Costume and gold and silver plate belonging to Elizabeth I were recorded in several inventories, and other documents including rolls of New Year's Day gifts. Arthur Jefferies Collins published the Jewels and Plate of Queen Elizabeth I: The Inventory of 1574 from manuscripts in 1955. The published inventory describes jewels and silver-plate belonging to Elizabeth with detailed references to other source material. Two inventories of Elizabeth's costume and some of her jewellery were published by Janet Arnold in Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlocke'd (Maney, 1988).
In 1574 the office of the Jewel House was located in a two-storey building on the south side of the White Tower. This contained the records of the jewels and packing materials for sending jewels to court.[1] The 1574 inventory was made by John Astley, Master and Treasurer of the Jewel House. The Master had an annual salary of £50 and was able to exact payments from goldsmiths appointed to work for the Jewel House, and those who transported plate from the House to diplomats. The post was lucrative, but some of the perquisites of the role were exaggerated or overstated by Sir Gilbert Talbot, who was made Master in 1660 and in 1680 wrote a treatise entitled Of the Jewel house.[2] In the inventory the items were listed in categories; below an outline of the main categories is given with some examples of the 1,605 entries.
The sources used by Collins were British LibraryHarley MS 1560 and Stowe MS 555 (see external links for digitised manuscripts). The manuscripts represent the "Quenis Majesties juelles plate and other stuff" in 1574 and additions by gift or purchase over the next 20 years which were kept in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. Collins also collated information from other books and manuscripts to cross-reference information about the objects listed. Gifts of plate to the queen passed from the Privy Chamber to the Jewel House. Some pieces were melted down and others were given as diplomatic gifts. When the queen travelled, the towns she visited often gave her gifts of silver-gilt cups.
Janet Arnold published an annotated wardrobe inventory now in the British Library, (Stowe MS 557),[3] consulting also a duplicate copy at the National Archives, and another inventory held by the Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V. b.72. The inventory includes some of the queen's jewels.[4]
no. 6 A pair of bracelets with six rubies and seven large pearls and five smaller pearls, with red laces.[7]
Cups and bowls
The Royal Gold Cup is 23.6 cm (9.3 in) high and 17.8 cm (7.0 in) across at its widest point. It weighs 1.935 kg (4.27 lb) of solid gold, enamels and jewels, showing scenes from the life of Saint Agnes. Now in the British Museum, it was item no. 48 in the 1574 inventory, and later given away by James I.
no. 48 The St Agnes cup. A cup of gold with imagery the knop a crown imperial and about border of the cover and the foot a crown garnished with 61 pearls.[8]
no. 83 A salt called the "Morris Dance" decorated with precious stones and pearls with 5 morris dancers, a drummer, and a lady. The salt was taken to The Hague in October 1625 by the Duke of Buckingham and pawned.[12]
no. 125 A gold basin with the arms of Jane Seymour with gold roses enamelled red and white, and the border of the cover engraved with roses, a bird with a ring in its mouth, and a worm or serpent. Presented to the Constable of Castile in 1604.[13]
Glasses
Casting-bottles
no. 148 A casting bottle with the queen's arms. Dorothy Silking, a chamberer of Anne of Denmark was accused of taking this bottle.[14]
nos. 152 and 153 The covering of a Bible of silver and gilt fair wrought, and the covering of a Book of Common Prayer. These book covers were later weighed by the auditor Francis Gofton.[15]
no. 159 The silver-gilt font was decorated with pomegranates (the emblem of Catherine of Aragon), roses, and "antique" (renaissance style) decoration. It was made for Mary I of England in 1555.[16]
no. 215 An "Antique" (renaissance style) gilt cup with a cover with a letter "D". Given in 1604 to Jean Grusset Richardot, President of the Privy Council of the Netherlands.[17]
no. 225 Two great gilt cups with German knights in armour on their covers with shields and halberds. These had belonged to the Duke of Northumberland. With other pieces, they were given to Alessandro Roveda, a Spanish representative at the Somerset House Conference on 22 August 1604.[18]
no 356 A cup called a "colloke" made of serpentine with a silver-gilt cover, given by Sir John Mason as a New Year's gift in 1562. The silver was sent to the mint to be made into coin in 1600.[19]
no. 872 A silver gilt tankard set with cameo heads, given in July 1579 to Edward Darcy, groom of the Privy Chamber, on his marriage to a daughter of Thomas Astley, another groom.[21]
no. 998 A basin of silver-gilt designed by Hans Holbein the younger for Anne Boleyn.[24]The table fountain designed by Holbein for Anne Boleyn was item no. 998 in the 1574 inventory Declared unserviceable and sold in 1620.[25]
Basins, fountains, ewers and gilt lairs (a lair was a kind of ewer)
no. 1322 A perfume pan of silver and gilt with pillars of crystal part broken, and a clock plated with gold and enamelled. Melted down in October 1600.[29]
no. 1429 Thirteen hooks of silver gilt made to fasten hangings in the queen's privy chamber, placed in the keeping of Dorothy Habington, the sister of Edward Habington.[31]
no. 1433 Four gold toothpicks given by Mistress Elizabeth Snowe (died 1587), a gentlewoman in the Privy Chamber.[32]
no. 1440 A cup of agate set with rubies and emeralds given by Thomas Wilson, and delivered to Jewel House from the Privy Chamber by Henry Middlemore, groom of the privy chamber, the father of Mary Middlemore a maid of honour to Anna of Denmark.[33]
no. 1453 A jug of crystal with silver gilt with a phoenix at the top given by Lord Henry Seymour. Anna of Denmark had this jug during her lying-in while pregnant with Princess Sophia.[34]
no. 1483 Three gilt bowls with covers given by the town of Yarmouth in August 1578. Elizabeth did not visit the town because of an outbreak of plague.
no. 1484 A fair standing bowl with a silver cover decorated with scenes of the story of Joseph given by the members of the Dutch church in Norwich on 19 August 1578.
no. 1485 A cup with a cover of silver gilt given by the town of Thetford in August 1578.[35]
no. 1515 A basket of silver to use to clear away dining utensils, presented by Francis Drake at a banquet at Deptford in 1581.[36]
no. 1521 A double porringer and 4 silver boxes with silver gilt covers given by Blanche Parry.[37]
no. 1541 A great standing cup gilt, with a cover, the body garnished with "sundry vermin as snakes ewetes (newts) frogs and others", and laid with colours, the cover garnished with sundry men and beasts hunting with a stag at the top, supplied by Alderman Martin. This cup, probably made in Germany, was admired in the Tower of London by Lupold von Wedel in November 1584. It was a gift at the baptism of Prince Henry in August 1594.[38]
Portraits of Elizabeth depict jewels, and may indicate how they were worn. Her ruff in a portrait c.1595 is decorated with 25 red arrows of rubies feathered with pearls, and tall jewelled spikes top her hair echoing obelisks embroidered on her dress. Some of the jewellery shown in portraits reflects the pieces described in the inventories, a theme explored by the costume historian Janet Arnold,[39] and the jewellery historian Diana Scarisbrick.[40]
On 21 May 1559 Elizabeth selected a group of jewels from the Tower of London for a celebration with French ambassadors for the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. These included two diamond-set brooches depicting David And Goliath, one with Goliath's armour composed of diamonds (a diamond-set example held by the Green Vault, Dresden is later),[41] a jewel depicting several figures with the motto In Petra Christi sancta fient foedera, with chains set with gems and other jewels.[42] It is not clear whether Elizabeth intended these items as gifts or wore them herself, but they were not included among the gifts listed by the Venetian ambassador.[43][44]
Elizabeth took an interest in the making of jewels in London, in 1587 asking John Spilman, her household goldsmith, to employ English and foreign ("stranger") diamond cutters, ruby cutters, agate cutters, clockmakers, goldsmiths, and wire workers.[45] James VI and Anna of Denmark's agents in London bought a sapphire engraved with Elizabeth's portrait in 1599.[46] A lady in waiting, and keeper of her jewellery, Blanche Parry, made an inventory in 1587, now held by the British Library, listing 628 pieces, which passed into the custody of Mary Radcliffe.[47]
Elizabeth received gifts of jewels from courtiers at New Year, and from diplomats.[48]Lady Mary Sidney gave Elizabeth a pelican jewel as a New Year's Day gift in 1573,[49] possibly as a reproach for Elizabeth's perceived ingratitude for nursing her in 1562 when she had smallpox and Sybil Penn died. Elizabeth soon gave the pelican brooch to Sidney's sister, the Countess of Huntingdon.[50]Lady Stafford gave Elizabeth another gold pelican jewel in 1580, and two other pelican jewels appear in the inventories.[51]
In January 1585 Catherine Howard, Countess of Nottingham gave her "a jewel of gold being a dolphin fully garnished with sparks of ruby with a personage upon his back having a lute in his hand", a representation of the classical myth of Arion.[52]Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick gave her a jewel in the form of bay leaves with roses, a spider and a bee, in 1572. The Spanish ambassador, Antonio de Guarás, noted that in 1577 he gave Mary a jewel that was recognised to refer to Mary, Queen of Scots. It depicted Elizabeth enthroned with a queen in chains, and France and Spain submerged by Neptune.[53]
Elizabeth was given jewels during country house entertainments staged during her progresses.[54][55] At the Ryecote Entertainment,[56] the gifts represented the military activities of the sons of Sir Henry Norris.[57] At the Harefield Entertainment in August 1602 Elizabeth was presented with a diamond feather (or heart) and an anchor.[58] The two jewels were said to be worth £600 and £1000.[59] When Christopher Hatton was unable to join her on a progress, he gave her a jewel featuring a bagpipe, which she wore on her ruff.[60] This was an allusion to shepherds and sheep, Elizabeth's nickname for Hatton was "her mutton", as she herself explained to Sir Robert Cecil.[61]
The inventory has three sections of jewels, the first group has 77 items kept by Elizabeth's lady in waiting Mary Radcliffe, the second section lists 19 jewels kept by the Countess of Suffolk and transferred to Thomas Gorges, Master of the Wardrobe, to make the inventory, and the third section lists 32 jewels kept by Mary Radcliffe passed to Gorges. After the inventory was taken by the auditor Francis Gofton, Gorges returned the jewels to Radcliffe on 28 May 1603.[62] The entries have annotations in various hands which help to track the transfer of pieces to Anne of Denmark or their sale after the Union of the Crowns.[63] Some entries are given below, abridged and with modernised spelling:
[3] Item, small aglets of gold, 46 pairs. Delivered 30 January 1604 to "Mr Robert Jessi".[64] This may be the Scottish goldsmith Robert Jousie who was connected with King James' wardrobe.
[13] A jewel of gold like an Angel, the body mother of pearl, the wings garnished with sparks of diamonds and rubies, and two antiques like horses under it garnished with like sparks of rubies and diamonds. Delivered 30 January 1604.[65]
[4] A jewel of gold like a circle of Pansies, Daisies, and other flowers, garnished with sparks of diamonds and rubies, with a butterfly of mother of pearl and a crab holding the same.[66]
[6] A jewel of gold like a Pelican garnished with diamonds of sundry sorts.[67]
[11] A jewel of gold having two hands, one holding a sword, the other a trowel, both garnished with sparks of diamonds, and between the hands a garnishment of opal. This had been a New Year's Day gift in 1587.[68] The device is a well-known emblem for peace and appears in Geoffrey Whitney's Choice of Emblems (London, 1586).[69]
[27] A jewel of gold like a Daisy and small flowers about it garnished with sparks of diamonds and rubies with her Majesty's picture graven on a garnet, and a sprig of three branches garnished with sparks of rubies, a pearl at the top, and a small pendant of sparks of diamonds. A New Year's day gift in 1593.[70]
Elizabeth I, like Mary, Queen of Scots, bought jewellery in Paris. The diplomat Nicholas Throckmorton sent her a list of questions about prospective purchases in 1562, which give useful information about jewels worn in the 1560s and contemporary attitudes to purchasing and material literacy. Throckmorton discussed the borders and "billements" worn with hoods, noting that the length of a French style billement was different to those worn in England. There could be girdles and necklace chains in matching sets with the billements and borders. Some items were destined as gifts, and Throckmorton contrasted the cost of making, the "fashioning", with the weight of precious metal. Simple forms made by casting were much cheaper.[72] His questions for Elizabeth were:
How many borders, upper and nether, shall be bought?
What number shall be engraved and "sicelled" which is the most costly fashion, and how many cast in the mold and wrought slightly which will be better cheap?
Whether all the borders shall be enamelled, or some not?
To know the length of the said borders, because the fashion is different here to there in the length of the "billements"
Whether to every border there shall be a chain for the neck, and a girdle with a pendant and a vase, or at least to know how many chains and girdles with vases shall be provided.
How many chains shall be provided for men, to be given in reward, and of what value, which ought rather to be of more show than fashion, because the fashion, if it be costly will eat up the weight?
How many pomanders (as you term them) called here pommes of gold shall be provided, and whether there shall be any sweet paste put in them?
Whether any bracelets shall be provided, and how many pairs?
How many carcanets shall be provided?
This purchase of jewels and gold chains was first mooted for the time of the progress in the summer of 1561, for Elizabeth and the ladies of the court.[73] Later, the Parisian jewellery may have been intended to be diplomatic gifts at the "interview", the planned meeting between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth in England which never took place. The Earl of Pembroke became involved in buying the jewels and chains in Paris and there was some difficulty in obtaining credit from the Italian financier Guido Cavalcanti.[74] One French piece listed in the queen's inventory was "a chain of Paris work being white and tawny "bugle" slightly garnished with gold".[75]
William Cecil had previously written to Throckmorton in May 1561, before Mary had returned to Scotland from France, asking him to find a goldsmith in Paris to bring or send items for Elizabeth and her ladies to "be gay in this Court towards the progress".[76] Cecil wrote about a jewellery purchase connected to a visit by Elizabeth's suitor, Eric XIV of Sweden. Anything unsold in England would be custom free.[77]John Dymocke, who had been a soldier and a royal usher, had a licence to import jewels. He discussed patterns drawn on parchment with Kat Ashley and Elizabeth. Elizabeth was interested in a jewel with a large ruby and pearl pendant, and Dymocke claimed she jokingly said the King of Sweden would buy it for her. Dymock went to Sweden with a portrait painter. He gave Eric XIV a pair of perfumed gloves, and discussed jewels and Elizabeth's marriage plans, although he was not an accredited diplomat. There was a scandal and Kat Ashley and the chambererDorothy Bradbelt were banished from court for a time.[78]
A 15th or 16th-century coral branch with "serpent's tongues" intended to test for poison, (Vienna, Treasury of the German Order)
Elizabeth had a quantity of old jewels from the Tower of London appraised for sale in October 1600 by the goldsmiths Hugh Kayle, John Spilman, and Leonard Bushe. The consignment included a number of unmounted precious stones and counterfeit imitations including "Dutch agates", gold rings and buttons set with stones and cameos, pearls, gold chains, beads, billements for headdresses, seven clocks, and scrap "broken" gold and silver. Some of the pearls had been sewn on a gown of Elizabeth, or perhaps a gown of Mary I of England.[79]
The goldsmiths William Herrick and John Spilman reset a number of Elizabeth's gems on a gold circlet or coronet which Anne of Denmark wore to her English coronation on 25 July 1603.[80] On 12 January 1604 Herrick and Spilman were asked to assess and make an inventory of jewels that had belonged to Queen Elizabeth. King James had already given many pieces to the queen, Princess Elizabeth, and Arbella Stuart and others. Some of the remaining jewels had been transferred from the keeping of Mary Radcliffe to the Countess of Suffolk.[81] Several pieces were sold or exchanged with the goldsmith and financier Peter Vanlore. A list of jewels in the possession of Anne of Denmark in 1606 was published by Diana Scarisbrick, and includes several items formerly in Elizabeth's collection.[82]
In December 1607, King James retrieved some of Elizabeth's jewels from the Jewel House and sent them to William Herrick and John Spilman to be refurbished. He gave his wife Anne of Denmark a cup made of unicorn's horn with a gold cover (believed to guard against poison) set with diamonds and pearls, a gold jug or ewer, a salt with a branch set with sapphires and serpent's tongues (really fossilized shark teeth, also a safeguard against poisoning), and a crystal chess board with topaz and crystal pieces.[83] Later in the reign of James other lists of jewels were made, including those annexed to the crown in 1606, and those sent to Spain in 1623 at the time of the Spanish Match. These were printed in Thomas Rymer's Foedera.
^Jack Ogden, Diamonds: An Early History of the King of Gems (Yale, 2018), p. 187: See TNA SP 12/202 f.58.
^Michael Pearce, 'Anna of Denmark: Fashioning a Danish Court in Scotland', The Court Historian, 24:2 (2019) p. 141.
^Diana Scarisbrick, Tudor and Jacobean Jewellery (London, 1995), p. 19: British Library Royal MS Appendix 68, 'A BOOKE of soche jewells and other parcells as are deliuered to the charge and custodie of Mistris Mary Radclyffe'.
^John Nevinson, 'New Year's Gifts to Queen Elizabeth I, 1584', Costume, 9:1 (January 1975), pp. 27-31.
^Kate McClune, 'New Year and the Giving of Advice at the Stewart Court', Steven J. Reid, Rethinking the Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland (Boydell, 2024), 206: Catherine Howey Stearn, 'Lady Mary Sidney's 1573 gift to Elizabeth I', Sidney Journal, 30:2 (2012), 109–127.
^Jane Ashelford, Dress in the Age of Elizabeth (London, 1988), p. 100.
^Natasha Awais-Dean, 'Jewellery', Erin Griffey, Early Modern Court Culture, (Routledge, 2022), 371: Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Simancas, vol. 2 (London, 1894), pp. 289-90 no. 231: Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift-exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2014), pp. 99-100: Janet Arnold, 'Sweet England's Jewels', Anna Somers Cocks, Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500–1630 (London: 1980), 39.
^Felicity Heal, 'Giving and Receiving on Royal Progress', Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, Sarah Knight, The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford, 2007), pp. 46-63.
^Henry Ellis, Original Letters, series 2 vol. 3 (London, 1827), p. 192.
^Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, The Elizabethan Country House Entertainment (Cambridge, 2016), p. 79: Mark Netzloff, Agents Beyond the State: The Writings of English Travelers, Soldiers, and Diplomats in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2020), p. 143.
^Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1791), pp. 132-3.
^Gabriel Heaton, Writing and Reading Royal Entertainments: From George Gascoigne to Ben Jonson (Oxford, 2010), p. 105.
^John Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (London, 2016).
^Paul E. J. Hammer, 'Letters from Cecil to Hatton', Religion, Politics and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2003), p. 238.
^Janet Arnold, 'Sweet England's Jewels', Anna Somers Cocks, Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500-1630 (London: 1980), pp. 37-8.
^HMC Laing Manuscripts at the University of Edinburgh, vol. 1 (London, 1914), p. 95: Laing II.525 f1r.
^Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers James I: 1603-1610 (London, 1857), p. 66 citing TNA SP14/6/9.
^Diana Scarisbrick, 'Anne of Denmark's Jewellery Inventory', Archaeologia, vol. CIX (1991), pp. 193–237. The manuscript is kept by the National Library of Scotland.
^Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer During the Reign of James I (London, 1836), pp. 305-6.
