Toffee Day 2

Are you ready for Day 2?

We woke up and took a train out to Hampton Court Palace!  It was built by a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, who was a good friend of King Henry VIII.  But in 1529, the King unfriended the Cardinal and took over the palace for his own (as you can guess, King Henry is NOT a nice person!).  King Henry is most famous for having EIGHT different wives!  EIGHT!  Can you even imagine?  There is a little poem they taught us to remember the order of what happened to his wives:

“Divorced, Beheaded, Died; Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”  

This crazy king had 2 of his wives beheaded!  And for no good reason!  The last wife is considered lucky because the King died before he could divorce or behead her!  The fun part of being at the castle was that we had to dress for “court” (which is what they called when you were to be in the presence of the King), so they let us wear fun fancy robes to pretend with.

While we were there, we saw historical actors who pretended to be the real people from King Henry’s court.  They were SO GOOD that I started to believe I was really back in time.

This next picture made me giggle.  :0)  If you were lucky enough to dine at court with the King, there were certain rules you had to follow, or else you could loose your friendship with the King!  This was one of those rules.  I think it is still a very good one to follow!

As I was getting ready to leave, I got to meet King Henry VII Bear.  He was much nicer than the real King Henry!  Look how fancy he was dressed!  He said it was so that people could tell he was the King just by looking at him.  I thought it would mess up my fur, so I am thankful that I didn’t have to wear it.

Oh…I forgot this picture!  This was by a wishing well. I thought someone did a horrible job with their spelling and had ruined the sign, but King Henry VIII Bear told me that was just the way that they spelled things in 1529.