tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/elizabeth-i-28563/articlesElizabeth I – La Conversation2024-03-14T13:28:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222982024-03-14T13:28:33Z2024-03-14T13:28:33ZHow the Tudors dealt with food waste<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579929/original/file-20240305-24-2ojthy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1690%2C1295&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Baron Cobham and family around the dinner table, 1567.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Brooke_10th_Baron_Cobham_and_Family_1567.jpg">Master of the Countess of Warwick </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than <a href="https://wrap.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-11/WRAP-Food-Surplus-and-Waste-in-the-UK-Key-Facts-Nov-2023.pdf">ten million tonnes</a> of food is wasted in the UK each year. Leftovers perish in their plastic Tupperware tombs, supermarket bins heave with damaged but perfectly edible produce and fields are littered with spoiled harvests. Preventing good food from ending up in the bin is an important part of the global fight against climate change. </p>
<p>But what about the past? How did our ancestors deal with food waste? Surprisingly, given the pertinence of the issue in modern discourse, very little has been written about the history of food waste. My <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/leftovers-9781803281575/">new book</a>, Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation, addresses the topic across the last half a millennium, from the Tudor kitchen right up until the present day. </p>
<p>Tudor society was intrinsically religious. Henry VIII’s well-known <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Henry-VIII/#:%7E:text=Henry%20took%20matters%20into%20his,was%20forced%20to%20leave%20court.">divorce issues</a> ignited the English Reformation, the tumultuous transformation from Catholicism to Protestantantism, heightening religious fervour and shaping attitudes towards food across the country. </p>
<p>In Tudor eyes, food was the ultimate gift from God that literally sustained life on earth. And in the form of the bread and wine, it was food that Christ had chosen to represent his body and blood at the Last Supper. No wonder that wasting food was seen as sinful and immoral. “The least crum, which can be saved, be not lost,” commanded the puritan writer <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A15695.0001.001?view=toc">Ezekias Woodward</a>, “no, not a crum”. </p>
<p>Familiar to many of us today, clergymen taught their parishioners about the feeding of the 5,000. In the Biblical tale, when Jesus went to mourn the passing of John the Baptist, the large crowd that followed him were miraculously fed on just five loaves and two fish. According to the <a href="https://biblehub.com/john/6-12.htm">Gospel of John</a>, at the end of the meal, Christ told his disciples to “gather the pieces that are left over,” so “nothing be wasted,” and they collected 12 full baskets of leftovers.</p>
<p>In another Biblical parable, the rich man Dives went to hell when he denied the scraps of his feast to the poor man <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2016%3A19-31&version=NIV">Lazarus</a>, who instead ascended to heaven. Like Lazarus, the Tudor poor waited at the gates of grand estates to receive the remains of lavish feasts. An almoner (a church official who was responsible for distributing money or food to the poor) collected leftovers but also the first slices of meat to be given in charity. </p>
<h2>Leftovers</h2>
<p>Even those from humbler backgrounds could donate surplus food. Instead of throwing it to the pigs, the whey left over from cheese making, for example, could become a nourishing summer drink for the labourers who toiled in the hot fields. </p>
<p>Charitable housewives who expressed their piety by distributing such leftovers to their poor neighbours would “find profit therefore in a divine place,” according to Gervase Markham in his popular <a href="http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/book%201615%20huswife.htm">1615 cookery book</a>. </p>
<p>As well as being distributed to the poor, the leftovers from large Tudor households went to employees rather than going to waste. In Queen Elizabeth I’s <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Collection_of_Ordinances_and_Regulatio/yGxBAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">royal household</a>, workers who cooked meats in the “boiling house” received the “dripping of the roste” and even “the grease… in the kittles (kettles) and pannes” as a benefit for their labour. A waste product to those with plenty, these meat juices could be reimagined to add flavour and nutrition to sauces and gravies. </p>
<p>Still, those at the top of the social scale had access to far more than they could possibly eat. Elizabeth’s table overflowed with elaborate pies, roasted meats, sugar sculptures, imported wines and exotic fruits. </p>
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<img alt="An old painting of a table filled with ornate looking food." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Still life with turkey pie by Pieter Claesz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Claesz._-_Stilleven_met_kalkoenpastei_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Rijksmuseum/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<h2>Waste and hunger</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, widespread hunger led to rioting across the country in the 1590s after years of devastating harvests. As wealthy landlords closed off their land to common pasture, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Worlds_Within_Worlds/A_odA1alLoYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">flour prices tripled</a> over the span of just a few years. </p>
<p>In the Bible, Ruth gleaned from the field of a wealthy man named Boaz, in accordance with the <a href="https://biblehub.com/leviticus/23-22.htm">Old Testament law</a>: “when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field…thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger”. With this example, the poorest in Tudor England collected the scraps from the harvest to feed themselves and their families. </p>
<p>Squaring these disparate images of plenty and want is not too hard when we consider that in the UK <a href="https://foodfoundation.org.uk/initiatives/food-insecurity-tracking">9.7 million adults</a> experience food insecurity according to data from September 2022. Meanwhile the richest <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7484/">5% take home 37%</a> of the nation’s total disposable income. On a global scale, <a href="https://www.wfp.org/stories/5-facts-about-food-waste-and-hunger">a third of the food</a> we produce goes to waste while <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Waste_Free_Kitchen_Handbook/Y0IACgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">842 million people</a> are afflicted with chronic hunger. </p>
<p>Food waste today is a pressing environmental issue. But this foray into Tudor food waste reminds us that it is also a deeply moral issue that reflects the growing inequalities between the rich and the poor. In telling the so far untold history of food waste, my research reflects on our changing moral values, and our relationship with food, people and planet. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Barnett is the author of Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation (Head of Zeus, 2024). She receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cardiff University. </span></em></p>During the Tudor period, religious beliefs shaped people’s attitudes towards food and food waste.Eleanor Barnett, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1905672022-09-16T15:08:16Z2022-09-16T15:08:16ZElizabeth II took the throne at age 25 — one of the many young queens who shaped Britain’s history<p>Imagine being 25 years old and 5,000 miles from home when you get a call delivering the worst possible news – your parent has died. For Elizabeth Windsor, this call had a far greater impact. She was now taking on the greatest of responsibilities, shouldering the burden of the sovereign’s role. </p>
<p>Already a young wife and mother of two, she would become a mother to the nation, and to the Commonwealth of nations around the globe. It would have been a lot to process for the young queen on that day in 1952. </p>
<p>Her son Charles is now experiencing that same combination of mourning for the loss of a beloved parent while simultaneously being catapulted into the role of monarch and head of state. King Charles III had 70 years to prepare for this moment and a lifetime to act with the greater freedom of the heir. </p>
<p>Elizabeth did not have this luxury. As the daughter of the Duke of York, she was not the immediate heir to the throne until her uncle Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936 suddenly made her heir apparent.</p>
<p>In taking the throne, she joined the ranks of Britain’s cohort of reigning queens. This long tradition of female rule has left an indelible impression on Britain’s history.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
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<p>The Queen’s namesake, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/280827/elizabeth-i-penguin-monarchs-by-helen-castor/9780141989945">Elizabeth I</a>, was also 25 when she transitioned from princess to queen. Like Elizabeth II, she was a somewhat <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-55294-1">unexpected heir</a>. Elizabeth Tudor was in and out of the line of succession to her famous father Henry VIII during her childhood. </p>
<p>While her mother, Anne Boleyn, fought to ensure that Elizabeth’s claim would be superior to her elder half-sister Mary’s, Anne’s fall made Elizabeth Tudor a bastard. Later restored to the line of succession, Elizabeth was relegated to the rear of the direct Tudor line, after Mary and her half-brother Edward VI. She spent years as a shadowy heir who was considered a threat to her half-sister and was briefly held prisoner at the Tower, before finally coming to the throne in 1558 on the death of Mary I.</p>
<p>Coming to the throne as a young woman was a dual challenge. Any young ruler faced being perceived as inexperienced or even incapable of rule. If they were still a child or even in their teens, a regency or minority council could be set up to govern for them. Women were normally second-choice heirs who only came to the throne in the absence, or death, of sons. </p>
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<img alt="Painting of a young Elizabeth I in a red and gold dress, holding a book and wearing ornate jewellery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484839/original/file-20220915-1785-jlhhmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484839/original/file-20220915-1785-jlhhmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484839/original/file-20220915-1785-jlhhmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484839/original/file-20220915-1785-jlhhmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484839/original/file-20220915-1785-jlhhmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484839/original/file-20220915-1785-jlhhmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484839/original/file-20220915-1785-jlhhmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A portrait of the young Elizabeth I before her accession at age 25.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Elizabeth_I_when_a_Princess.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Women could face opposition as monarchs due to their gender. In 1558, the same year as Elizabeth I’s accession, the Scottish religious reformer <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044009511056&view=1up&seq=2">John Knox published</a> The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which derided female rule as “unnatural” and ineffective. </p>
<p>Despite these challenges, the two Elizabeths were not the only women to become queen at a young age and in unexpected circumstances. In 1689, the often overlooked Mary II unseated her father James II in the so-called <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/g04.pdf">Glorious Revolution</a>, just shy of her 27th birthday. </p>
<p>Unlike the two long-lived Elizabeths, Mary II died only five years later, provoking public outpourings of grief at the untimely death of their young queen. Mary’s unexpected death also left her grieving husband William III, with whom she had shared the dual monarchy, to rule alone.</p>
<p><a href="http://pegasusbooks.com/books/crown-of-blood-9781681775555-paperback">Lady Jane Grey</a>, the first female monarch of England, was only 16 during her nine-day reign. Like Mary II, Jane too was accused of stealing a throne – that of her cousin, Mary Tudor, who moved swiftly to retake it and send the teenage Jane first to the Tower, and then to the executioner’s block. </p>
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<span class="caption">Portrait of a young Queen Victoria by the painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/queen-victoria-franz-xaver-winterhalter-studio-423235798">Everett Collection / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Victoria was another teenage queen, just 18 at her accession in 1837. Her uncle, William IV, supposedly was determined to hang on long enough to avoid a royal minority council governing for Victoria until she came of age. </p>
<p>Neither Victoria nor William IV would have come to the throne if another heiress, <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/claremont-landscape-garden/features/the-death-of-princess-charlotte">Princess Charlotte of Wales</a>, had not died in childbirth at age 21 in 1817. Charlotte’s beautiful and emotive tomb at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor – where Elizabeth II will be buried – visibly expresses the tragedy of her early, unexpected death. </p>
<h2>From unexpected heirs to senior sovereigns</h2>
<p>While they were sometimes unexpected heirs, Britain’s young queens have transcended challenging accessions to become historically significant sovereigns. Mary II’s short reign saw an important shift in the balance of power between monarchy and parliament, marking the beginning of the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/6972">constitutional monarchy we still retain today</a>.</p>
<p>Elizabeth I reigned for 44 years, Victoria for 63 and Elizabeth II is Britain’s longest reigning monarch with her 70-year reign. They all faced the challenge of assuming power at a young age and in very challenging circumstances. <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-93009-7">Elizabeth I</a> had to cope with stabilising the realm after decades of religious and political turbulence under her father and siblings. </p>
<p>Victoria had to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/queen-victoria-9780199253920?cc=gb&lang=en&">rebuild the reputation of the monarchy</a> after the scandals of her Georgian predecessors. Elizabeth II came to the throne in the post-war era when Britain’s empire was dissolving rapidly. </p>
<p>Yet these three women gave their names to eras that resonate in history – the Elizabethan and Victorian ages. Britain’s history has been profoundly and positively marked by female rule and shaped by women who were able to shoulder the burden of sovereignty, often at a young age, and take to the task of rulership.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elena Woodacre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Other queens were just teenagers when they ascended the throne.Elena Woodacre, Reader in Renaissance History, University of WinchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1833922022-06-01T16:10:43Z2022-06-01T16:10:43ZHow Elizabethan law once protected the poor from the high cost of living – and led to unrivalled economic prosperity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466383/original/file-20220531-14-n9xvm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C0%2C1156%2C784&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elizabeth I in procession, circa 1600.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the closing years of Elizabeth I’s reign, England saw the emergence of arguably the world’s first effective welfare state. Laws were established which successfully protected people from rises in food prices. </p>
<p>More than 400 years later, in the closing years of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-II">Elizabeth II’s reign</a>, the UK once again faces perilous spikes in living costs. Perhaps today’s government could learn something from its legislative ancestors.</p>
<p>Until the end of the 16th century, it was a given throughout medieval Europe that when food prices rose there would be a consequent surge in mortality rates, as people starved to death and diseases spread among the malnourished. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/poor-relief-in-england-13501600/poor-laws-of-1598-and-1601/DD47B704ECD7DED525DC5A4310B14408">Elizabethan Poor Laws</a> of 1598 and 1601 turned the situation in England on its head. Now when food became too expensive, local parishes were obliged to give cash or food to those who could not afford to eat. For the <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/after-the-virus/hilary-cooper/simon-szreter/9781009005203">first time in history</a>, it became illegal to let anybody starve.</p>
<p>The laws were clear and simple, and required each of over 10,000 English parishes to set up a continuous relief fund to support the vulnerable. This included the lame, the ill and the old, as well as orphans, widows, single mothers and their children, and those unable to find work. Occupiers of land (landowners or their tenants) had to pay a tax towards the fund in proportion to the value of their holding. </p>
<p>Overseen by local magistrates, the system’s transparency provided no loopholes for avoiding the tax. In fact, it encouraged a flourishing culture of charitable giving which provided almshouses, apprenticeships and hospitals for the parish poor to alleviate destitution.</p>
<p>With this proliferation of localised mini-welfare states, England became the first country in Europe by more than 150 years to effectively put an <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/first-century-of-welfare/index/EBEEAB51C199B639780C00D557051F13">end to widespread famine</a>. And it also enabled England subsequently to enjoy by far the fastest rate of urbanisation in Europe. </p>
<p>Between 1600 and 1800, huge numbers of young people left rural parishes to find work in cities, safe in the knowledge that their parents would be supported by the parish in times of need – and that they themselves would receive help if things didn’t work out. Long before the first steam engines arrived, the Poor Laws had created an urban workforce which enabled the industrial revolution to take off.</p>
<h2>Poor state of affairs</h2>
<p>Then in 1834, everything changed. The cost of this level of welfare support was deemed too high, and replaced with a deliberately <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/irish-historical-studies/article/abs/making-of-the-new-poor-law-183239-anthony-brundage-hutchinson-university-library-london-1978-850/458D4B371AD8B2AB0CED2B760E9BC05C">harsh new system</a> in which the poorest men and women were separated from each other and their children and provided only with gruel in return for tedious chores in degrading workhouses. The fear of the workhouse was designed to force the poor to prefer work – for whatever abysmal wages the market offered. </p>
<p>It is this version of the Poor Laws which tends to stick in the popular memory, familiar from the books of Charles Dickens, and obscuring the achievements of the Elizabethan original. But <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/118/1/254/45092?redirectedFrom=fulltext">extensive</a> <a href="https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/253/1/151/6386211?redirectedFrom=fulltext">recent</a> <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/enterprise-and-society/article/jonathan-healey-the-first-century-of-welfare-poverty-and-poor-relief-in-lancashire-16201730-woodbridge-uk-boydell-press-2014-xvi-319-pp-isbn-9781843839569-2995-paper/8A8E2B1D6BD01F1430EFF496630C7CC5">research</a> has started to highlight how Elizabethan law changed British history – and provides us with urgent lessons for today’s welfare system and the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis. </p>
<p>Just as the old Poor Laws supported an extraordinary period of economic prosperity, so too did the UK’s welfare state after the second world war. Tax-funded investment in education (secondary and higher), and the newly-created NHS saw widened opportunities and living standards take off, as the UK enjoyed over two decades of the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/cambridge-economic-history-of-modern-britain/97D02C574487738C18079CEB24F0E573#contents">fastest productivity growth</a> in its history (1951-73).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A half full food bank donation container." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466393/original/file-20220531-22-nqgg54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466393/original/file-20220531-22-nqgg54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466393/original/file-20220531-22-nqgg54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466393/original/file-20220531-22-nqgg54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466393/original/file-20220531-22-nqgg54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466393/original/file-20220531-22-nqgg54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466393/original/file-20220531-22-nqgg54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the 1600s, food distribution was legally enforced in England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-1216-container-tesco-supermarket-1876971844">Shutterstock/Yau Ming Low</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, people regularly speak of being forced to choose between <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/20/martin-lewis-says-people-will-be-forced-to-choose-between-food-and-heating-15287413/">eating and heating</a> as food and energy prices surge. Yet there is no corresponding compensation for those whose wages and benefits do not stretch far enough. A one-off <a href="https://theconversation.com/rishi-sunaks-15-billion-cost-of-living-package-and-windfall-tax-four-experts-respond-183945">hand out</a> when millions of households are facing both fuel and food poverty is but a temporary sticking plaster. </p>
<p>Until there is a permanent increase in safety net payments to those on universal credit, food banks will continue to proliferate and children will continue to go to school hungry. The link between wealth and taxation was effectively used by the Elizabethans to start to tackle inequality. But today’s globalised economy facilitates offshore profits and ever-rising inequality.</p>
<p>In my new book, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/after-the-virus/748D2883622738E1F515886A9BA4953F">After the Virus: Lessons from the Past for a Better Future</a> I explore changes in the sense of moral duty and the carefully legislated collective endeavour that formed the foundation of the UK’s past – and most recent – periods of prosperity.</p>
<p>The Poor Laws were far from a perfect system of welfare. But the fact that protecting the poorest in society has previously led to widespread economic growth is a history lesson that should not be ignored by any government during a cost-of-living crisis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Szreter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are valuable lessons to be learned from the England of the 1600s.Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Public Policy, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1762372022-02-27T13:09:00Z2022-02-27T13:09:00ZDying for makeup: Lead cosmetics poisoned 18th-century European socialites in search of whiter skin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447705/original/file-20220222-21-167vach.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5472%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An actor wearing a contemporary version of 18th-century lead-based makeup.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eighteenth-century socialites have been depicted as vain, silly women who were poisoned by their <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151541/Vanity-mirror-used-tragic-18th-century-society-beauty-27-died-make-poisoning-sells-300-000.html">white lead makeup</a>. The Countess of Coventry, Maria Gunning — a society hostess reknowned for her beauty — is said to have refused to stop wearing foundation containing white lead, <a href="https://historyofyesterday.com/deadly-fashion-trends-from-the-georgian-era-58d120dad1c6">even as she lay dying</a>. Why would women of that era knowingly choose to wear makeup that was killing them? Was beauty worth dying for? Or was the makeup not to blame?</p>
<p>I am a scientist who has been studying lead poisoning for 30 years, with a particular interest in women’s exposure to lead. My research shows that women metabolize lead differently from men, women exposed to lead as children have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/oem.57.7.465">elevated blood lead levels 20 years later</a>, and women exposed to lead are at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajim.10096">risk of hypertension</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.7386">early menopause</a>. </p>
<p>The stories about white lead makeup poisoning did not make sense to me, so two years ago, <a href="https://www.insauga.com/killer-beauty-mcmaster-researchers-study-mysterious-18th-century-death/">I decided to start studying these cosmetics</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/484190477" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Dying to be Beautiful: Exploring the look and toxicity of 18th century makeup.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Historical techniques</h2>
<p>My research group makes white lead makeup from recipes dating from the 16th to 19th centuries. If you look around the makeup counters of a department store, you will see words such as “illuminate,” “radiance,” “glow” and “luminous.” You’ll also see products that promise to reduce shine or blur imperfections. These modern products change the way light is reflected from the skin, which is perceived as enhancing beauty. </p>
<p>We wanted to know if white lead makeup had some of these properties, so we studied the colour and level of light reflected by the makeup using an optical spectrometer.</p>
<p>Our most surprising finding has been that white lead makeup can look quite pretty and natural. It does not look like the bright white mask that we have seen depicted on screens and stages — it is generally much more subtle and sophisticated. </p>
<p>We test the makeup on ethically sourced pigskin. The pigs we use have a pale complexion that is very close to the lightest colour of human skin, which burns easily and does not tan well. The white lead makeup usually does not change the colour of this skin much at all.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three petri dishes with bare pigskin, pigskin with titanium-based makeup and pigskin with lead makeup." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446392/original/file-20220214-17-1pygpfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446392/original/file-20220214-17-1pygpfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446392/original/file-20220214-17-1pygpfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446392/original/file-20220214-17-1pygpfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446392/original/file-20220214-17-1pygpfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446392/original/file-20220214-17-1pygpfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446392/original/file-20220214-17-1pygpfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A comparison of bare skin with makeup made with white lead and with titanium dioxide replacing the lead carbonate. Modern recipes that use a titanium replacement look whiter and more opaque than the ‘softer’ yellow-white of lead makeup.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(F.E. McNeill)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Titanium oxide is the modern substitute for white lead. When we used titanium oxide in the makeup recipes, the colour change was dramatic. There was a shift towards blue, and the makeup appeared startlingly white. Actors wearing makeup formulations made from old white lead recipes with a titanium substitute are wearing the wrong colour.</p>
<h2>Colour changes</h2>
<p>We tested different historical makeup recipes to see how the colour would be affected. One recipe made no measurable change to the colour, while another changed yellow tones slightly. Adding a yellow tone to pale skin is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032988">perceived as more attractive</a>, due to its connection to fruit and vegetable consumption. A third makeup mixture reduced redness in the skin, something that today’s colour-correcting foundation makeup attempts to correct.</p>
<p>All the white lead makeups we tested increased the amount of light the skin reflected — referred to as its reflectance. Skin becomes <a href="https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/b2/24/aa/e19ac6d3eb268f/US10281267.pdf">less reflective as women age</a>, and more reflective skin is associated with a youthful complexion. </p>
<p>Specifically, the makeups increased the diffuse reflectance of the skin. Light reflection occurs in two ways. First, light can reflect, as from a mirror. It comes in at an angle and is reflected at that same angle. We call this specular reflection. Objects with a high specular reflection look glossy or shiny. </p>
<p>Second, light can reflect or scatter off rough surfaces in several directions. This is diffuse reflection. Objects with high diffuse reflection look blurred or slightly out-of-focus. The increased diffuse reflectance from the white lead makeup gives the skin a “softer” appearance, blurring blemishes — another effect produced by modern cosmetics.</p>
<p>The recipes we re-create in our lab create a soft-focus look that blurs wrinkles and blemishes, or the look of a youthful, dewy complexion.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="an array of liquid and powder foundations and blushes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448246/original/file-20220224-2513-1kfkdp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Modern makeup promotes even skin tone and a glow, achieved by altering the skin’s reflectance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The ugly price of beauty</h2>
<p>However, prettiness does come with an ugly side: the celebration of white skin. While the overall measured colour shifts on pale skin are small, spectral changes do make the skin look lighter. These were products that would have enhanced the whiteness of skin. </p>
<p>Historians, anthropologists and sociologists have long studied skin whitening and the reasons people may choose to do this. Our science shows how white lead makeup could achieve this in a subtle way, like an earlier version of <a href="https://www.beautypackaging.com/contents/view_online-exclusives/2021-10-07/how-nomakeup-natural-looks-fail-to-discourage-the-use-of-cosmetics/">“no-makeup” makeup</a>.</p>
<p>We have also been testing whether some makeup formulations allow lead to be absorbed through the skin. White lead cannot be absorbed easily through skin, it is only toxic if eaten or inhaled. However, if the makeup formulations changed the form of the lead, or softened the outer layer of the skin, some lead could diffuse through. This would make those makeup formulations more poisonous. </p>
<p>Our research is showing some evidence of differences in skin absorbance, meaning some recipes were more toxic than others. It is possible that some recipes could have been used with little problem. Other recipes, which made <a href="https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101636361-bk">young women deathly ill</a>, were probably so poisonous because the lead was absorbed through the skin. </p>
<p>So far, our research suggests that most white lead makeup recipes probably didn’t kill 18th century socialites by being absorbed through the skin. But some recipes were more toxic than others.</p>
<p>The most toxic mixture we have observed so far is the very simple formulation said to have been used by England’s Queen Elizabeth I: a mixture of <a href="http://www.elizabethancostume.net/makeup.html">white lead and vinegar</a>. This mixture passed lead through the skin in much higher quantities than other recipes. This raises the question of whether it is worth revisiting whether <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/little-known-or-unknown-facts-regarding-queen-elizabeth-death">some of Elizabeth I’s health problems were due to, or exacerbated by, lead poisoning</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona E. McNeill receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Historic white lead makeup is depicted today as a thick white mask, but recent studies have found that some formulations create a more natural, youthful look.Fiona E. McNeill, Professor, Physics and Astronomy, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1099932019-01-18T16:41:40Z2019-01-18T16:41:40ZMary Queen of Scots: don’t worry about movie accuracy, historians can’t agree on who she really was either<p>The story of Mary Queen of Scots, packed as it is with drama and tragedy, has always been a favourite of film makers. As far back as 1895, Thomas Edison made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOLsH93U1Q">The Execution of Mary Stuart</a>, a short film which was the first ever to use special effects to show Mary having her head chopped off. Since then, the doomed Scottish queen has been the subject of numerous biopics, ranging from Katharine Hepburn’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027948/">Mary of Scotland (1936)</a> to the new Josie Rourke film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2328900/">Mary Queen of Scots</a>, starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary. </p>
<p>When news media cover period dramas, historians are always asked if they are accurate. As far as the new Rourke film is concerned, the answer is no, of course not. Yet again audiences will come away thinking that she met Elizabeth I in person; there was a romantic involvement between Mary’s husband Henry Stewart Lord Darnley and her Italian secretary David Rizzio; and that 16th century Scots were wild and uncultivated. </p>
<p>Compared to its predecessors, however, Rourke’s film does quite well at blending the established narrative about Mary with creative licence. The <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067402/">1971 film</a> of Mary’s life, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, had the two queens meeting not once but twice. The 1936 movie was generally criticised for its melodramatic portrayal of Mary. And let’s not even address the wildly inaccurate treatment of Mary and the Anglo-Scottish relationship in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127536/">1998</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414055/">2007</a> biopics of Elizabeth I, starring Cate Blanchett. </p>
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<p>Yet while tallying points on the historical scorecard in films is always fun, it’s harder to criticise film makers here than over many other historical events. The reality is that it’s highly problematic to think in terms of the “truth” about Mary because right from the beginning, all the historical sources have polarised into two wildly different accounts of to what extent she influenced the events of her demise. </p>
<h2>Mary vs Mary</h2>
<p>Everyone agrees that Mary returned to Scotland from France in 1561 to become the active monarch, and that her reign started well and began to crumble after she married her cousin Lord Darnley in 1565. The marriage soon fell apart and Darnley was murdered by an explosion two years later. </p>
<p>Mary quickly married the Earl of Bothwell, and was forced to abdicate by rival nobles who objected to him becoming so closely interlinked with the throne. She ended up imprisoned before fleeing to England in 1568, where she was <a href="https://www.historyscotland.com/articles/mary-queen-of-scots/where-was-mary-queen-of-scots-imprisoned">jailed</a> again, in large part because of the threat she posed to Elizabeth as a rival to the throne. She remained in captivity until she was executed in 1587. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wnqjSgMU36U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>The disagreement turns on whether Mary was essentially a blameless victim or scheming perpetrator. Did she have a hand in Darnley’s death, in collusion with his possible murderer Bothwell? Did she marry Bothwell willingly or was she effectively forced because he had raped her? Was she actually involved in the Babington Plot against Elizabeth which resulted in her execution? </p>
<p>The two competing narratives sprang up from the moment Mary was forced off the throne in favour of her 13-month-old son, James VI. The intellectual and poet George Buchanan wrote one version, initially in his scurrilous 1571 tract <a href="http://ota.ox.ac.uk/tcp/headers/A69/A69648.html"><em>De Maria Regina Scotorum</em></a>. He smeared her as a lascivious whore who colluded with Bothwell in Darnley’s murder and helped her lover to seize the Scottish throne. </p>
<p>The victim narrative was created by Catholic writers like John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, who was one of Mary’s leading agents during her English captivity. Leslie’s <a href="https://glasgowuniscotrenaissance.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/john-leslie-a-defence-of-princesse-marie-quene-of-scotlande-and-dowager-of-france-with-a-declaration-as-well-of-her-right-to-the-sucession-of-the-crowne-of-englande-as-that-the/">1569</a> text celebrated her Catholic piety and condemned <a href="https://www.tudorsociety.com/24-july-1567-the-abdication-of-mary-queen-of-scots/">her removal</a> from the Scottish throne as an act of highest treason against the rightful Stewart monarch. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quite contrary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp02996/mary-queen-of-scots">NPG</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The same binary approach to Mary continues to the present day. During the civil wars of the mid-17th century, everyone compared her to her grandson Charles I. Royalists <a href="https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=6793">claimed</a> they were both examples of how ambitious opponents have cast down the lawful monarch. Pro-republicans like John Milton <a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Emilton/reading_room/eikonoklastes/text.shtml">countered that</a> she was the source of Charles’s deceitful and evasive nature, and a moral warning of Stewart tyranny to come. </p>
<p>In the Victorian era, Mary’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mary_Queen_of_Scots.html?id=msZMAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">critics</a> built on Buchanan’s negative image of her, influenced to some extent by Presbyterian bias. <a href="https://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/skelton-john/mary-stuart/60252.aspx">Defenders</a> excused Mary’s failings on account of her youth, gender, and a French upbringing which ill-prepared her to rule Scotland. Modern historians have been far better at viewing Mary in the context of her gender in a highly patriarchal society, but still divide vehemently. The late <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/29/jenny-wormald">Jenny Wormald</a> received death threats for her unrelentingly harsh <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mary_Queen_of_Scots.html?id=9bGbnAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">critique</a> in 1988; while John Guy took the process full circle with a staunch <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/my-heart-is-my-own-mary-queen-scots/author/john-guy/">defence of Mary</a> in 2004. </p>
<h2>Mary in public</h2>
<p>We know less about public perceptions of Mary down the centuries. Indeed, I’m involved in a new two-year <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_629499_en.html">research project</a> at the University of Glasgow, with more than 40 academics and curators, partly to understand this better. We know, for instance, that in the 18th century, Mary was curiously absent from the propaganda of the Jacobites battling to return the Stewarts to the British throne through Bonnie Prince Charlie. This might have been because the attempts to restore her to power had always failed. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254169/original/file-20190116-163286-1ja8ohi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">En deuil blanc by Franςois Clouet (1559).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We also know that the imagery of Mary has consistently presented her as a martyr. What are believed to have been authentic likenesses of Mary were produced during her time as a youth in France – most notably the 1559 <em>deuil blanc</em> (white veil) portraits mourning the death of her first husband, François II. </p>
<p>But while Mary was highly fashion conscious and wore a huge range of colours and outfits – a fact captured well in the new film – she’s almost always seen dressed like in the image earlier in the article: a black gown with a widow’s cap, high white collar, tightly bound hair and rosary and crucifix. This is derived from <a href="https://www.mountstuart.com/execution-mary-queen-scots/">contemporary accounts</a> of what she wore in captivity and at her execution. But in a similar way to images of Robert Burns, these details would stay the same over the years while her face, body size and shape have varied hugely. </p>
<p>The films of Mary have also been consistent, depicting her mainly as a sympathetic, strong heroine. It may or may not be the real Mary; we will never know for sure. So there isn’t a lot of point in worrying about historical accuracy when it comes to this Scottish icon. Take her as you find her, and rest assured that it won’t be long before Hollywood decides to serve up another new version for mass consumption.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Reid receives funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for the research project described in the article. </span></em></p>The doomed Scottish monarch has divided opinion ever since the days when she was forced off the throne.Steven Reid, Senior Lecturer, Scottish History, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/969982018-05-23T09:47:35Z2018-05-23T09:47:35ZThe ‘lawe of nations’: how diplomatic immunity protected an Elizabethan assassin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219952/original/file-20180522-51121-56wpt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary Queen of Scots was at the centre of numerous plots to kill Queen Elizabeth I.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pierre Révoil (1776–1842)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A foreign state sponsors a political assassination on English soil. The attempt fails. In its aftermath, Her Majesty’s government asks her expert advisers what is the appropriate level of response and what action should be taken against murderous foreign agents and state-sponsored terrorism.</p>
<p>Sound familiar? It should. These are questions the UK government has asked time and time again when dealing with hostile foreign agents operating on British soil – most recently following the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44165718">attempted murder of former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal</a> and his daughter. </p>
<p>Sometimes these hostile foreign agents are under diplomatic cover. Elizabeth I faced just such situation in 1584, when the Spanish ambassador in London, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, was implicated in the <a href="http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/Throckmorton_plot.htm">Throckmorton Plot</a> to assassinate her. By replacing Elizabeth on the throne with her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots, the plan was to restore Protestant England to Catholicism. Elizabeth’s Privy Council wanted Mendoza tried for treason, but they weren’t sure of the legality of this move. They solicited the advice of two of Europe’s most prestigious experts in international law, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alberico-Gentili">Alberico Gentili</a> and <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/countyhistorian/jean-hotman">Jean Hotman</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219951/original/file-20180522-51095-10wfz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219951/original/file-20180522-51095-10wfz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219951/original/file-20180522-51095-10wfz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219951/original/file-20180522-51095-10wfz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219951/original/file-20180522-51095-10wfz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1259&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219951/original/file-20180522-51095-10wfz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1259&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219951/original/file-20180522-51095-10wfz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1259&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bernardino de Mendoza by an unknown artist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both of them were resident foreigners – one, Italian, the other French – who had come to England some five years earlier as Protestant asylum seekers. Both born in 1552, they held academic posts in Oxford colleges. Both, too – via relationships with royal favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester – were recognised at Court. So what satisfaction would they give a Privy Council baying for Mendoza’s blood? </p>
<p>None. Their advice <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_g3JBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=throckmorton+case+ambassador+mendoza+hotman+gentili&source=bl&ots=alUJo-GUzN&sig=s2D5Ful0M1aUaZFjXn8mlQfp2w0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwif6cOns5vbAhWItVkKHfKfAoUQ6AEINTAB#v=onepage&q=throckmorton%20case%20ambassador%20mendoza%20hotman%20gentili&f=false">was unequivocal</a>. Ambassadors, even criminal ambassadors, were protected by diplomatic immunity “infallibly within the sanctuarie of the Lawe of Nations”. “The right of embassy” was “defended by a rampart of human and divine authority”, “the person” of the ambassador being “adjudged holy, sacred, and inviolable”. The Privy Council’s only recourse, they said, was to order Mendoza recalled. Their advice was followed. When Mendoza ignored the order, he was transported to Calais.</p>
<h2>Personality of the Prince</h2>
<p>Later, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/32/2/297/38572">Gentili</a> and <a href="http://ota.ox.ac.uk/tcp/headers/A03/A03724.html">Hotman</a> published books emerging directly out of the Mendoza case that established the terms of reference for England’s international diplomacy. They argued that the ambassador is a stand-in for the sovereign, someone “invested with the personality of his Prince” who “makes the Prince to speake”, but who never speaks in his own voice, is never permitted to “think beyond his instructions”. </p>
<p>Any person who “does violence to an ambassador” commits “an attack on the state”. Theoretically, since “the whole grace” of diplomacy “hath no other end than Honour”, a dishonourable embassy is an oxymoron. But in practice, “there is not almost any publike charge, wherein there is more lying”. Thus, some call ambassadors “honourable spies”. </p>
<p>What did ordinary Englishmen know about the business of diplomacy at the time? They weren’t likely to be reading Gentili or Hotman. But they were going to the theatre. And it was on public stage, in plays from Henry V to Hamlet, Coriolanus to Troilus and Cressida, that William Shakespeare put the practice of diplomacy squarely in the popular imagination. In his fictions of embassy, Shakespeare picked up the historic examples Gentili and Hotman cited and the topics they debated. </p>
<p>In Antony and Cleopatra, spectators saw what happens to the perfidious ambassador Caesar sends to Cleopatra; sensationally, Antony ignores diplomatic immunity and has him flogged. This is a big deal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tug him away: being whipp’d,<br>
Bring him again: this Jack of Caesar’s shall<br>
Bear us an errand to him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As we know, things don’t end well for Antony or Cleopatra.</p>
<h2>Death threat in Venice</h2>
<p>If Shakeapeare wasn’t familiar with their work, it’s likely that both Gentili and Hotman were among the sources Henry Wotton turned to as he prepared, in the summer of 1604, for an assignment from King James I. Wotton knew both men, having studied under Gentili at Oxford and also having a connection to Hotman’s father, Francis. After an interruption of 33 years, the Crown wanted Anglo-Venetian relations restored. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219950/original/file-20180522-51095-1udcc3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219950/original/file-20180522-51095-1udcc3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219950/original/file-20180522-51095-1udcc3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219950/original/file-20180522-51095-1udcc3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219950/original/file-20180522-51095-1udcc3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219950/original/file-20180522-51095-1udcc3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219950/original/file-20180522-51095-1udcc3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Wotton by Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt (1620).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sotheby's</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wotton was appointed ambassador, arriving in Venice, coincidentally, just about the time the king was settling down at Whitehall to watch a new play by Shakespeare, Othello: The Moor of Venice. </p>
<p>For the following six years, Wotton didn’t so much restore relations as invent them from scratch – and, in doing so, tested diplomatic theory to the limit. For how could he act only “on instructions” when it took the post 21 days to reach London – and the instructions a further 21 days to return? Far from having little business to conduct there (as secretary of state, Robert Cecil supposed, “the passages of affaires between us and that state [being] very barren”) he dealt with everything from trade and taxation to suspected murder and piracy. </p>
<p>While representing English affairs in fortnightly audiences (without notes, in Italian), before the doge and his council, he simultaneously – secretly, if rather cackhandedly – organised a network of “intelligencers” to uncover anti-English, anti-Protestant practices in Rome and, during the <a href="http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol10/pp438-451">Interdict Crisis of 1606</a>, agitated for a Protestant revolution in Venice – including, if required, war in Europe. </p>
<p>On several sensational occasions, his career in Venice crossed paths with early modern versions of the diplomatic problems we’re facing today – not least when hitmen (perhaps employed by paymasters in Rome) failed in the political assassination of a “troublesome priest”, one Paolo Sarpi, who was suspected of having too much “conversation” with “heretics” in the English embassy. Wotton’s chaplain, William Bedell, was having Italian lessons with Sarpi and the pair were suspected of compromising conversations together.</p>
<p>How did the Venetian state respond to the Roman inquisitors who bayed for Wotton’s blood? Wotton was the ambassador – so his position as ambassador, “defended by a rampart of human and divine authority”, meant his person was “inviolable”. They didn’t even send him home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Rutter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the Spanish ambassador to Elizabeth I’s court was implicated in a plot to kill her, he was protected by the fledgling laws of diplomacy.Carol Rutter, Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/872052017-11-14T13:29:51Z2017-11-14T13:29:51ZHow to make friends and influence people (as a 17th-century woman)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194551/original/file-20171114-27573-13bl18z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anne of Denmark by unknown artist.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anne_of_Denmark,_ca_1600.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>England in the 17th century was a thoroughly male affair. Men dominated politics, law, religion and the military, and women were relegated to the domestic sphere. But, then again, the previous century had seen England actually ruled by two women in succession: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/mary_i_queen.shtml">Queens Mary I</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/ztfxtfr">Elizabeth I</a>. Was there nothing between these two extremes? </p>
<p>We might be too quick to think there wasn’t, for gender relations – and women’s ability to wrestle political gain from cultural and social means – were rather more subtle, murky, and nuanced than these two poles suggest. After the death of the legendary Elizabeth I in 1603, her cousin, James VI of Scotland, succeeded to the throne as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/james_i_vi.shtml">James I</a> and England was back in the hands of male rule. But James brought with him a young wife – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark">Anne of Denmark</a> – who makes an interesting case for female agency. </p>
<p>Anne owed her position as queen to her marriage (although she was of royal Danish blood); she owed most of her power to having “the king’s ear”; she did not hold any formal office, and she was firmly below James in the hierarchy. But thanks to the nature of her relationship with James, his obsession with hunting, the structure of the court, and Anne’s alliance with strategic male courtiers, she enjoyed some independence and influence. </p>
<p>First, early Stuart England was home to two centres of power beyond that of the king: those of the queen and the prince. These ancillary courts supported household favourites, policies, aesthetics, and cultural forms that could be completely separate from James’s court. This difference did not amount to rebellion, or rejection, but fuelled a climate of debate and diversity, and ensured factional balance. </p>
<p>In several areas, Anne actively diverged from James: in her patronage of artists and designers, in the style of portraiture, in her preferred clients for court posts, in factional support, and through her passion for building and garden design. </p>
<p>Second, geographic distance was a defining feature of the royal relationship. Passionate about hunting, and aware of the political benefits of mobility, James absented himself from London for between six and nine months a year. His ability to do so, without the kingdom falling into disarray, was ensured by the proficiency of his privy councillors, most notably <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Cecil-1st-earl-of-Salisbury">Robert Cecil</a> – and his wife, Anne.</p>
<h2>A conduit to the king</h2>
<p>Anne spent most of her time in London, where she served as an intermediary between James and the council, passing on the king’s “dispatch” and <a href="http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domestic/jas1/1603-10/pp185-200">hosting weekly meetings</a> “in such places as our dearest wife shall Keepe her Courte”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194397/original/file-20171113-27632-2u6ysx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James I and VI with his consort Anne of Denmark.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/James_I_and_VI_with_his_consort%2C_Anne_of_Denmark._Wellcome_M0012951.jpg">Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frequently tasked as the monarchical representative in London, Anne was readily accessible to dignitaries and elites who valued her as a conduit to, and a spokesperson for, the king. When rumours were rife about England’s future marriage alliance through Anne and James’ eldest son, and heir to the throne, Prince Henry, several ambassadors pegged Anne as the most <a href="http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol12/pp312-322">reliable source of information</a>, and actively sought her opinion. </p>
<p>Her sway with the king was also noted by Spain, who considered her key to the success of their marriage bid, and sought her favour through one of the most popular means: gifts. When an ambassador was sent to London for four days – to congratulate James for surviving the Gunpowder Plot – his other political duty was to get an audience with Anne, and give her <a href="http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol10/pp341-354">clothes and jewels</a>.</p>
<p>The level of influence Anne <em>actually</em> held with James is another matter, but perceptions were almost as important as the real thing.</p>
<h2>Playing the patriarchy</h2>
<p>But even though the court was polycentric, it was also patriarchal. Anne was barred from holding office, but her proximity to the king meant that her actions and views carried political weight. </p>
<p>She was also careful to align herself with men who shared her opinion, and could speak or act on her behalf when necessary. Between 1610 and 1612, she worked with her eldest son, <a href="http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/periods/stuarts/death-prince-henry-and-succession-crisis-1612-1614">Prince Henry</a>, to curb the power of James’s favourite, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Carr-earl-of-Somerset">Robert Carr</a>. </p>
<p>On one occasion, Carr was made Chief Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, but was forced to share the office with John Harington – a close companion of Henry, and brother of Anne’s principal lady-in-waiting. When there was competition for the secretariat, Carr quickly chose to support Anne and Henry’s candidate, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yPUhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=thomas+birch+court+and+times+of+james&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilOjjubbXAhWSzKQKHXuEBXAQ6wEILjAB#v=snippet&q=stand%20in%20the%20breach%20against%20such%20assailants&f=false">as he was</a> “not willing … to oppose himself, or stand in the breach against such assailants”. </p>
<p>Later, Anne played a key role in Carr’s displacement, working with the faction headed by the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton to bring in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Villiers-1st-duke-of-Buckingham">George Villiers</a> as the new favourite. Against Carr’s vocal protestations, Anne pushed James to make Villiers a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, where he would be guaranteed access to the king (and therefore power). James heeded his wife’s recommendation, thereby starting the legendary rise of Villiers. </p>
<p>As the chief favourite of King James, and then King Charles I, Villiers ultimately became Duke of Buckingham, Knight of the Garter, privy councillor, and Lord Admiral – arguably, the most powerful man at court. His relationship with Anne was always good, and it was <a href="http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol15/pp384-401">well known that</a> “since the fall of her enemy [Carr], Mr Villiers has risen, supported by her and dependent on her”.</p>
<p>The formal structure of 17th-century England was highly unfavourable for women. Anne of Denmark, however, proved that political power could still be achieved, however unfavourable the odds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jemma Field does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anne of Denmark proved women could play a key role in the 17th-century patriarchy.Jemma Field, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/865782017-10-31T14:08:49Z2017-10-31T14:08:49ZThe Mary, Queen of Scots cover up – and why hidden paintings keep being found<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192482/original/file-20171030-18720-1ehljr2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Behind the mask. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Galleries of Scotland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>An exciting discovery for British history buffs: an unfinished portrait believed to be of Mary, Queen of Scots <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/press-office">has been</a> revealed under a 16th-century painting using X-ray photography. The hidden portrait is a special find by painting conservator <a href="http://courtauld.ac.uk/people/caroline-rae">Caroline Rae</a>, yet it is not unique. In having her features painted over, Scotland’s doomed queen finds herself in excellent company. </p>
<p>The portrait in question is of Sir John Maitland, the first Lord Maitland of Thirlestane (1543-1595), and normally hangs in a gallery in London. At the time it was painted in 1589, two years after Mary’s death, Maitland was one of the most powerful men in Scotland, having attained the office of Lord Chancellor. The work is attributed to <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/adrian-vanson">Adrian Vanson</a> (or Van Son), an artist from the Low Countries who later became court painter to James VI, Mary’s son. </p>
<p>The X-ray revealed that Vanson originally had very different plans for this portrait. Instead of Maitland’s face with its characteristic moustache and goatee, we can see the face of a woman, slightly tilted and turned in the opposite direction. The outlines of a square-necked gown and a wired lace ruff are clearly visible; the ghostlike appearance of someone who perhaps needed to be forgotten. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can you tell what it is yet?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Galleries of Scotland</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mary Stuart <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/mary_queen_of_scots/">was executed</a> for plotting the murder of Elizabeth I of England. Her image was identified from the few authentic portraits in existence, including <a href="http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O62538/portrait-miniature-hilliard-nicholas/">two miniatures</a> by the English painter Nicholas Hilliard. </p>
<p>If it is Mary, the painting may well have been begun around the time of her execution. This would be surprising but not unlikely: it is easy to imagine portraits of her still being in demand in Scotland but at some point being judged too dangerous. Whether asked to do so by a patron or at his own initiative, Vanson would have been reusing the panel to cover up the politically sensitive evidence. </p>
<h2>Cover ups and more cover ups</h2>
<p>The history of art is full of examples of covered up or destroyed portraits. Often politically motivated, they are sometimes known by the Latin expression <em>damnatio memoriae</em> – the condemnation of memory. In ancient Rome the senate sometimes sanctioned the destruction of the images of previous emperors on coins and life-size sculptures, whereby often only the heads would be replaced – a cheap solution. </p>
<p>There are other good examples from around Mary’s time. The Italian bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi commissioned a painting of the Madonna and Child that included his own portrait, having recently survived an attempt on his life. But at a later date his family had his image painted over in favour of an infant St John the Baptist. No one looking at the painting nowadays would guess that it once contained the bishop. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Madonna and Child (1503), Lorenzo Lotto.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later in the 16th century Bianca Capello, grand duchess of Tuscany, fell victim to a campaign of <em>damnatio memoriae</em>: after her premature and possibly violent death her brother in law, Ferdinando de’ Medici, saw many of her portraits destroyed.</p>
<p>There are also more recent examples. The Soviet Union <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-were-erased-from-history-2013-12?IR=T">was notorious</a> for erasing unwanted figures from the photographic record, long before the existence of Photoshop. Stalin had the head of his secret police, Nikolai Yezhov, airbrushed after his execution in 1940, for instance. The Nazis and Chinese communists also have form in this respect. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nikolai Yezhov vanishes from Stalin’s left …</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Artists sometimes covered up initial compositions for more mundane reasons than politics, of course. Vincent van Gogh is <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/two-for-the-price-of-one-van-gogh-confirmed-with-another-underneath-7578001.html">well known</a> for having recycled canvases to save money. Three years ago, researchers ascribed similar motivations to Pablo Picasso after finding a portrait of a man with a bow tie underneath his famous <a>Blue Room</a>. No less spectacular was the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/aug/04/x-ray-reveals-mysterious-face-hidden-beneath-degas-portrait-of-a-woman">discovery</a> last year of Edgar Degas’s favourite model under his Portrait of a Woman. </p>
<p>While art historians have been using X-rays to analyse the authorship of paintings for over a hundred years, it has always been limited by the fact that, depending on the chemical composition of the paint, it does not make everything visible, and only results in the characteristic black-and-white image. </p>
<p>This makes the results difficult to interpret, although it can still produce important results, as we see with this latest discovery. Yet recent advances in X-ray technology have helped to overcome this problem in certain cases: a technique called <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep29594">X-ray fluorescence</a> makes it possible to see under-paintings in high-resolution full colour. This is what was used to uncover the image in the Degas painting, for example. </p>
<p>While specialised knowledge and highly costly equipment are required, it is probably only a matter of time before more fascinating discoveries are offered up by old masters. Who knows what else might be revealed from the Maitland painting if it was subjected to similar techniques. A tantalising prospect, especially for what such finds may tell us about artistic process and changing historical fortunes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elsje van Kessel receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>An old Scottish master has revealed its secret after 430 years. What next from art detectives?Elsje van Kessel, Lecturer in Art History, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/808052017-07-16T20:03:17Z2017-07-16T20:03:17ZFrom Elizabeth I to high fashion, the tales behind Game of Thrones’ costumes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177785/original/file-20170712-14428-a2ezrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1777%2C999&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Costumes tell a story through their design and give the viewer a look at the character's personality.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/mediaviewer/rm2581055488">HBO</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Game of Thrones, which returns today for its seventh season, offers fantasy, horror and intrigue, and, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jun/19/game-of-thrones-fashion-legacy-michele-clapton">Sarah Mower</a> has put it, shines a light on “our cynical, sophisticated, brutal, hopeless new Dark Ages”. It is also great fun to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-accurate-are-the-costumes-in-tv-period-dramas-75624">watch as a fashion expert</a>, whether you are a “pedant” who needs everything to be historically correct, or a “swooner” who doesn’t mind if it is not. </p>
<p>The show is infamous for its ability to brutally shock audiences. Such visceral, sensorial overload can mean that the breathtaking beauty of the costumes — and especially <a href="http://www.michelecarragherembroidery.com/Game-of-Thrones-Gallery(2829575).htm">Michele Carragher’s stunning embroidery</a> – is sometimes lost on viewers.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Uord1ojddeE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>It may be fantasy, but, if we take the time to look closely, we can see myriad historical influences, from medieval northern Europe to 1960s Balenciaga. Designer Michele Clapton’s claim that “we were never bound by the rules of any particular time period” is certainly true. The influences are scattered and often not consistent, which makes the discovery of them all the more piquant.</p>
<p>Whether a particular influence was the designer’s intention or not is, in many respects, unimportant. As with literary analysis, television dramas are an art form open to interpretation.</p>
<h2>Sansa Stark’s second wedding dress</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177669/original/file-20170711-20000-ramd0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) and Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3849842/mediaviewer/rm2236550656">HBO</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The circumstances of Sansa Stark’s second wedding to Ramsay Bolton in season five are dark and traumatic. Her groom is a psychopath and her terror as she walks towards him is palpable. Her dress is threaded with reminders of her past life and family, but it also has some very unexpected influences. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178191/original/file-20170714-15666-tnkuxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1960s Vogue pattern for a Misses coat/poncho cape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a4/41/5e/a4415ed2fb7ae268b5940c60285f3593.jpg">Pinimg.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To me, the sculptural sleeves of the bodice, a moulded extension of the body of the dress (which was intended to look somewhat like the statues in the crypt at <a href="https://fashionista.com/2015/06/game-of-thrones-season-5-costume-designer-interview">Winterfell, her ancestral home</a>) are reminiscent of 1960s cape coats with their fluid body and high neck.</p>
<p>An especially useful comparison is a <a href="http://www.kci.or.jp/en/archives/digital_archives/1960s/KCI_244">1963 design from the French fashion house Balenciaga</a>, which has a very similar upper-body silhouette. Sansa’s undersleeves, meanwhile, correspond to the 19th-century “bishop” style – a lightweight sleeve, full to the wrist, where it is gathered into a cuff. This could be seen from around 1810 until the early years of the 20th century. In Sansa’s dress it provides a softer edge to a rather severe and encased design. </p>
<h2>Cersei’s wedding outfit</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177670/original/file-20170711-19980-1tvknvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0372176/mediaviewer/rm1469490944">HBO</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cersei Lannister’s dress at the fateful wedding of her son, King Joffrey, in season four embodies many of the staples of “fantasy” costume: long flowing sleeves, emblematic embroidery, a trained skirt. These aspects often fall under the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14553832-inside-hbo-s-game-of-thrones">pseudo-medieval banner</a> and indeed this era was on Clapton’s radar when designing the costumes.</p>
<p>More recently, Cersei’s dress also recalls the appropriately royal costume of Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century. The portrait of Elizabeth I as princess from around 1546 is a beautiful example of the Tudor silhouette: a low, almost off-the-shoulder neckline, a long slender torso, voluminous oversleeves, gold trimming and ornamentation, and a rich colour scheme. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177824/original/file-20170712-15626-14rq3ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attributed to William Scrots, Elizabeth I when a Princess.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The way women held themselves in these dresses, with clasped hands in front of the waist (helping to show off those sleeves), can also be seen in Cersei when she wears her dress. The style both empowers and constrains women. </p>
<p>On the one hand it has an armour-like appearance that might suggest strength and perseverance against the world. On the other, the hampering skirts, sleeves and constraining bodice could imply the very opposite. Clapton has <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14553832-inside-hbo-s-game-of-thrones">said of Cersei</a>: “I don’t know how strong she is really, but she wants to project that image.”</p>
<h2>Daenerys’s pleated skirts</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177671/original/file-20170711-19988-dlljek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daenerys (Emilia Clarke).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3592338/mediaviewer/rm3260140544">HBO</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Self-professed “Stormborn, Mother of Dragons” and other titles too numerous to mention, Daenerys Targaryen is given some of the most striking costumes of the series. Her costumes sit somewhere between Lord of the Rings’ ethereal royal elf Galadriel and the angular lines of Star Trek uniforms. By the most recent series they had evolved to portray – in Clapton’s words – “this sense of power and also a sense of immortality … this rather untouchable [quality and] a removal from reality”. </p>
<p>With Daenerys’s insatiable wish to power forward in life, coupled with her constant re-invention of herself, it is perhaps unexpected that her clothes should have any strong historical connections.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178186/original/file-20170714-28500-1nod5sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ‘Delphos’ Tea Gown designed by Mariano Fortuny.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museum of Fine Arts, Houston</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quite a few of her costumes appear to be influenced by the iconic pleated dresses of Spanish-born Mariano Fortuny, one of the most important designers of the 20th century. His innovative rolled pleated technique (patented in 1909) recalled the classical statues of ancient Greece and Rome. </p>
<p>Similarly pleated skirts, reaching to the floor, can be seen on a number of Daenerys’s garments and give softness to an often rather harsh ensemble. The connotation of ancient Greece and Rome is an appropriate one for this burgeoning queen, who aims to build empires and tame mythological beasts. </p>
<p>Fortuny’s gowns were also associated with rational and aesthetic dress advocates in the 20th century, who argued for practical yet attractive female clothing. Likewise Daenerys wears trousers under every dress. <a href="https://fashionista.com/2015/06/game-of-thrones-season-5-costume-designer-interview">Clapton has said</a>: “I like that sense of, ‘I can play this [queen] but underneath, I can run’.”</p>
<p>Clapton retired from Game of Thrones after five series, having completed, in her words, “a complete look” for the show’s diverse geographic regions. She left not only a complete “look”, but also a complete mood board of historical influences for successors to draw on. As we move into the seventh season, it will be interesting for eagle-eyed viewers to spot and enjoy new parallels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lydia Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Game of Thrones is brutal, shocking and great fun for fashion experts. Not confined to historical accuracy, its influences stretch from medieval northern Europe to 20th-century high fashion.Lydia Edwards, Fashion historian, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/680242016-11-17T14:27:23Z2016-11-17T14:27:23ZMedieval women can teach us how to smash gender rules and the glass ceiling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146414/original/image-20161117-18145-17mh8il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joan of Arc. BlackMac/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the night of the US election, Manhattan’s magisterial, glass-encased Javits Centre stood with its ceiling intact and its guest-of-honour in defeated absence. Hillary Clinton – who has frequently spoken of “the highest, hardest glass ceiling” she was attempting to shatter – wanted to bring in a new era with symbolic aplomb. As supporters despaired in that same glass palace, it was clear that the symbolism of her defeat was no less forceful.</p>
<p>People wept, hopes were dashed, and more questions were raised about just what it will take for the most powerful leader on the planet to one day be a woman. Hillary Clinton’s staggering experience and achievements as a civil rights lawyer, first lady, senator and secretary of state were not enough.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146388/original/image-20161117-18113-16gfll4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146388/original/image-20161117-18113-16gfll4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146388/original/image-20161117-18113-16gfll4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146388/original/image-20161117-18113-16gfll4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146388/original/image-20161117-18113-16gfll4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146388/original/image-20161117-18113-16gfll4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146388/original/image-20161117-18113-16gfll4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Javitts Centre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BravoKiloVideo/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The double-standards of gender “rules” in society have been disconcertingly evident of late. The Clinton campaign said FBI director James Comey’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s private server revealed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/james-comey-fbi-clinton-trump-email-investigation-russia-hack">“jaw-dropping” double standards</a>. Trump, however, lauded him as having “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/james-comey-fbi-clinton-trump-email-investigation-russia-hack">guts</a>”. When no recriminating email evidence was found, Trump ran roughshod over the judicial process, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/06/fbi-director-hillary-clinton-email-investigation-criminal-james-comey">claiming</a>: “Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it. The FBI knows it, the people know it.” Chants of “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/james-comey-fbi-clinton-trump-email-investigation-russia-hack">lock her up</a>” resonated through the crowd at a rally.</p>
<p>Mob-like cries for a woman to be incarcerated without evidence or trial? That’s medieval.</p>
<h2>The heart of a king</h2>
<p>Since time immemorial, women have manipulated gender constructs in order to gain agency and a voice in the political milieu. During her speech to the troops at Tilbury, anticipating the invasion of the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth I famously claimed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146376/original/image-20161117-18101-skl0oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146376/original/image-20161117-18101-skl0oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146376/original/image-20161117-18101-skl0oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146376/original/image-20161117-18101-skl0oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146376/original/image-20161117-18101-skl0oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146376/original/image-20161117-18101-skl0oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146376/original/image-20161117-18101-skl0oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elizabeth I, The Ditchley Portrait, c. 1592, National Portrait Gallery. Elizabeth stands upon England, and the top of the world itself. Her power and domination are symbolised by the celestial sphere hanging from her left ear. The copious pearls represent her virginity and thus maleness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Four hundred years later, Margaret Thatcher seemed obliged to follow the same approach, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11251919/From-shrill-housewife-to-Downing-Street-the-changing-voice-of-Margaret-Thatcher.html">employing a voice coach</a> from the National Theatre to help her to lower her voice. And <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/james-comey-fbi-clinton-trump-email-investigation-russia-hack">Clinton told a rally in Ohio</a>: “Now what people are focused upon is choosing the next president and commander-in-chief.” Not a million miles away from the kingly-identifications of Elizabeth, the pseudo-male “Virgin Queen”.</p>
<p>This gender-play has ancient origins. In the late fourth century AD, <a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.v.LXXI.html">St Jerome argued that chaste women become male</a>. Likewise, the early Christian non-canonical <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/thomas-anon.html">Gospel of Thomas</a> claimed that Jesus would make Mary “male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146378/original/image-20161117-18123-ui8xj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">15th century ‘Disease Woman’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection, MS Wellcome Apocalypse 49, f.38r.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the Middle Ages, this idea of female bodily inferiority became material as well as spiritual as medical texts on the topic proliferated. Women’s bodies were considered inferior and more prone to disease. Because of the interiority of female anatomy, male physicians had to rely on diagrams and texts to interpret them, often with a singular focus on the reproductive system. Since men mostly wrote the books, the lexical and pictorial construction of the female body has therefore been historically, and literally, “written” by male authors.</p>
<p>So women, who were socially constrained by their female bodies and living in a man’s world, had to enact radical ways to modify their gender and even their very physiology. To gain authority, women had to be chaste, and to behave like men by adopting “masculine” characteristics. Such modifications might appear to compromise feminist, or proto-feminist, ambitions, but they were in fact sophisticated strategies to undermine or subvert the status quo.</p>
<h2>Gender-play</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146381/original/image-20161117-18131-lsbewx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illuminated image from Hildegard of Bingen’s (1098-1179) Scivias, depicting her enclosed in a nun’s cell, writing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Medieval women who desired a voice in religious circles (the Church was, of course, the unelected power of the day) shed their femininity by adapting their bodies, the way that they used them, and therefore the way in which they were “read” by others. Through protecting their virginity, fasting, mortifying their flesh, perhaps reading, writing, or becoming physically enclosed in a monastery or anchorhold, they reoriented the way in which they were identified.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_zdEBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=joan+of+arc+helen+castor&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAleCKp_HPAhUDIMAKHc9wD1EQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=joan%2520of%2520arc%2520helen%2520castor&f=false">Joan of Arc</a> (1412-1431) famously led an army to victory in the Hundred Years War dressed as a soldier, in a time when women were not supposed to fight. </p>
<p>Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), defying social codes of female beauty, shaved her hair in defiance of her parents’ wish to have her married. She later had a powerful mystical experience whereby she received the heart of Christ in place of her own; a visceral transformation which radically altered her body and identity. </p>
<p>And St Agatha (231-251), whose story was widely circulated in the Middle Ages, refused to give in to sexual pressure and was tortured, finally suffering the severing of her breasts. She has since been depicted as offering her breasts on a plate to Christ and the world. Agatha subverted her torturers’ aim, exploited her “de-feminised” self and instead offered her breasts as symbols of power and triumph.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146384/original/image-20161117-18134-16f5q08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146384/original/image-20161117-18134-16f5q08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146384/original/image-20161117-18134-16f5q08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146384/original/image-20161117-18134-16f5q08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146384/original/image-20161117-18134-16f5q08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146384/original/image-20161117-18134-16f5q08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146384/original/image-20161117-18134-16f5q08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saint Agatha bearing her severed breasts on a platter, Piero della Francesca (c. 1460–70).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yENzezyyPPMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=christianity+in+medieval+europe+contents+page&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUoe-Qo_HPAhUhCMAKHeYBCfsQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">Some scholars</a> have even argued that monks and nuns were a considered a “third gender” in the Middle Ages: neither fully masculine nor feminine. </p>
<p>These flexible gender systems show how medieval people were perhaps more sophisticated in their conceptualisation of identity that we are today, when challenges to <a href="http://fty.sagepub.com/content/1/3/347.short">binary notions of gender</a> are only now becoming widely discussed. Medieval codes of chastity might not be to most 21st-century tastes, but these powerful women-in-history took control of their own identification: found loopholes in the rules, found authority in their own self-fashioning.</p>
<p>The US presidential campaign has without doubt reinvigorated the politics of gender. Hillary Clinton <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/11539780/How-to-get-a-story-off-the-front-page-politicians-transformed.html">has said</a>: “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle”. It is easy to leap at such a comment, seeing Clinton as a media-sycophant, playing to the expectation that women are defined by their appearance. But in fact, like myriad women before her, Clinton was manipulating and exploiting the very rules that seek to define her.</p>
<p>Complete liberation this is not. Only when the long history of gender rules is challenged will powerful women no longer be compared to men. Like the response of Joan of Arc and her troops, it is surely now time for another call to arms: for the freedoms of tolerance, inclusion, equality and compassion. We must turn grief into optimism and words into action. To shatter not the dreams of girls around the world, but the glass ceilings that restrain them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Kalas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women have always had to fight gender rules in order to gain power.Laura Kalas, Postdoctoral Researcher in Medieval Literature and Medicine, Associate Tutor, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/633522016-08-02T08:40:04Z2016-08-02T08:40:04ZElizabeth I, the Spanish Armada and the art of painting politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132760/original/image-20160802-17185-1qrfhgq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elizabeth I of England, the Armada portrait, 1590.
</span> </figcaption></figure><p>After what the Heritage Lottery Fund has <a href="https://www.savearmada.org/">described</a> as one of the most successful funding campaigns ever, one of three versions of the 1590 “Armada portrait” has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/29/armada-portrait-elizabeth-i-bought-britain-heritage-lottery-fund-royal-museums-greenwich">acquired</a> by the Art Fund for £10.3m. The painting, bought from Sir Francis Drake’s descendants, will be on public display from October this year in the Queen’s House, Greenwich, before undergoing conservation in 2017.</p>
<p>Few images are as well known as the Armada painting, which shows Queen Elizabeth I basking in the aftermath of the greatest military success of her long reign, the defeat of a Spanish Armada. </p>
<p>This invasion force was sent by her rival and brother-in-law, Philip II, to take the English throne and revert England to Catholicism in 1588. The Spanish Armada posed an existential threat to Elizabeth Tudor’s reign and had been feared for decades. But when the Spanish launched the actual invasion, delivery from the threat seemed miraculously easy. A combination of atrocious weather and shrewd naval tactics on the part of the English divided the Spanish force, shipwrecking some and diverting others. No landing forces reached English shores. </p>
<p>At the time the victory was viewed as nothing short of miraculous and a sure sign of divine support for the rule of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. The propaganda potential was considerable and the Armada portrait was no doubt commissioned in order to capitalise on this.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132667/original/image-20160801-17169-lxr4cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132667/original/image-20160801-17169-lxr4cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132667/original/image-20160801-17169-lxr4cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132667/original/image-20160801-17169-lxr4cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132667/original/image-20160801-17169-lxr4cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132667/original/image-20160801-17169-lxr4cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132667/original/image-20160801-17169-lxr4cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Queen’s House, Greenwich, in the foreground.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leonid Andronov/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Painting politics</h2>
<p>By 1590, when the image was painted, Elizabeth had been on the throne for more than 30 years and there was rising domestic discontent with her rule. Internal plots to overthrow her were especially rife in the 1580s and the execution of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots for treason in 1587 had done little to calm matters down. Elizabeth remained unmarried, was firmly past childbearing age – and as she approached old age the unresolved questions over her succession came increasingly to the forefront. </p>
<p>The stunning military victory over the Spanish Armada deflected attention away from these internal fears, instead projecting the image of a monarch whose reign was blessed by a divine overlord who endorsed her Protestant rule over that of her Catholic challenger. The wise, calm, magnificent Elizabeth steered her ships to victory, while those of her enemy crashed and burned. The iconography of the image is hardly subtle, aiming instead at glorious celebration.</p>
<p>The value of the Armada painting lies in its masterful storytelling, beautifully executed by the unknown painter who committed the narrative to canvas sometime after the actual events of the feared and foiled invasion. Elizabeth, in a splendid and jewelled gown, occupies the centre of the painting, flanked by two images. Both scenes show a fleet. On the left, the English fleet rides high on tranquil and becalmed waters, basking in sunshine, whilst on the right the Spanish fleet are battered by ferocious high waves. Elizabeth’s presence has becalmed the waves for her own navy, resulting in the destruction of enemy ships. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132668/original/image-20160801-17185-1384kyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cropped Armada portrait highlighting background.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there is more to this than just a reference to the military battle. The biblical references to the parting of the Red Seas, which allowed the Israelites, God’s chosen people, to be safe from the wrath of the Egyptian pharaoh, are all too clear. The painting bears witness to how contemporaries considered the events of 1588 as a reaffirmation of their monarch’s divine right to rule, something the patron of the image sought to evoke and remind the viewer of. </p>
<p>It should also be remembered that images of Elizabeth I were governed by tight rules that required images to be approved of by Elizabeth herself, which is one of the reasons why there are several versions of the Armada portrait. The propaganda value of the image was such that once the image was approved, several more versions were commissioned by courtiers demonstrating their loyalty to Elizabeth by adding one of her images to their own collections. The politics of painting at the Elizabethan Court were sophisticated and complex.</p>
<p>The painting also speaks more eloquently than even the sonnets and literature associated with the Elizabethan court, such as Edmund Spenser’s <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126947.html">The Fairie Queene</a>, about gendered perceptions of Elizabeth I. Here her reign is measured by meaningful events, and in the Armada portrait, she is curiously, magnetically androgynous in being both a woman in body but a divinely appointed king in her actions.</p>
<h2>The second Elizabeth</h2>
<p>Fast forward to images of the second Elizabeth, HRH Elizabeth II, now in the seventh decade of a reign whose longevity has outstripped even that of her Renaissance predecessor, and a different kind of royal portrait emerges. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.jerseyheritage.org/places-to-visit/mont-orgueil-castle">Mont Orgueil</a>, in Jersey – long a significant Channel Island stronghold – is a prominent portrait of Elizabeth II, commissioned in 2004 by the Jersey Heritage Trust. Chris Levine’s aptly titled work “<a href="http://chrislevine.com/artworks/the-queen/">Equanimity</a>”, featured on a holographic £100 Jersey stamp and banknote, depicts Elizabeth II as a serene and calm woman – and, significantly, an old woman, with silvery white hair and a lined face. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132665/original/image-20160801-17183-1ccgs5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jersey’s Jubilee note.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her image speaks of graceful age and experience (and images of old women projecting age in a positive manner remain surprisingly few and far between). But where the Armada portrait surrounds Elizabeth I with iconography, telling a story about her achievements and successes, the story in the modern image lies in permitting the viewer a close contemplation of the person of the Queen herself. Military victories and political change are divorced from the figure of the monarch – she functions as a very different icon 400 years on: as a role model for personal integrity and conduct.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriele Neher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The value of the Armada painting, soon to go on show in Greenwich, lies in its masterful storytelling.Gabriele Neher, Associate professor History of Art, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/612292016-06-20T12:31:10Z2016-06-20T12:31:10ZVote Leave views of Europe’s future are not attractive – if you know your history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127310/original/image-20160620-8875-1ru7tv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Whither Europe after Brexit?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/europe+future/search.html?page=2&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=384377665">Wiliam Potter</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the EU referendum, those urging Britons to vote to leave see two possible outcomes for Europe in the event of a Brexit. Either it would integrate further and become a superstate or it would fall apart, restoring a Europe of nation states. Both can’t be true. And when you take a historical perspective, neither would be in the UK’s interests.</p>
<p>Let’s start with integration. The <a href="https://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/111027161740-SenseofSovereignity1991.pdf">longstanding fear</a> of many Brexiters is a European federal superstate. They <a href="http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/the_five_presidents_report_and_the_next_eu_treaty">cite</a> the European Commission’s “<a href="https://ec.europa.eu/priorities/publications/five-presidents-report-completing-europes-economic-and-monetary-union_en">Five Presidents’ Report</a>” of last year as unsettling progress – it proposes deeper financial, fiscal and political union, chiefly in the eurozone, by 2025. Some in Vote Leave <a href="http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2016/02/28/economic-uncertainty-and-the-eu/">argue that</a> the departure of the eurosceptic British would make such deeper intergration and even a superstate more likely. </p>
<p>Any move by Britain to encourage this would run counter to five centuries of foreign policy. Britain has always been deeply intertwined with the continent in everything from politics to culture to religion. Hence it has been a longstanding policy goal to maximise influence there and prevent a single power dominating. </p>
<p>This was one reason Elizabeth I of England <a href="http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20254%20elizabeth%20diplomacy%202.htm">supported</a> the Dutch protestants’ revolt in the 1580s against the king of Spain and Habsburg emperor, Philip II. It was equally behind Britain’s wars against <a href="http://www.louis-xiv.de/index.php?id=23">Louis XIV</a> and <a href="http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_napoleonic.html">Napoleon Bonaparte</a> of France; its <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/mirror01_01.shtml">declaration of war</a> on Germany in 1914 to support Belgian neutrality; and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/churchill_decides_to_fight_on">its refusal</a> to make peace with Hitler after France fell in 1940. Splendid isolation has rarely been judged a viable proposition. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127311/original/image-20160620-8856-1pqvghn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not quitters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bigot44/17492665161/in/photolist-sDLtVc-8psCaQ-gGa64y-8ehe9F-maw7ar-rthwtX-qMTrZG-gascqn-5Z4FVu-qH7Bdz-4scdho-rbhKmm-fWujWw-fsbFa4-6bQ6D1-fA6zbg-d3GsAo-6bKWDv-9TFC7w-sadZhM-orXbVt-kzbz7e-9q9Ne1-oq1jsK-8yofaw-ka7V8Q-qstuoM-4sccA1-5m8co3-i75iib-8nxr6e-nXbuy7-5Fp8qo-weifm-5FEKPn-eANU4x-5FEKuZ-weic6-hVYK1L-3go5X-23Ct83-5FK4k5-5FEJPa-o5do4-8jn33y-5FEKd4-8WADFt-4scbKh-5zL9bb-HLqZry">Franck Berthelet</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In reality, a European superstate is a distant prospect. Notwithstanding a small core of federalists, European integration <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VJzdndGbO7wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=milward+european+rescue+of+the+nation+state&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii8Y_73bHNAhVLAsAKHTY_B9AQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=milward%20european%20rescue%20of%20the%20nation%20state&f=false">has primarily</a> been about strengthening its nation states through collective action. The UK has <a href="http://www.cvce.eu/en/recherche/unit-content/-/unit/02bb76df-d066-4c08-a58a-d4686a3e68ff/62cd6534-f1a9-442a-b6fb-0bab7c842180">not been the only state</a> to guard its sovereignty. This is why, for example, the idea of a European Defence Community with a single army was <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/int/edc.htm">too much</a> for the French in the 1950s – and why <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/26/plans-to-create-an-eu-army-kept-secret-from-voters/">rumours of new plans</a> for an EU army are unlikely to succeed either.</p>
<p>It seems far <a href="http://www.cer.org.uk/in-the-press/unnoticed-brexiteers-idea-eu-super-state-quietly-dying">more likely</a> the EU minus the UK would remain a prosaic supranational bloc built on nation states. From outside, it would be harder to maintain the influence that the UK has generally judged crucial.</p>
<h2>A Europe of nation states</h2>
<p>An alternative vision from leavers such as the UK justice secretary <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/662384/EU-referendum-Brexit-Michael-Gove-speech-liberate-Europe-Brussels-Vote-Leave">Michael Gove</a> and UKIP leader <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/678138/Brexit-EU-referendum-trigger-end-Eropean-Union-Nigel-Farage">Nigel Farage</a> is that a Brexit would trigger the collapse of the EU. Europe would then flourish as a patchwork of coexisting sovereign states, they argue. After even a cursory glance at 19th and 20th century European history, this looks hopelessly romantic. </p>
<p>Nineteenth-century Europe was a collection of nation states and empires. The nation state dominated in the west after <a href="http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-unification-of-italy-summary-timeline-leaders.html">Italian</a> and <a href="http://www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/unific.htm">German</a> unification in 1870 and 1871, while eastern Europe remained largely the preserve of multi-national empires such as the Ottoman and Austria-Hungary. </p>
<p>Economic cooperation certainly blossomed in that era. Between 1870 and 1914 – sometimes <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/globalization-and-history">described by historians</a> as the “first age of globalisation” – labour, capital and goods all moved freely enough. But there were limits. A free-trade honeymoon in the mid-century <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/5293/discussions/130285/blog-brexit-free-trade-and-perils-history-imperial-global-forum">gave way</a> to protectionism in the 1880s. And while <a href="https://archive.org/details/greatillusionstu00angerich">some argued</a> in the pre-war years that economic interdependence had made conflict irrational, this made little difference in 1914. </p>
<p>What really underpinned peace by the early 20th century was the system of alliances between the great powers. Yet it struggled to contain their rival ambitions, not least those of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilhelm_kaiser_ii.shtml">Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany</a>. The crumbling Ottoman Empire let loose competing nationalisms in the Balkans. When Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Gavrilo-Princip">assassinated</a> the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 1914, a showdown between Serbia and Austria-Hungary rapidly descended into the great war the alliances were intended to deter. </p>
<p>Yet the drive for a continent-wide state system based on national sovereignty reached its zenith after 1918. Led by Woodrow Wilson, the US president, the victorious allies applied the principle of “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/fourteen_points.shtml">national self-determination</a>” to eastern as well as western Europe – even if the patchwork of ethnicities meant compromises were necessary to build viable states. It meant unions such as Yugoslavia and large minority enclaves such as German-speaking Sudentenland in Czechoslovakia. Inter-state tensions and the potential for conflict were ever present. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127312/original/image-20160620-8889-1nepc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Big four at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919: (L to R) David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bigot44/17492665161/in/photolist-sDLtVc-8psCaQ-gGa64y-8ehe9F-maw7ar-rthwtX-qMTrZG-gascqn-5Z4FVu-qH7Bdz-4scdho-rbhKmm-fWujWw-fsbFa4-6bQ6D1-fA6zbg-d3GsAo-6bKWDv-9TFC7w-sadZhM-orXbVt-kzbz7e-9q9Ne1-oq1jsK-8yofaw-ka7V8Q-qstuoM-4sccA1-5m8co3-i75iib-8nxr6e-nXbuy7-5Fp8qo-weifm-5FEKPn-eANU4x-5FEKuZ-weic6-hVYK1L-3go5X-23Ct83-5FK4k5-5FEJPa-o5do4-8jn33y-5FEKd4-8WADFt-4scbKh-5zL9bb-HLqZry">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Inter-war Europe had only weak mechanisms to smooth things over. In place of the system of great-power alliances the new <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/league-of-nations/">League of Nations</a> pursued collective security and cooperation, though with limited power to bind its members. It proved too weak to prevent protectionism resurging in the 1920s or the rise of fascism. Great-power politics re-emerged and the continent plunged into an even bloodier war in 1939. </p>
<p>No wonder so many British and continental leaders since World War II have supported European integration. Winston Churchill <a href="http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html">spoke airily</a> of a “United States of Europe” in 1946. A Europe of sovereign nation states had proved a failure twice, and the second failure had been worse than the first. </p>
<h2>All in the past?</h2>
<p>Brexiters might argue Europe <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/brexit-boris-johnson-david-cameron-security-nato-eu-457370">could now</a> return to separate sovereign states because its stability is underpinned by the American-designed international framework of the UN, NATO, IMF and World Trade Organisation that emerged after 1945. </p>
<p>None of these other organisations provides a specifically European system of cooperation, however. They are not designed to tackle the common problems of a small, densely populated and combustible continent. This is why successive US presidents, most recently <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/21/as-your-friend-let-me-tell-you-that-the-eu-makes-britain-even-gr/">Barack Obama</a>, have generally supported the European project and UK participation. </p>
<p>When those who back Vote Leave conjure these competing visions of a European superstate or a patchwork of sovereign states, they are effectively offering the UK either impotence or instability in its own neighbourhood. Even if the more likely outcome is probably a diminished EU with the UK on the sidelines, let’s be clear: none of these three alternatives looks attractive for either the UK or the rest of Europe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dilley is supported by an AHRC Early Career Fellowship, but this article reflects entirely his own views.
</span></em></p>Those who favour Brexit imply it would be followed either by a European superstate or the collapse of the EU. Here’s why neither is in UK’s interests.Andrew Dilley, Senior Lecturer, History, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.