From a pharaoh’s protector to Charles I’s stirrups: 5 centuries-old lots with links to royalty

Sekhmet, depicted as a lion-headed woman, was a feared goddess who could be both destructive and healing. Her name means ‘the female powerful one’. More statues exist of her than of all other deities combined. It is suggested that this is due to the seven years of crippling plagues during Pharaoh Amenhotep III’s reign, and that statues of Sekhmet were erected to try to bring the pestilence to an end.

The degree of central control in the letter is notable — it even includes a price-list for buying new equipment for the militia; and it is also striking how much was asked of individual citizens in defending their country, both in money and time — the letter even specifies that they are to give up the afternoon of every public holiday for the next two or three months for military training. The worry it expresses about people of ‘secrete welthe’ not paying their share — the tax avoiders of their day — strikes a contemporary note.

This rare document is a snapshot from one of the golden periods of English history. It is signed by the last, and greatest, of the Tudors monarchs, under whose reign arts and culture would flourish, international exploration was encouraged, and religious tolerance would be increased: Elizabeth, it could be argued, laid the foundations for the values and freedoms the UK enjoys today.

Although there are no detailed depictions of the trappings of Charles I’s horse, we know that the coronation procession by barge from Hampton Court to Westminster was derailed by strong tides, forcing Charles to make the last part of the journey on horse — with his feet secured by these very stirrups.

This royal provenance is given credence by entries to the 19th-century journal Notes and Queries, self-described as a ‘medium of inter-communication’ for ‘literary men’. In Volume VII of the 4th Series, printed in 1871, Major Stewart Blacker writes, ‘The stirrups, however, bear evidence… as being the property of an earlier king than William III, viz. Charles I… the leather was looped on, is plainly marked, dotted or inscribed, a royal crown, with the cypher C.R. and the date 1626 beneath.’

In the previous edition of Notes and Queries, a correspondent had written: ‘Some time previous to the month of August 1835, I saw in the house… a pair of stirrups, which were then very carefully preserved, and were represented (no doubt truly) as what had been used by King William III at the battle of the Boyne.’

William’s use of accoutrements belonging to his grandfather, Charles I, such as these stirrups, was a symbolic gesture — he had been born and raised in Holland, and invited to take the British throne by influential British Protestants, deposing his Catholic father-in-law James II in the process. It is believed that no other pairs of 17th-century stirrups with a royal association are known to survive.

Marie-Antoinette bought the Château de St. Cloud from Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orléans, in 1785, furnishing it mostly with furniture and works of art collected from other royal residences. New pieces were also commissioned, and completed in haste to be ready for the first visit by the King and his Queen in the summer of 1785.

This particular view of a Mediterranean port was first recorded in the collection of Prince Alexander Andreyevich Bezborodko (1747-1799), a leading figure at the court of Catherine the Great. Bezborodko was a famed collector of paintings and decorative arts, and owned, along with the present picture, several other works by Vernet. The painting remained in the family by descent until 1875 when it was sold at auction in Paris.