John Tunstall (usher)

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John Tunstall or Tonstal was a servant and gentleman-usher to Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI and I in England, and Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I.

John Tunstall grew Colchicum variegatum in his Croydon garden

In the summer of 1615 Anne of Denmark visited Bath twice for her health to bathe in the warm spring water.[1] John Tunstall was later paid £105-10s-9d for fitting up her lodging in Bath and some expenses of her journeys.[2]

He married Penelope Leveson, a daughter of Walter Leveson of Lilleshall in Shropshire.[3] She was a cousin of the Fittons and Newdigates.[4] Tunstall was a godparent to the children of Anne Newdigate, and may have arranged an invitation for her and daughter Mary Newdigate (1598-1643), to attend a masque at court in 1617.[5][6] Mary Newdigate later married Edmund Bolton, whose sister may have been the Elizabeth Bolton who took part in Robert White's Masque of Cupid's Banishment at Ladies Hall, Deptford.[7] One of Anne Newdigate's daughters, Lettice Newdigate (1604-1625), attended the Ladies Hall school in 1620. Her portrait, aged 2, at Arbury Hall, includes one of the earliest depictions of an English knot garden.[8]

In February 1618, Tunstall was sent to the Lady Elizabeth, Electress Palatine in Heidelberg. He carried a gift of £100 for her nurses and midwives, following the birth of Charles Louis.[9]

Tunstall helped organise the performance of a masque Gargantua and Gargamella at Somerset House, then known as Denmark House, to celebrate the birthday of Henrietta Maria, on 16 November 1626. In the performance, the court dwarf Jeffrey Hudson fenced with a giant, the Welsh porter William Evans.[10]

Tunstall had a house at Edgcome or Edgecombe (later Addiscombe) by Croydon, and the flowers he grew for Henrietta Maria, including Colchicum variegatum and Myosotis arvensis were mentioned and illustrated by the botanists John Gerard and John Parkinson.[11] In the 1630s he objected to commissioners taking saltpetre from his pigeon-house or dovecote for making gunpowder and had it demolished.[12]

References[]

  1. ^ Emanuel Green, 'The Visits to Bath of Two Queens', Proceedings of the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, 7 (Bath, 1893), p. 223.
  2. ^ Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer During the Reign of James I (London, 1836), p. 183.
  3. ^ Visitations of the County of Surrey (London, 1899), p. 189.
  4. ^ Anne Emily Garnier Newdegate, Gossip from a Muniment Room: being passages in the Lives of Anne and Mary Fytton, 1574–1618 (London: David Nutt, 1897).
  5. ^ Vivienne Larminie, 'Newdigate , Anne, Lady Newdigate (1574–1618)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [1]
  6. ^ Vivienne Larminie, 'The undergraduate account book of John and Richard Newdigate, 1618-1621', Camden Miscellany, XXX (London, 1990).
  7. ^ Anne Emily Garnier Newdegate, Gossip from a Muniment Room: being passages in the Lives of Anne and Mary Fytton, 1574–1618 (London: David Nutt, 1897): John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 3 (London, 1828), p. 284: Vivienne Larminie, 'The undergraduate account book of John and Richard Newdigate, 1618-1621', Camden Miscellany, XXX (London, 1990), p. 202.
  8. ^ Kenneth Charlton, Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England (Routledge, 1999), p. 137 (as a niece): Roy Strong, The British Portrait, 1660-1960 (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 43: Mary's daughter was Lettice Bolton (1629-1694).
  9. ^ Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer During the Reign of James I (London, 1836), p. 206.
  10. ^ Thomas Postlewait, 'Notorious Jeffrey Hudson: The Court Wonder of the Caroline Masques', Nadine George-Graves, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater (Oxford, 2015), p. 629.
  11. ^ John Gerard, Herball Or Generall Historie of Plantes, vol. 1 (London, 1636), p. 161: Charles E. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray (Cambridge, 1947), p. 282: George Steinman, A history of Croydon (London, 1833), p. 49.
  12. ^ John Bruce, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1634-1635 (London, 1864), p. 388 no. 53.
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