Lot 37
Charles I (1600-1649), King of England, Scotland and Ireland
Satin fragment reputedly from the shoes worn by Charles I at his execution
Auction: 02 October 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
approx. 2.5 x 1cm, mounted on silk in red morocco locket with watercolour portrait of Charles I (c.1800-1850) behind glass opposite, the locket approx. 6.5 x 5cm, containing a small handwritten note in blue ink, ‘Black satin and French braid taken from one of the shoes worn by K Charles I on the scaffold, 15 V 49’
Provenance
From the collection of Bryan Hall (1922-?) of the Old Rectory, Banningham, Norfolk, picture restorer and antiques collector, previously of Barton Turf Vicarage; given by him to Colin Shewring (1924-1995), ecclesiastical architect and son of Walter Shewring, associate of Eric Gill; thence by descent to the present owner.
Footnote
In a letter from to Colin Shewring from 15th May 1949 which accompanies the lot, Hall writes ‘I now enclose a tiny portion of the satin taken from one of the shoes worn by K. Charles the Martyr on the scaffold' before describing the provenance of the shoes themselves, which are evidently the pair which were catalogued as ‘By repute, the shoes worn by Charles I on the day of his execution’ in the 2004 sale of Hall's collection, ‘The Contents of the Old Rectory, Banningham, Norfolk’ (Bonhams, 23rd March 2004, lot 1495).
Hall's letter also contains a putatively verbatim transcript of a written provenance note accompanying the shoes (now not present) written some 70 or 80 years previously: ‘Thomas Stranger Leather Esqr of Dalehead Hall presented these satin shoes to Crosthwaite Museum upwards of 80 years ago and stated that a member of the Leather family had them from one of the Kings pages as those worn by Charles the first at the time he was beheaded’. Hall adds: ‘Later, a former Earl of Lonsdale purchased the shoes from Crosthwaite Museum, and [they] were preserved at Lowther Castle until the sale there in the spring of 1947. The shoes together with other relics were found in a locked cabinet forming part of a lot purchased by Messrs Copper and Adams. This firm lent the shoes to the Antique Dealers' Exhibition, 1947 and they were to have been bought by Queen Mary, who however forgot all about them. As a result, Copper and Adams sent the said shoes up to Sotheby's in 1948 and I was the buyer'. Hall then speculates that the shoes might have passed to the Stranger family via Charles's physician Dr Hobbs ‘who so carefully preserved the ‘sky-blue vest’ and who passed it to his daughter Susannah who married Temple Stranger’.