolitan image was also a consciously constructed argument.

In light of this emphasis on the politically potency of royal display an altogether more

‘material’ Henry has emerged in recent years. Studies have become less concerned about

who Henry was and more about how he wanted to be perceived. These reassessments have

encouraged a number of works focused on one or more of the media used to construct

Henry’s royal image, be it his famous tapestries or his ornate clothing.20 The material shift

has also been precipitated by a reassertion of the king’s personal role in politics - as recently

argued by G.W Bernard in ‘The King’s Reformation’ – and Henry is now seen as the architect

of his own image.21 This study will contribute to this body of work by arguing that Henry 18See Tatiana C. Sting, Art and communication in the reign of Henry VIII, (London: Routledge, 2008) and David Howarth, Images of rule (Los Angeles: University of Californian press, 1997.), Betteridge, Thomas and Suzanna Lipscomb (ed.), Henry VIII and the court, (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2013) Thomas P. Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (New York: Paul Mellon Centre BA, 2007.) John Adamson, ‘The Tudor and Stuart courts 1509-1714,’ in John Adamson (ed.), The princely courts of Europe, (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1999.); pp.95-118. 19See again, Sharpe, ‘Selling the Tudor Monarchy,’ 2009, Tatiana C. Sting, Art and communication in the reign of Henry VIII, (London: Routledge, 2008) and David Howarth, Images of rule (Los Angeles: University of Californian press, 1997.) These scholars were writing against theories presented by Sydney Anglo, in Images of Tudor Kingship (Basingstoke: Basford ltd., 1992) 20 For tapestries see Thomas P. Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (New York: Paul Mellon Centre BA, 2007) for clothing, Maria Hayward, Dress at the court of King Henry VIII, (London: Maney Main, 2007) 21 For the kings role in politics see G.W Bernard, The Kings Reformation, (New Haven: Yale University press, 2007) This re-emphasizing of Henry’s personal role is aimed directly at the work of scholars, such as Geoffrey Elton and David Starkey who for a long time presented Henry as merely a pawn in the politics of faction. See

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016personally employed visual and material culture to show himself as a cosmopolitan

monarch.

Material items have also been a vital source base for scholars interested in exploring

the effects of international contact on early modern culture, which is another field of study

this project contributes to. Many of the material studies of Henry’s royal image have already

begun to hint at the more global elements of Henry’s royal image which my dissertation will

develop further. For example, the dyes needed to make the brilliant reds in many of Henry’s

tapestries - which themselves were sourced from overseas - came from the New World.22

These scholars are working in the field known as the ‘global renaissance.’23 The goal of this

group has been to challenge Eurocentric readings of renaissance culture, and this study aims

to make this argument for the case of Henry.24 Material wares are great for this research

because they were passed among and between the corners of the early modern globe,

usually through a mix of trade or diplomacy. They quite literally mediated cross cultural

contact and their presence in the courts of Europe is itself an example of how early modern

culture was affected by the age of discovery. My project aims to place Henry’s court firmly

within this discourse and to argue that culturally his court and identity were also deeply

affected by international connections.

Geoffrey Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government (London: The University press, 1966) and David Starkey, Henry VIII: Personalities and politics (London: Vintage, 2002.) 22 See Campbell, ‘Henry VIII and the art of majesty,’ 2007. 23 For some examples of scholars working in this field see: John Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Los Angeles: University of California press, 2010.), Amelia Peck (ed.) Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 (New York: The metropolitan museum of art, 2013) and Claire Farago, Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650 (New Haven: Yale University press, 2005.)24 See, Farago, ‘Reframing the renaissance,’ 2005 and Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar: from the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2003.)

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016

This is important because whilst the image of Henry’s court as backwards has been

revised, the impression of its provinciality has remained. Although the sixteenth century is

now hailed as the first global age, Henry and his court are usually not highlighted as being a

central part of this process. It isn’t until the reign of his daughter, Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

that England tends to figure in histories of early modern globalisms, precisely because she

was the first English monarch to aggressively pursue overseas ventures.25 The most recent

example of this kind of study is Jerry Brotton’s, This Orient Isle, published in 2016.26 In this

work Brotton explores the unique relationship Elizabeth forged with the Ottoman Sultan

Murad II and the effects this had on English culture. Brotton argues that because of the

continued tumults of the Reformation Elizabeth was forced to look outside of Europe for

political and economic allies. This is an important argument for my study which is also

interested in exploring how the Reformation informed Henry’s relationship with the wider

world.

Finally, a topic like Henry’s cosmopolitan image cannot be explored without

consulting literature that discusses the later English Empire, that most obvious expression of

the relationship between the national and the global. Because the global elements of

Henry’s royal persona were mainly expressed culturally, I am most interested in exploring

the ideals and images of the later Empire rather than the political reality. In his Forms of

Nationhood, Richard Helgerson argued that the very idea of Elizabethan England was in

some respects ‘made’ in direct response to encounters with the wider world.27 This study

25 As aforementioned it is not that case that Henry does not pursue these ventures at all but rather that they are not as central to his foreign policy as Elizabeth’s or as successful as her attempts and thus don’t become a key tenants of his worldly royal image. 26 Jerry Brotton, This orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World, (London: Allen Lane. 2016.)27 Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood: The Elizabethan writing of England, (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1995)

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016likewise hopes to explore how the global came to influence English identity as embodied by

Henry. In this it follows a long line of scholars including Sir John Elliott, Anthony Pagden, and

Stephen Greenblatt, who have explored the impact of early modern discovery on European

self-fashioning.28

Approach

This dissertation will borrow most strongly from the methodological approach of

cultural history, which endeavours to weave together textual, visual, and material sources

to present a well-rounded impression of its subjects. It is vital that I adopt a similar

approach to explore how Henry’s royal image performed the monarch’s cosmopolitanism.29

My project will build a holistic vison of Henry’s persona that takes into account different

media. Tatiana C. String has talked about the importance of viewing all of Henry’s actions as

‘communicative acts.’30 It is this notion of communicative performance that determines

how sources will be selected and used in this work. I have chosen not to focus solely on one

element of Henry’s cosmopolitan performance but to focus on the king and his court more

broadly as the stage where all these different media combined.

With this dissertation my goal is not just to explain and illustrate the more

cosmopolitan elements of Henry’s performance of kingship, but actually to re-create the

experience of witnessing this royal projection. This entails not only telling the story of how

28See J.H Elliott, The old world and the new, (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2002), Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University press, 1994) and Greenblatt, Renaissance self-fashioning, (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1980) and Marvellous possessions (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 2008.) 29 For some classic examples of this approach see Elliott and Brown, ‘A palace for a king,’ 2004 and Burke ‘The fabrication of Louis XVI,’ 1994. For some more current examples, Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, 2009 and Jerry Brotton, This orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World, (London: Allen Lane. 2016.) 30 String, ‘Art and communication in reign of Henry VIII,’ p.2

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016the king presented himself as a worldly wise monarch and reproducing images that were a

part of this, but actually re-building that image for a modern audience to experience and

engage with. To achieve this I am in part turning to film. I believe that using moving pictures

will enable me to present Henry’s royal image in the way that he intended it – as an

argumentative performance to be witnessed and felt. Henry had to move his audience in

order for them to accept his brand of kingship and I too need to move my reader/viewer to

fully convince them of my argument.

The intended emotional efficacy of Henry’s royal image is perhaps best summed up

by the seventeenth century art critic, Karel Van Mander.31 When discussing the Holbein

mural he claimed that the king “stood there, majestic in his splendour……was so lifelike that

the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in his presence.”32 Moving images are a uniquely

valuable medium for re-creating this kind of experience. Although film has classically been

used in similar ways to print and text – as a medium to tell stories and craft narratives – it is

not bound to this function in the way that the written word is. To borrow a phrase from

Gilles Deleuze, when discussing the genius of neo-realist cinema he talked about the

capacity of moving images to create a “purely optical and sound situation.”33 This was a

method developed in comparison to the classic ‘action-image.’ In an action image items and

objects are placed on the screen in support of the narrative. Optical-sound situations are

instead created by presenting the material of the scene on its own terms; items are not

chosen purely as illustrations of the ‘story.’ Deleuze argued that these images were

31Van Mander wrote his canonical text on Northern Renaissance artists - including Henry’s renowned court painter Hans Holbein – the Het Schilder-Boeck, in 1604 shortly after Elizabeth I’s death. 32 Roy Strong quoting Karel Van Mander in the early C17, Roy Strong, Holbein and Henry VIII (London: Routledge, 1967); p.7. 33Gilles Deleuze, ‘Beyond the movement-image’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (ed.) Film Theory and Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2009); pp.227-240, p.228

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016encountered in a fundamentally different way from the classic action image motored by

narrative. Instead of presenting a story, optical-sound images create a cinema of “seeing

rather than action” that allows for the senses to take over and the viewer to more fully

experience the material reality of the shot.34

Creating moving images in this model will be vital if I am convincingly to re-present

Henry’s royal persona, which, as mentioned above, was intended to be felt and not simply

seen. In addition to the written thesis this project will therefore include an online interactive

360⁰ tour of Henry’s Hampton court palace made up of a series of optical-sound images.

Unlike the use of stills that are usually used to illustrate ideas, moving images can actually

make the argument that the text presents. In the case of the tour this will be achieved by

creating a sensory experience of kingship that engages the emotions. This is especially vital

for a topic dealing with national identities because identity is far more grounded in emotion

than cognition.35 To be able to fully feel the persuasive pull of Henry’s royal image a modern

viewer needs to experience it in a way most close to how it was originally presented.

Moving images are the best way to achieve this.

In recent years other scholars/institutions have used 360⁰ images to create virtual

tours of historical spaces designed to invoke a similar physical response to that which I hope

to generate. One example is the Musée de l’armee’s tour of Napoleon’s tomb which will

prove a useful model for my own work.36 As I will likely be restrained to photographing the

space as it currently exists, in order to fully show the breadth of Henry’s royal persona the

34Deleuze. ‘Beyond the movement image.’ in Braudy and Cohen, p.228.35 The canonical text on identity formation being Benedict Anderson’s, Imagined communities: reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1998). For a study that uses these ideas to talk about English national identity see, Linda Colley, Britons: forging the nation (London: Pimlico, 2003.) 36 http://www.musee-armee.fr/en/collections/museum-spaces/dome-des-invalides-tomb-of-napoleon-i.html

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016tour will be overlaid with ‘hot spots.’ Viewers will be able to click on these to bring up a 3D

image of an item of Henry’s designed to project a specific argument about his kingship. The

tour will also have its own soundtrack that will reflect the atmosphere of the early Tudor

court. I will be using a Ricoh Theta camera to capture images of the court and the items I

wish to highlight in the hot spots. In order to build the virtual tour I will turn to VR stitching

software.37 I have a number of contacts in the industry who work with these programs and

have offered to help me bring Henry’s cosmopolitan image to life. I also intend to create

more than one iteration of the tour to show how the royal image developed over time.

It is intended that the tour and the text be viewed as a whole project and not as

separate variations on a theme. They are designed to mutually reinforce one another. The

text provides the rationale for the tour by arguing that Henry’s royal image was something

to be witnessed and felt, and the tour provides validity for the text by re-presenting the

emotional pull of Henry’s performance of kingship. Because of the power of the moving

image to invoke the senses, it is fundamental that the tour is viewed alongside the written

text because the text provides the analysis of the experience and a necessary reminder that

Henry’s performance of national and cosmopolitan kingship was a careful construction

designed to persuade. I am especially keen to stress this because although moving images

can be used to build a unique experience of the past they are not and never can be mirrors

onto it. Just with any representative media the tour will be a mediated experience and it

would be unethical to claim otherwise, hence the importance of viewing it in conjunction

with the textual portion. 37 This software stitches together 360⁰ images to re-create the visual experience of inhabiting a space. It allows the viewer to move the images just as they would their heads to look at different parts of the physical environment. An example of a company who provides this software is Electronic eye (http://electronic-eye.com/en/)

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016Chapters/organization:

For the written part of the dissertation, the study will be divided into five chapters

that explore a different element of Henry’s cosmopolitan projections. Each section will cover

the reign chronologically in order to get a good sense of how external developments may

have effected this image.

Chapter one, tentatively entitled “A court in the age of discovery and reformation”

will set the scene for the performance of Henry’s royal image. This will be the most

theoretical of my chapters. It will explore early modern ideals of kingship, early modern

notions of cross cultural relations (especially those linked to humanism), the function of the

court as a centre of monarchical power, and the relationship between the material arts and

royal display. The goal of this chapter is to place Henry firmly within these discourses. I will

also use this chapter to draw out in broad strokes the impact of the age of discovery and

reformation on early Tudor England and to explain more generally how Henry’s political

standing in Europe motivated his desire to impress and be seen.

Chapter two, tentatively entitled ‘Performing Worldliness’ will be the first of the

source based chapters and will look at the multiple performances and pageants Henry put

on throughout his reign designed to promote him as a worldly wise monarch. Of particular

interest will be international events and performances put on for visiting ambassadors. I will

also be looking to ambassadors/visitors reports for information on the reaction to these

displays. Taking the notion of the court as a centre of performance this chapter will also

look at the cosmopolitan individuals Henry brought to his court and the influence they may

have had on Henry’s self-fashioning. For this chapter Edward Hall’s chronicle, which

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016describes in good detail the many pageants and events of Henry’s reign, will be vital. Also of

much importance will be records from the office of the revels, held in The British Library.

The third chapter – working title, ‘cross cultural contact and the construction of a

cosmopolitan court’ - will build on the second by exploring the more permanent material

culture of Henry’s court and its cosmopolitan messaging. It will highlight the international

origin of many of Henry’s physical possessions and material commissions – including jewels,

plate, and textiles - and will argue that the presence of items from all over the early modern

globe created a court culture that defies a nationalist label. This chapter will also look at the

items Henry possessed that were linked to exploration and discovery, such as navigational

instruments and globes. For this chapter Henry’s household archives will be essential,

including those of the wardrobe, the jewel house, and the armoury. The two remaining

inventories we have of the king’s goods, taken in 1543 and at his death in 1547, will be key

sources for this chapter. Again these are housed at the British Library.

The last of the source based chapters – ‘Writing Worldliness’ - will look at how Henry

used words and law to back up the more visual/performative elements of his cosmopolitan

image. I will be looking at the royal library to argue that the existence of texts associated

with travel, map-making, cosmography and geography should be seen as another element

of this performance. This chapter will also explore the monarch’s relationship with

merchant communities and foreigners in the city of London. Finally, I will end the study with

a chapter that attempts to tie the cosmopolitan manifestations of Henry’s kingship together

to assess the relationship between the national and the global presented at the court.

Plan for completion:

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016

Following the prospectus presentation I will be spending Winter 2016/17 consulting

secondary literature whilst remaining in Seattle to teach. With the support of a

departmental fellowship, I will be heading to London - where the vast bulk of my archives

are - to begin primary research in spring 2017. At present I am planning to spend at least

three months there. A big focus on this first research trip will be to capture the 360⁰ images

from Hampton court palace so that I can begin building this element of the dissertation on

my return to Seattle. I have also applied for funding from the Jackson School for summer

2017 to help specifically with this digital component. My time frame in London is somewhat

dependent on the results of this application. If I were to get the grant I will come back to

Seattle over the summer and finish up consulting secondary material, in addition to building

the 360⁰ tour. If not, I will likely stay in Europe consulting both primary and secondary

material until fall 2017. I have applied for three months of Funding at The Huntington for fall

2017. If I do not get this fellowship I plan to consult this archive later that year as well as

planning a second trip to Europe. I plan to be finished with research early 2018 and then to

spend the rest of that year, and the half the following year, writing and building the tour. I

have an optimistic completion date of summer 2019.

Sample bibliography:BL = British Library NA = National Archives

Primary sources –

1542 inventory at Westminster (BL)

1547 inventory of King Henry VIII (BL)

Brown, Rawdon, Four years at the court of Henry VIII (NA)

Cromwell’s possessions (NA)

Hall, Edward, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke, c.1548

Hakluyt, Richard, The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation, c.1598

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016Rotz, Jean, Boke of Idrography, c.1542 (BL)

Records of Henrys armoury (BL)

Records of Henry’s Jewel house (BL)

Shakespeare, William, Henry VIII, c.1623

Van Mander, Karel, Het Schilder-Boeck, 1604

The Kings wardrobe (BL)

Wolsey’s inventory (BL)

Secondary sources –

Adamson, John (ed.), The princely courts of Europe, (London: Cassell, 1999)

Anglo, Sydney, Images of Tudor Kingship, (London: Trafalgar square press, 1993)

Armitage, David, The ideological origins of the British Empire, (Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2000)

Betteridge, Thomas and Lipscomb, Suzannah (ed.), Henry VIII and the court, (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2013)

Betteridge, Thomas and Freeman, Thomas (ed.), Henry VIII and history, (London: Routledge, 2012)

Bernard, G. W., The King’s reformation, (New Haven: Yale University press, 2007)

Brotton, Jerry

- The Renaissance Bazaar: from the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2003.)- This orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World , (London: Allen Lane. 2016.)

Brown, Jonathan, and Elliott, J.H (ed.), A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Phillip IV, (New Haven: Yale University press, 2004)

Burke, Peter, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, (New Haven: Yale University press, 1994)

Burns, J.H, Lordship Kingship and Empire 1400-1525, (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1992)

Campbell, Thomas P., Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (New York: Paul Mellon Centre BA, 2007)

Carley, J.P, The books of King Henry VIII and his wives, (London: The British Library, 2005.)

Cooper, J.D, Propaganda and the Tudor state, (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2003)

Dillon, Janet, Performance and spectacle in Hall’s chronicle, (London: The society for theatre research, 2002.)

Doran, Susan, and Richardson, Glenn (ed.) Tudor England and its neighbours (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Elias, Norbert, The court society, (New York: Pantheon, 1983)

Elliott, J.H

- The old world and the new , (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2002)- Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale University

press, 2006)

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016Elton, Geoffrey, The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953.)

Farago, Claire, Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650 (New Haven: Yale University press, 2005)

Finaly, John, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Los Angeles: University of California press, 2010.)

Fitzmaurice, Andrew

- Sovereignty, property and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2014)- Humanism and America: An intellectual history of English colonisation 1500-1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2002)

Fletcher, Catherine, Henry VIII and His Italian Ambassador (London: Bodley head, 2012)

Foister, Susan,

- Holbein’s Ambassadors Making and Meaning, (London: National gallery press, 1997.) - Holbein and England, (London: The Paull Mellon centre for British art, 2005)

Graves, Michael A. R., Henry VIII: a study in kingship, (London: Longman, 2003)

Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance self-fashioning, (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1980)

Hayward, Maria,

- Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (London: Maney Main, 2007)- The inventory of King Henry VIII: Volume 2, textiles and dress (London: Harvey Miller publishing, 2012.)

Headley, John, The Europeanization of the World, (New Jersey: Princeton university press, 2016)

Helgerson, Richard, Forms of nationhood: The Elizabethan writing of England, (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1995)

Hoak, Dale, Tudor Political culture, (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2002)

Howarth, David, Images of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485-1649 (Los Angeles: University of California press, 1997.)

Jardine, Lisa

- Worldly goods: A new history of the renaissance , (London: W. W Norton and company, 1998.)- With Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West (New York: Ithaca,

2000)Knapp, Jeffrey, An Empire nowhere England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest, (Los Angeles: University of California press, 1994)

Lloyd, Christopher, Images of a Tudor King, (Vienna: Phaedon press, 1996)

Loades, David, Henry VIII (London: Amberley Publishing, 2011)

Lipscomb, Susannah, 1536: the year that changed Henry VIII (London: Lion Books, 2012)

Necipoğlu, Gülru, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Boston: The MIT press, 1992.)

Emma Hinchliffe,Dissertation prospectus,Fall 2016Norwich, John Julius, Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe (New York: Atlantic monthly press, 2017)

Pagden, Anthony

- European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University press, 1994

- Lords of all the world: ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France 1500-1800 , (New Haven: Yale University press, 1998.)

Peck, Amelia, (ed.) Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 (New York: The metropolitan museum of art, 2013)

Rankin, Mark, and Highley, Christopher (ed.), Henry VIII and his afterlives: literature, politics and art (Cambridge: Cambridge university press. 2013)

Richardson, Glenn

- The Field of cloth of gold (New Haven: Yale University press, 2014)- Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V (London: Bloomsbury

academic press, 2002) Scarisbrick, J.J, Henry VIII, (New Haven: Yale University press, 2011 [first published 1968])

Sharpe, Kevin, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: authority and image in sixteenth century England, (New Haven: Yale University press, 2009.)

Sowerby, Tracy A, ‘All our books do be sent into other countreys and translated’: Polemic in its International Context, English Historical Review (2006) CXXI (494): pp.1271-1299.

Starkey, Sir. David

- The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London: Longman, 1987)- Henry VIII: A European Court in England (London: Abbeville press, 1991)- The Inventory of Henry VIII: The Transcript, Volume 1 (Belgium:Brepols Publishers, 1998)- Henry: Virtuous Prince (London: Harper perennial, 2008)

String, Tatiana C., Art and communication in the reign of Henry VIII, (London: Routledge, 2008)

Strong, Roy, Holbein and Henry VIII (London: Routledge, 1967)

Thurly, Simon, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life, 1460-1547, (New York: Paul Mellon Centre for British studies, 1995)