The Book of Queens

In my studio there are various noticeboards. Maps, postcards of Tudor personages, newspaper cuttings, images from the stage productions of the Cromwell Trilogy, scribbled preliminary sketches, quotes, and notes to myself. The boards act as a depository of ideas, a set of visual cues that may - one day - be translated into artworks.

Studio views. The Book of Queens is in the foreground.

One noticeboard includes an index card on which is noted “The Book called Henry. The Book of Queens”. Another reads “Three card trick”. And these jottings, made while listening to the audiobooks of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy, eventually became a tangible object - a representation of Thomas Cromwell’s “Remembrances” of the emblems, mottos, dates, and fates of the four queens he served.

In her trilogy, Mantel shows Cromwell writing a guide to managing the King. It is for his own reference, and for the assistance of those who might come after him:

The Book Called Henry: how to read him, how to serve him, how best to preserve him.

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies, Crows

In The Mirror and the Light, we see Cromwell keeping his Book up to date. “Try and keep cheerful”, he notes. “Are you sitting up writing your King book tonight?” asks Christophe.

Thomas Cromwell’s Book of Queens. Photography © Michael Wicks

Useful as The Book Called Henry might have been (or not), I felt that Cromwell might have also benefitted from a guide to Henry’s queens. All six queens appear in Mantel’s Trilogy, and Cromwell served four of them: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and Anne of Cleves. All different in temperament, background, families, and faith. Cromwell may have been famed for his excellent memory, but an aide mémoire would surely have helped too.

The Book of Queens comprises forty-four pages of quilting, embroidery, paint, buckram and pewter. Each queen is shown in three portraits, and their other pages include their emblem, motto, and dates. The page are different sizes and shapes, representing odd papers that were bound together as Cromwell’s knowledge grew incrementally.

Forty-four pages, ready for binding in buckram with pewter buttons

I deliberately chose to make three portraits of each queen as a reference to the game of “Three Card Trick” that runs through the Trilogy, and made a specific reference to this on the last page. And my subconscious must have played a part in creating the number of pages - forty-four. In Wolf Hall, forty-four charges are brought against the Cardinal. “Forty-four, master,” says the King to Cromwell. “Would I come here unprepared?” responds Crum, poised to answer each of them.

Forty-four charges. Forty-four pages. There are no accidents.

In my studio

Sorting out my chronology.

When do I think Cromwell got his second knife?

What about antiquing that statue?

Yes, I am well into his third life for my Cromwell Narrative Cloth, and I’m about to stitch Tommaso, Karl-Heinz, and the retired knight in Venice. Lots of lettering, lots of records, lots of notes. Lots of wrestling with what we don’t really know. And how does what we don’t really know fit with the historical record? This isn’t only a stitching project, but a chronology of different realities. It’s growing and growing.

What caught my eye?

I love 16th century clerks. Not that I know any of course, but I love what they left us, their ghosts, their personalities sometimes breaking through.

I was at the National Archives a couple of weeks ago, and I ordered up a volume of the Valor Ecclesiasticus. Instead of the gorgeously illuminated volume I saw last time, I had chosen a volume that listed church possessions omitted from the main record. I had the opportunity to look at both the rough draft, and the fine bound copy, and I thought of the clerk laboriously copying record after record.

It is always a joy to turn a page and find an unexpected - unauthorised? - sketch. An excellent monkey, a strange bird, and a man in the leaves. I hope the clerk enjoyed drawing them in the fine copy as much as I enjoyed seeing them nearly 500 years later. And I hope he didn’t get into trouble.

There is a monkey in the Valor Ecclesiasticus!

What bird is this?

And who are you?