[MR] BBC: Possible Piece of Tudor Crown Found in Field

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Today the BBC has a fascinating, if somewhat belated, story on the
discovery of what may be a piece of Henry VIII's crown. The gold figurine,
possibly depicting Henry VI, was discovered by a metal detectorist in
Northamptonshire in 2017.

The piece supposedly adorns the royal crown in a 1631 Daniel Mytens
portrait of Charles I. Crowns tend to get remade, but Charles' crown is
thought to date back to at least Henry VIII. The crown itself was melted
down on the orders of Oliver Cromwell after the English Civil War, but this
piece may have broken off when the Royalist army was utterly destroyed at
the 1645 Battle of Naseby not far from the discovery site.

The story and photos of the bling are at
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-55890488 .

This story has been all over the news since the 2017 discovery of the
piece. Usually the portrait supposedly representing the crown is the Mytens
painting. I looked at a blowup of this painting on Wikimedia, and don't see
the figure, but the actual painting may be one of a number of similar
portraits Charles commissioned (the King must have had a really big ego,
but that goes with the job I guess). Here's a link to the file, which can
be blown up to full screen:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Charles_I_by_Daniel_Mytens.jpg
. Actually, this may have been a studio copy of Mytens' much sharper 1629
painting now in the Met collection:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Charles_I_(1600–1649)%2C_King_of_England_MET_06.1289.jpg
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Charles_I_(1600%E2%80%931649)%2C_King_of_England_MET_06.1289.jpg>
. I still don't see the figure on the crown (Sigh!).

Totally unrelated and somewhat egotistical on my part, but the Wikipedia
biography of Charles I features a painting done during his trial in 1649 by
Charles Bower. The text mentions that King Charles let his hair and beard
grow because his barber[surgeon] had been dismissed by his keepers, and the
King wouldn't trust anyone else with a razor near his neck:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England#/media/File:Charles_I_at_his_trial.jpg
. That barber surgeon was my real direct ancestor, Patrick Napier.

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆