Waiting for Harley: Day 1

There's a forlorn, four-book-wide empty spot on my bookshelf, begging and pleading to be filled by the elusive 4-volume Harleian 433 manuscript, which I'm still waiting to receive from the Richard III Society.

I've decided that this delay in receiving my books is due to bad karma, no doubt caused by my failure to be sufficiently appreciative of England's last Plantagenet king. Therefore, in an effort to right this wrong (and, more important, to get my damn books), I'm going to write one nice thing about Richard III every single day. Or at least for as long as I can stand it.

So here's Nice Thing #1: Richard III had very nice handwriting. See it here? I bet that's more than one can say about Henry Tudor's handwriting, or the Duke of Buckingham's handwriting, or (shudder) Elizabeth Woodville's handwriting.

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it? I can hardly wait for tomorrow to post Nice Thing #2. In the meantime, while I pass the hours in wistfully contemplating the picture of volume 1 posted above, there's a new poll in the sidebar to keep you busy.

William Hastings: Richard III's First Victim

On Friday, June 13, 1483, William Hastings walked into what he thought was a routine council meeting called by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. When Hastings left the chamber a few hours later, it was as a prisoner being hustled out to execution.

No trial was given to Hastings, whose death on Tower Green was such a hasty affair that no scaffold had been erected. He was the first of the four men who would die violently before Gloucester, who had been serving as protector of England during the minority of Edward V, took the throne as Richard III.

As with so much involving Richard III, there are conflicting theories as to why William Hastings, probably the most loyal friend Edward IV ever had, met his death at the hands of Richard, Edward IV’s supposedly devoted brother. Richard himself claimed that Hastings had been plotting against him, though he never produced any proof to substantiate his claims. Those defenders of Richard who have taken him at his word suggest that Hastings was driven into conspiracy by concerns that under the protectorate, he would lose the power and prestige he had enjoyed during Edward IV’s reign or by his suspicion that Richard meant to take the throne for himself.

The alternative explanation is that there was no plot at all and that Richard, having planned to seize the crown, ruthlessly eliminated Lord Hastings as the man most likely to stand in his way. This theory was propounded by those writing under the Tudors, but it was also that of Dominic Mancini, writing shortly after the events in question at a time when Henry Tudor was still an obscure exile:

After this execution had been done in the citadel, the townsmen, who had heard the uproar but were uncertain of the cause, became panic-stricken, and each one seized his weapons. But, to calm the multitude, the duke instantly sent a herald to proclaim that a plot had been detected in the citadel, and Hastings, the originator of the plot, had paid the penalty. . . . At first the ignorant crowed believed, although the real truth was on the lips of many, namely that the plot had been feigned by the duke so as to escape the odium of such a crime. [Richard III: A Source Book, by Keith Dockray]

It’s probably not a big surprise to readers of this blog that I lean toward the second theory: that of there being no plot by Hastings at all. Richard had recently had three of the men closest to Edward V—his uncle Anthony Woodville, his half-brother Richard Grey, and his chamberlain, Thomas Vaughan—arrested on equally vague charges of conspiracy, which would never be proven. They too would be executed without trial. In just a few days, Richard and his followers would spread the story that Edward IV had been precontracted to Eleanor Butler before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, making the latter marriage invalid and the resulting children bastards. These allegations would never see the inside of an ecclesiastical court, where they belonged. In each case—Hastings, Woodville, Grey, Vaughan, and the precontract—Richard would accuse, but never prove. None of those involved were allowed to defend themselves against Richard’s allegations.

No one, however, was inclined to press the point: The sudden, shocking execution of Hastings, the arrests of others on June 13 and on June 14 (including the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Ely, Oliver King, secretary to Edward V, and John Forster, an official of the queen), the previous arrests of Edward V’s associates and their executions on June 25, the large number of armed men sent to Westminster Abbey to aid in persuading Elizabeth Woodville to giving up the Duke of York to Richard on June 16, and the rumors of massive numbers of troops headed from the north to London were powerful incentives for those who valued their heads to be docile, for the time being at least. What must have made Hastings’ execution all the more terrifying was that he was no unpopular royal favorite, but a well liked, competent, and respected man who had been associated with the Yorkist cause for decades.

In his treatment of Hastings’ widow and children, Richard did act commendably, allowing Lady Hastings to retain her husband’s land and goods, though Rosemary Horrox notes that Hastings’ royal grants were seized. This can and has been treated as an instance of Richard’s chivalrous behavior toward widows, though one might counter that it would have been rather more chivalrous of Richard not to have made Lady Hastings a widow in the first place.

Richard did do Hastings one service: he allowed his family to bury him in the Chapel of St. George at Windsor beside his friend Edward IV, as Hastings had requested in his will (made in 1481). His tomb can be seen there today. Other relicts of Hastings survive in the Hastings Hours, an illuminated manuscript owned by Hastings that today is in the British Library; in the ruins of Ashby de la Zouche Castle, which Edward IV granted to Hastings, and in Kirby Muxloe Castle, which Hastings was improving until the last days of his life.

Really Random Stuff

1) Over the weekend at the bookstore, in which I was lingering partly to avoid the 100-degree heat here, I finally remembered to look at the ending of Ian McEwan's Atonement to see what all of the fuss was about. Now I know, and what's more, I've got my dose of literary fiction for the year without having to have actually read the whole book. A nice day's work, if you ask me.

2. Since receiving some research materials earlier this spring bound in pressboard binders, I have become increasingly addicted to pressboard binders. On Monday night Hubby came home from the office supply store with a package of shiny new ones for me, and last night I started punching holes in some of my research material so I could put them in the binders. They're beautiful. Now all I need is one of those hole punchers that can do fifty pages at a time.

This may partially explain why my daughter never tells her friends, "My mother is cool."

3. I have fifty dollars in my wallet. There are fifty dollars worth of new books I want from the bookstore, including Sandra Gulland's new novel. Coincidence? I think not.

4. Since the end of May, I have walked out to the mailbox with a spring in my step, eagerly anticipating the arrival of the four-volume Harleian 433 manuscript, which is published by the Richard III Society and which has all sorts of useful information in it for someone doing research in the period. (That hammering you hear is another nail in my coffin of uncoolness.) Each day, I have trudged back with sagging shoulders, hands full of bills but not with the Harleian 433. One would think that the Richard III Society, devoted as it is to a man who could condemn and execute a man within a space of a couple of hours (the subject of my next post), would be a tad more efficient. I have arrived at several explanations for this delay:

a. The people in the UK responsible for posting the manuscript have all gone on one of those long vacations to wonderful locales that no one in the United States can afford except for the parents of my daughter's friends.

b. The Richard III Society has been secretly infiltrated by devotees of Henry Tudor, and this is all part of a sinister master plot to take it over by breeding discontent.

c. The fault lies not at all in the UK, but with agents of the Bush administration who have intercepted the package on the premise that anyone receiving four books from overseas with a weird title when they could be buying ghostwritten books by members of the Bush family at Wal-Mart is up to something sinister.

I'll keep you posted.

Mini-Review: The Red Queen by Ruth S. Perot

Recently, in a book-buying spree at Amazon, I picked up copies of two historical novels about Margaret of Anjou. The first is best left unnamed. Though the writing in itself wasn't bad, its plot consisted mainly of Margaret of Anjou having sex with men, boys, and women from all classes in all sorts of settings. (This may be the only historical novel written where Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret of Anjou have a lesbian relationship. Hopefully, it will be the last.) On the plus side, the author appears to have done a fair amount of research, so at least Margaret was having sex with people with whom she was known to be in the same geographical area as at the relevant time.

The second Margaret of Anjou novel is The Red Queen by Ruth S. Perot, which apparently was self-published in 2000. Unlike the first book mentioned here, which reads like a schoolboy fantasy run amok, The Red Queen is a rather sedate telling of Margaret's story, reminiscent of Jean Plaidy's The Red Rose of Anjou. It's a sympathetic look at Margaret, though it doesn't gloss over her faults either. The writing is solid, as is the research.

This novel could stand to be longer. In less than 300 pages, The Red Queen covers 40 years, and the period from 1460-71 seems to have been given rather short shrift. I would have especially liked to have seen more interaction between Margaret and her maturing son, between her and the Earl of Warwick, and between her and Anne Neville. It was nice, however, to see some familiar faces from the Wars of the Roses without the stereotypes that mar so many novels set during this period. For telling the story of a woman who's too often been reduced to a mere caricature, Perot deserves high marks.

Anne, Duchess of Exeter, and Her Two Husbands

A few days ago, I was thumbing through a Ricardian novel and noticed a scene where Richard III’s oldest sister, Anne, begs him to spare her husband, Thomas St. Leger, from execution for his participation in the rebellion of 1483. I call this sort of episode in historical fiction a “Dead Man Walking” scene, because Anne couldn’t have begged for her husband’s life or anyone else’s in 1483: she died in 1476. (One suspects that if Anne’s ghost had been the one begging for St. Leger’s life, Richard might have been more inclined to give way.)

So who was this little-known royal sister?

Anne, Duchess of Exeter, was the oldest of the children of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. She was born on August 10, 1439, at Fotheringhay—the same castle in which her youngest surviving sibling, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, would be born in 1452. In 1446, when she was six, she was married to fifteen-year-old Henry Holland, who would shortly become the second Duke of Exeter. The Duke of York offered a large marriage portion—4,500 marks--probably because Henry VI was childless at the time, putting the young Henry Holland in line for the throne. Only 1,000 marks of the portion were paid. It was a poor investment in any case, for Exeter proved to be solidly Lancastrian. He also seems to have been exceptionally quarrelsome, falling out with his father-in-law and with all manner of people during the 1450’s and serving time in the Tower. Among those with whom he seems not to have gotten on well with was his own wife. The couple had one child, Anne Holland, but evidently lived most of their lives apart.

Exeter was attainted in 1461 and eventually joined Margaret of Anjou in exile abroad. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Exeter was granted the duke’s Holland inheritance for life. For a brief time beginning in 1464, she had the custody of the nine-year-old Harry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, a ward of the crown. Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville later that year. Probably around Easter 1465, he transferred Harry to the care of his queen, whose youngest sister Harry married.

The Duchess of Exeter’s young daughter, Anne, had been promised in marriage to George Neville, a nephew of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. George at the time had the potential to be a quite wealthy young man, as the Earl of Warwick had no sons and the Neville lands were entailed in the male line. Elizabeth Woodville, however, wanted the heiress Anne for her own eldest son, Thomas Grey. She paid the Duchess of Exeter 4,000 marks to break the contract with the Neville family. This was certainly sharp business practice on the queen’s part, but it was hardly unusual for the times: rich young heirs and heiresses were hot commodities. Certainly Elizabeth could not have made the arrangement without the approval of Edward IV, the Duchess of Exeter’s brother. The Duchess of Exeter was no less keen to look after her own interests than the queen: as part of the marriage arrangements, the Holland inheritance was settled on little Anne, with a remainder interest in the duchess herself and in the heirs of her own body.

During the Readeption of Henry VI in 1471, the Duke of Exeter moved back into his London house of Coldharbour, which had been granted to the Duchess of Exeter during his exile. Probably the Duchess of Exeter prudently took herself off to one of her other residences during this period.

The Duke of Exeter fought with the Earl of Warwick at Barnet in 1471. There he was badly injured and was left for dead on the battlefield until a servant discovered signs of life in him and took him to a surgeon. He was later smuggled into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, but Edward IV removed him and imprisoned him in the Tower of London. While her husband was still a prisoner, in 1472, the Duchess of Exeter took the opportunity to have their marriage annulled. Presumably the Church did not recognize allegiance to the house of Lancaster as a basis for an annulment, but the actual grounds are not known.

The duchess soon remarried. Like her brother the king, she married a social inferior—in her case, Thomas St. Leger, a knight who had probably been her lover for some time. As Anne Crawford notes, Edward IV had been showing St. Leger a great deal of favor for many years, including a substantial grant of eight manors in the early 1460’s. He was no gigolo, however; he served Edward IV militarily and administratively for years.

In 1474, the duchess’s child by the Duke of Exeter died, triggering the duchess’s remainder interest in her lands. The following year, Edward IV set off on an expedition to France, which ended in a peace treaty instead of the anticipated military engagement. Anticlimactic for most people, the expedition was fatal to one—the Duke of Exeter. He had been released from the Tower and allowed to join the expedition, presumably so he could prove his loyalty to the king in battle, but on the return journey, he was drowned. Whether his death was accidental or murder is unknown, though rumors of the latter abounded.

The Duchess of Exeter, meanwhile, had a daughter by Thomas St. Leger in late 1475 or in January 1476. The little girl, named Anne like her mother and her deceased half-sister, soon became motherless, for the duchess died in January 1476, possibly in or soon after childbirth. She was buried in the Chapel of St. George at Windsor.

Following his wife’s death, St. Leger remained on good terms with his brother-in-law the king. He served as Edward IV’s controller of the mint and as master of the king’s harthounds. In 1481, he was granted a license to found a perpetual chantry of two chaplains at the Chapel of St. George, in memory of his wife. He never remarried.

Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, who had married the Duchess of Exeter’s eldest daughter, Anne Holland, had remarried after the young girl’s death and now had a son of his own, who was contracted to young Anne St. Leger. The arrangement under which Anne was be deemed the heir to the Exeter estates was formalized in an Act of Parliament in January 1483. Richard Grey, Dorset’s younger brother, also benefited from the Act, in which part of the Exeter inheritance, worth about 500 marks, was set aside for him. The loser in this transaction was Ralph, Lord Neville, who was the heir of the Holland family, although since the Duke of Exeter had been attainted, the crown had some justification in treating his inheritance as it liked.

This arrangement fell apart when Richard III took the throne in July 1483. Thomas St. Leger attended the new king’s coronation and was given cloth of silver and velvet for the occasion, but he was soon afterward deprived of his positions of master of harthounds and controller of the mint. His daughter, meanwhile, was ordered to be handed over to the Duke of Buckingham. Perhaps, as Michael Hicks has suggested, Buckingham had the girl in mind as a bride for his own eldest son. This never came to pass either, of course, for both St. Leger and Buckingham ended up in rebellion against the new king.

St. Leger has been criticized for his lack of loyalty to Richard III, but Richard, having removed him from his offices, had given him no reason to remain loyal. Moreover, St. Leger had been unshakably faithful to Edward IV and, like many of the other rebels, was undoubtedly distressed at Edward V having disappeared from sight after having been deprived of his crown.

Unlike many of the rebels, who gave up the fight after Buckingham’s execution on November 2, St. Leger continued the fight in Exeter, but was ultimately captured. He was executed on November 13, 1483, at Exeter Castle, despite the offer of large sums of money on his behalf. St. Leger, described by the Crowland chronicler as a “most noble knight,” was buried with his wife Anne at Windsor. They are depicted here:



One last bit of business remained: the disinheritance of Anne St. Leger. In 1484, Richard III’s only Parliament overturned the acts under which Anne had been declared the heir to the Exeter estates. The beneficiary, however, was not the Exeter heir, Ralph Neville, but the crown itself.

Poorer but still well connected, Anne St. Leger ultimately married Sir George Manners, Lord Ros. Their eldest son, Thomas Manners, became the first Earl of Rutland. It is this earl’s countess who is credited with telling the supposedly sexually naive Anne of Cleves, “Madam, there must be more than this, or it will be long or we have a duke of York, which al this realm most desireth.”

Whole Lotta of Reviewing Going On

Here are some historical fiction reviews I did for the February 2008 issue of the Historical Novels Review. There's quite a variety here!

Lady Macbeth
Susan Fraser King, Crown Publishers, 2008

As the descendant of Scottish kings, young Gruadh is a valuable prize, as a man who marries her can claim the throne of Scotland. Married, pregnant, and widowed within a matter of months, Gruadh after her husband’s death is immediately claimed in marriage by another man—the warrior Macbeth, killer of her first husband.

King paints a vivid picture of the often brutal world of eleventh-century Scotland, where allegiances constantly shift and where peace is always elusive. Gruadh, who bears little resemblance to her Shakespearian counterpart, is a compelling heroine, fiercely protective of her lineage, proud of her Celtic heritage, and determined to fight for what she holds dear. Macbeth is not only a man of intense ambition, but a man of honor, a quality that Gruadh shares with him and that she gradually comes to recognize in her husband. Their evolving relationship, one between two strong-willed, intelligent people, is rendered skillfully. Gruadh tells her own story in a narrative voice that evokes the atmosphere of her time and place without feeling contrived or stilted.

As King points out in a detailed author’s note, little is known of the historical Lady Macbeth. Working with the information available, King has created a memorable portrait of a courageous woman.

***

More Letters From Pemberley
Jane Dawkins, Sourcebooks, 2007

When we left Elizabeth Darcy in Letters From Pemberley, she and her husband had been married for a year or so and were expecting their first child. More Letters From Pemberley picks up shortly thereafter and follows the Darcys and their family through 1819, shortly before the end of the Regency period.

Though Letters From Pemberly was an agreeable read, More Letters From Pemberley is a much better novel. The allusions to Austen’s other works, while still present here, are far less abundant than they were in Letters From Pemberley; the result is a novel that feels less like fan fiction and more like a novel that can stand entirely on its own. There’s considerably more focus and dramatic tension here as well, due in large part to the author’s determination to show a maturing Elizabeth and to “include the sometimes unpleasant realities of everyday life,” as Dawkins states in her preface. The result is not grim realism but a touching portrait of how one of fiction’s most beloved couples might have dealt with life’s inevitable reversals of fortune. Even more to her credit, Dawkins accomplishes this task without sacrificing charm and humor and while remaining true to the characters as they were conceived by Austen.

***

Fancy Pants
Cathy Marie Hake, Bethany House, 2007

Newly arrived in the United States in 1890, Lady Sydney Hathwell cannot bring herself to enter into a loveless marriage with the man her deceased father had chosen for her. Instead, she determines to stay with her uncle at Forsaken Ranch in Texas until she comes of age and receives her inheritance. Unfortunately, Uncle Fuller, deceived by Sydney’s masculine-sounding name, is expecting a nephew, not a niece. Sydney, therefore, dons men’s clothes and heads for Texas, where her uncle’s partner, Tim Creighton, determines to make a man out of Fuller’s foppish English relation.

Though there’s very little doubt about the resolution of this novel, Hake makes getting there an enjoyable journey, complete with Sydney’s first visit to a bordello (where Sydney’s new acquaintances allow her to take bubble baths undetected). With lively dialogue and engaging characters, Fancy Pants is tailor-made for fun.

***

Whispers Along the Rails
Judith Miller, Bethany House, 2007

In this, Miller’s second novel set in the 1890’s “company town” of Pullman, Illinois, Olivia Mott is not only working as an assistant chef at the Hotel Florence but riding the rails incognito, checking to see how Pullman’s services can be improved—or does her enigmatic boss, Mr. Howard, have another goal in mind? Meanwhile, Olivia’s former suitor, Fred, finds himself becoming involved in the labor movement, while lack of money causes Charlotte, daughter of an earl and mother to an out-of-wedlock child, to move into a settlement house in Chicago and take a job at the Marshall Field department store.

Whispers Along the Rails is well researched, well plotted, and peopled with sympathetic, three-dimensional characters who must make increasingly complicated—and risky—decisions as their situations become firmly intertwined. As was the case with its predecessor, In the Company of Secrets, Miller leaves the reader hanging and eagerly awaiting the next installment. (Fortunately, the recipes that Miller includes in the back matter can be enjoyed straightaway—allowing, of course, time for cooking.)

***

On Wings of the Morning
Marie Bostwick, Kensington Books, 2007, $14.00/C$17.50, pb, 384 pp, 9780758222565

Georgia Carter and Morgan Glennon have something in common: both grew up as out-of-wedlock children. They have another thing in common as well: both have a passion for flying airplanes. World War II gives both the opportunity to serve their country by doing so, Georgia as a member of the now-little-known Women’s Air Service Pilots.

Morgan (whose mother is the heroine of Bostwick’s first novel, Fields of Gold) and Georgia recount their own experiences, which eventually intersect to form a love story. Just as important as the romance between Morgan and Georgia, however, is the manner in which both characters come to terms with their backgrounds and with the harsh realities of war and sexism.

The characters here, major and minor alike, are rendered vividly and sympathetically, and Bostwick makes 1940’s America come alive. The dialogue is natural, with a nice period flavor to it, as are Georgia and Morgan’s narrative voices. Spending time in these people’s company was a pleasure.

For those wishing to learn more about the history behind the novel, Bostwick has included an informative author’s note in which she discusses the Women’s Air Service Pilots and Charles Lindbergh (an important character in this novel).

***

Cassandra’s Sister
Veronica Bennett, Candlewick Press, 2007

Cassandra’s Sister opens in revolutionary Paris as a young man is guillotined. In due time, his English widow, Eliza, makes her way to an English rectory, where her glamorous, tragic marriage and pragmatic outlook on life make a deep impression on one of her country cousins—the young Jane Austen, called Jenny by her family.

This quiet, often gently humorous, and elegantly written biographical novel tells the story of Jane Austen’s coming of age, both as a woman and as a writer. As Jane and her sister Cassandra go about their daily lives of social calls and occasional visits, suitors come and go for the sisters. Jane’s novels are started, completed, rejected, put away, and revised. Like a Jane Austen novel, a great deal happens without much seeming to happen at all. Jane Austen’s life influences her art—and, at a crucial moment, Jane Austen’s art will influence her life.

Intended for young adults, this novel doesn’t require a familiarity with Jane Austen’s own novels, but those who know at least some of them will probably find Cassandra’s Sister more enjoyable than those who are strangers to Austen. Older readers, Janeites and non-Janeites alike, are likely to find this novel to be a pleasant tea or cocoa companion as well.

***

Rhiannon
Vicki Grove, Putnam, 2007

In 12th-century England, fourteen-year-old Rhiannon is fascinated by the fate of King Henry's White Ship, wrecked just months before. After all, many of the passengers who perished were not much older than Rhia herself. Soon, however, Rhia's thoughts turn in another direction when a man is found murdered in nearby Woethersly. When Jim, one of the kindly locals, is accused of the crime, Rhia determines to clear his name by searching for the real murderer. Her quest will not only put her and her friends in danger, but lead to another question: Did the king's son survive the wreck of the White Ship?

Rhia is resourceful and endearing, as are the friends, old and new, she enlists in her mission. There's a large, varied cast of characters, from Rhia's healer mother to a handsome young oblate to some loutish young aristocrats to Rhia's aged, noisy, and protective groshawke, Gramp.

Grove's prose style is highly readable, with turns of phrase that give her narrative a medieval feel. With its blend of mystery, adventure, and romance, and even a dash of the supernatural, this is a novel that young readers should thoroughly enjoy.

Well, Dog My Cats, as We Say Down South

Announcing 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards Results
12th Annual IPPY Awards to be presented in Los Angeles on May 30th

******

11. Historical/Military Fiction
Gold: The Traitor’s Wife: A Novel of the Reign of Edward II, by Susan Higginbotham (iUniverse)
Silver (tie): Trail of the Red Butterfly, by Karl H. Schlesier (Texas Tech University Press) and Hundred in the Hand, by Joseph M. Marshall III (Fulcrum Publishing)
Bronze: Rosebloom, by Christine Keleny (CK Books); The Telemachia: A History by Antimenes of Argos, by Michael Barnes Selvin (Lulu.com)

When Felicity and Populating in Peacefulness Are Just Not Enough

Every now and then, as with this example from a couple of months ago, a review of The Traitor's Wife will get sucked in by an online translator and spat out. Here's the latest very strange example:

of Both Universes
“The Traitor’s Married woman: A Novel of the Sovereignty of Duke of Windsor II” author Susan Higginbotham: BOOK REVIEW
May 20th, 2008

The Treasonists wife is the story of Eleanor de Clare, the Granddaughter of Male monarch Edward VIII I. The story starts with Eleanor as a young teen got hitched with to Hugh le Despenser. The friction match makes both Eleanor and Hugh very felicitous but felicity is not enough for Hugh. He pushes and fights to derive more until he carries off his own devastation. Eleanor lives through the sovereignties of Edward II, her beloved uncle, and Duke of Windsor III, her first cousin. She is flipped about by the intrigues and eyed monsters of others in a mode that can only be through by Queens, Rexs and consorts. Through all of this her only desire is to populate in peacefulness with her kids and Hugh.

I acknowledge that it was puzzling for a spell stating all the Jonathan Edwards, Hughs, Joans and Isabelles apart but the story, disdain the superfluity of Eleanors, was gripping. It had got fascinated, schemes and romance. I matted up every hurt and iniquity that was imposed upon Eleanor and her house. Queen Isabella, Queen regnant of Edward VIII II was a dead on target scoundrel. She was self wrapped, grabby and mean. I cherished Eleanor to be felicitous. I cherished Female monarch Isabella I to decease an ugly decease. Alas, Isabella the Catholic populated to be an older adult female.

The castanets of this story came up from historic fact and corroboration devising the fictional characters all the more existent to me. As with most historic fable it exalts me to larn more of the time period. I would advocate this book to anyone with an interest in the mediaeval time period.

The Treasonists Married woman

(The unmangled review can be found here.)

The Lucky Winner of The Crimson Portrait Is . . .

Aarti!

Sorry for the delay in the announcement. Boswell wasn't cooperating. Anyway, Aarti, e-mail me at boswellbaxter@bellsouth.net with your snail mail address, and we'll have your book ready to go!

More Tacky Covers

We've had a little tacky-cover-fest here in blogland, between Suburbanbeatnik's Toga Porn post (courtesy of Sarah's link) and Sarah's own post on The Epitome of Tackiness. So here's a couple of more tacky covers to start your weekend off right. (Long-time readers of this blog will have seen the last two already--which depict Jane Shore and Katherine Howard--but I thought I'd post them again for the newcomers here, especially since I didn't have the scanner when I posted them before.)

Ride East! Ride West!, incidentally, is set in the 1340's. The heroine's scanty clothing is doubtless an arcane reference to Edward III's sumptuary laws, which regulated what materials could be worn by persons of various social ranks.

Hugh's Catalog Card

Visited Alianore's blog today and was shocked (yes, shocked) that Hugh le Despenser the younger had no Catalogue Card. (Of course, we efficient Americans call it a "Catalog Card.") So here goes:




We feel much better on this blog now, thank you.

Is Jean Plaidy Blushing in Her Grave?

As promised a few posts ago, here's a picture of my latest acquisition: a 1950's paperback of Madame Serpent by Jean Plaidy. The heroine is Catherine d'Medici, and judging from her state of undress, the weather must have been quite balmy in France at the time. I haven't read the book yet (and won't be reading this copy; it's too fragile), but it's probably safe to say that Plaidy didn't write anything that quite lives up to the promise of the cover.

Here, by way of contrast, is the cover from the recent UK reissue of Madame Serpent.

It's just not the same, is it?

Some Mother's Day Sympathy for Margaret of Anjou

Of all the mothers in the Wars of the Roses, Margaret of Anjou, queen to the unfortunate Henry VI, has surely been the most maligned. She's regularly portrayed as an adulteress and a vengeful harpy. One historical novel even has her repeatedly trying to murder her daughter-in-law, Anne Neville, though I never quite figured out why. (I'm not sure the author knew either.)

Derived from Shakespeare, a set piece in many a Wars of the Roses novel, even some recent ones where the authors should have known better, involves cruel Margaret ordering immediately after the Battle of Wakefield that the severed heads of the Duke of York and his teenage son, the Earl of Rutland, be displayed and the Duke's head bedecked with a paper crown. In fact, Margaret was not at the Battle of Wakefield; she was in Scotland at the time. There's even been considerable doubt cast as to the extent of the atrocities supposedly committed by her troops.

Margaret's position is surely deserving of more sympathy than she has received. Criticized at first for her failure to conceive a child, when she finally did become pregnant, her enemies accused her of adultery. (There's simply no proof that she had sexual relations with any man but her husband.) During her pregnancy, her husband lost his reason; eventually, the loss of his crown followed. Believing that the throne of England was her son's birthright, she fought for it until his death at the Battle of Tewkesbury. She was brought to London as a prisoner, only to have her husband murdered the night of her arrival. No longer regarded as a threat by the Yorkists, only as a financial burden, she was finally sent back to France, where she died in obscurity.

Margaret is frequently compared to an earlier French-born Queen of England, Isabella of France, and the traditionally negative portrayal of each of them has often been ascribed to misogyny and xenophobia. Both women, indeed, have recently benefited from recent interest in medieval women and medieval queens and have attracted some sympathy from historians, female and male alike. Yet popular culture has lagged behind, for while Isabella has been portrayed sympathetically by a number of novelists, especially female ones, Margaret of Anjou has met a quite different fate at their hands. She's frequently little more than a cardboard villain, and even when she's given some semblance of depth, the myths such as her presence at the Battle of Wakefield are trotted out. (Ironically, this portrayal of Margaret, which owes so much to Shakespeare, is often perpetuated by the very same novelists who decry the Bard's portrayal of Richard III.)

Strangely, Isabella, an adulteress who was disloyal to her husband and even to her own son, has attracted defenders because of those very facts. They attribute her adultery as being the natural reaction of a wronged wife and her deposition of her husband as being a commendable reaction against royal tyranny. Yet the loyalty of Margaret to her husband and to her son is depicted as the power-mad reaction of a vengeful woman. Evidently even her modern-day detractors feel that she should have settled back and worked on tapestries while her son was being deprived of his crown.

So this Mother's Day, why not spare Margaret of Anjou a little kindness for a change? She might well have hoped to have been a traditional queen, smiling at her husband's side, doing good works, and procuring favors for her subjects. Instead, with an incapacitated husband and competing claims to the throne, she found herself thrust into a situation that had no easy solutions, either for the men involved or for Margaret. Novelists have recognized the complexity of the situation these men faced; it's time they did the same for Margaret.

Saturday Night's All Right for Back Patting

I was pleased to hear this morning that The Traitor's Wife has been named as a semifinalist in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards' historical/military fiction category. Results will be announced on May 23, 2008.

OK, back pat over.

Anyway, while we're on the subject of--er--me, C.W. Gortner, whose historical novel The Last Queen is being re-released by Ballantine Books, has an interview with me over at his blog, Historical Boys. Take a look, and enjoy the rest of his blog!

In Which I Give Away Books That Have Nothing to Do With Medieval England

Up for a book giveaway? Of course you are!

The folks at Back Bay Books, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group, have sent me two novels to give away here: The Crimson Portrait by Jody Shields and The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani. The Crimson Portrait is set in 1915 England, The Blood of Flowers in seventeenth-century Persia. Both have received excellent reviews.

Now, read carefully, because I'm doing something different with each book. As some of you might know, I spend a fair amount of time hanging out over at Historical Fiction, a great bulletin board full of friendly people who love historical fiction. The Blood of Flowers is being given away there as well, so instead of having a separate giveaway here, I'm adding my copy to the kitty over there. So there will be two copies of The Blood of Flowers being given away over at Historical Fiction. Just leave your comment here (you have to join the board, but that's a cinch) before May 17, and you'll be in the running! Only catch is that you have to be in the United States or Canada (overseas postage can get pricey).

Now for The Crimson Portrait. All you have to do to win that book is to leave a comment on this blog before May 17 (again, US/Canada residents only). On May 17, Boswell will choose the winner by placing his paw on the entry of his choice. He's such a clever dog.

Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labor

From Booking Through Thursday:

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

I generally don't read them. I used to read a fair amount of writing magazines in my younger days, but these days I just write.

For my day job, I have a copy of Diana Hacker's Pocket Style Manual, as it's the style we follow. I also have a Chicago Manual of Style, which I was introduced to during my days as a freelance copy editor and proofreader and which I still find useful in my own writing. I own a Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, probably an edition or two out of date, and a Webster's International Dictionary, which sits ignobly in the garage because it's too damn big to keep anyplace else. I don't think I've cracked it open in years, thanks to the Internet.

The Thistle and the Rose by Jean Plaidy

This hasn't been a very productive year, reading-wise--more than anything, I've been reading bits and pieces of nonfiction, mostly for research. So I'm pleased to say that I actually read a novel from front to back: Jean Plaidy's The Thistle and the Rose, about Margaret Tudor, who married James IV of Scotland.

This novel, told in the third person, picks up with Margaret in her early girlhood at Henry VII's court and ends with her death in Scotland after having given birth to two surviving children and married three husbands.

As I knew little about Margaret before reading this novel, I found it quite interesting. Margaret's first marriage ended when she was still quite young, leaving the widowed Margaret to choose first one unsuitable husband of lower rank, than another. I can't say that I found Margaret a particularly likable character, but Plaidy did do a good job of portraying the difficulties she faced from warring factions in Scotland, pressures from England and France, and her own stubborn nature. In some ways, Margaret reminded me of Mary, Queen of Scots, with the difference being that Margaret ultimately died in her bed.

One thing I did wish had been included in here was a genealogical table, not so much for the English characters but the Scottish ones. That aside, I found this to be an interesting introduction to Margaret, one that will have me on the outlook for nonfiction about her as well.

Speaking of Jean Plaidy, I won an old paperback of one of her novels that has a splendidly tacky cover. I'm counting the days till it arrives so I can post it here!

Happy Anniversary to Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville

On May 1, 1464, twenty-two-year-old Edward IV, on his way north to deal with a Lancastrian threat, combined pleasure with business. He left his camp at Stony Stratford for the nearby town of Grafton, where he married Elizabeth Woodville, a widow several years his senior with two small sons and a very large family. The marriage remained secret until September, when Edward IV announced it to his dumbfounded council.

No one knows when Edward IV and Elizabeth met or when they began courting, although Elizabeth’s father, Richard Woodville, had been a member of the king’s council for some time. Chroniclers added various embellishments over the years—that Elizabeth, in difficulty about her dower lands, waited under a tree with her young sons, then threw herself at the king’s feet when he passed by; that Edward IV, at first planning to seduce Elizabeth rather than to marry her, placed a dagger at her throat; that Elizabeth herself put a dagger to her throat—but the couple themselves kept a demure silence on the matter. Even the May 1 date has been questioned by some; Elizabeth’s biographer David Baldwin suggests that it was assigned pursuant to romantic tradition and that the couple actually married later in the summer. What is clear, though, is that as late as April 13, 1464, Elizabeth herself seems to have no idea about the impending nuptials, for on that date she entered into a financial arrangement with her neighbor William Hastings, Edward IV’s boon companion. The arrangement, under which William promised to assist Elizabeth in recovering some of her lands in return for a share of profits, would have hardly been necessary had Elizabeth known she was shortly to be queen of England.

Only one source, Fabian’s Chronicle, details the wedding itself. According to Fabian, no one was present at the early-morning wedding but the spouses, Elizabeth’s mother, the priest, two gentlewomen, and a young man who helped the priest sing. “After which spousals ended, [Edward] went to bed, and so tarried there three or four hours, and after departed and rode again to Stony Stratford, and came as though he had been hunting, and there went to bed again.”

Elizabeth’s mother was later accused by a follower of the Earl of Warwick of having brought the match about by witchcraft. Although she was acquitted of the charge in 1470, it made a reappearance in 1484 in Titulus Regius, the document spelling out Richard III’s claim to the throne, where both mother and daughter are accused of using witchcraft to lure Edward into matrimony. The accusation has provided much fodder for historical novelists and for Ricardians, who have noted with delight that April 30 was St. Walpurga’s Eve and thus a fitting day for Jacquetta to work her black arts in preparation for the marriage the next morning. One Ricardian, W. E. Hampton, in “Witchcraft and the Sons of York” (The Ricardian, March 1980), even suggests that Edward IV’s fatigue at Stony Stratford can be attributed to “the orgiastic nature of the rites to which he may have been introduced.” (More generous minds might attribute his fatigue to three or four hours in the bridal bed, perhaps not sleeping the entire time, plus a journey on horseback to and from Grafton, or one could suppose he was feigning fatigue from his nonexistent hunting trip.) Generally not noted by the Woodvilles-as-witches contingent is the conventional Christian piety Elizabeth exhibited during her time as queen.

Once Edward IV himself made the marriage public, he treated his new bride in duly royal fashion, presenting her formally before his council at Michaelmas in 1464 and giving her a grand coronation the following May. Though little is known about the private relations of the couple, Elizabeth bore the king’s children regularly, a mark of his continuing interest in her even after she had produced the needed “heir and a spare,” and played an influential role in the bringing-up of their eldest son, Edward, a mark of the king’s trust in her.

Strangely, and sadly, it was nearly nineteen years later to the day that Elizabeth’s brother Anthony, also having stopped at Stony Stratford, would leave his lodgings there to meet Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who proceeded to make Anthony and Elizabeth’s son Richard Grey his prisoners on April 30. Fearful for her own safety after these arrests, Elizabeth Woodville, recently widowed, would spend her nineteenth anniversary of May 1, 1483, in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.

Edward Woodville

Of the five brothers of Elizabeth Woodville who survived to adulthood, Edward Woodville, after Anthony Woodville, had the most colorful career.

Edward was the youngest of the Woodville brothers and was likely born in the mid 1450’s (his youngest sister, Katherine, probably the baby of the family, was born around 1458). When his brothers Richard and John were made Knights of the Bath in 1465, he was not included; presumably it was thought that he was young enough to wait a bit.

I have found nothing that indicates that Edward Woodville fought at Barnet or Tewkesbury, though it may simply be that he was not sufficiently prominent to be recorded. It is quite possible that he served under his brother Anthony, who P.W. Hammond suggests in The Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury might have commanded the reserve at Barnet and who was wounded there. In April 1472, Edward accompanied Anthony to Brittany with 1,000 archers.

In 1475, Edward IV created a number of new Knights of the Bath, including his son the Prince of Wales. Edward Woodville was one of the newly made knights. In 1478, he appeared at a tournament held to celebrate the marriage of young Richard, Duke of York, to little Anne Mowbray; his horses were resplendent in cloth of gold. Later that year, Edward and the Bishop of Rochester negotiated a marriage contract between the widowed Anthony and Margaret of Scotland, although the marriage never took place. In 1480, Edward Woodville was sent to Burgundy to escort Edward IV’s sister Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, to England for a visit.

D. E. Lowe, in an article entitled, “Patronage and Politics: Edward IV, the Wydevilles, and the Council of the Prince of Wales, 1471-83,” indicates that Edward Woodville played a role on the council of his nephew, Edward, Prince of Wales, during the last years of Edward IV’s reign. Edward Woodville was also granted custody of the town and castle of Porchester.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, led an army against Scotland in 1482. Contrary to reports that Richard’s relations with the Woodvilles were hostile prior to 1483, Edward Woodville served as one of Richard’s lieutenants on that occasion. Richard made him a knight banneret on July 24, 1482.

In April 1483, Edward IV died. Edward Woodville took part in his funeral procession. In the succeeding days, of course, all hell broke loose. Philippe de Crevecoeur, known as Lord Cortes, had taken advantage of Edward IV’s death to raid English ships, and Edward Woodville had been appointed by Edward V’s council to deal with this French threat. On April 30, he took to sea with a fleet of ships. That same day, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Henry, Duke of Buckingham, took Anthony Woodville and others prisoner at Northampton, claiming on very dubious grounds that the Woodvilles had been plotting against Richard.

Edward Woodville has acquired a somewhat tarnished reputation from Mancini, who stated that “although [Edward IV] had many promoters and companions of his vices, the more important and espcial were three of the . . . relatives of the queen, her two sons and one of her brothers.” This brother has been assumed to refer to Edward Woodville (the hairshirt-wearing Anthony, the bishop Lionel, and the obscure Richard being each unlikely candidates), but Mancini’s description may have been heavily influenced by the propaganda being put forth in the summer of 1483 by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who later described Edward and associates of Henry Tudor in generic terms as "adulterers." Nothing else supports this picture of Edward Woodville as court playboy; as his career shows, he was a man of action. His life also undercuts the notion that his sister the queen heaped her relations with royal largesse: aside from Porchester, he seems to have received no grants other than a wardship. Like his brother Richard, Edward does not seem to have ever married, and there is no trace of a marriage having been sought for him.

At his departure in April, Edward Woodville is said by Mancini to have taken part of Edward IV’s treasure with him, in collusion with Elizabeth Woodville and her son the Marquis of Dorset. Rosemary Horrox in Richard III: A Study in Service, however, writes that Mancini’s story probably originates in the fact that Edward IV’s cash reserves were exhausted to pay for this military expenditure. (She also points out that there is no evidence that Elizabeth Woodville had any share of the treasure; if she did have any, Richard III would certainly have required her to disgorge it before she left sanctuary in 1484.) Edward Woodville, in fact, had probably put to sea before he learned of the events at Northampton.

Edward and his fleet gathered at Southampton, where Edward seized ₤ 10,250 in English gold coins from a vessel there, claiming that it was forfeit to the crown. Meanwhile, having gained control of the young king, Richard turned his attention to the fleet commanded by Edward Woodville. He sent letters to officials in Calais about the restitution of ships and goods between England and France and appointed men to seize Edward Woodville. According to Mancini, the Genoese captains of two of the ships, fearing reprisals against their countrymen in England if they disobeyed Gloucester’s orders, encouraged the English soldiers on board to drink heavily, then bound the befuddled men in with ropes and chains. With the Englishmen immobilized, the Genoese announced their intent to submit to Richard's authority, and all but two of the ships, those under the command of Edward Woodville himself, followed suit. Horrox, however, suggests more prosaically that the majority of Edward’s captains recognized Gloucester’s authority as protector and obeyed his orders accordingly.

Edward Woodville—perhaps with his gold coin seized at Southampton, unless he had had the misfortune to place it on one of the deserting ships—sailed on to Brittany, where he joined Henry Tudor. There, he received a pension from Duke Francis of Brittany.

Though the October 1483 uprising against Gloucester, now Richard III, failed, the new king could not rest comfortably. In May 1484, Richard was expecting an attack led by Edward Woodville at Dover or Sandwich. It never materialized, but less than a year and a half later, in 1485, Edward Woodville was among Henry Tudor’s forces when Richard III was defeated at Bosworth.

Edward Woodville’s career under Henry VII was brief but busy. He was made captain of the Isle of Wight in 1485. In 1486, he was one of those who bore a canopy at the christening of Prince Arthur. In 1488, he was made a Knight of the Garter. These ceremonies, however, were not where his interests lay. In 1486, calling himself “Lord Scales,” he went to fight the Moors in Granada, serving in the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella. At Loja, he and his forces were successful in putting the Moors to flight, but the encounter cost Edward his front teeth. He is said to have said to a sympathetic Queen Isabella, “Christ, who reared this whole fabric, has merely opened a window, in order more easily to discern what goes on within.” Edward was sent home to England with a rich array of gifts, including twelve horses, two couches, and fine linen.

The next year saw Edward in battle again, this time in England against forces led by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, in support of Lambert Simnel, a young pretender to the throne. After three days of skirmishing near Doncaster, Edward’s troops were forced to retreat through Sherwood Forest to Nottingham. At the Battle of Stoke, however, where Edward Woodville commanded the right wing, victory went to Henry VII.

In May 1488, Edward “either abhorring ease and idleness or inflamed with ardent love and affection toward the Duke of Brittany,” as Hall’s chronicle has it, asked Henry VII to allow him to assist the duke in fighting the French. Henry VII, who hoped for peace with France, refused the request, but Edward ignored this and returned to the Isle of Wight, where he raised a “crew of tall and hardy personages” and sailed to Brittany. Henry then reconsidered and decided to send Woodville reinforcements, but the French arrived in Brittany before this could be done. At St. Aubin-du-Cormeier on July 27, 1488, Edward Woodville fought his last battle. He and almost all of his troops perished.

Nonfiction Roundup

I've been reading (when I can) Marie-Therese, Child of Terror: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter by Susan Nagel. It's a fascinating, well written look at a child who at a young age went through horrors that would have overwhelmed many adults, much less a young girl. I've still a ways to go in it, but I heartily recommend it.

Also on the groaning to-be-read pile is the anniversary present I received yesterday: A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain by Marc Morris. It looks well done too (though I wish there were something about the Despensers in it--at least Hugh the elder).

Someone on the Richard III Society American Branch's Yahoo group noted that a new book about Richard III is coming out in June. It's called Richard the Third: The Maligned King by Annette Carson. According to the Amazon UK description, this book promises to "investigate areas where historians fear to tread," including whether Edward IV was poisoned and whether Elizabeth Woodville practiced witchcraft. I've my doubts about this book, because Carson co-wrote an article for The Ricardian on the execution of the Earl of Desmond, which she lays squarely at the feet of Elizabeth Woodville. I thought that in their determination to find Elizabeth responsible for the earl's execution at the hands of Edward IV's lieutenant John Tiptoft, the authors skimmed over contemporary events in Ireland that might have furnished an explanation (if not necessarily a justification) for the earl's execution. Nor did they explain satisfactorily why no source until the sixteenth century links Elizabeth to the execution or how the Earl of Desmond's survivors in Ireland knew of a conversation between Elizabeth and Edward IV and of Elizabeth's supposedly filching her husband's privy seal when no one in England seems to have overheard this conversation or witnessed Elizabeth's actions. So I'm expecting the usual Good Richard, Bad Woodvilles with this book, though I'll probably get a copy anyway.

Rather more to my enthusiasm, I see that there's a new book entitled Lancaster Against York: The Wars of the Roses and the Foundation of Modern Britain by Trevor Royle due out this July. Another one for the pile!

Medieval Tax Questions

In honor of income tax filing day here in the United States, here's some tax questions that some men and women in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries might have asked:

Can I deduct the cost of clothing I need to impress the nobles? Piers G.
In some cases, you may be able to deduct the cost of clothing you acquire to impress others, if this is essential to generating patronage. See Form 1040, Schedule P (PDF), Itemized Deductions for New Earls.

Are my expenses in acquiring added residences (attorney fees, costs of travel, time spent in persuasion) deductible? Hugh D.
Such expenses are generally deductible if they satisfy the same requirements for deductibility as interest on a primary residence and if the king says they are. For more information, refer to Publication F, Tax Information for Royal Favorites.

In my spare time, I enjoy diverse hobbies such as thatching, roofing, and digging ditches. If in the future I should make money off these activities, would they be considered a business or a hobby? Ed 2
If you are not sure whether you are running a business or simply enjoying a hobby, here are some of the factors you should consider:
• Do you have another occupation?
• Do others think you spend too much time on your hobby and too little time on your business?
• Do most other people in your position enjoy such hobbies?

My son is only seventeen but insists that he is capable of running his own business. Can I at least continue to claim him as a dependent? Isabella
As long as the following dependency exemption tests are met, you may claim him or her:
1. He has not fathered a child of his own;
2. He has not openly declared his intent to rule;
3. He has not executed any friends of yours.

I married a woman with very few assets of her own and a very large family. In the past tax year, I have provided jobs and marriages for these relations. Can I claim them as dependents? Ed 4.
There are four tests that must be met for a person to be your qualifying relative for an exemption. The four tests are:
1. Member of household or relationship test,
2. Gross income test,
3. Support test, and
4. Annoying the Kingmaker test.

I am an English citizen. If I move to France with the intention of returning to England at a convenient moment, do I pay both French and English income taxes? Henry T.
You must comply with both countries’ filing requirements. However, if you return to England and make yourself king, this advice may change. Consult your tax expert.

Search Terms

It's been a busy last few days, between the day job and it being tax time here, but I thought I'd post several recent search terms used to reach my website. (Most have been distressingly sensible and straightforward lately.)

susan higginbotham resigns
Wishful thinking from an unhappy blog reader?

elizabeth de burgo’ and cambridge black widow
I really don't like the sound of this one. Neither, I'm sure, did Mr. de Burgoâ€

duchess of york legs photo
Now there's a person with a obsession.

lady marries hand her own
Surely a dating service could have saved this poor woman from this fate. And on which hand did she wear her wedding ring? Did the hand have its own wedding ring?

New Message Board About the Wars of the Roses

This weekend, I woke up in a mood to start a message board about the Wars of the Roses. (Yes, I do have a very patient family--someone else might have woken up in a mood to cook the whole family breakfast.) So here it is! It's not the prettiest board in town (I need to figure out how to add some graphics), but it's ready for posting, so please mosey on over, and join a thread or better yet, start one!

Don't be put off by the stuffy-sounding rules at the top. I added those because in one group I used to belong to, a debate about Richard III degenerated into a name-calling fest, the chief offender being a person well into middle age. Debate that adheres to common rules of courtesy will never be discouraged on the board, however,

US, UK Publishers Declare Tudor Moratorium

Responding to increasing reader complaints about an oversaturated market, top publishers in the United States and the United Kingdom have entered into a ground-breaking agreement: not to publish any fiction about the Tudors until at least 2018.

A senior editor at Penguin, who preferred not to be identified, explained, “Readers—and editors—have simply had too much of Henry VIII and his wives. Why, the other night, I dreamed of Henry VIII, and my husband doesn’t even look the least bit like him. It’s unhealthy.”

Though some civil libertarians have expressed concern that the Tudor moratorium amounts to censorship, an editor at St. Martin’s, speaking on condition that his name not be mentioned, saw no cause for concern. “This is purely a voluntary program. If an author really insists on writing about the Tudors, there’s always small presses or self-publishing, though it’d be great they chose to go with the program as well. It’s really a healthy thing to do, sort of like giving up smoking. Once you do it, you realize how much better you feel, even though it’s hard at first.”

Only fiction is included in the moratorium, though some editors are hopeful that it will later expand to include nonfiction as well. “We wanted to sort of ease people into this,” explained the Penguin editor. “Besides, once the novels are gone, people won’t be looking for nonfiction to see if the novels got it right, so I think you might see the nonfiction dying a natural death—sort of like Anne of Cleves.”

Though many readers describe themselves as pleased by the publishers’ plan, not all are willing to kick the Tudor habit. “They need to let us down gradually—maybe one wife at a time,” said Gwen, a homemaker from Virginia. “Start with not publishing anything about Jane Seymour, maybe—I always thought she was kind of a wimp, anyway.”

Other readers, such as Jean, an attorney from Washington State, have vowed to boycott the publishers involved. Such a reaction, says the editor from St. Martin’s, is extreme. “Readers who are hopelessly addicted to the Tudors—and that’s just what it is, an addiction, if people will just admit it—just need to look for alternatives. For example, Henry VIII had a bad temper. So find some fiction about other kings with bad tempers, like King John. Or you might want to read about Catherine of Valois instead of Katherine Parr, since they both remarried after their king died. Why, they’ve even made it easy for you by having the same first name.”

The Penguin editor added, “We are concerned about the mental health of some readers who may have problems adjusting to not having any new Tudor novels. We’ll be setting up an 800 number they can call day or night, and there will be several operators concentrating on Anne Boleyn alone. And Barnes and Noble has agreed to host twelve-step groups for the Tudor addicts who need a bit more help to see this through. Ultimately, we know people are going to be all the stronger for this, though.”

The moratorium takes effect immediately as of April 1, 2008, meaning that novels currently in production with Tudor themes will not be released. Asked if this might cause a hardship for some authors, the Penguin editor replied, “Not really, if they’re creative. They can take the story they did and rework it. For instance, if an author did a novel about Henry VIII and his six wives, he or she can update it to modern Hollywood and have it be about a big-name producer and his many divorces. There’s still a lot of glitzy clothes and parties, after all. All the writer would really have to do is take out the beheadings. And maybe not even that. Some people in Hollywood are pretty whacked out, you know.”

Lionel Woodville, Bishop of Salisbury

In his biography Richard the Third, Paul Murray Kendall praises Anthony Woodville (as far as Kendall could bring himself to praise a Woodville) by first cataloging his family’s supposed vices. He writes, “Anthony Woodville’s father was a rapacious adventurer . . . His brother Lionel was a type of their father in the gown of a bishop.” Elsewhere in the book, he describes Lionel as “haughty.”

As is often the case when Kendall writes about the Woodvilles, he offers no evidence to support his assessment of Lionel’s character, and indeed there seems to be none. For Lionel, Bishop of Salisbury, is a rather obscure person, despite the high office he obtained.

Most of what is known about Lionel has been summarized by John A. F. Thomson in two publications, one an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the other an article in the Bulletin of Historical Research (1986) entitled “Bishop Lionel Woodville and Richard III.” In an article originally published in The Ricardian and reprinted in Richard III: Crown and People, “Oxford University and the Life and Legend of Richard III,” Robert C. Hairsine adds a bit more to the picture.

Thomson estimates Lionel’s birth as being between 1450 and 1455. He notes that the Pope granted him the right to receive any benefice when he was over twelve and that Lionel received a canonry at Lincoln in 1466 as his first benefice. Lionel was educated at Oxford, which elected him as its chancellor in 1478 or 1479 and offered to award him a doctoral degree in canon law (he already held a bachelor’s degree). This is said to be the first honorary degree offered by Oxford. Lionel was also made Dean of Exeter Cathedral.

Lionel was not created Bishop of Salisbury until 1482, eighteen years after becoming the king’s brother-in-law. He was consecrated in April 1482. Although he undoubtedly owed his advancement to his royal connections, bishoprics were common enough destinations for well-connected younger sons, including George Neville, who as the youngest son of the powerful Earl of Salisbury and the brother of the immensely rich Earl of Warwick rose to be Archbishop of York. No controversy seems to have surrounded Lionel’s elevation to bishop, and nothing indicates that he was considered incompetent to hold his office. Records of his tenure are scant: according to Thomson, his episcopal register did not survive. Unlike George Neville, who played a leading role in the political controversies of his day, Lionel seems to have taken little part in his royal brother-in-law’s reign. Thomson suggests that his main interest, even after he became bishop, might have been in the affairs of Oxford University.

Following Edward IV’s death on April 9, 1483, Lionel apparently attended his funeral services, according to Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, who have collated the various manuscripts describing the ceremonies. By April 26, 1483, however, Lionel was back at Oxford. On June 9, 1483, Simon Stallworth reported that Lionel had entered sanctuary with his sister the queen; Thomson speculates that he had traveled there for his nephew’s coronation and fled into sanctuary upon hearing of the arrest of his brother Anthony at the hands of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Harry, Duke of Buckingham (the latter married to Katherine Woodville, Lionel’s sister). Gloucester evidently was wary of Lionel, for on June 3, 1483, he removed Lionel’s name from a commission of the peace for Dorset. Later in June, however, Lionel appears to have reconciled with Richard and left sanctuary, for Richard restored Lionel to the Dorset commission on June 26, 1483, and appointed him to a Wiltshire commission on July 20, 1483. Lionel, however, is not recorded as being at Richard’s coronation on July 6, 1483.

In late July, Richard III set off on a royal progress, visiting Oxford’s Magdalen College on July 24 and 25, 1483. The college register records that the new king was greeted by the university’s chancellor—who, of course, was Lionel Woodville. Since Richard had recently executed Lionel’s older brother Anthony, this must have been a rather awkward occasion, but ceremony presumably carried the day.

On September 22, 1483, however, Lionel issued letters from Thornbury—a manor belonging to Lionel’s brother-in-law Harry, Duke of Buckingham, who by that time had joined those in rebellion against the king. The letters, which concerned the appropriation of a benefice, were harmless enough, but Lionel’s residence at Thornbury, as Thomson points out, is intriguing. Was he there as a guest of Buckingham or Katherine, or had he been arrested like Bishop Morton, who was also in Buckingham’s charge? Was Buckingham, with an eye to rebellion, attempting to reconcile with his Woodville kin? Richard clearly was suspicious of Lionel, for on September 23, 1483, he ordered the seizure of the bishop’s temporalities (i.e., his revenues). Richard III apparently still trusted Buckingham himself; Thomson suggests that at this stage Richard may have suspected some sort of treasonous communication between Lionel and Bishop Morton, whose nephew Robert was dismissed from his post as Master of the Rolls on September 23 as well.

Whatever the nature of Lionel’s residence at Thornbury, he had certainly become involved in the rebellion by October, when he, Walter Hungerford, Giles Daubenay, and John Cheyne planned an uprising at Salisbury. The rebellion, of course, failed, and Lionel fled to sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey, where Queen Anne’s mother, the Countess of Warwick, had taken shelter years before following the Battle of Barnet. According to Louise Gill in Richard III and Buckingham's Rebellion, Lionel was joined in sanctuary by Robert Poyntz, who was married to the natural daughter of Lionel’s deceased brother Anthony. (Poyntz fought for Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth and was knighted after the battle.)

Oxford quickly moved to elect a new chancellor to replace Woodville, now a political liability to the university, while Richard III made inquiries in December 1483 as to the sanctuary rights of Beaulieu. In February 1484, he sent two chaplains to bring Lionel, who had been attainted, into his presence. These attempts to prise the bishop out of sanctuary failed, however.

In March 1484, in letters dated from Beaulieu Abbey, Lionel nominated a candidate to a vacant vicarage. Lionel is again referred to in a writ dated July 22, 1484, that was issued after a rival candidate challenged the nomination. By December 1, 1484, when the dean and chapter of Salisbury were allowed to elect a successor, Lionel had died. His cause of death is unknown, as is his burial place. Thomson notes that one manuscript from the seventeenth century states that he was buried at Beaulieu, though there is apparently another tradition that has him being buried in the north transept of Salisbury Cathedral.

In the sixteenth century, a tradition arose that Lionel Woodville was the father of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. This claim can still be found in older books available on the Internet, but James Arthur Muller, a biographer of Gardiner, weighed the evidence and rejected it in 1926. He noted that Gardiner’s enemies never accused him of illegitimate birth and that Gardiner was probably not born until the 1490’s, eliminating Lionel as a father. More recently, C. D. C. Armstrong, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, estimated Gardiner’s birth date as being between 1495 and 1498. It seems safe to say, then, that the Bishop of Salisbury was not the sire of the Bishop of Winchester.

Academic Articles I Can't Wait to Read

I was going to do something special for my 300th post today, but I was distracted from that greater purpose when I read abstracts of these articles, to be published in the Summer 2008 issue of The English Historical Research Journal. It's truly exciting how discoveries like these come in clumps sometimes, isn't it? Here are the abstracts:

Isabella’s Scottish Lover: New Evidence

For centuries, it has been assumed that Edward II was the father of Edward III. Now a recently discovered cache of documents, buried deep beneath the site where once stood Hanley Castle, has established irrefutably that—as long suspected by filmmakers and historical novelists—Edward II’s infamous queen did indeed enjoy a brief liaison with a Scottish warrior and that Edward III was the product of this extramarital affair.

The evidence, which comes in the form of a letter from Isabella intended to be given to her son when he came of age, notes by Edward II’s physician, and a fragment of a kilt that Isabella saved as a remembrance of her lover—as well as Edward III’s well-known and hitherto unexplained taste for haggis—indicates that when Isabella was staying in York, the warrior, injured and delirious, wandered south and was taken in by Isabella, who nursed him back to health, with extremely successful results. Meanwhile, Edward II himself had fallen ill and was being cared for daily by his physician, making his own paternity of Edward III an impossibility. When the warrior—known only as “Robert”-- returned north, Isabella, discovering she was pregnant, confessed her secret to her husband, who was so concerned about the situation of his own lover, Piers Gaveston, that he agreed without argument to treat the child as his.

The location of the documents beneath Hanley Castle, home to Hugh le Despenser the younger and his wife, Eleanor de Clare, suggests that Eleanor, Isabella’s lady-in-waiting and favorite niece to Edward II, secreted them there, possibly with the idea of blackmailing Isabella or Edward III, or possibly to protect the Plantagenet dynasty from revelation of this secret.

In light of this discovery, it appears that research into the paternity of Isabella’s other children will be a fruitful endeavor.


Elizabeth Woodville and the Princes in the Tower: New Light on an Old Mystery

Historians have long puzzled over the question of the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. Was it murder? Were they smuggled north or abroad by Richard III? Now a recently discovered document, buried deep beneath the site where once stood Bermondsey Abbey, Elizabeth Woodville’s last home, has revealed the startling truth: Elizabeth Woodville herself ordered the murder of her sons.

The document, which takes the form of a written confession and which has been established by handwriting experts as matching the queen’s handwriting, explains that Elizabeth, who turns out to have detested the male sex and small boys in particular, believed that by eliminating her boys, she could put her favorite daughter, Elizabeth of York, on the throne, either as wife to Richard III or as wife to Henry Tudor (“if it had to be a man, one was as good as another,” writes Elizabeth).

This discovery solves many other riddles about Elizabeth as well. Her hatred of men—attested here by explicit comments such as, “I hate men” —readily explains why she arranged good marriages for her sisters, but not for her brothers, why she sent young Edward to live far away from the court at Ludlow, why she acceded so willingly to Gloucester’s and Buckingham’s demand that her son Richard join his brother in sanctuary, and why she agreed to leave sanctuary in 1484 and place herself under the protection of Richard III. (Indeed, Richard III appears to have been one of the few men Elizabeth tolerated. “Richard wasn’t nearly as bad as the rest of them,” she writes. “At least he gave me more money to live on than Tudor.”)

Further research into the issue of Elizabeth Woodville’s sexuality, formerly not an issue among academics, may well be warranted by this discovery.

Post Number 299: My New York Trip

I spent this Easter weekend in the very un-medieval atmosphere of New York City:



Friday, though it got off to a bad start when my daughter's suitcase went missing, was notable for a nice lunch I had with Susan A.

On Saturday, I made a visit to the booklovers' paradise, The Strand. That's me in the gray coat in front. You don't want a close-up, trust me, it was a bad hair day:



I actually acted with great restraint at the Strand, only buying three books (Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette, Chris Given-Wilson's Chronicles, and Compton Reeves' Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England).

Most of the time, we just walked around the different neighborhoods, taking a long subway ride now and then just to get off our suburb-accustomed feet. (I'm a subway aficionado.) Just before we went to the airport on Sunday, we stopped by St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan. As I'm fond of old tombstones, I took a picture of this rather portly winged head:



Now, back to work, and back to thinking of post 300!

A Bit About Jean Plaidy

It's been ages since I've mentioned Jean Plaidy here, hasn't it? Well, I'll make up for it a little tonight.

Last year, I wrote an article for the Historical Novel Society's Solander magazine about Crown's reissue of some of her novels. The article's now available on my website (with permission).

Second, I finally got hold of the first two volumes in Plaidy's French Revolution series: Louis the Well Beloved and The Road to Compiegne. (These have been reissued in the UK, but I have the old Pan paperback versions.) These two books are about Louis XV, grandfather of Louis XVI, and his many mistresses. I finished Louis the Well Beloved a few days ago and am about a third of the way through with The Road to Compiegne. I'm really enjoying them--it's a period of history I don't know much about, having encountered Louis XV only in his final days in various novels about Marie Antoinette, so they've been both entertaining and illuminating reads. They were also written fairly early in Plaidy's career; they don't have the rushed feel that some of the later novels do. After these are finished, if I can't find the third in the series, I may have to break down and get it from the UK.

Anne Neville, Queen to Richard III, and Happy Birthday to My Daughter

Poor Anne Neville! I've been looking around the Web today to find a mention that today is the 523rd anniversary of her death on March 16, 1485, but haven't found anything, not even on Ricardian sites. So I thought I'd give her at least a quick mention here.

Perhaps the reason the anniversary of Anne's death received so little attention is that so little is known of Anne herself. Unlike her predecessors, Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville, she has come in for little criticism; unlike her successor, the well-liked if not particularly influential Elizabeth of York, she has come in for little praise. Almost nothing is known of her personality. Nonetheless, she has been the heroine of numerous historical novels. Perhaps it's because so little is known about her that she makes for such fertile material: an author can make of her what he or she wishes. Her life, of course, is also stuff for the imagination. What did she think of her father's grand ambitions, her marriage to Margaret of Anjou's son, her mother's disinheritance, her marriage to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, her husband Richard's seizure of the crown? Probably we shall never know.

March 16, though, is a happy day in our household, because it's on that day fifteen years ago that I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Happy birthday, Bethany!

Review: The Woodville by S. R. Bridge

I'm always up to reading a historical novel about the Wars of the Roses, especially when I can find the elusive one that doesn't deal in the usual stereotypes (Good Yorkists, Bad Lancastrians. Saintly Richard III, Evil Woodvilles). So I was pleased to read this novel by S. R. Bridge, published by Hale in 1976.

The Woodville covers Elizabeth Woodville's life from the death of her first husband until shortly after Edward IV's victory at Tewkesbury in 1471. It's told in the third person. Although Elizabeth is the focus, the action is often seen from the point of view of others as well: her brothers John and Anthony and Edward IV and his companions in exile.

What I liked best about this novel is what it's missing. Instead of relying solely on sources hostile to Elizabeth, Bridge has taken the trouble to read widely. The result is that the usual slurs about Elizabeth--her supposed role in the execution of the Earl of Desmond, her supposed involvement in witchcraft, her supposed greed and haughtiness--aren't regurgitated here. The rest of her family is also portrayed sympathetically, though not romantically. (And Bridge gets the age of Elizabeth's sister Catherine right! She's portrayed here as a somewhat bratty little girl.)

This novel does have its faults. Like some other Hale novels I've seen from this era, proofreading seems lacking. The characterizations don't go very deep, and the narrative sometimes feels rushed, as in one chapter where several years pass by in the flash of a couple of paragraphs. The events behind the turmoil of 1469 to 1471 could have been explained a lot better for the reader. On the other hand, there's some good dialogue and some vivid scenes, such as when Edward IV and his companions flee overseas.

The young Richard, Duke of Gloucester, makes a few appearances in the novel but doesn't have much to say for himself. It's a pity the novel stops in 1471; it would have been interesting to see what Bridge made of him (though the epilogue suggests it wouldn't have been a favorable portrait).

All in all, if you're fond of reading novels set in this period, this is a worthy addition to your library--if you can find a copy, which may be difficult outside of the UK. Mine came on loan from the American Branch of the Richard III Society; I don't see a copy for sale anywhere on the Internet.

Blogs, Blogs, Blogs

While I work on my next post, I wanted to mention that Brian Wainwright, author of Within the Fetterlock and The Adventures of Alianore Audley, has joined blogland with The Yorkist Age, focusing on the House of York. Within the Fetterlock, in case you haven't read it, is the story of Constance of York (married to Thomas le Despenser, a descendant of Hugh le Despenser and Eleanor de Clare), who lived during the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV. The Adventures of Alianore Audley is that rarity--a humorous novel set during the Wars of the Roses.

Lady D. has been around since January with her blog, Lady Despenser's Scribery, but if you haven't come across it yet, now's the time to do so!

And Carole has joined the world of fourteenth-century blogs with The Age of Treason. (Carole is 18. When I was 18 I was listening to Top 40 radio, hanging out with a guy who was obsessed with nuclear power plants, and still writing the occasional dreadful bit of poetry. If we'd had blogs back then, I hate to think what mine would have looked like, so it's just as well we didn't have them.)

Finally, I see that this blog is coming up on its 300th post soon. I really ought to do something special to celebrate, so I'll be pondering the matter.