Book Review: "Tudor Sunset" by Mrs. Wilfrid (Josephine) Ward

This book begins and ends with death: the future Saint John Rigby is hanged, drawn, and quartered at St. Thomas Waterings (on the way to Canterbury) on June 21, 1600 and Queen Elizabeth I dies in her bed on March 24, 1603. With a title like Tudor Sunset, I don't think I'm spoiling the plot by telling you that: the sun sets on the Tudor dynasty when she dies.

It's what Josephine Ward does between these two deaths that make a novel a tense and suspenseful historical tale, as the fictional couple at the center of tale, Margaret (Meg) Scrope and Captain Richard Whitlock do their best to survive the last two years and three months of Elizabeth's reign. Especially since Meg is a recusant Catholic lady-in-waiting and friend of Anne (Dacre) Howard, Lady Arundell, the widow of martyred-in-chains Saint Philip Howard, and she and Whitlock frequent the bookstore of future Blessed James Duckett (also a martyr).

Each book and each chapter--numbered, not titled--brings another brush with danger, near escape, temptation or trap, and the reader becomes even more watchful than the characters.

Following a classic historical fiction method, Ward brings real historical characters into the story: not just Queen Elizabeth I, but Richard Topcliffe, William Byrd, Father John Gerard, SJ, Lady Arundell, the two martyrs already mentioned, etc., and one lady in particular, Luisa de Carvajal.

In the appendix with notes on her sources, Ward admits that she has brought Luisa de Carvajal to England earlier than records indicate she actually came. She needs her there for a crucial plot development and resolution. 

This may be a deal breaker for some readers and I'm not completely happy with her decision either. One result of this change in time line is that Ward depicts the "last supper" of Saint John Roberts, OSB and Blessed Thomas Somers the night before their executions at Tyburn arranged by Luisa de Carvajal on December 9, 1610 in Newgate Prison as being arranged instead for Blesseds Francis Page, SJ, Robert Watkinson, and Venerable Thomas Tichborne the night before their executions on April 20, 1602!

I looked at a couple of historical fiction writing guides and they commented that the author may use the excuse of a gap in the historical record to deviate from the timeline. For example Jane Friedman comments:

Rather than worrying about never, ever deviating from history, I advise establishing your own set of rules for when to bend history or not. That way, you’ll be able to make fair and consistent decisions and achieve the kind of balance most readers are looking for. Here are some tips that might help:

• There is a difference between altering verifiable facts and filling in the gaps. History is full of mysteries, unanswered questions, and gaps in the record. If what really happened can’t be verified, you have much more freedom to play around with history. . . .

• If a historical figure isn’t well known and not a lot has been written about them, you have more room for maneuver than you do if their life has been exhaustively documented. But, if you’re going to make something up, make sure it’s consistent with what you otherwise know about the character, including how they behaved, their interests, and what their values were.

So I'll just leave that there for your consideration; the scenes depicting the interactions between the priests and the laywomen, including the tragic figure of Anne Bellamy, who betrayed Saint Robert Southwell after horrible abuse and manipulation by Topcliffe (see the third paragraph on this page for details) are filled with wonderful detail and verisimilitude (?). Ward adds details to their conversations like the stories of Jane Wiseman, a recusant sentenced to the same fate as Saint Margaret Clitherow, of being pressed (literally) for information--which fits the timeline of the novel--and the executions of Blesseds John Thules and Richard Wrenno (Wrenno the Weaver)--which do not! (they were executed in Lancaster in 1616)--so while it's a beautiful scene and fulfills Ward's purposes of using the occasion to present vivid historical detail about how Catholics suffered in different ways in that era, it still troubles me a bit . . .

After a detour through Newgate and a sojourn at the Recusant Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire with Lady Huddleston and William Byrd (his Mass for Three Voices is sung there), the scene returns to Court after the execution of the Earl of Essex on February 25, 1601. 

There's a different tension in the last part of the book as the two fictional characters wait out the last months of Elizabeth I's life. Meg and Lady Southwell--I presume this is the Lady Elizabeth (Howard) Southwell who went on to serve James I's Queen Anne of Denmark--serve the queen through her last decline: on the floor, standing up for hours, finally in bed, pressed to prepare for death by Archbishop Whitgift and the succession by Lord Cecil . . . 

The last words of the book are: 

It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

Finally, I must comment on Josephine Ward's extensive preparation for this book, documented in her "Rough Notes on some of the Books Consulted" in the Appendix. The notes are not rough at all as she evaluates the literature available to her at the time and displays her critical judgment of the authors' intentions and methods. She read these works not just for the details about the sufferings of Catholics during Elizabeth I's reign but to help her prepare for the really great challenge of the novel: How to depict Queen Elizabeth I in the waning years of her reign. 

In the note Ward wrote "To Alfred Noyes" at the beginning of the book, she offers some insights into how she framed this depiction:

Does not tyranny provoke falsehood? Was ever a father so tyrannous as Henry VIII? Has it every been understood how his tyranny affected Elizabeth? Mary has been more pitied [?], and perhaps rightly, but the fact that the vices of the triumphant Elizabeth can be traced to her childhood is in itself a tragedy.

If the heart of Mary's mother was broken, the mother of Elizabeth was beheaded. The alternations of their fate were extreme, for first one and the other daughter was proclaimed illegitimate; first one and then the other and then both had the prospect of wearing the crown. The story of their childhood shows how they were conscious that they were utterly helpless and without defense against their father. On Elizabeth the effect was formative and repulsive. It seems to me that she admired the monster as heathens have admired inhuman gods. . . . Was ever child more demoralised by a bad father? (p. xi)

For all my qualms about the Luisa de Carvajal timeline manipulations, this was a marvelous reading experience and I recommend the novel highly.

Ward placed the "Epilogue at the Presentation before Queen Elizabeth of Ben Jonson's "Every Man Out of His Humor" (1599) as the frontispiece of the book (I have the Reprinted edition of December 1932 from Longmans, Green and Co.):

O heaven, that She, whose presence hath effected
This change in me, may suffer most late change
In her admired and happy government:
May still this Island be call'd Fortunate,
And rugged Treason tremble at the sound,
When Fame shall speak it with an emphasis.
Let foreign polity be dull as lead,
And pale Invasion come with half a heart,
When he but looks upon her blessed soil.
The throat of War be stopt within her land,
And turtle-footed Peace dance fairy rings
About her court; where never may there come
Suspect or danger, but all trust and safety.
Let Flattery be dumb, and Envy blind
In her dread presence; Death himself admire her;
And may her virtues make him to forget
The use of his inevitable hand.
Fly from her, Age; sleep, Time, before her throne;
Our strongest wall falls down, when she is gone.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Elizabeth I, painted around 1610, during the first revival of interest in her reign. Time sleeps on her right and Death looks over her left shoulder; two putti hold the crown above her head.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait thought to Elizabeth Southwell as a widow in 1600