Repossessing Henry: reading The Inventory of Henry VIII

Published 'a little late' (as the editor David Starkey disarmingly puts it) to mark the 450th anniversary of Henry VIII's death, The Inventory of Henry VIII makes accessible the findings of the commissioners who were commanded in September 1547 to survey 'all suche readie mony plate Juelles apparel Silkes household stuff stable stuff or Cattlles whatsoeuer'. Within the OED, its fame went before it. It was rumoured to be as full of antedatings, interdatings, postdatings and variant forms as of rubies, pearls, pomegranets, and pieces of unicorn's horn.

Its reputation turns out to be entirely justified. The Inventory records a surprisingly jumbled collection of objects, many of them obviously personal to members of the household, if not to Henry himself. Thus, as well as the Crown Jewels and the King's Great Lodgings of Canvas there are boxes containing ten small keys, tapestries 'parte ratte eaten' and any number of worn-out sheets of Holland. Even in the rather more regimented and repetitive lists of 'Ordinaunce Artillery Munycyons habyllementes of warre', there is a remarkable number of references to 'Litle broken gonnes', 'Blake billes the helves whereof moost part rotten', and 'Bowe stringes not good'. Despite the commissioners' best efforts to keep things in order, ostrich feathers turn up among chafing dishes and candlesticks in the kitchen, and 'sundrie parcelles' are discovered to be in nobody's charge. At Hampton Court in particular they seem to have been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff they have to record; the headings become a wearied repetition: 'Hanginges ... yet hanginges ... yet hangynges ... yet Cusshions ... yet Carpettes' (267-79). Poignantly, there are numerous items bearing Katharine of Aragon's device, Queen Anne's cipher, or Queen Jane's 'word'.

As anticipated, the Inventory substantially contributes to the developing picture of the English language in the Early Modern Period. For OED purposes, the Inventory is dated 'a1549', the date of the compilation of the inventory. In the lists below, the dates in brackets give the previous first (or, in the case of postdatings, the last) recorded use of the word or sense in OED2.

Predictably, perhaps, there are many antedatings of words whose earliest recorded use on the OED2 database was later in the sixteenth century, including angling-rod, n. (OED2 1552); burgundian (OED2 1578); borachio (a leather wine-bag; OED2 1583); entrail (a coil of cloth; OED2 1590; its occurrence in the Inventory proves incidentally that the word was not coined by Spenser), and spectacle case, n. (OED2 1597), as well as many others. However, there is also a large number of more spectacular antedatings, including breakfast table (OED2 1762); crumhorn (variant of cromorne, an organ reed-stop; OED2 1694-6); grotesque adjective (OED2 1603); and Indian work (OED2 1865).

Postdatings are strikingly rarer than antedatings, confined to a few items including custody (a safe for storage; OED2 1483); dorse (an ornamental cloth; OED2 a1524); fustian (a blanket made of fustian; OED2 1500); housing (a niche for a statue; last OED non-hist. use 1521); and poteller (a two-quart pot; OED2 1465).

There are several additions to technical and specialist vocabularies. As well as antedatings of crinière (neck-armour for a horse; OED2 1598); demi-cannon (OED2 1577-87); garland (a receptacle for shot; OED2 1697); and organ-pipe (a kind of firearm; OED2 1594), additions to military vocabulary include the previously unrecorded bearing sword, boar-spear sword, and lizard shot, and the use of gyrfalcon and shrimp as names for types of firearm. Previously unrecorded ecclesiastical terms include a use of languet as (probably) the loose tongue of cloth on a priest's vestment, and the use of priest and subdeacon for the priest's and sub-deacon's vestments. Similarly, scarlet is used to indicate a type of hanging typically made of scarlet cloth ('Item sondry peces of red course karsey rat eaten in one place to make skarlettes for the kinges beddes'); conversely, sparver appears in the sense of 'a type of fabric' as well as in the sense of 'canopy'.

Lastly, there are a few curious cases in which an entry resists interpretation, as: 'Item a Cheyne of golde ... hanging to the same cheyne a fayer tablet sett in the myddes with a large rocke rubie ij table Dyamountes / and one pointed Dyamounte ... the same tablett having a whistell and other Instrumentes for the tethe and eares' [69: 2]). Perhaps the most amusing of all, however, are those in which the syntax leads momentarily to a completely wrong interpretation, as:

'Item oone old Carpet perished with hooles of englishe making...'