Elizabeth

A recent trip to Borders (armed with some skimpy coupon - enough to stimulate an outlay of cash) brought two books about Elizabeth, the last Tudor. "Elizabeth and Leicester" by Sarah Gristwood, and "Elizabeth - The Struggle for the Throne" by David Starkey. Together they formed a good introduction to her youth, heart, and reign.

No surprise that she eluded marriage - though for a time it was a very near thing - with her father's disastrous unions, the popular condemnation of her sister Mary's being knotted with Philip of Spain and Mary's hysterical behavior thereby, and the observation of Mary Queen of Scots letting her heart rule her head. Better to be the unattainable as a focus of courtly love affairs. Better to be in control of her status, especially since her youth held dangers, in and out of legitimacy and later the figure around which plots to overthrow the throne throve.

Elizabeth, named after her grandmother Elizabeth of York, "vain and clever", was a fascinating sovereign with a taste for the theatrical that stands alongside the great theatrical works and performances of her era. Ferociously educated, deeply thoughtful in her caution, maybe England's greatest ruler. I am glad to have met you through well written popular history.

Henry IV, Well Met

Well, I have met another Henry, and he is quite fine, at least as presented by Ian Mortimer in "The Fears of Henry IV". Was he a sort of bridge between the glories of Edward III and the breakdown of chivalry in the Wars of the Roses? Mortimer makes the case that the Usurpation and the regicide were inevitable, given the history between Richard II and Henry of Bolingbroke. They seem to be complete opposites - Henry a great jouster, Richard unathletic - Richard horrifically insecure, Henry comfortable enough to journey to the Holy Land - Richard totally unable to compromise, Henry able to bend with the wind.

Henry was literally beset on all sides as he survived assassination attempts, put down rebellions in Scotland and Wales (I think I will next look into the heroic Owen Glendower) more than once, rebellions within England with the rallying cry "King Richard is alive!", and later the opposition of his cold hearted son, Henry of Monmouth, who was itching to be Henry V. And there was always the problem of money - the parliament never seemed to make quelling rebellions any easier - causing the royal entourage to be seriously reduced.

Henry IV, as presented by Mortimer, was one of those men for all seasons to me, by power of his very survival through stiff odds, and his pragmatism in doing what needed to be done to hold the kingdom together. Though his time as king was brief, he is an object lesson for capable government in very tough times.

How Much Change?

I took a flight of fancy during my recovery from my operation last month - read two very pleasant court romances by Susan Holloway Scott - "The French Mistress" about Charles II's last main squeeze, Louise de Keroualle, and "Duchess", regarding Queen Anne's right arm, Sarah Churchill (pictured). They were very easy to read and quite entertaining - and led me to wonder about the evolution of court life in England over the early modern period. Both stories were told in the first person, with just enough color and not too much sartorial detail.

I know little about the period - the weakening of the monarchy due to its unresponsiveness to social movements (could that be?), the rise of Parliament, the prominent placement on the world stage. The nobility did weird stuff with the styling of their hair. The presence of lap dogs...\

Perhaps similar to the courtesans of Ancient Greece, the mistresses of Restoration England, at least as Louise is portrayed here, have unexpected political influence. Indeed, Louise is employed as a spy for the court of France. Sarah Churchill, of course, exacted great pull with Queen Anne, though she never acted as a courtesan, marrying as a young lady in waiting.

We have here come a long way from Margaret of Anjou's court, dingy as they say, with Elizabeth Woodville appearing far too fetchingly beautiful a lady for comfort, and also the ladies-in-waiting stitching altar cloths in the Tudor court. Seems like Restoration ladies played a ridiculous amount of cards rather than employing their hands at needlework. Their gaming debts remind me of modern credit card debt holes. Somehow the money wasn't real.

What was real was the commerce of the nation and its military might. The display of the court remains the same - the concept of show equalling majesty that it did in Tudor England.

I realized this post is but ramblings, but historical fiction at its best for me elicits same. I am sure I will read more of Ms. Scott's work.

"The Queen's Sorrow"

"The Queen's Sorrow" by Suzannah Dunn, gives a portrait of England under Mary Tudor that has thick background brush strokes fronted by delicious detail. With a very deceptive cover, it is marginally about Queen Mary herself, but rather a Spaniard in her Philip's entourage named Rafael. Rafael starts with almost no English and goes through his experience in Tudor London with thoughtfulness. He lodges with an English family that soon goes to the country, leaving a skeleton crew behind, including a housekeeper that is drawn poetically and lovingly by the author and Rafael as well.

Rafael is in England to execute plans for a sundial at court, a paradoxical commission as there seems to be little sun. His preoccupation throughout is going home, an elusive event, even after the sundial project is in jeopardy. Cecily, the housekeeper, has a son, Nicholas, who recalls Rafael's own son in Spain. The story of these three plays out with a backdrop of burnings, which shock Rafael ("They don't burn people in England!").

This book drew me in completely, and I felt like I was looking into Rafael's experience fully. Also I acquired a poetical picture of Marian England, a period of which I know little.

Two Annes, Different Results

I must confess to a fascination with the wives of Henry VIII, though their stories be a century along from my area of greater interest (Lancaster and York). Our century is a huge distance from the 19th, but I have yet to learn how different the 15th and 16th centuries were in practice. In any case, it was easy to read two novels about two Annes, "The Concubine" by Norah Lofts, and "My Lady of Cleves" by Margaret Campbell Barnes.

Anne Boleyn, briefly "The Most Happy" and Anne of Cleves, for awhile the least happy. Of all the wives, Anne of Cleves, initially called the Flanders Mare by her boorish self centered royal husband, and deeply insulted, turned out to be the only one who left Henry with her head and a comfortable home intact. The comparison between their respective visages is deceptive, the old story of the lack of the surety of surfaces. In Anne Boleyn's case, Henry is enchanted with a vivacious sprightly young thing, and in Anne of Cleves' case, he falls for what he sees in a portrait. He falls out of love in both cases, cruelly so, and all in a moment, as both authors describe the Annes' individual catastrophes.

Both of these women are presented very sympathetically, and it is interesting to speculate how their lives would have played out if they hadn't fallen under the royal eye. Would Anne Boleyn have been hardened by grief to dip into ambition due to the loss of young love in any case? Would Anne of Cleves have glided in the Flemish countryside unremarked? Anne of Cleves, in the royal bedchamber - "if he only gives me children" she could bear it. Anne Boleyn totally devastated by the birth of Elizabeth, and crazed under the pressure that was life and death.

I have ordered a biography of Jane Seymour, so my preoccupation with the wives will continue. What a collection of gutsy women! What a king trapped by circumstance and his view of his place in history.

Living In Utopia

A King and his Chancellor, Henry VIII and Thomas More - their collision is a story that I have been taken by for decades now - I saw "A Man for All Seasons" as a teenager, and just now finished "The King's Confidante" (previously issued as "St. Thomas' Eve") bye the Mistress, Jean Plaidy.

She has taken the far famed homestead at Chelsea and made it into a sort of utopia, with all living in harmony with animals and plant life, from the bustling Dame Alice, More's second wife (who acts as a foil with her worldliness set against his erudition), to itinerants who find a place at their table. It is a wondrous microcosm centered on More and his children, both natural and adopted, and their spouses, humble and ambitious.

More serves his sovereign reluctantly, ghosting Henry's tract against Martin Luther, pointing out constellations to the King and Queen Catherine, all the while regretting his time away from his family as the children grow up happy in his regard. He for a time fills a need of Henry's to have intellectuals around him, and ultimately can't fulfill Henry's need for his approval of what he did to ensure the succession, that is turning the English Church to his rule as it's head. No, Thomas could not come out in favor of the divorce. His silence had to be shown to be assent.

Anne Boleyn has a background part and Thomas More is empathetic, realizing that her hold on life is as tenuous as his. It is enjoyable to read enough Plaidy to have characters walk out of one book into another.

Thomas More was a huge hero of mine in my teenage years. Now I know his story had not that simple purity of explanation. He was a heretic hating zealot, and did wrestle with Will Roper, his son-in-law in a way over Will's beliefs that seems unreasonable to me, with his dear daughter Meg torn between them. Dame Alice spoke of his pride in refusing to approve the divorce, and the more I think of it, the more I see her point. It is justice vs expediency, martyrdom vs the middle road. Perhaps his family would not have loved him as deeply as they did had he taken that middle road. In the end, he had no choice, really, as so many victims of Henry VIII found.

King John - A King Beset

There are fewer books more pleasant than those that draw you in to dispel your set of preconceptions and received hardened assumptions about a historical figures. At least I think this to be true after reading "The Maligned Monarch" by Alan Lloyd (1972) a biography of King John with a difference - the presentation of this dark king as not so bad after all.

John was hampered by a prejudiced press of clerical dudes - he couldn't do anything right by them due to the complicated relationship between he, his archbishops, and his pope. Following a king that hardly acknowledged England as somewhere important (Richard), John was to travel the country coast to coast, in peace time as an adjudicator and as a the Royal Commander in the war against the 25 barons. Many of the myths regarding John were fanciful fabrications by such as Matthew Paris, a chronicler always looking for a good story.

John made some serious mistakes, including starving a noblewoman and her son to death, but Lloyd asserts that he was quite the man of his rough times. Jean Plaidy's "Prince of Darkness" set out all the horrific stories chapter by chapter - and I am glad I read her take before this biography, as Lloyd refuted each horrific story in turn.

Oh and then there was the baronial war and that Magna Carta thing - a charter celebrated far beyond its due - only affecting freemen (one-quarter of the population) for one thing - and that warm day at Runnymede didn't solve the differences between baron and king. John kept his side of the bargain and seemed to bend backwards to try to bring peace to his land under his control.

Why is Richard the Lionheart celebrated as chivalrous although he shafted his Queen Berengaria, and John, by account a loving husband with a brood of children to carry on in the 13th century, is vilified as a faithless womanizer? It is all in the propaganda of the times.

Another note - John inherited a financial mess after Richard bankrupted the nation when it collected untold riches to ransom him after his capture in Germany. Henry VI inherited a financial mess after Henry V all but bankrupted England in search of chivalric empiric glory. Glory takes money, but such a cost.