1535: HENRY VIII
ROMANCE AND INTRIGUE AT SUDELEY

Tudor

Sudeley was amongst Henry VIII’s Royal residencies and in the summer of 1535 the King and his Queen, Anne Boleyn visited the Castle attended by a vast train of courtiers and baggage.

The King and Queen and immediate servants stayed at the Castle but many of their entourage were lodged at nearby Winchcombe Abbey. Henry’s Vicar General – Thomas Cromwell – was hidden away at Winchcombe Abbey, sending out his commissioners to value the assets of the monasteries and seize them for the Crown. Thus began ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries’, which changed the face of English history and its relationship with the Church.

While the King was conferring with Cromwell at Winchcombe Abbey, Anne Boleyn decided to use her commissioners to investigate the relic of Holy Blood at nearby Hailes Abbey with which she had become intrigued. The phial of blood, which it was claimed was the blood of Christ had been presented to the Abbey in 1270 and had transformed the Abbey into one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the country. Although the blood had been guaranteed as genuine by the patriarch of Jerusalem, later Pope Urban IV in the 13th Century, by the time of Anne Boleyn’s investigation it had been replaced by duck’s blood which ran out of a system of hidden levers worked by the monks. When Anne told the King of this trickery he ordered the false relic to be removed but it seems the monks only did so for a time and it had proved so popular that it was soon replaced. Hailes Abbey had meanwhile become so celebrated that the Prior of Hailes built a hotel in Winchcombe to home the richer visitors – it later became the George Hotel.

After the dissolution Henry VIII presented both Hailes and Winchcombe Abbeys to Thomas Seymour, Lord Sudeley, who had them dismantled and the materials sold. Seymour later married his love Katherine Parr who had outlived Henry, and they lived at Sudeley Castle. Katherine sadly died in child birth and is entombed in St. Mary’s Church within Sudeley’s enchanting gardens.

A new exhibition has been launched to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Henry’s accession to the throne.

The exhibition brings to life Henry’s and Anne Boleyn’s visit to Sudeley Castle in 1535 and includes fascinating detail about his visit and the costs to the estate. The exhibition includes Tudor artefacts and an audio description of this important period in Sudeley’s fascinating history.

We are delighted to have loaned two rare artefacts belonging to Katherine Parr, a lock of her hair and one of her books, to the Historic Royal Palaces for the 2009 Henry VIII exhibition at Hampton Court Palace.