ENGLAND, SIXTEENTH CENTURY
(HENRY VIII—ELIZABETH—MARY STUART)

WITH the accession of Henry VIII a new period opens in the history of the jeweller's art. The spirit of the revival, which had previously affected only the Court, began to spread rapidly throughout the community, under the influence of the example set by the great jewellers of Italy. The King inherited an enormous treasury, and the display of jewellery on his own person and on that of his Court was prodigious. We are indebted to the Venetian ambassador, Giustinian, for the following graphic description of the King's personal adornment a year or two after his accession—

"He wore a cap of crimson velvet, in the French fashion, and the brim was looped up all round with lacets and gold enamelled tags.... Very close round his neck he had a gold collar, from which there hung a rough-cut diamond, the size of the largest walnut I ever saw, and to this was suspended a most beautiful and very large round pearl. His mantle was of purple velvet lined with white satin, the sleeves open, with a train more than four Venetian yards long. This mantle was girt in front like a gown, with a thick gold cord, from which there hung large golden acorns like those suspended from a cardinal's hat; over this mantle was a very handsome gold collar, with a pendent St. George entirely of diamonds. Beneath the mantle he wore a pouch of cloth of gold, which covered a dagger; and his fingers were one mass of jewelled rings."[130]

Many a lively and detailed picture has been left us by the chronicler and lawyer, Edward Hall, of the equipage and adornment of Henry VIII on his coronation and at the court entertainments, and particularly of the famous meeting of the Cloth of Gold, where, in their insane desire to outshine each other, the English and French nobles entered into boundless extravagance in dress, and so loaded themselves with jewellery, that, in the words of Du Bellay, "they carried the price of woodland, water-mill, and pasture on their backs." Many are the elaborate descriptions of entertainments and pageants by the chroniclers Leland, Holinshed, and Stowe, in which rich jewellery figures; but Hall's Chronicle, the most minute in its accounts of contemporary fashions, teems with references to "Gold Smithe's woorke" and to the wealth of precious stones broidered on the garments. The passion for personal ornaments ran such riot that even foreign critics inveighed against Englishmen for their extravagance.

This love of jewellery was largely due to foreign fashions, which hitherto discountenanced, were growing popular at Court, in consequence of the increasing communication with the Continent. From the commencement of Henry's reign merchants and craftsmen from abroad swarmed in numbers into London, and Hall, who shared the characteristic English antipathy to all things foreign, gives an instance of an invasion by these alien artificers. It was on the occasion of a magnificent embassy from France in 1518 in connection with the betrothal of the Princess Mary to the Dauphin that there came, he says, "a great number of rascals and pedlars and jewellers, and brought over divers merchantize uncustomed, all under the color of trussery [baggage] of the ambassadors." In accordance with the system of his predecessors in pursuit of their own personal interests, Henry VIII extended his protection to the foreigner, while the example of the French Court, the rivalry with Francis I, and the foreign proclivities of Wolsey and Cromwell induced him to patronise extensively foreign jewellers and merchants in precious stones. Occasionally Henry was a sufferer in his transactions with sharp Italian dealers; and Cellini relates a story of how a Milanese jeweller counterfeited an emerald so cleverly that he managed to palm off the same for a genuine stone on the sovereign of "those beasts of Englishmen," as he elsewhere terms them, for 9000 golden scudi. And all this happened, because the purchaser—who was no less a person than the King of England—put rather more faith in the jeweller than he ought to have done. The fraud was not found out till several years after.

A considerable number of the foreign craftsmen patronised by the King were Italians; but in jewellery the French influence seems to have predominated—judging by the frequent mention of jewels of "Paris work," and by the fact that the majority of the jewellers mentioned in the "King's Book of Payments,"[131] bear French names. Among those of foreign extraction the following were the most prominent: Robert Amadas, John Cryspyn, Allart Ploumyer, Jehan Lange, Cornelius Hays, Baptist Leman, John Cavalcant, John Baptista de Consolavera, Guillim Honyson, Alexander of Brussels, John of Utrecht, and John (Hans) of Antwerp. The mention, however, of such names as John Angell, Morgan Fenwolf (a Welshman), John Freeman, John Twiselton, Thomas Exmewe, Nicolas Worley, John Monday, and William Davy indicates the English nationality of several of the royal jewellers—though it is well to remember the common tendency of the time to Anglicise foreign names.

Throughout the first half of his reign Henry placed huge orders in the hands of these craftsmen, but advancing years and an exhausted treasury appear to have somewhat diminished his expenditure on personal ornaments. Some interesting correspondence between the above-mentioned Jehan Lange, a jeweller of Paris, and certain of his native townsmen has been preserved.[132] "The King," he writes in 1537, referring to certain jewelled garments he had submitted to His Majesty, "was very glad to see such riches. He said he was too old to wear such things, but he has offered 4000 cr." To Allart Ploumyer he writes: "The King always makes good cheer, but he has grown cold, and we have not quite sold everything; for the gentlemen have spent their money in the war." "I find the King," he says in another place, "disinclined to buy, for he has told me he has no more money, and it has cost him a great deal to make war."

In spite of Lange's complaints, it was only just before his death that Henry VIII acquired a famous and magnificent historical jewel, the great pendant of Charles the Bold, last Duke of Burgundy.[133] In its centre was set the wonderful diamond—a deep pyramid five-eighths of an inch square at the base—believed to be the first on which Louis de Berghem tried his newly invented method of cutting. Around it were set three balas rubies, styled from their equality in size and weight the "Three Brothers," which, owing to their fine quality, were set open, without the foil with which stones were then usually backed. Between these were four enormous pearls (Pl. XXV, 3). According to the universal custom of his day, the Duke, accompanied by all his treasure when campaigning, carried this jewel with him, partly to have it constantly under his personal supervision, and partly because of the magic properties then attributed to precious stones. Captured by a common soldier from his tent after his memorable defeat at the battle of Granson in 1475, the pendant came into the possession of the magistrates of Berne, and from them was purchased by Jacob Fugger, of the opulent merchant family of Augsburg, whose son, after keeping it for several years, disposed of it to Henry VIII. Fifty years later the jewel was still intact, and in James I's inventory of the crown jewels in 1603, it is thus described:[134] "A fayre Flower,[135] with three greate ballaces, in the myddest a greate pointed dyamonde, and three greate perles fixed, with a fayre greate perle pendaunte, called the Brethren." The last we hear of this famous jewel is in 1623, when it is described in the same words in the list of jewels removed from the Tower by James I, and handed over to his jeweller Heriot to be refashioned for the use of Charles and Buckingham on their visit to Spain. That it was then remounted is evident from the King's letter to his son, in which he says: "I send for your wearing the Three Brethren, that you knowe full well, but newlie sette."

About the year 1536 the great painter Hans Holbein, who had come to England several years previously, entered into the service of Henry VIII, and it was between that date and his death in 1543 that he executed those masterpieces of design for jewellery which will ever stand as a landmark in the history of the subject. There is no evidence to show that Holbein himself worked in the precious metals. But brought up under similar influences as had moulded the great Italian artists of the Renaissance, Ghiberti, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, Francia, and Ghirlandaio, who combined the arts of painting, architecture, and sculpture with the jeweller's craft, he had been well grounded in the limitations of his materials, and knew how far the draughtsman could display his skill in this direction.

The most important of Holbein's designs for jewellery are preserved in the British Museum, to which they were bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane in 1753. The collection, originally mounted in a quarto volume, termed Holbein's London Sketch-book, is now remounted and systematically arranged. The designs, comprising 179 separate items, are for the most part drawn with a pen with black ink, and then some slight touches of brown put in for the shadows. Several of the designs have the ground blackened, the ornaments being left in white. Some of the jewels, entirely coloured and often touched up with gold, are designed for enamelling in high relief; some are perhaps designed for execution in niello, though it is not improbable that these were intended to be ornamented with black champlevÉ enamel. The most attractive are the patterns for jewels enriched with precious stones and enamels, the majority of which were for neck pendants intended to hang from a chain, ribbon, or silken cord, itself sometimes shown in the drawing (Pl. XXVI).

The design of a few of these pendants is based upon the prevailing custom of wearing initials of the name either in embroidery or in pure gold attached to the garments. Some curious instances of this fashion are recorded by Hall, particularly in his graphic account of what took place at a masque given by Henry VIII at his palace at Westminster. Upon the King's invitation to divide the rich garments of the maskers sewn with letters of "fine and massy gold in bullyon as thicke as they might be," which generally went as largess to the ladies, a rabble of citizens, who were allowed to look on, broke in, and "ranne to the Kyng and stripped hym into his hosen and dublet, and all his compaignions in like wyse. Syr Thomas Knevet stode on a stage, and for all his defence he lost his apparell. The ladies like wyse were spoyled, wherfore the Kynges garde came sodenly, and put the people backe, or els it was supposed more inconvenience had ensued." So pure was the gold of which these letters were composed that it is recorded subsequently that a "shipeman of London who caught certayn letters sould them to a goldsmyth for £3. 14. 8"—quite a considerable sum in those days.

In the same way jewelled initials were also frequently worn in the form of pendants and a jewelled B can be seen hanging from the neck of Anne Boleyn in her portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Holbein's drawings contain several beautiful instances of this type of design, generally completed with three pendent pearls. One of them has a monogram of the initials R and E in chased and engraved gold set at the four corners with two rubies, an emerald, and a diamond. Another has the letters H and I (probably for Henry and Jane Seymour) with an emerald in the centre; and a somewhat similar jewel, formed of the sacred monogram, is worn by Jane Seymour in her portrait by Holbein at Vienna.

The designs for the larger pendants, mostly circular or lozenge-shaped, are set with sapphires, diamonds, rubies, and pearls, and terminate with large pear-shaped pearls. The spaces between the stones are filled with chased or enamelled arrangements of scroll or leaf work.

The smaller jewels, which might also have been worn as enseignes or badges on the hat, or as brooches, are of open goldwork with leaf or ribbon ornament set with stones and pearls. They include a very beautiful design of a half-length figure of a lady in the costume of the period holding between her hands a large stone, upon which is the inscription well laydi well (Pl. XXVI, 9). The fifteenth-century traditions seem to have influenced Holbein in the design of this jewel, which at once calls to mind the Flemish-Burgundian brooches (an example of which, in the British Museum, has already been mentioned) ornamented with similar figures, full-faced, and holding a large stone before them.

The jewels actually executed from these designs were probably the work of Hans of Antwerp, known as John Anwarpe.[136] He was a friend of Holbein, and one of the witnesses of his will; and his portrait, painted by Holbein, is now at Windsor. Hans of Antwerp appears to have settled in London about 1514, having perhaps been induced to do so by Thomas Cromwell, who in early life resided for a time in Antwerp as secretary to the English merchants there. It was presumably Cromwell who, as "Master of the King's Jewel House," was instrumental in procuring for him the post of the King's goldsmith. His name occurs several times in Cromwell's accounts, and it was in accordance with the latter's "ryght hartye commendations" that he obtained the freedom of the Goldsmiths' Company of London. The chief duty of the King's goldsmith was to supply the New Year's gifts (estrennes), so popular at that time. These usually took the form of personal ornaments, and it seems likely that Holbein's famous sketches were specially designed for this purpose.

ELIZABETH—MARY STUART

However remarkable the Court of Henry VIII was for its profusion of jewellery, that of Queen Elizabeth, who inherited the Tudor love for display, was still more extravagant. Throughout her reign—a period marked also upon the Continent for its prolific production of jewellery—the fashion set by the jewel-loving Queen for a superabundance of finery maintained its sway. The country suddenly becoming wealthy, was tempted, like one not born to riches, to use the whole in outward show, and this display was rendered comparatively easy by the influx of gold and precious stones after the Spanish conquests in America.

Numerous portraits of courtiers and court ladies afford ample evidence of the prevailing fashions in jewellery, while the portraits of the Queen herself, all overburdened with ornaments, are too well known to need detailed description.[137] "There is not a single portrait of her," says Walpole, "that one can call beautiful. The profusion of ornaments with which they are loaded are marks of her continual fondness for dress, while they entirely exclude all grace, and leave no more room for a painter's genius than if he had been employed to copy an Indian idol, totally composed of hands and necklaces. A pale Roman nose, a head of hair loaded with crowns and powdered with diamonds, a vast ruff, a vaster fardingale, a bushel of pearls, are features by which every body knows at once the pictures of Queen Elizabeth."

An excellent description of the jewellery of Elizabeth towards the close of her brilliant reign is given by Paul Hentzner, who visited England in 1598: "The Queen had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore false hair and that red; upon her head she had a small crown; her bosom was uncovered, and she had on a necklace of exceedingly fine jewels. She was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads; her train was very long. Instead of a chain, she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." To a courtier who knelt to her, "after pulling off her glove, she gave her right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels."

The best of all representations of that "bright occidental Star" is her faded waxwork effigy, still to be seen in Westminster Abbey—no other than the one which on the 28th of April, 1603, was carried on her coffin to the Abbey. It shows the veritable passion Elizabeth possessed for pearls. Her stomacher is encrusted with large Roman pearls, while strings of pearls hang round her throat and neck. Her earrings are circular pearl and ruby medallions, with huge pear-shaped pearl pendants.

Full of detail are the records of costly "juelles" that have come down to us, particularly in the list, preserved in the British Museum,[138] of the New Year's gifts presented to the Queen, from the fourteenth to the thirty-sixth year of her reign. The practice of exchanging presents on New Year's Day attained extraordinary proportions at the Court of Elizabeth, and was supplemented by birthday presents, which, as Her Majesty's weakness for jewellery was well known, took for the most part the form of personal ornaments of every kind. The very accurate accounts that were kept by the officers of the Queen's wardrobe of every item in her enormous store of jewellery is witnessed by a number of curious entries in her wardrobe-book of losses of jewellery sustained by Her Majesty.[139]

In addition to numerous inventories and wills full of information concerning the jewellery of the period, we have at our service, as in Roman times, the works of social satirists, such as The Anatomie of Abuses, by Philip Stubbes (1583), and Bishop Hall's poetical satires of 1597, to which we are indebted for many valuable details. In accepting these it is well to bear in mind the common tendency of every age to ridicule its own fashions; yet, in spite of Puritan narrowness, and the exaggerated indignation of the satirist, it is manifest that extraordinary luxury and extravagance in dress and jewellery were prevalent not only at Court, but among all classes of the community.

Of greater importance, however, than the information to be gleaned from pictorial and literary sources is that derived from the actual jewels themselves, a considerable number of which, through all the changes and chances of more than three centuries, have been handed down still practically intact, and retaining the chief feature of their decoration—their exquisite enamel. Shakespeare, while appreciating the charm of its harmonious combination of colours, recognised, it appears, the delicacy of this beautiful medium, when in the Comedy of Errors he makes Adriana say:—

The New Learning, which made itself felt in England during the reign of Henry VII, began at this time to exercise a direct influence on the choice of the designs of jewels and on the arrangement of their ornamentation. As witnesses of the intellectual revival, they often took emblematic forms, bearing in exquisite enamel-work fancy mottoes and devices, generally obscure in their interpretation, and intended to express the sentiments of their wearers, or those of donors, regarding the presumed state of mind of their recipients.

The passion for these reached its height in the golden days of Good Queen Bess, when it became the fashion for the bejewelled gallants who fluttered like a swarm of glittering insects around her to display their wit and ingenuity in devising jewelled emblems as fit presents to the Virgin Queen. Thus in the list of costly articles of jewellery offered to Elizabeth, we meet with the present, made in Christmas week 1581, by some courtiers disguised as maskers, of a jewel in the form of "a flower of golde, garnished with sparcks of diamonds, rubyes, and ophales, with an agathe of her Majestis phisnamy and a perle pendante, with devices painted in it." The love for strange devices and enigmatical mottoes was fostered by the spirit of an age that witnessed the production of Lyly's Euphues and Spenser's Faerie Queene; while Elizabeth's colossal vanity prompted the dedication to her of highly laudatory mottoes, like the inscription on a jewel belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan: hei mihi quod tanto virtus perfusa decore non habet eternos inviolata dies. Few of the jewels of this stirring period display a more charming symbolism than those produced after the defeat and destruction of the Spanish Armada, whereon England is figured as an ark floating securely and tranquilly on a troubled sea, surrounded by the motto, saevas tranquilla per undas. The most remarkable of these Armada jewels is Mr. Pierpont Morgan's, just mentioned, and another of the same class in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum, Milan.

A jewel more characteristic of the period than any other, and an historical relic of singular interest, is that chef d'oeuvre of inventive genius—the Lennox or Darnley jewel, the property of His Majesty the King. It is covered inside and out with the most elaborate symbolism, and contains altogether no less than twenty-eight emblems and six mottoes (Pl. XXVIII, 4). Internal evidence proves this remarkable jewel to have been made by order of Lady Margaret Douglas, mother of Henry Darnley, in memory of her husband, Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, who was killed in 1571.

Among many other examples of Elizabethan jewellery, there stand out above the rest a certain number to which, besides their high artistic excellence, is attached the additional interest of historical associations. To this class belong the following important jewels: the Berkeley heirlooms, belonging to Lord Fitzhardinge; the Drake jewels, the property of Sir Francis Fuller-Eliott-Drake; the Wild Jewel (Miss Wild); the Barbor Jewel (Victoria and Albert Museum); and the Phoenix Jewel (Sloane Collection, British Museum). Public and private collections likewise contain a considerable number of enamelled miniature cases furnished with loops for suspension, and cameos set with jewelled and enamelled mountings of the period.

The Berkeley heirlooms, among which is the Anglo-Saxon ring already mentioned, include the Hunsdon Onyx, the Drake pendant in form of a ship, Edward VI's Prayer Book, and a crystal armlet. These exquisite jewels, according to tradition, were presented by Queen Elizabeth to her cousin Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, who died in 1596. They then passed to his son George, the second Baron Hunsdon, who so highly valued them, that he bequeathed them on his death, in 1603, to his wife, and afterwards to his only daughter Elizabeth, with strict injunctions to transmit the same to her posterity, to be preserved (according to the actual terms of his will) "Soe longe as the conscience of my heires shall have grace and honestie to perform my will, for that I esteeme them right jeweles, and monumentes worthie to be kept for theire beautie, rareness, and that for monie they are not to be matched, nor the like yet knowen to be founde in this realme." The jewels mentioned, which came into the Berkeley family through the marriage of the above-named Elizabeth Carey with Lord Berkeley, are still preserved at Berkeley Castle.

Further reference to these and other remarkable Elizabethan jewels will be given when the special species of ornaments to which they belong is being dealt with. There is one jewel of this date, however, which, though it no longer exists, is of particular interest from the fact that it is specially mentioned in the famous inventory of Charles I's collection drawn up by Abraham Van der Doort in 1639.[140] This golden jewel, we learn, was round, and hung with a small pendent pearl; one side was enamelled with a representation of the battle of Bosworth Field, and the other with the red and white roses of Lancaster and York upon a green ground. Within were four miniatures, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Queen Mary. The miniatures are still preserved at Windsor Castle, but shorn of their enamelled case, which has long since disappeared. The jewel was bought by the King, so Van der Doort tells us, from "young Hilliard," son of the famous miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, who, besides painting the miniatures, probably also executed the enamel-work upon the jewel itself. Hilliard, like the artists of the Renaissance already cited, had been brought up as a goldsmith and jeweller, and, as we see by the inscription which he placed round his own portrait, held an appointment as goldsmith at Elizabeth's Court; while his knowledge and love of jewellery are admirably displayed in his miniatures, in which every jewel is painted with faultless accuracy and care.

The mention of Hilliard introduces to our notice the other creators of the beautiful jewellery of the period. English work continued to be influenced by the Continent; and engraved designs for jewellery by the Frenchmen Ducerceau and Woeiriot, and by the eminent goldsmith and engraver Theodor de Bry, who himself worked in London in 1587 and the two following years, must have been well known and imitated in England. In spite of this, however, it would appear that Englishmen were no longer actually dependent for their jewellery upon foreigners. The latter ceased to hold the virtual monopoly they had once enjoyed; and their place was taken by a number of native craftsmen. Among these, the following were the most prominent: Dericke Anthony, Affabel Partridge, Peter Trender, and Nicolas Herrick—elder brother of William Herrick, James I's jeweller, and father of Robert Herrick the poet. During the latter years of her reign Hugh Kayle and his partner Sir Richard Martin supplied the Queen with jewels as New Year's gifts and presents to ambassadors amounting to upwards of £12,000.

Enough has been said to demonstrate that the reign of Elizabeth, fertile in great events, was productive of much important jewellery, whose charm, excellence, and historic interest have, up to the present, by no means received the attention they deserve. And it may be stated, without prejudice, that jewels of the period which bear a clear stamp of English origin compare favourably, nay even advantageously, with the productions of contemporary jewellers of the Continent.

The jewels of the unhappy Mary Stuart form a subject of peculiar interest. Like her jealous rival Queen Elizabeth, Mary was most lavish in her display of jewellery. In addition to the crown jewels she had a profusion of personal ornaments, her own private property. Her inventories, published by the Bannatyne Club (1863), furnish many a vivid description of the splendid objects which, during the course of her turbulent life, she bestowed on her friends or lost under stress of circumstances. They have further acquired quite an historical celebrity "from the frequency with which they were claimed by their unfortunate mistress in her appeals for mercy and justice during her long captivity, and the rapacity with which her royal jailer and other enemies sought or retained possession of these glittering spoils."

It is impossible here to enter into details respecting the many beautiful things recorded in her inventories, or the strange vicissitudes that they underwent. Their dispersal would seem to have begun with her infatuated passion for Bothwell. The number of jewels she lavished on him when they parted on Carberry Hill, those she distributed as personal gifts, and others that served in the various emergencies in which the unfortunate Queen found herself, afford some idea of the extraordinary quantity of precious articles in her possession. A few of Mary's actual jewels, such as the Duke of Norfolk's rosary and jewelled necklace, the Duke of Portland's jewelled cameo, and the Penicuik jewel, have been preserved to our own day. Along with the historical documents must rank the Leven and Melville portrait—the brilliant centre-piece of Mr. Andrew Lang's Portraits and Jewels of Mary Stuart. As far as jewellery in general is concerned, this portrait may be said to merit greater consideration than any picture of its own or of other times, in that it displays a complete parure of contemporary jewellery, each item of which is entered and described in detail in the personal inventories of the individual it represents.