britain Royal weddings

The
Archaeology
As Prince William and Kate
Middleton’s nuptials this
month stir feverish national
excitement, what light can
archaeology shed on the
of
pomp and pageantry of the
most magnificent of Royal
occasions? Brendon Wilkins
goes in search of the evidence.

T
he sound of smashing porcelain
paralysed us with fear. Looking
down at the kitchen floor, ‘29th
July 1981,’ read one of the shat-
tered pieces, laying next to the
heart shaped portraits of The Price
of Wales and his broken bride, tragically cracked
in two. My best friend had dropped the most pre-
cious thing we had ever been given. His mum was
going to kill us.
I sometimes reflect on my hapless friend’s royal
wedding cup with the detached eye of an archae-
ologist. It doubtlessly ended up in a Yorkshire
landfill, where it now rests in the July 1981 layer.
Modern royal weddings spawn all manner of dis-
posable souvenirs and paraphernalia, but what
survives from earlier periods of history? Moving
further back into the past, how much archaeolog-
ical evidence remains for other royal weddings?
Can archaeology, with its long, unsentimental
view of history, tell us anything we don’t already
know about these celebrated occasions? 

12 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk May 2011 |

Royal
Weddings

image: The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/ The Bridgeman Art Library

Marriage of Queen Victoria, on the 10th February 1840, 1840-

42 (oil on canvas) by Hayter, Sir George (1792-1871). On 10th
February 1840, Queen Victoria married her cousin, Prince Albert
of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in the Chapel Royal, St James. Though
white has long been accepted as the traditional colour of the
wedding dress, it was actually Victoria’s dress - white satin trimmed
with Honiton lace – which established this new tradition. White has
been by far the most popular choice, ever since, for bridal gowns.

| Issue 254 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 13

 britain Royal weddings

left & inset The site of

the Hermitage at Grafton
Regis. This was the place
of the secret marriage of
Edward IV and Elizabeth
Woodville in 1464. Back
then, it would have been
obscured by dense tree
cover, birch and oak
woodland, set within the
north-eastern quadrant of
the Whittlewood Forest.

What lies beneath?

Weddings are the least considered,
among all the ‘rites of passage’
studied by archaeologists. We are on
much firmer footing with funeral rituals, not least
because mortal remains survive in the ground for
us to study. A royal funeral may demand the con-
struction of monumental architecture and burial
with a wealth of grave goods, but what type of
evidence might be expected for royal wedding?
Recorded history from 1066 onwards suggests
that they leave little or no trace. Throughout the
photos: Lee Hutchinson
of Scotland in 1100, ostensibly to secure an heir
that could unite England and Scotland. The prag-
matic choice of bride could seal treaties between
warring nations, and royal children were some-
times betrothed before they could walk. Henry
‘The Young King’ was engaged to Constance of
Castile when he was 5 and she was 2, and Isabella
of Valois married the 29 year-old Richard II when

Medieval period, royal weddings were small pri- she was only six. In such matches, personal feel-
vate affairs -with big political consequences. ings were irrelevant. Weddings were a contract
The primary purpose of royal matrimony was signed behind closed doors, between dynastic
political, such as Henry I’s marriage to Mathilda families. Love was not part of the equation.

The Woodville Oak,

Grafton Regis
On 4th September 2000, in an act of symbolism
and spirituality verging on Old English paganism,
Prince Charles planted this tree (christened the ‘The
Woodville Oak’) to replace the so-called ‘Queen’s
Oak’, which, according to legend, was the tree under
which Edward IV met Elizabeth Woodville in 1464.
The Queen’s Oak was believed to have survived for
over five hundred years, until its tragic demise in
1997 following an arson attack. Subsequent tests
conducted on the perished oak indicated, however,
that it was a mere 340 years old and therefore not
the oak of legend.

14 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk May 2011 |

 Much has been made about Kate Middleton’s
status as a commoner who won a Prince’s heart,
but she is just one in a long line of upwardly
mobile lasses who have married close to the
throne, including the Queen Mother herself,
Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. But to find the biggest
upset to Royal protocol, we have to go back to the
15th century, and the tumultuous years of the
War of the Roses.
A tryst in the tale
Elizabeth Woodville lived the last of her days
amongst the nuns at Bermondsey Abbey. When
she died on 8th June 1442, her simple funeral
belied her true status in a dynastic struggle for
the crown of England. The rise of the Woodville
family from common stock to the Royal house-
hold reflects the complex social and political
upheaval in England during the War of the Roses
(1455-1485). As the houses of Lancaster and
York (the red rose and white rose respectively)
embarked on a sporadic thirty-year conflict,
Elizabeth’s father fought for the Lancastrian
cause. Elizabeth’s first husband was killed in the
battle of St Albans fighting for the Lancastrians,
and as the tide shifted in favour of the Yorkist’s
claim, her lands were confiscated.
Elizabeth returned home to her father’s manor
in Grafton, Northamptonshire, where hearing
news that the King was hunting nearby, she set
out to plead with him for restoration of her lands.
What passed between them on that fateful day –
1st May 1464 – we will never know, but according
to legend they met under an oak tree, where the
King tried in vain to alleviate her distress by sug-
gesting she become his mistress. The 25 year old
Elizabeth was a renowned beauty, ‘with heavy
lidded eyes like those of a dragon;’ she spurned
his initial advances, until he swept her back to her
father’s manor, and married her in secret.
The wedding took place in the family chapel,
and the only people present at the ceremony
were her mother, a priest, two anonymous wit-
nesses, and a boy to help with the mass. Not even
Elizabeth’s father knew of the marriage, which
remained a closely guarded secret until the fol-
lowing September, when the King’s advisors
unveiled their plans for far more profitable, and
foreign, wedding match. The idea that a King
could have married for love was unheard of in
the 15th century, but there was little the nobles
could do without provoking outright rebellion.
Edward struggled to prove the credentials of his
| Issue 254
bride; the favours he bestowed on Elizabeth and
her family served to intensify seething dynastic
resentments.
The proof is in the plough-soil
In 1964 and 1965, Christine Mahany excavated
what, on the surface, appeared to be little more
than a jumble of lumps and bumps outside
the village of Grafton Regis. This was the same
‘Grafton’ that Elizabeth Woodville had grown
up in; the village acquired the suffix ‘Regis’ in the
16th century when Henry VIII took possession 
Buyer beware!
Anyone who has ever experimented with internet dating will recognise the sinking
feeling when you finally meet the object of your affections, only to find that they
look nothing like their photograph. Henry VIII shares your pain.
Keen to cement a vital alliance with Germany in the wake of the Truce of Nice
(1538), the King’s Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, urged a match with Anne of Cleves,
daughter of a German Duke. By March 1539, negotiations were well underway, but
Henry still had misgivings, and dispatched his personal artist, Hans Holbein the
Younger, in the summer of 1539 to paint Anne and her younger sister Amalia, who he
was also considering marrying. Holbein was under strict instruction to be as accurate
as possible, and not flatter the sisters. Holbein painted Cleves, square-on and in
elaborate finery.
Henry planned to meet her at Greenwich Palace, but was impatient to see his
future bride, and rushed to meet her at Rochester almost as soon as she had landed
in the country. Henry was woefully dismayed by her appearance, but dragged his
heels to the alter nonetheless, grumbling ‘if it were not to satisfy the world and my
realm, I would not do that I must this day for none earthly thing.’ Continuing in the
same vein, the couples
first night was equally
disagreeable, Henry later
remarking ‘I liked her
before not well, but now I
like her much worse.’
There was little love lost
on her side either, and less
than seven months later
she returned her wedding
ring, ‘desiring that it might
be broken into pieces as a
thing which she knew of no
force or value.’ She readily
agreed to an annulment,
on grounds of non-
consummation.
Right Holbein the
Younger’s portrait of
Anne of Cleves.
www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 15
 britain Royal weddings

above The Museum of from Elizabeth Woodville’s manor, could this it

London team excavates also have been the family chapel - and the loca-
at Greenwich Palace,
tion for her secret wedding to Edward IV? And if
2006. The Queen Anne
building borders the so, how had the site so comprehensively disap-
excavations to the right; peared from popular memory, so that by 1964
in the bottom right corner not even local tradition could identify the bewil-
can be seen the partition
dering complex of rubble which lay just below
between the Tudor tiles
and the seventeeth the surface?
century Flemish tiles. Mahany and her team identified a number of
different phases corresponding to historical doc-
left Another view of the
uments charting the development of the site. The
excavations at Greenwich.
The Queen Anne building earliest mention comes from an undated charter
in the background was (between 1180 and 1205), which was witnessed
designed and built by Sir by a ‘Helias, hermita de Grafton.’ Little more can
Christopher Wren, and
be said of Helias, but he was likely to have been
was completed in 1749.
an Augustinian monk, perhaps commencing his
of her family manor. The investigation warranted religious life in the Abbey of St James (founded
two excavation seasons, because a Medieval in 1140s) who later followed a call to solitude.
structure began to emerge that could not easily be Monastic authorities enjoyed close links with
explained. Mahany discovered a pillared cloister religious hermits, benefiting from their relation-
measuring 10.3 metres by 10.6 metres internally, ship with celebrated Holy Men; at sometime
flanked by a chapel (14.6 metres x 4.5 metres) in the 13th century his small cell was enlarged
and several other associated buildings. Beyond into a complex church for orations, hospital
the main building lay a dovecote, and what may for travelers or paupers, and accommodation
have been a hospital and an industrial complex. for brothers. By 1256, the site was inhabited by
The excavators realised that this intriguing a small religious community and continued to
photos: Museum of London Archaeology

evidence for a small monastic settlement
could have been the ‘Hermitage of Grafton’,
an Augustinian religious house that 19th cen-
tury Antiquarians had placed in Shaw Wood,
three miles from Grafton Regis. If this was the
Hermitage of Grafton, less than a stone’s through
prosper until the second half of the 14th century.
At about this time Elizabeth Woodville’s family
had succeeded to lands in the area, residing in
what would become the Manor house in Grafton.
Episcopal registers in Lincoln show that Thomas
Woodville was taking an increasing interest in

16 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk May 2011 |

 with tiles bearing the crest of the houses of York
and Woodville. Given the limits of our evidence,
this is as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to
get. We will never know for certain if this small
family chapel was the scene of Edward IVs elope-
ment, but the substantial renovations certainly
took place soon after, perhaps to commemorate
the ceremony that took place. By the time Henry
VIII had succeeded to the lands at Grafton in the
1530s, the Hermitage had been levelled.

The King’s Great Matter

the fortunes of the hermitage, supporting it
financially, and petitioning the parent Abbey
of St James to appoint a master. At some point
in Edward IV’s reign, possibly because they were
unhappy at the abbey’s failure to support the
hermitage, the Woodvilles took over the chantry
and undertook a major reconstruction of the
building.
The excavators found a number of coins of
Edward IV in the rebuilt areas, and considerable
remodeling. The cloister was sealed off, curtailing
the inhabited area; a new room with two hearths
was built, and the chapel was re-floored: tellingly,
Above A close-up of
the glazed Tudor tiles:
confirmation that this
was, indeed, the chapel
royal where Henry VIII
married to wife number
four, Anne of Cleves, on
6th Jan 1540.
If there is one monarch in British history likely to
have left archaeological evidence for royal wed-
dings, it is six-times bridegroom Henry VIII. In
a desperate bid to sire a male heir – the ‘King’s
Great Matter’ as the constitutional crisis was
known – he personally selected four of his wives
from his own court, something that would not
be seen again until the 20th century. His other
two wives were political matches – his brother’s
wife Catharine of Aragon (married on 11th June
1509) and Anne of Cleves (4th October 1539).
He married both queens in the Chapel Royal at
Greenwich Palace; in January 2006, archaeolo-
gists monitoring building work at the Old Royal
Naval College discovered brickwork belonging to
this chapel, with its tiled floor in situ.
The Palace of Placentia, as Greenwich Place
was known, was built on the banks of the River
Thames, and was Henry VIII’s favourite palace. It
has never been established with certainty when
the first royal occupation occurred at the site, but
the accounts of the Office of the King’s Works,

Wedding Venues
When it comes to wedding venues, there seems to be only one of two choices for today’s self-respecting British
royal: Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s Cathedral. Westminster Abbey has certainly been the location of many
royal weddings (14 in total) but it is worth remembering that no royal nuptials took place there between 1382
and 1919 – over 500 years of British history.
The return to Westminster in the 20th century, as well as Charles and Diana’s decision to break with previous
tradition and wed in St Paul’s Cathedral, has much to do with fitting more guests in, highlighting the trend for
treating Royal weddings as monumental public occasions.
However, there was another venue that was much in vogue in years past: The Chapel Royal at St James’
Palace. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, a flock of royals tied the knot in there, including Prince Fredrick
and Augusta in 1736, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1839 – their wedding certificate, signed by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, today hangs on the wall in the vestry.
The Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace was constructed by Henry VIII, and decorated by Hans Holbein in honour
of the king’s short-lived marriage to Anne of Cleves. If the Chapel Royal at Greenwich can be said to be at the
heart of the Royal palace, then the Chapel Royal at St James’ Palace has a heart all of its own: when Queen Mary
ABOVE The Chapel Royal at
I died there in 1558, her body was taken for burial at Westminster Cathedral, but her heart and bowels were buried St James’ palace, long a
beneath the choir stalls, and there they remain to this day. favourite venue for British
Royal weddings.

| Issue 254 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 17

 britain Royal weddings
show that Henry VII’s palace was an entirely new
development. Among the earlier buildings that
were demolished to accommodate it was the old
chapel, which came down in the years 1500–
1511. Construction of the new palace proceeded
apace and between March 1500 and July 1504
the accounts include payments to the master
mason Robert Vertue and the master carpenter
Thomas Benks for work on ‘the chapel, gallery
and two closets at Greenwich’. It is likely that the
new Tudor chapel was built on the already con-
secrated ground of its predecessor.
When archaeologist Julian Bowsher finally
located the Tudor chapel whilst monitoring
routine building work, he found that the floor
was laid with three distinct areas of tiles. In
the centre were glazed Tudor tiles, formed
in a chequered pattern with diagonally
laid tiles at the surviving western edge.
Linear breaks in the floor either side
of these tiles were suggestive of parti-
tion bases. Beyond these, to the north
and south, were later plain Flemish
tiles. The east wall, surviving in some
places to a height of 0.7 metres above
the floor, had no trace of any rendering.
It had been assumed that any surface at
ground floor level would have been fur-
nished with wooden panelling and plastered
at the first-floor level. There were, however, two
putlog holes (for supporting timberwork) within
the brick face towards the southern end, clearly
created during construction. The floor of the
chapel seemed to have been supported by
two pairs of brick walls set equidistantly
apart. These walls stood directly below
the partition lines within the tiled floor
and the putlog holes in the east wall.
This would suggest that whatever
structural feature surrounded the altar
was conceived during construction and
retained when the extremities of the
floor were retiled.
The importance of the archaeological
information about the Tudor chapel royal,
which was such a focus for the majesty of
monarchy and the setting for occasions of great
splendour, ceremony and music, cannot be
PHOTO: Portable Antiquities Scheme.
understated. Historian and broadcaster, Dr David
Starkey, said ‘This discovery brings home the
reality of the weddings of Henry VIII more directly
than any other surviving buildings, and gives us
a real sense of the absolute heart of the Palace.
When Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon
18 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk
XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX
and Anne of Cleves in the first floor Closet, what
he saw through the window was the tiled floor
and altar that have now been revealed.’ Unlike
Hampton Court and St James’s Palace, where the
chapels have been altered, at Greenwich we can
see what Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth would
have seen.
Sovereigns and keepsakes
From the 11th to the 16th century, royal
weddings remained very private affairs,
but as the powers of the monarchy
declined and Britain began a transi-
tion to a modern system of govern-
ment, old barriers were broken down.
A flourishing print culture stimulated
an appetite for royal weddings, and
popular accounts of weddings in this
period are supplemented with com-
memorative medallions, tokens and nov-
elty items that we would recognise today;
conceptions of royal marriage were beginning
to change in the popular imagination, and
become something that the public had an emo-
tional stake in, however slight.
Entering into the late post-Medieval
and modern period, much more evi-
dence for royal weddings survives, as
mass produced souvenirs entered the
archaeological record. Just such a
find was made by a metal detectorist
Marie Hunt in a field near Owestry,
Shropshire, in July 2010. She found
a group of silver coins, which were
unusual in that they included a silver
gilt medal commemorating the 1625
marriage of Charles I to the French prin-
cess Henrietta Maria.
The head of the medal depicts the portraits of
Charles I and Henrietta Maria, under rays from
BELOW Silver gilt medal
heaven, whereas the reverse shows Cupid with
commemorating the
1625 marriage of Charles flowers and references the union of the roses of
I to the French princess England and lilies of France. The inscription is
Henrietta Maria, founding a modified quote from Virgil’s Aeneid, FVNDIT
2010 in a Shropshire field .AMOR. LILIA. MIXTA. ROSIS./.1625. (Love
by a metal detectorist.
pours out lilies mingled with roses). The medal
May 2011 |
was found with six other coins with varied wear Above The modern royal marriage: perfectly illustrating the
and clipping, suggesting that they were come shift to public inclusion in the previously private ceremonies of
Royal weddings, a map was published detailing the procession
from a single body of material deposited on one
route of the royal carriages to and from St Paul’s Cathedral for
occasion, probably in the early 1630s. the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, and
They consisted of two sixpences of Elizabeth the official programmes of their wedding are a hugely popular
I, two pennies of James I and two pennies of piece of memorabilia.
Charles I. The wear and clipping visible on
the coins of Elizabeth makes it probable that
they had experienced considerable currency,
which would certainly be compatible with the
idea that they represent 17th century deposits.
Medals are not usually found with coins in this
way, but given that the other coins had experi-
enced considerable currency, it is possible that
this one served as a pocket piece. It could have
been carried around for luck, as a symbol of loy-
alty or as even a marital memento.
If the last thousand years of history was
wiped clean, and all we had to go on was the
artefacts, objects and scattered sites to inform
us about royal weddings, we would unfortu-
nately know very little. But taken together
with the long view of history, the buildings
and objects that archaeology reveals give an

PHOTO: Emily Brand

appreciation of the human scale of these royal
events. Looking back through the centuries, we
can see that royal weddings have changed sig-
nificantly; from small, private ceremonies with
little personal feeling in the Medieval period,
to the large State occasions of the last century,
where private feelings are front and centre.
Having met outside of royal circles and enjoyed
a long courtship, William and Kate epitomise
just how far the public’s expectations have
travelled. Rather than a political union for the Source
benefit of the country, we now expect that first Brand, E. 2011. Royal Weddings. Shire Publications. ISBN 978-
0747810933
and foremost, a royal marriage should be a love
Parker, G. 1981. The Medieval Hermitage of Grafton Regis.
match: the fairytale wedding in full bloom. Northamptonshire Past and Present. Vol VI: 247-252. ISSN 0140
Reflecting on another commoner’s path to the 9131
royal household through the Medieval forests Bowsher, J. 2007. The Chapel Royal at Greenwich Palace. Journal
of Northamptonshire, it seems that history of the Society for Court Studies 11 (2)155-61
a
really does repeat itself after all. C

| Issue 254 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 19