Book Reveals Tudor Heart Pendant Tied to Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon

A heart pendant linked to Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon has become a case study in why the motif still works in modern jewelry: it can read as love, power and memory at once. Rachel King’s The Tudor Heart centers on the gold jewel found in Warwickshire in December 2019 by amateur metal detectorist Charlie Clarke, a discovery that was reported under the Treasure Act 1996 and later described by the British Museum as unlike anything else in its collection or elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

The piece is far from a dainty token. It is a heart-shaped gold pendant with enamelled motifs, an enamelled suspension link in the form of a hand, and a chain made up of 75 links. The front combines an entwined Tudor rose with Katherine of Aragon’s pomegranate emblem, while the reverse carries the initials H and K in Lombardic script linked by ribbon. The motto + TOVS + IORS appears on both sides, a courtly pun tied to the French word for “always.” King’s book says the chain was made using more than 3 metres of gold wire and is the oldest known surviving example of its type.

That scale and specificity are what keep the jewel from tipping into sentimentality. Heart pendants often feel disposable when they are too small, too polished or too literal. This one endures because every surface does a job: the heraldic imagery gives it authority, the gold gives it weight, and the enamel keeps the form from flattening into mere ornament. Together, the pendant, chain and clasp weigh more than 0.3 kilograms and are largely 24-carat gold, details that place it closer to a wearable document than a trinket.

King, curator of Renaissance Europe and the Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum, places the object in the last years of the 1510s, when Henry VIII was still shaping the visual language of his court. The book links the jewel to Katherine of Aragon and to the betrothal of Henry and Katherine’s daughter Mary to the French heir apparent in 1518. King has also pointed out that Britain has relatively little museum material connected to Katherine of Aragon and Mary Tudor, in part because of centuries of anti-Catholic bias.

The British Museum launched a £3.5 million fundraising campaign in October 2025 to acquire the Tudor Heart, drawing more than 45,000 public donors and major support including £1.75 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, alongside gifts from the Julia Rausing Trust, the Art Fund and the American Friends of the British Museum. The museum announced the acquisition in February 2026 and said it planned future touring displays, including a stop in Warwickshire near the findspot. In the end, the jewel’s appeal is the same quality that keeps heart pendants in rotation now: when the silhouette is clear, the metal substantial and the symbolism restrained, sentiment turns into style.