VIII. Anne of Denmark's Jewellery Inventory

Abstract

The inventory of the jewels of Anne of Denmark, wife of James I of England, belongs to a group of catalogues of personal jewellery of Tudor and Stuart royalty of which one of the most important is that made after the death of Henry VIII in 1550. It is now in the National Library of Scotland (Adv. MS 31.1.10) and was compiled in 1606, the last entry being dated January 1607. It records over four hundred items giving the weight of gold or silver, and the number and nature of the gems in each. The text was written in a neat secretary hand on the recto of each folio, the verso being left blank for later notes. Most of these, together with the marginalia and corrections to the main text, are in the same hand; but two other writers can be distinguished. The presence of these corrections and annotations show it to have been the working copy kept in the Jewel House.The detailed descriptions make it possible to trace some of the jewels in the earlier inventories of Henry VIII, Mary Tudor and Queen Elizabeth, and, in the case of the latter, to donors such as her favourite, the Earl of Warwick. On his accession James I declared certain jewels to be ‘individually and inseparably for ever annexed to the kingdome of this realme,’ but this did not prevent either their use at Court of subsequent dispersal.