Now, on with this Sunday’s links:

* Hope Walker has posted the first seven entries of her PhD work on Hans Eworth. See the entries here at the Hans Eworth Catalogue!

* Royals’ own set of kings and queens paintings revealed – “A set of paintings of England’s kings and queens, which has been on display in Buckingham Palace since it was bought by Prince Albert almost 170 years ago, is going on public view for the first time.”

* A home-grown discovery – a portrait of the young James I & VI – I especially like the information revealed by infrared photography. I love it when science and art come together!

* Trust set to stop spraying the Mary Rose with wax – “In a major milestone in the conservation of Henry VIII’s 500-year-old flagship, staff at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard are due to turn off the jets for the first time since she was raised from the Solent 30 years ago.”

* Chatham dig finds Tudor dockyard remains

* Novel Approaches: From Academic History to Historical Fiction – The IHR had their first virtual conference on this topic and you can see all the presentations at the website.

And finally…

* If you have a few spare tens of thousands of pounds, you can bid on some late 16th century (or later) portraits of Catherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr on auction next week at Christie’s. And if you have a few spare MILLION – you can bid on some of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewelry, including La Peregrina, a pearl given to Mary I by her husband Philip of Spain. Many centuries later it was given to Taylor by her husband Richard Burton (who played Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days).

* Sir Francis Drake’s final fleet ‘discovered off the coast of Panama’

Sir Francis Drake’s body ‘close to being found off Panama’

Wrecks that promise to unlock the mystery of Francis Drake’s final resting place

And a few other news items that caught my eye last week:

* Brierfield treasure hunter finds Tudor ring

* Britain’s oldest family business opened when Henry VIII ruled

And finally, Medievalists.net visited the Making History exhibition at the McMullen Museum at Boston College (I mentioned it in a previous Sunday short takes) and recorded an interview with the museum’s director. Tudor history fans will recognize the portrait in the background!

* Helen Castor on Queens and Power – Five Books interview at The Browser

* A Tudor Bestiary – From the great How to be a Retronaut site

* From the Historic Royal Palaces learning blog – Podcast series now available to download!

* And from the HRP’s relaunched gift shop site: Henry USB – in case you’ve always wanted to have Henry VIII sticking out of the site of your computer. They have lots of other Tudor-related stuff, some of it REALLY nice, but this one in particular gave me a chuckle.

* It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these – WANT: Stable Cottage, Old Palace Yard, Richmond, Surrey – It’s a little smaller than some of the previous places that I’ve posted about, but in this case it’s all about location!

* Archive discovery reveals the identity of Yorkist footsoldier at the Battle of Bosworth – Historians searching through a medieval register at Norfolk Records Office last week revealed the will of Thomas Longe, made on August 16 1485, which they say gives them the first positive ID of an ordinary Yorkist soldier involved in the Battle of Bosworth.

* Simon Forman: The Astrologer’s Tables – Lauren Kassell reveals how the casebooks, diaries and diagrams of the late-16th-century astrologer Simon Forman provide a unique perspective on a period when the study of the stars began to embrace modern science.

* Tudor dress hook treasure – A Tudor silver gilt dress hook believed to be more than 400 years old was pronouned to be treasure at an inquest in Lynn.

* It’s Nostra-dumbass! Astrologer predicted Henry VIII would marry well and take care of the church – A medieval astrologer who predicted that Henry VIII would have a happy marriage and be a devoted servant to the Catholic church must have been gazing at anything other than the stars.
(Noted in the article – this is the same astrologer who said that Elizabeth of York would live to be 80. She died at age 37.)

* And finally, some YouTube videos of note! Claire of The Anne Boleyn Files has uploaded two new videos on Anne Boleyn’s Appearance and Anne Boleyn’s Prison and Execution Spot to her YouTube Channel. Also, the creator of AskMeHistoryStuff alerted me to several Tudor-related videos on her channel. Check them out!

* Mary Rose £2 coin floated on the Solent – A giant, inflatable replica of the coin I mentioned previously here

* Armada wreck discovered off Donegal – The wreckage of a sunken vessel believed to be from the Spanish Armada has been discovered off the Donegal coast.

* Plan to sail Golden Hinde down Thames – The Golden Hinde could join in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee River Pageant next year.

* Lanterns! Candles! Shakespeare for Jacobeans – A little past the Tudor/Elizabethan period, but a really neat project. More info here from the Shakespeare’s Globe site, including a video and how you can help make this happen!

* Mary Arden’s Farm blog – If you’re interested in Tudor and Elizabethan daily life topics, check out this new blog from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

* English Heritage Free Sites Audio Tours – English Heritage has put up mp3 versions of audio tours for their free sites that you can download. Be sure to check out some of the other goodies in their multimedia library!

* Damon Albarn and the Elizabethan magical mystery man and The Mystical Artefacts Of John Dee At The British Museum – I don’t get a whole lot of hits on my “John Dee” news alert, so it was particularly surprising to get two in one week (even though they are related, prompted by a new opera)

* Gunpowder Plot documents among millions of papers put online by National Archives and Fourth and final part of State Papers Online – I’ve linked to related stories on this topic in the past and it’s nice to see that it is finally complete. Unfortunately there still doesn’t appear to be a way for individuals to access it without an institutional affiliation (which I’m lucky to have through work!).

* And finally, Mullions XP – Operating System For The Tudor Times, a fun video sent to me by Stephanie through twitter. Enjoy!

I first heard about the possibility of a piece of The Mary Rose flying on the space shuttle when the crew of a different shuttle flight visited the Historic Portsmouth Dockyard last summer. They took the artifact with the hope that it would be flown on a future flight, which is indeed what happened. Here are some of the article links I collected about it, back when Endeavour was originally supposed to launch back in April:

From nasa.gov: Robonaut Hand, Ship Bearing Head to Space

From The Telegraph: Mary Rose artefact to be sent into space on Endeavour

From The BBC: Mary Rose artefact on space shuttle Endeavour

* Dig For Shakespeare is back and starting their new field season tomorrow (April 11). If you happen to be in the Stratford-upon-Avon area in the next few months, you can see the dig live.

* Margaret George has ventured back in to Tudor fiction with her new book Elizabeth I. I read The Autobiography of Henry VIII in high school and loved it, but I haven’t read any of her books since (although I have Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles on my shelf). I might have to pick this one up though since I haven’t read as much fiction on the later part of Elizabeth I’s life.

Amazon affiliate links below:

* Dame Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) – Elizabeth Taylor, Mary I and Hans Eworth

* Lucy Worsley: ‘Lots of historians are sniffy about re-enactors’ – Interview with Lucy Worsley including information about her new series If Walls Could Talk

* Spotted at The Lady Jane Grey Reference Guide Blog – Lecture by Anna Whitelock “Woman, Warrior, Queen – Rethinking Mary I and Elizabeth I”

* Flythrough of the Mary Rose Museum in 2012