14 October 2014 ~ The Wives of Henry VIII and the Courtyard

Listening to: Leftover Salmon ~ Lonesome Road

Hampton Court entrance includes a brief history, including Tudor and Baroque Palace style construction. King Henry VIII had six wives. There is a rhyme to remember their fate: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. This is represented on the lower-right placard.

Wife number one, Katherine of Aragon, was Henry's consort for over two decades, but she could not give him the son and dynastic security he craved and was discarded.

Wife number two was Anne Boleyn, but was executed on charges of adultery and providing a daughter.

Jane Seymour took her place and left a son but died soon after childbirth.

Anne of Cleves become wife number four. She was followed by the teenage Catherine Howard, but also arrested for adultery and taken away for execution.

Finally, Kateryn Parr became King Henry's final wife and outlived her husband.

Passing over the moat bridge, his "king's beasts" keep watch (below).

Then one arrives at the Great Gate House.

The wine fountain is a recreation of the one built for Henry in 1520.

The clock incorporate a great bell inherited from the late-medieval manor house that once stood on the site. The stationary outer ring shows the hours of the day. The outer dial rotates annually. It shows the days of the year, the position of the sun in the zodiac, and the date. The middle solar dial and pointer rotate daily, telling the time. The inner lunar dial rotates monthly, indicating the phase and visible portion of the moon.