Does the CHEQUERS’ RING show a portrait of ANNE BOLEYN AND ELIZABETH I? Elizabeth I’s jewellery

what you see here is supposedly one of the few pieces of Elizabeth the First's jewelry collection to have survived the centuries and made it to us called the checkers ring it opens up to show an Undisputed portrait of the queen on one side and a picture of a woman long believed to be her mother and Berlin on the other is this really arm though this is history calling where I bring you new videos every week on all aspects of the past and in today's much request a topic I'll take you through the Rings provenance and the debates around who the second sitter is for not everyone is convinced it's Henry VIII's second wife and several other theories as to this lady's identity have been put forward [Music] foreign [Music] band is made of mother of pearl inlaid with rubies set in Gold there is a capital letter E picked out in diamonds on the top of the Ring called the basil and although you can only just see it there is also a capital R in blue enamel underneath this e together these letters stand for Elizabeth Regina meaning Queen Elizabeth next to them on the right hand side of the ring is a pearl on the underside we see a brightly colored and beautifully rendered Crest depicting a Phoenix rising out of a flaming Crown the possible meanings of this Crest are very important in debating how the ring came to be in Elizabeth's possession but we'll return to them in a few minutes the ring is a locket and when opened it reveals two absolutely tiny enamel portraits the whole ring is only 175 millimeters wide each one showing a woman the one on the bottom is undoubtedly a profile view of Elizabeth the first dressed in the Fashions of the 1570s complete with rough the image of her here resembles other paintings done at around that time particularly one called The Phoenix portrait and so the ring has been tentatively dated to Circa 1575. the portrait on top shows a woman wearing a black dress and French Hood in the fashion of the 1530s she has an oval-shaped face with high cheekbones is facing forwards and is wearing a necklace with what looks like a huge diamond pendant the ring is currently in the possession of the checkers trust which is where it gets its name from and is usually kept at the British prime minister's country estate also named Checkers its provenance is a little murky though the estate and eventually the ring were gifted to this trust by their previous owner vikantly of faram he purchased the ring at auction in 1919 from the descendants of Scottish nobleman Alexander first Earl of whom who lived between 1566 and 1619. whom served King James VI and The Story Goes and it's important to realize that a story is all it is that James gave the ring to him sometime between taking the English Throne as James the first in 1603 at which point he would have inherited Elizabeth's jewels and Holmes death 16 years later this would certainly help to explain how the ring survived the ravages of the post-civil war period when the parliamentarians under Oliver cromwell's rule broke up and sold the Royal collection of art jewelry and Furniture among other things but there are no records of the ring in any of Queen Elizabeth's jewelry inventories and so despite the fact that I personally think it most likely did belong to her given the amount of Elizabethan symbolism on it and the expense involved in creating such an item there is not actually any hard proof of this there is a story that the checkers ring was taken off Elizabeth the first hand just after her death and Spirited Away to Scotland by her second cousin Robert Carey to be used as proof when he met with the Scottish King that Elizabeth was truly dead and James was now King of England in fact although Kerry himself wrote that he presented the king with a blue ring to prove that he was telling the truth about the Queen's demise which suggests that it was indeed one of Elizabeth's prized possessions there is no evidence that it was the checkers ring and the description of it as blue does not match this mother-of-pearl Ruby gold and white diamond ring what we have here is yet more false information about the tutors given legs by pseudo-historians and the internet but not supported by any primary source now we come to the identity of the second sitter in the portraits and there are numerous reasons why she is so often called Anberlin first and foremost she is an obvious candidate for a sitter to be paired up with a portrait of Elizabeth especially in such an intimate and private object as a locket ring most people would not have known what was inside this piece of jewelry assuming they knew it opened it all and such a Memento of Anne therefore makes sense when we consider that Elizabeth was famously tight-lipped about the scandalous and long dead mother whom she had barely known probably in my opinion because she knew that drawing attention to the dubious nature of her parents marriage and her own weak claims to legitimacy would do her new good see my video on whether Henry and Anne were really married and what Elizabeth's legitimacy status was for more details on that topic the second factor to consider is that this woman looks like Anne while it is true that the only contemporary image we have of her is a damaged portrait metal both images show the same oval face with high cheekbones this miniature also strongly resembles the letter B pattern portrait of Anne so named because she is wearing her famous B for Berlin necklace in them which are assumed to be copies of a lost original in all cases the women wear black square neck dresses and French hoods and are turned slightly to their right the lady in the miniature even appears to have brown eyes like ants my video on the B necklace will teach you more about that item's history and is linked on screen and below for you the assumption that the miniature is a copy of a lost portrait of Anne is further supported by the construction of the hood this woman is wearing aside from the fact that it is a French design which Anne famously like to wear having spent much of her youth at the French Court the length of the lapets on the sides the tips of which are about level with or even a little lower than her mouth did this lady to the 1530s as the pet length only got shorter with time look back to images of Catherine of Aragon and Elizabeth of York for instance and you can see how much longer their lapets were indeed as we'll see in a minute the lapet length alone all but rules out several other candidates finally let's talk about the hair one of the most commonly cited reasons for this not being on is that the woman here is supposedly blonde and Anne was famously a brunette I've always found it strange that anyone would say such a thing however when even a fairly cursory glance at the Ring's portrait shows you right away that it isn't true these tiny portraits are enamel remember and you can clearly see that someone said enamel has worn off the hair exposing the gold medal which it is backed onto underneath this woman is not meant to be blonde as the very obvious streaks of brown enamel which remain on her hair show she's a brunette just like Anne the fact that we're looking at enamel damage here is further hammered whom when we consider that we can see such damage on other areas of the miniature too for instance our lady in the hood is backed onto pink but some of that color has become chipped also exposing a brown color underneath possibly some of the mother of pearl that the enamel and gold backing is resting on also am I the only one thinking mother of pearl for a picture of her mother that might be a bit of a stretch I know still with such a wealth of evidence supporting an identification of Anne who else has even been suggested as a possible sitter here before I answer that question if you're enjoying this content please give it a thumbs up and to get more history delivered straight to you without having to remember to constantly pop back and check my channel hit the Subscribe button beneath this video and switch on all notifications so that YouTube automatically notifies you every time I upload you can also find links to my social media and patreon sites below where I'd be delighted to have you join me as well and where I share additional history calling perks including behind the scenes information and early access to ad-free versions of my videos historian Susan James whose work I generally like very much by the way even though I'm going to disagree with her here has claimed that the woman might be Catherine Parr Elizabeth's final stepmother she cites the close relationship the pair had during Elizabeth's Youth and says the woman in the ring has red gold hair like Catherine now as we've just established the woman was a brunette but I admit that this in itself doesn't reluct Catherine whose hair color is open to dispute her portraits do indeed suggest Chestnut or auburn hair which would be a close enough match to the lady in the ring however her corpse was disinterred multiple times in the late 18th and 19th centuries I'll leave my video on that topic link for you and she was fine to be a blonde her badge whilst Queen also shows a woman with blonde hair though it can't necessarily be taken to literally represent Catherine herself in essence you can argue the hair color any way you want what is not open to debate though is that the hood is all wrong for a woman who was Queen in the 1540s as by that time lapets only reached the level of the cheekbones and the Queen of England certainly wouldn't be seen in a hood 10 years out of date let alone be painted in it because remember this enamel must be a copy of a pre-existing portrait another piece of evidence listed by James is the Phoenix on the back of the Ring which was a symbol of the Seymour family and which you can see here on the badge of Henry VII's third wife Jean Seymour Catherine parr's final husband was jian's brother Thomas and so The Dowager Queen could indeed have been associated with the Phoenix badge through him however the presence of this mythical bird is open to other interpretations too Elizabeth herself frequently used it as a symbol that's why there's a painting of her known as the Phoenix painting for instance and if we accept the second woman in the ring is an it can also be read as a reference to her surviving the fall of her mother and Rising Like a Phoenix From the Ashes or crime as the case may be to become monarch it might also be an indication of who gave her the ring rather than having anything to do with the identity of one of the women shown in it Diana scarisbrook for example points out that it might have been a gift to her from a member of the Seymour family alive in the 1570s and David Starkey suggests Edward Seymour Earl of Hartford and Son of the Duke of Somerset who was seeking to restore his reputation after angering Elizabeth by marrying her cousin Lily Catherine gray in 1560 without Royal permission certainly money was little or no object for whomever commissioned it the materials used and the expertise required to create such an item encrusted with diamonds and rubies and containing Exquisite portraits which are the size of fingernails and yet still remarkably detailed will not have come cheap lastly Susan James is also far too quick in my opinion to relight Amber Lynn dismissing her by saying that there's no evidence to support such an identification other than her relationship with Elizabeth as I explained a few minutes ago however there is in fact ample evidence to back up the idea of the woman in the ring being Anne another person suggested as the second sitter is Elizabeth's former servant cat Ashley also called Astley who raised her during much of her childhood other than the fact that Elizabeth loved her however there's nothing to support this identification the lady in the ring looks nothing like hat and is also far too expensively dressed and Bejeweled to be a servant even a royal servant I think we can reject that idea very quickly the final Contender is a young Elizabeth herself as suggested by writer mariona Ponce buchaka I'm very sorry if I mangled her name this Theory doesn't hold water however when we remember that Elizabeth was like her father a famous redhead she did not have brunette or even auburn hair and we have pictures of her in her youth to prove it nor would the creator of this image risk giving the queen a poorly executed portrait of her that didn't even get her hair color correct in addition Elizabeth was only born in September 1533 and was thus a baby or a young child in the remainder of the 1530s by the time she was old enough to be painted like this French Hood Styles had changed as you can see in this portrait of her done in the mid-1540s when the lapets on her Hood finish at her cheekbones even if you want to argue that the second sitter looks like her this is easily enough explained by a familial resemblance between mother and daughter furthermore if the ring showed only Elizabeth there was no reason for her to have such a personal item mirrored or gifted to her with its little hidden compartment and I feel it would be odd to walk around with two tiny pictures of yourself hidden in your jewelry rather than of yourself and a loved one locket jewelry is still popular today for instance but I can't say I've ever come across anyone using it to display only themselves finally if this was a present whether from a Seymour or not rubbing in what the Eugene Gloriana used to look like in her youth whilst juxtaposing that image with a picture of her in the 1570s as her looks fitted would have been the height of stupidity it is for the same reason that I find it equally unlikely that the famous levian Elizabeth would have commissioned such a piece herself to conclude I believe the woman pictured in the checkers ring alongside Elizabeth the first is Anne Boleyn with the image most likely copied from a lost original portrait and possibly the same painting that was the basis for one or more of the B pattern pictures we have today the facial structure the resemblance to other images of Anne the style of the hood the color of the hair her relationship to Elizabeth and Elizabeth's need to not publicly acknowledge her mother all make her the most natural fit when it comes to identifying this woman furthermore as the ring was created within living memory of Anne and almost certainly made for her daughter I also think it's a reliable likeness of the former Queen not to mention a beautiful and no doubt highly meaningful item for Elizabeth to have owned and worn before I leave you for this week I'd like to thank my patrons and those of you who donate to the channel using the thanks button beneath videos for your generosity if you'd like to check out my patreon site as well remember to click the link in the description box beneath this video let me know in the comments below who you think the lady in the French hood is and if you'd like to learn more about famous Jewels or the tutors try one of these options next whatever you choose please enjoy and until next time keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 126,014

Keywords: elizabeth is jewellery collection, country residence of the british prime minister, residence of the british prime minister, anne boleyn and elizabeth I, elizabeth i and anne Boleyn, portrait of anne Boleyn, elizabeth i's jewellery

Id: hvgl1Wbjw1I

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2023