This book provides you with the chance to explore the world of Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles II, by the means of a full transcript of the surviving four volumes of her privy purse accounts. Kept by the keeper of her privy purse, Barbara, countess of Suffolk, the account books cover the period from the time of Catherine’s marriage to the merry monarch in 1662, to Barbara’s death in 1680. The accounts offer a glimpse of key events in Charles II’s reign including the plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666. They also reveal how Catherine, with Barbara’s help spent her money. The accounts take us further, offering insights into the women in Catherine’s household and her wider social circle, her health, and her itinerary. Her love of flowers and gardens is also revealed, along with her engagement with music, and how ambassadors and the court elite presented her with gifts of food, many of which were intended to remind her of her Portuguese home.
Tabella dei contenuti
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
List of illustrations, maps, and tables.
Introduction
Working with account books
This edition
Catherine of Braganza: ‘a fond and pleasant lady’
a) Becoming a queen
b) Catherine and the key events of Charles II’s reign
c) Life as queen consort
Barbara, countess of Suffolk
a)Early life
b)In the queen’s service/life at court
c)Married life/husband and children
The privy purse – early modern royal women
Catherine of Braganza’s privy purse
Glimpses of Catherine’s world
a)The queen’s household
b)Clothes and dressing
c)Catherine’s health: ‘the condition of the queen’
d)Religion
e)Politics
f)Recreation
g)Plants and gardens
The queen and seventeenth century Lincolnshire
Catherine and the Lincolnshire archive
Circa l’autore
MARIA HAYWARD is professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton, and her research focuses on the Tudor and Stuart courts. Her books include Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England and Stuart Style: Monarchy, Dress and the Scottish Male Elite, winner of the ‘History Book of the Year’ in the Scottish National Book Awards 2021.
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