When a tapestry cost as much as a warship

Houses of Power
by Simon Thurley, Bantam Press, £30

It requires a great deal of archival work and a lively historical imagination to recreate the world of Tudor royal palaces. These buildings were centres of governance, worship, intrigue and domestic life, but all too often surviving physical traces are frustratingly limited.

Archaeology helps, as do financial records, but drawing everything together is a daunting undertaking. Simon Thurley makes it look easy, and his latest book is one of the finest works of historical reconstruction I have ever encountered.

For the Tudor kings and queens, palace life was about power and prestige. “Theatre,” as Thurley puts it, was “a fundamental ingredient of monarchy,” so it made sense for Henry VIII to commission a set of tapestries depicting the life of David that cost as much as a warship. When it came to consumption, the more conspicuous the better, which is why Elizabeth I’s royal kitchens could go through 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep and 2,330 deer in a single year.

Big buildings impressed, so when Henry set about creating Whitehall Palace (which would stretch all the way from the site of present-day Trafalgar Square to Downing Street) he gobbled up existing properties to clear the way without always bothering with the legal niceties.

Within these complexes, intimacy was also terribly important. Access to the monarch was closely guarded and the Tudors, through the innovation of the Privy Chamber, added new layers of protocol and mystique. This was part of a more subtle exercise of power. You could always tell whether one of Henry VIII’s children was in or out of favour by the rooms they were allotted in a royal palace. The frequency and location of an ambassador’s encounters with the monarch told you a great deal about the state of European politics.

All manner of fascinating characters stride through these pages: from Pasquier Grenier, Europe’s greatest tapestry merchant, to Henry VIII’s longest serving chef, Piero le Doux, with his fur-trimmed gown and velvet doublet. For serious students of Tudor history, the floor plans of the palaces alone are worth the admission price.