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  • BBC History Magazine

    THE ART OF TREASON

    Nov 25, 2021 6 minutes

    ON THE H PODCAST

    While I was working on an exhibition in the Netherlands a decade ago, curator Jan Peeters showed me a painting of Elizabeth Stuart – but, at the time, I didn’t grasp its deadly significance. It shows Elizabeth, daughter of King James VI and I and elder sister to Charles I, wearing an ermine robe and crown. Peeters believed that the crown – added to an earlier painting by a second artist – was the same one that had been lost by Charles I during the Civil Wars, broken up and sold for scrap by parliament. This crown, the so-called Tudor Crown, was the crown of England.

    I only got an idea of how potentially explosive this portrait may have been when my research revealed that Elizabeth had been seen as a serious contender for England’s throne. To commission or own a painting of the Stuart princess wearing this crown would be to risk an accusation of treason.

    The scope of what could be considered treason was intentionally broad. When Edward III

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