1511 Westminster Tournament Roll

1511 Westminster Tournament Roll
Detail showing Henry VIII tilting in front of Katherine of Aragon
Created1511
LocationCollege of Arms
PurposeTo commemorate of the birth of King Henry VIII's son born New Year's Day 1511

The 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll is a painted roll of 36 vellum membranes sewn together. It is almost 60 feet long and 143⁄4 inches wide. The Roll depicts the joust called by Henry VIII in February 1511 to celebrate the birth of his son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, to Catherine of Aragon, on New Year's Day of that year.[1]

Dale Hoak, in his book Tudor Political Culture, describes the Roll as follows:[2]

The [illuminated roll] preserves a unique visual record of the politico-cultural purposes of the Tudor tournament as spectacle: here is the staged, chivalric magnificence of young Henry's court, an orchestrated magnificence meant to rival that of the Burgundian court from which the forms of such martial pageantry were derived.

The Roll is one of the most ancient and most prized possessions of the College of Arms in London. It is believed to be the work of Thomas Wriothesley's workshop,[3] as is The Westminster Tournament Challenge, which was the invitation to the Tournament. That document is in the British Library's collections.[4] The Roll features the earliest known portrait of a named Black person in Britain, John Blanke.[5] He is pictured twice on the roll, playing the trumpet in both the opening and closing ceremonies of the tournament.[6]

  1. ^ Henry Ellis, Hall's Chronicle (London, 1809), pp. 518–519
  2. ^ Hook, Dale (2002). Tudor Political Culture. Cambridge University Press. p. 79.
  3. ^ Anglo, Sydney (1968). The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster: Historical Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 75.
  4. ^ "Westminster Tournament Challenge".
  5. ^ Nadia van Pelt, 'John Blanke's wages: No business like show business', Medieval English Theatre 44 (Boydell, 2023), pp. 3–35. doi:10.2307/j.ctv360nrnh
  6. ^ "Story of Henry VIII's Black trumpeter to be told at Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool". the Guardian. 2022-04-20. Retrieved 2022-05-21.