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Abstract
Based on untapped archival material in the National Archives (London) and the National Records of Scotland (Edinburgh), and supplemented by a new analysis of the portraits of Anna of Denmark (1574–1619), this article provides information about the fabrics, fashions and costs of clothing worn by the consort of James VI during her early years in Scotland. It sheds light on the Queen’s trousseau, her strategic use of clothing to demonstrate territorial, political and/or factional allegiance, and the artificers involved in the construction of the royal wardrobe. Providing details of the Stuarts’ high level of expenditure on clothing, this article highlights the political currency of the Queen’s sartorial display, and it contributes to our growing understanding of clothing at the Scottish court at the turn of the seventeenth century.
Notes
1 This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [706198].
2 David Moysie, Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 83.
3 William K. Boyd and Henry W. Meikle (eds), Calendar of State Papers Scotland, vol. 10 (1589–1593), (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 115, 124-25.
4 Ibid., p. 115.
5 Caroline Hibbard, ‘Henrietta Maria in the 1630s: Perspectives on the Role of Consort Queens in “Ancien Regime” Courts,’ in Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders (eds), The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era (Manchester and New York, 2006), pp. 92-110, pp. 94-95; Erin Griffey, On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence (New Haven, 2015), pp. 34-5, 40-8. Margaret Lemberg provides a fascinating account of the political signification and logistics of the marital journey of Princess Elizabeth Stuart; see her ‘Hesse-Kassel and the Journey up the Rhine of the Princess Palatine Elizabeth in April and May 1613’, in Sara Smart and Mara R. Wade (eds), The Palatine Wedding of 1613: Protestant Alliance and Court Festival (Wiesbaden, 2013), pp. 412-27.
6 For the importance of a royal woman’s dynastic identity see, for example, the two ground-breaking volumes edited by Clarissa Campbell-Orr, Queenship in Britain, 1660–1837: Royal Patronage, Court Culture and Dynastic Politics (Manchester and New York, 2002) and Queenship in Europe 1660–1815: The Role of the Consort (Cambridge, 2004). Most recently, see Adam Morton and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly (eds), Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics, c.1500–1800 (London and New York, 2017).
7 Anna Reynolds, In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion (London, 2013), p. 25.
8 Victoria and Albert Museum, London #E.214-1994 and #T.228-1994. On the waistcoat see, most recently, Claire Thornton, ‘Margaret Layton’s Waistcoat’, in Susan North and Jenny Tiramani (eds), Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns, vol. 1 (London, 2011), pp. 22-33.
9 For the economic difficulties of late sixteenth-century Scotland see Julian Goodare, ‘James VI’s English Subsidy’, in Julian Goodare and Michael Lynch (eds), The Reign of James VI (East Linton, 2000), pp. 110-26; Goodare and Lynch, ‘James VI: Universal King?’, in The Reign of James VI, pp. 10, 15-16, 22-23; Julian Goodare, ‘Thomas Foulis and the Scottish Fiscal Crisis of the 1590s’, in W. M. Ormrod et al. (eds), Crises, Revolutions and Self-Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History, 1130–1830 (Stamford, 1999), pp. 170-97; Thomas Riis, Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot, vol. 1, pp. 265-6. For the politics of material culture and visual display in early modern England, see R. Malcolm Smuts, ‘Art and the Material Culture of Majesty in Early Stuart England’, in R. Malcolm Smuts (ed.), The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 86-112, pp. 90-94, 107, 112; John Peacock, ‘The Politics of Portraiture’, in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (eds), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 211-20; Griffey, On Display, pp. 1, 21-27.
10 Passementerie refers to ‘decorative and often sumptuous trimming consisting of braids, tassels, gimps, etc., variously made from silk, linen, wool, cotton, and silver and gold thread’; ‘passementerie, n.’, OED Online. (accessed 9 April 2019).
11 National Records of Scotland (hereafter NRS), E35/13, vol. 1, p.1; NRS, E35/13, vol. 3, pp. 2, 3. Joussie was directly involved with the collection and administration of James’s annuity. He probably procured much of the cloth for the Scottish court from English suppliers while in London, which offset the amount coming into Scotland at which point James had to contend with his creditors, a scenario that Goodare observes of his associate Thomas Foulis: ‘James VI’s English Subsidy’, pp. 117-19; ‘Scottish Fiscal Crisis’, pp. 173-5.
12 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 65; NRS, E53/13, vol. 4, p. 16. All monetary amounts given in this article are pounds Scots unless otherwise specified. In 1603, the exchange rate between the Scots pound and the pound sterling was fixed at 12:1, see A. J. S. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, Food, and Wages in Scotland, 1550–1780 (Cambridge and New York, 1995), p. 7.
13 NRS, E35/13, vol. 7, p. 9.
14 NRS, E35/14, fol. 34v.
15 My thanks to Michael Pearce for discussing issues of supply and payment with me.
16 On the velvet industry in the Italian states see Lisa Monnas, Renaissance Velvets (London, 2012), pp. 8-11.
17 ‘incarnadine, adj.’, OED Online (accessed 10 March 2019).
18 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 7.
19 NRS, E35/14, fol. 14v. ‘Fresit ppl. adj.’, Dictionary of the Scots Language (accessed 10 March 2019).
20 NRS, E35/13, vol. 7, p. 9. This included the abovementioned charge for the Queen’s servitors. It is worth noting that Joussie only supplied a fraction of the embellishments required for the Queen’s apparel, and many of the spangles, aglets, buttons, pearls and/or embroidery would have been overseen by, and presumably sourced by, specialists. For comparison, see those finished garments that the Queen's main jeweller, George Heriot (1563–1624) delivered: NRS, GD421/1/3/14; NRS, GD421/1/3/21.
21 For an alternative reading that Anna made cost-cutting measures in 1595/1596 by having gowns remade, see Maureen Meikle, ‘“Holde her at the Oeconomicke rule of the House”: Anna of Denmark and Scottish Court Finances, 1589–1603’, in Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen Meikle (eds), Women in Scotland, c. 1000–c. 1750 (East Linton, 1998), pp. 105-11, p. 108.
22 NRS, E35/13, p. 1. In this set of records, the Queen’s Danish gentlewomen are interchangeably referred to as ‘Dence’ [Danish] and ‘Dutche’, see p. 10. More commonly, the term ‘Dutch’ meant German.
23 David Calderwood, The History of the Kirk of Scotland, edn Thomas Thomson, 7 vols (Edinburgh, 1842-1849), vol. 5, pp. 98-9; The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. 22, p. 121; Amy Juhala, ‘The Household and Court of King James VI of Scotland, 1567–1603’ (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 58-9, 331; NRS, E31/16; National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS.34.2.17, fol. 143r.
24 This is suggestive of fastenings on a front-opening gowns being reinforced with taffeta; ‘Loup n.1’, Dictionary of the Scots Language (accessed 26 Jul 2018). My thanks to Perin Westerhof-Nyman for discussing this point with me.
25 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 5.
26 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, pp. 31, 32.
27 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, pp. 58, 65.
28 Ibid., p. 41.
29 Ibid., p. 7.
30 Ibid., p. 14.
31 Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, ‘State Ceremonial, Court Culture and Political Power in Early Modern Denmark, 1537–1746’, Scandinavian Journal of History 27 (2002), pp. 65-76, p. 67. For a clear and concise overview of Denmark’s connections to German duchies and states see Paul Douglas Lockhart, Denmark, 1513–1660: The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy (Oxford, 2007), pp. 158-66.
32 Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (Amsterdam: facsimile edition, 1971), vol. 2 (book 4, chapt. 1), p. 170.
33 Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød, Gm656.
34 Some pertinent examples of portraits, beyond that of Augusta, include Anna’s other sister Elisabeth of Denmark (c. 1588–90, Hillerød, Frederiksborg); Elisabeth of Sweden, later Duchess of Mecklenburg-Gadebusch (c. 1581, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum); Sophie of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1599, present location unknown); Ellen Marsvin (c. 1580–1600, Hillerød, Frederiksborg Castle); Barbara, Countess Palatine of Zweibrücken (1599, Munich, Alte Pinakothek); Elisabeth of Anhalt-Zerbst (c. 1595, London, Royal Collection); Erdmuthe of Brandenburg (1590, Krakow, Pomorskie Muzeum). For a Scottish example see that of Agnes Douglas (1599, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland).
35 Camilla Luise Dahl, ’Huffer till theris hoffueder: Sen-renæssancens kvindehuer, c. 1560–1630’, Dragtjournalen 3 (2008), pp. 21-52. For English pictorial examples see those of Queen Elizabeth (1585, Hertfordshire, Hatfield House; c. 1585, Elizabethan Club of Yale University) and Mary Cornwallis (c. 1585–87, Manchester City Art Galleries).
36 NRS, E35/13, p. 4. A kell/caul being an ornamental hair net: ‘Kell n.1’, Dictionary of the Scots Language (accessed 10 Mar 2019).
37 NRS, GD421/1/3/14; NRS, GD421/1/3/21.
38 Ibid.
39 NRS, E21/68, fol. 197.
40 ‘Snud(e), n,’ Dictionary of the Scots Language (accessed 18 Jul 2018); NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 17.
41 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p.23.
42 NRS, GD421/1/3/21. For snoods made for Anna’s gentlewomen see NRS, E35/14, fol. 29r.
43 Carmen Bernis and Amalia Descalzo, ‘Spanish Female Dress in the Habsburg Period’, in José Luis Colomer and Amalia Descalzo (eds), Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early Modern Europe, vol. 1 (Madrid, 2014), pp. 39-75, pp. 56-58.
44 See portraits of Queen Elizabeth from c. 1592 (London, National Portrait Gallery), and c. 1599 (National Trust, Hardwick Hall).
45 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p.4; NRS, E30/14, fol. 3v.
46 Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts, 1590–1619 (Manchester University Press, forthcoming).
47 On Anna’s iconography see, most recently, Catharine MacLeod, ‘Facing Europe: The Portraiture of Anne of Denmark (1589–1619)’, in Jill Bepler and Svante Norrhem (eds), Telling Objects. Contextualizing the Role of the Consort in Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden, 2018), pp. 63-85.
48 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, pp. 3, 4, 13, 41, 46.
49 NRS, E35/14, fols 2r, 4v; NRS, E35/13, vol. 4, p. 10. Taffetas were also ordered for her gentlewomen, see NRS, E35/14, fols 29r, 30r.
50 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, pp. 3, 4, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20, 26.
51 Ibid., p. 55.
52 Davie Horsburgh, ‘Young, Sir Peter (1544–1628)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessed 21 July 2018).
53 John Robert Christianson, ‘The Spaces and Rituals of the Royal Hunt: King Frederik II of Denmark (1559–1588)’, in Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen and Konrad Ottenheym (eds), Beyond Scylla and Charybdis: European Courts and Court Residences outside Habsburg and Valois/Bourbon Territories 1500–1700 (Odense, 2015), pp. 159-71, p. 166. A version of this chapter was earlier published as ‘Terrestrial and Celestial Spaces of the Danish Court, 1550–1650’, The Court Historian 12 (2007), pp. 129-53. The influence of the Danish hunting culture under Frederik II on Anna’s later cultural activities forms part of my current research for a monograph on the Stuart queen consort, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts, 1590–1619, due out with Manchester University Press in 2019.
54 CSP Scots, vol. 10, p. 306.
55 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 3. This draws comparison with Queen Elizabeth, whose riding clothes were similarly fashioned in ensembles: Arnold, Wardrobe Unlock’d, p. 142. A safeguard was an outer-skirt or petticoat worn by women for protective reasons during riding: ‘safeguard, n’, OED Online (accessed 10 March 2019).
56 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, pp.14, 39. See other sets in NRS, E35/13, vol. 8, pp.69; NRS, E35/14, fol. 8v.
57 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, pp. 39, 44, 49, 59.
58 Ibid., pp. 12, 20. A muzzle, or ‘missel’, is a chin cover, while ‘Tournett’ is a corruption of a French phrase for a face veil, ‘tour de nez’ which also appears in the records of Mary Queen of Scots’ apparel. My thanks to Michael Pearce for discussing this point with me.
59 Peter Razzell (ed.), The Journals of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England: Thomas Platter and Horatio Busino (London, 1995), p. 139; Isabelle Paresys ‘The Body’, in Elizabeth Currie (ed.), A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, vol. 3 (London, 2017), pp. 70-1; Arnold, Wardrobe Unlock’d, p. 203.
60 NRS, E35/14, fols 4r, 9r; NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p.25; NRS, E35/13, vol. 8, pp. 56, 67.
61 Cypress was ‘a light transparent material resembling cobweb lawn or crape; like the latter it was, when black, much used for habiliments of mourning’: ‘cypress, n.3’, OED Online (accessed 10 April 2019).
62 NRS, GD421/1/3/21; Arnold, Wardrobe Unlock’d, p. 203; Moryson, Itinerary, p. 170. A countenance was presumably a fabric mask designed to cover the face, although Randle Cotgrave later defined it as ‘the fan, or little skreen, which women hold before their faces, to preserve them from the scorching heat of a great fire; also the small looking glass which some Ladies have usually hanging at their girdles; also, one of their Snuffkins, or Muffes’, see Cotgrave’s A French and English Dictionary … (London, 1673).
63 Yvonne Hackenbroch, Enseignes (Florence, 1996), p. 308; Arnold, Wardrobe Unlock’d, pp. 200-03.
64 Moryson, Itinerary, p. 156.
65 Ibid., p. 170.
66 Royal and elite Danish women known to have favoured the Böhmischer Hut include Anna Catherine, first wife of King Christian IV, who chose to sit for a formal portrait wearing one in 1611. Ellen Marsvin, Christian IV’s mother-in-law from his second marriage likewise wore high-crowned hats, and Christian’s daughter Leonora Christina, from his morganatic marriage to Kirsten Munk, is a notable outlier, continuing to favour the tall hat into the 1640s. My thanks to Camilla Luise Dahl for discussing this point with me and sourcing some of the pictorial evidence.
67 NRS GD421/1/3/21; NRS, E35/13, vol. 1, p.30; NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, pp. 21, 25, 26, 49; NRS, E35/13, vol. 4, p. 10; NRS, E35/13, vol. 8, pp. 69; NRS, E35/14, fols 2v, 3r, 5v.
68 NRS, GD421/1/3/21.
69 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 3.
70 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 10. Skinkel accompanied Anna to Scotland in 1590 and became a lady in waiting, returning to Denmark in summer 1591. Koss’s record is more obscure, but she was recorded as a gentlewoman of the Queen’s Chamber in February 1591; Riis, Auld Acquaintance, vol. 2, pp. 294-95; Juhala, ‘Household and Court’, p. 329.
71 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 13.
72 Ibid., pp. 18, 26, 49.
73 NRS, E35/13, vol. 4, p. 10; NRS, E35/13, vol. 8, p. 71. For ‘fessis’ see ‘Fas n’,.Dictionary of the Scots Language (accessed 10 Mar 2019).
74 NRS, E35/13, vol. 1, p. 17.
75 NRS, E35/13, vol. 3, p. 17.
76 NRS, E35/14, fol. 4v.
77 NRS, E35/13, vol. 2, p. 17.
78 NRS, E35/13, vol. 1, p. 13.
79 Emily Cole, ‘The State Apartment in the Jacobean Country House, 1603–1625’ (DPhil diss, University of Sussex, 2010), pp. 6, 21, 360-416; Juhala, ‘Household and Court’, pp. 61, 121, 127-8, 130, 132-5.
80 An exception is the delivery of red crimson taffeta and gold thread to the embroiderer William Beaton, which was to be made into a hat: NRS, E35/13, vol. 1, p. 2.
81 See those in the collection of the Scottish National Galleries, Edinburgh: PG156, PG1109, and PG561.
82 NRS E21/68, fol.168; NRS, E35/13, vol. 1, pp. 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 15, 18, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 36, 41, 46, 52, 55, 58, 59, 61, 63, 68, 70, 72, 76, 79; NRS, E35/13, vol. 3. pp. 1, 12, 13, 17. James wears a light-blue castor hat in a miniature by Nicholas Hilliard from around 1604 that remains in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (GG_5476).
83 NRS, CC8/8/25, p. 385. My thanks to Michael Pearce for this reference.
84 NRS, CC8/8/11, p. 323. My thanks to Michael Pearce for this reference.
85 Arnold, Wardrobe Unlock’d, p. 201. Pictorial evidence includes portraits of Elizabeth Cornwallis, Lady Kyston (1573, London: Tate Gallery); Elizabeth Knollys (1577, Somerset: National Trust, Montacute House); Elizabeth, countess of Shrewsbury (1575, Staffordshire: Ingestre Hall Residential Arts Centre).
86 CSP Scots, vol. 10, pp. 115, 124-25; Calderwood, History, p. 94.
87 The splendid Danish coaches provided to Anna’s two sisters for their marital journeys likewise drew comment. See Barton Browning, ‘Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig’s 1590 Welcoming Celebration for Princess Elizabeth of Denmark’, in Mara Wade (ed.), Pomp, Power, and Politics: Essays on German and Scandinavian Court Culture and their Contexts (Amsterdam, 2003), pp. 73-82, p. 78; Mara Wade, ‘Politics and Performance: Saxon-Danish Court Festivals 1548–1709’, Occasional Papers in Modern Languages, Culture and Society 4 (2000), pp. 41-56, p. 43.
88 J. G. Dalyell, Fragments of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1798), pp. 59-60.
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Notes on contributors
Jemma Field
Dr Jemma Field is Associate Director of Research at the Yale Center for British Art. A specialist in Jacobean court culture, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Brunel University London from 2016 to 2018. Her research focusses on Anna of Denmark as a cultural agent and political figure at the English and Scottish courts, and she has published articles in Costume, Northern Studies, The British Art Journal, and Women’s Historical Review. Her monograph, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts, 1590–1619, is forthcoming with Manchester University Press.