History of Conservation: The Contribution of Henry VIII

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CCI Newsletter, No. 33, May 2004

History of Conservation: The Contribution of Henry VIII

by Robert L. Barclay, Senior Conservator, Treatment and Development Division - Objects

Henry VIII, who came to the throne of England in 1509, was an avid bibliophile. Not only did he collect books of all kinds, many of them extremely rare, but he also wrote several. His books were not the usual scribblings of monarchs — published under their names, but largely ghost written by others. He really was highly literate, very intelligent and widely cognizant of the minutiae of European political, philosophical and religious trends. Although he is also said to have been an accomplished musician, a touchingly clumsy setting of a popular song that exists in manuscript (apparently in the king's hand), shows that perhaps his literary skill was the greater. In a man of such refined and cultured tastes, it is so difficult for us, given our modern attitudes, to reconcile these highly refined aesthetic sensibilities with the dissolution of the monasteries, which, deplorably, was accompanied by widespread destruction of works of art and crafts. However, this wholesale purging of Catholic imagery and thought did not extend to the books or the manuscripts. Henry very astutely ordered the organization of a huge inventory of written works, and demanded that material of any historical and aesthetic value from every religious house in the country be collected, catalogued and preserved. Much of the early English material available to scholars today was conserved as a result of Henry's forethought — or perhaps his avarice for the written word. Conservation by design maybe, but not quite the way we would pursue it these days.