Henry VIII by Alison Weir Page A

goblets with their names engraved around the borders, a gold salt cellar engraved with H and K and enamelled with red roses, and a gold basin enamelled with red and white roses, which had been “given to the King by the Queen.” 49 Anne Boleyn’s falcon perches atop the antique-style Boleyn Cup, which bears the London hallmark of 1535–1536. 50
    Of all his plate, Henry particularly prized his clocks, which were luxury items available only to the very affluent. His inventory lists seventeen standing clocks with chimes and “alarums,” which “strike the quarter and half of an hour”; two were “fashioned like books” (Katherine of Aragon also owned a clock set in a gold enamelled book), while another was set in crystal and adorned with rubies and diamonds. 51 He also had “a hanging clock closed in glass with plummets [weights] of lead and metal,” clocks that charted “how the sea doth ebb and flow” or showed “all the days of the year with the planets, with three moving dials,” clocks of antique work or adorned with roses or pomegranates, and a striking clock “like a heart.” One clock stood on a carved pillar in the privy chamber at Hampton Court, 52 others on cupboards, buffets, or wall-mounted brackets. The King paid a specialist clock technician 40s a year to maintain all these clocks. Only one survives, a Renaissance-style, gilt-metal bracket clock in the Royal Library at Windsor, which has weights engraved with the initials and mottoes of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn—
“Dieu et mon droit”
and “The most happy”—surrounded by lovers’ knots. This clock may have been a wedding gift from Henry to Anne. A facsimile is at Hever Castle.
    Other items in the royal chambers were not nearly as valuable or as interesting. Early Tudor tables were often basic in design. Sometimes the table on the hall dais was handsomely carved and a permanent fixture, as at the More; 53 such a table might be more than twenty feet long. Most tables, however, were simply boards set on trestles; they could be taken down after a meal. Heavy fringed tablecloths covered tables in both the royal apartments and the household offices. 54
    Henry VIII’s beautifully fashioned portable writing desk survives. 55 It is of stained walnut and gilded leather painted with the arms of the King and Katherine of Aragon supported by putti with trumpets, figures of Venus and Mars, Renaissance medallions, and antique motifs. Lined with velvet, it has a pull-down flap at the front, which is released when the lid is lifted, revealing three drawers; handles are at the sides.
    Many items, notably clothes and linen, were stored in oak chests, which were sometimes carved with linenfold panels, foliage, or figures. Painted and gilded chests were imported by the wealthy from Flanders or Italy. Master Green, the King’s “coffer-maker,” regularly supplied him with chests with drawers, covered with fabric or leather and provided with leather travelling cases. 56
    Henry VIII, a vain man, was well-provided with “glasses to look in.” These were of polished steel; glass mirrors were unknown. One had “purple velvet and a passement of Venice gold set square about the same.” 57 Another, ordered in 1530, was full length. 58 The King’s mirrors were hung on the walls alongside his paintings and maps. Four were displayed in the long gallery at Hampton Court, and fourteen at Whitehall. 59
    Also on display were three rare “pots of earth, painted, called porcelain,” 60 which must have come from Venice, where porcelain had been manufactured since about 1470. Thirty-eight items of glass were on show in the King’s lower study at Greenwich alone. 61
    Henry’s was an itinerant court, as royal courts had been throughout the Middle Ages. The King removed on average around thirty times annually, less in his later years. In the winter he