4th December 2007
Have you ever wondered what presents the Tudor royal family received for the New Year? Now you have the rare opportunity to see what Princess Elizabeth gave her stepmother Queen Katherine Parr for the New Year 1544-45.
Courtesy of the Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library's historic Divinity School, Oxford, UK, will open its doors to the public for a special one-day event to mark the Christmas celebrations on 6 December 2007. The event includes the display of two Tudor decorative embroidered bindings and four Renaissance manuscripts, free admission to the Divinity School and extensive special offers in our new Gift Shop. Gifts exchanged between Tudor monarchs and their subjects on New Year's Day (1 January) were symbols of loyalty and patronage. Amongst rich offerings such as jewels and money, manuscripts and printed books were very common gifts to the sovereign, their contents carefully chosen and often splendidly bound.
The first decorative binding covers a book translated and written out by Princess Elizabeth for her stepmother Queen Katherine Parr as a gift for the New Year 1544-45. The binding displays Katherine Parr's initials worked at the centre of each cover within a knotwork pattern of gold and silver braid on a blue background, with pansies stitched over padding in the corners. The joined 'K' and 'P' exactly reproduce the monogram habitually used by Queen Katherine at the end of her signature: this personal echo may help to confirm the natural inference that the binding was also Elizabeth's own handiwork.
Courtesy of the Bodleian Library
The second embroidered binding covers the 'Geneva Bible' in English, printed by Christopher Barker in London in 1583. The book was presented to Queen Elizabeth I by its printer as a gift for the New Year 1583-84. The binding, which has been described as the finest of all surviving Elizabethan embroidered bindings, shows a design of Tudor roses embroidered in gold, silver and coloured silks on crimson velvet; when presented to the Queen it was further adorned with seed pearls.
The other two New Year royal gifts are the Astronomical rules presented by Nicolaus Kratzer to King Henry VIII for 1 January 1528/9, with an illuminated initial by Holbein, and a sermon translated from Italian into Latin and written out by Princess Elizabeth for her half-brother King Edward VI as a gift for 1 January 1547/8 or 1552/3.
The other two manuscripts are a Tudor pattern-book, showing a design for mistletoe dated c. 1520-30, and a 16th-century French Book of Hours, showing a snowball fight as the 'Occupation of the Month' for December in the lower margin.
The display will be on show in the Divinity School which will offer free admission to all visitors for the entire day. Also, The exhibition will be open from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm.
