View of the royal wedding garden party from the Powis Castle terraces. ©National Trust/Emma Marshall
To celebrate the recent royal wedding, the colleagues at Powis Castle threw open the garden for free and invited everyone to come and watch the event on a giant screen.
A local marching band led a procession to Powis from nearby Welshpool, including the Mayor and many people in wedding costume and fancy dress. In all over 5,000 people came and the atmosphere was very festive.
The 1863 royal wedding. Illustration in a book in the library at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. ©NTPL/John Hammond
As a modest tribute to today’s event I thought I would show a couple of historical royal weddings, to see if we can spot parallels and differences. This is the wedding of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, to Alexandra, Princess of Denmark, at Windsor Castle in 1864 (Princess Alexandra can also be seen, depicted twenty years later, in this post).
Admission ticket to the 1863 royal wedding, from the library at Anglesey Abbey. ©NTPL/John Hammond
And this is an admittance ticket to that event. The fact that it directs the bearer to the roof of the New Guard Room seems to indicate that they were expecting significant crowds.
Detail from a commemorative bioscope showing the wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 1840. ©NTPL/David Garner
And this was Queen Victoria’s outfit for her wedding to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840 – with a slightly longer train than we saw today.
Seaton Delaval Hall. © 2010 Dan Wakenshaw Photography
The house was built by Sir John Vanburgh in the 1720s for Admiral George Delaval and his nephew and heir Captain Francis Blake Delaval. Its theatrical silhouette and massing is an impressive example of Vanburgh’s Baroque genius.
Bust of Charles II attributed to John Bushnell, marble. Image: National Trust/Andrew McGregor
One of the works of art acquired with the house is a bust of Charles II attributed to John Bushnell (above). It was reputedly given by the King to Sir Jacob Astley, 1st Baronet, in recognition of his family’s loyalty to the Royalist cause during the Civil War. The purchase of the bust was enabled by generous grants from The Art Fund and from Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement.
Model for a bust of Charles II, terracotta, attributed to John Bushnell. Reproduction by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
A related terracotta model is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Alastair Laing, the National Trust’s sculpture expert, has noted that Bushnell was the only British sculptor of the period able to create busts of such monumentality and presence, due to his training on the Continent.
Showing a good leg: King Charles II by Sir Godfrey Kneller, at Powis Castle, Powys. ©NTPL/Clare Bates
Charles II created a strong royal ‘brand’ around his person, partly in imitation of the leading royal brand of the time, Louis XIV of France. Like Louis, Charles believed in the divine right of kings and he enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of his role.
Elevated status: Portrait of Charles II on plaster by Antonio Verrio, at Packwood House, Warwickshire. ©NTPL/John Hammond
Artists were employed to glorify the King in a variety of ways. This portrait, from the collection at Packwood House, is a rare surviving fragment of the ceiling of the Drawing Room at Windsor Castle. The distortions are due to the fact that the image would have been seen from below. It is currently on loan to the Verrio exhibition at the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse.
Certificate of authenticity: Grant of a baronetcy to Sir Thomas Myddelton of Chirk Castle, Wrexham. ©NTPL/John Hammond
The image management extended to the titles that the King liberally sprinkled among his supporters. Like many other financially straitened rulers before or since, he was adept at rewarding people through symbolic gestures.
