Saint Thomas More and the Princes in the Tower: New Evidence?

Last December, Channel 5 in the UK broadcast a documentary on the mystery of the fate of the Princes in the Tower--one of whom was the uncrowned King Edward V--titled Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery. 

The BBC History Magazine's December 2024 issue, which I perused in a local chain book/game/gift/toy store, featured an interview with two historians about that "damning discovery". Whom does that discovery damn? Hint: Not Saint Thomas More.

The evidence is that King Edward V's gold chain was handed down by a wealthy London woman in her will -- and that woman was the sister-in-law of Sir James Tyrell, the man Thomas More identified as the organizer of the murder of the Princes in the Tower at King Richard III's command.

Tim Thornton, Professor of History at the University of Huddersfield, found the will and shared his discovery with Jason Watkins and Tracy Borman, an historian and chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces during the documentary. From the BBC History article, Thornton explains his methodology:

One of the key sources we have on the disappearance is a detailed account written around 30 years later by Thomas More. He will be a familiar name to people interested in the Tudor era, and his account is the first that identifies how the deed was done and who was to blame. More claims that two individuals – Miles Forest and John Dighton – carried out the murder for an agent of Richard III called Sir James Tyrrell.

When I began looking at More’s account, I was working against a background of very great scepticism about his story. Many people believed it was a simple exercise in propaganda on behalf of the Tudors – Richard’s enemies who were on the throne at the time. Other people have suggested that More was more interested in literary flair and political philosophy than historical accuracy; he was writing an abstract account of how a country can fall into tyranny.

First, Thornton found a letter from More written while he was on embassy in Bruges and Miles Forest, son of the Miles Forest named above was a messenger, carrying More's letters back to England. Then he found the will of Lady Margaret Capell, widow of Sir William Capell or Capel, bequeathing a chain which had been King Edward V's, which her husband had left to her. (Margaret was a daughter of Sir John Arundell VII of Cornwall by his second wife, Katherine Chideocke or Chiddiock.)

Thornton adds another twist to the story:

It’s also worth noting that the Capells’ lawyer in the 1510s was a man called John More – the father of (you guessed it) Thomas More. So not only have we identified a physical object from the princes that survived in the hands of the sister-in-law of the man that More says organised the murders, but we’ve also established another connection with More himself.

I'd note that we don't have the chain nor do we have any record of the chain to test its provenance; there's some evidence on paper, but nothing concrete. Nevertheless, Tracey Borman expressed careful enthusiasm about the discovery:

As someone who has followed the story of the princes so closely throughout my whole career, I would say that this is undoubtedly the most significant discovery, not just in recent years, but in my entire tenure as a historian. I haven’t heard anything more compelling in this case than Tim’s latest discovery. This is the next chapter and it’s a hugely significant one.

She admits the discovery may strengthen the case against King Richard III, suggesting more evidence that he ordered the princes murdered. 

There's also a BBC News story summarizing the discovery. Other pictures are available at the University of Huddersfield website. And there's an article  (with open access now), "Sir William Capell and A Royal Chain: The Afterlives (and Death) of King Edward V" in History: The Journal of the Historical Association.

A further note: Lady Margaret Capell's will has been described before in a book by Susan E. James, Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material (Ashgate, 2015):

The bequest was intended to entail the chain, the Capel bed with anchor badges, and other items to her grandchildren and the Capel family

"his faders cheyne which was younge kyng Edwarde the Vth's. To have the forsaid stuffe and cheyne during his life with reasonable werying upon that condicion that after his decease I will that yt remain and be kept by myn executors to the use of Henry Capell and Edward Capell from one to another, And for default of these two children, I will that my daughter Elizabeth Paulet shal'have the forsaid goodes".

I guess the next link in the mystery would be to find the chain!

Image Credit (Public Domain): The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower, 1483 by Sir John Everett Millais, 1878, part of the Royal Holloway picture collection. Edward V at right wears the garter of the Order of the Garter beneath his left knee.

Who Was Newman? and What to Read?

My Newman friend (we've never met but we've talked on the phone a few times and corresponded) Edward Short answers the first question with an article on the BBC History Magazine website:

When news of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman’s canonisation was first announced earlier this year, some might have recalled what the liberal UK prime minister Lord Rosebery, Gladstone’s protégé, thought of the great convert. When Rosebery met the 79-year-old cardinal in 1880, he was impressed by his “deliciously soft voice” and “courtly” address. Indeed, Newman was surprised and pleased when Rosebery told him that he always kept Newman’s autobiography by his bedside.

Ten years later, when Newman was laid out on the high altar of the Oratory Church in Birmingham, Rosebery wrote in his journal: “This was the end of the young Calvinist, the Oxford don, the austere vicar of St Mary’s. It seemed as if a whole cycle of human thought and life were concentrated in that august repose. That was my overwhelming thought. Kindly light had led and guided Newman to this strange, brilliant end.”

Of course, Rosebery was referring not only to Newman’s lovely poem The Pillar of the Cloud (now a beloved hymn titled Lead Kindly Light), but to the fact that in 1845 he walked away from everything he had known and loved as an Anglican don at Oriel to embrace the Church of Rome. Gladstone, if anything, was even more laudatory about the man with whom he had crossed swords over the First Vatican Council (1869­–70), especially its adoption of papal infallibility:

“When the history of Oxford during that time comes to be written, the historian will have to record the extraordinary, the unexampled career of [Newman]… He will have to tell, as I believe, that Dr. Newman exercised for a period of about ten years after 1833 an amount of influence, of absorbing influence, over the highest intellects — over nearly the whole intellect, but certainly over the highest intellect of this University, for which perhaps, there is no parallel in the academical history of Europe, unless you go back to the twelfth century or to the University of Paris.”

What, then, was it about Newman that made him so extraordinary?

Notice how Short pays his readers such a high compliment to their knowledge of Lord Rosebery! Please read the rest there.

I offered my answer to the question what should a beginner read to learn more and more about Newman for The Catholic Herald magazine:

So, which among his many works would help someone who has never read anything written by Newman understand why so many have been devoted to this saint?

Here are my suggestions.

Start with the Meditations and Devotions, a collection of prayers and reflections for students at the Oratory School in Birmingham. It was compiled and published by Fr William Neville in 1893, three years after Newman’s death. The saint’s simple, confident and humble faith is evident on the pages of this work, including his devotion to Our Lady, to his patron saint Philip Neri and to the Stations of the Cross, meditation before the Blessed Sacrament and the holy rosary.

In the “Meditations on Christian Doctrine” the reader will find one of his most famous quotations:

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his – if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me – still He knows what He is about.

Other meditation highlights include his “Short Road to Perfection” and the “Prayer for the Light of Truth”.

The neophyte should continue on the road to understanding Newman as a pastor of souls – that quality of his life that Benedict XVI highlighted at the beatification Mass in September 2010 – with a sampling of his Parochial and Plain Sermons. Newman was preaching in the 19th century to many nominal Christians in the Church of England: they hardly knew what they believed and barely acted on what they thought they believed.

In sermons such as “The Religion of the Day”, “Unreal Words”, “Doing Glory to God in Pursuits of the World” and “Christ’s Privations a Meditation for Christians”, he asked his congregation at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford why they did not – for example, in that last sermon – “have some little gratitude, some little sympathy, some little love, some little awe, some little self-reproach, some little self-abasement, some little repentance, some little desire of amendment” when hearing week after week what God has done for them. He told them exactly why:

But why is this? why do you so little understand the Gospel of your salvation? why are your eyes so dim, and your ears so hard of hearing? why have you so little faith? so little of heaven in your hearts? For this one reason, my brethren, if I must express my meaning in one word, because you so little meditate. You do not meditate, and therefore you are not impressed.

Then the offers the solution:

What is meditating on Christ? it is simply this, thinking habitually and constantly of Him and of His deeds and sufferings. It is to have Him before our minds as One whom we may contemplate, worship, and address when we rise up, when we lie down, when we eat and drink, when we are at home and abroad, when we are working, or walking, or at rest, when we are alone, and again when we are in company; this is meditating. And by this, and nothing short of this, will our hearts come to feel as they ought.

After the reader has sampled some of Newman’s works, an introductory biography would be helpful, such as Joyce Sugg’s John Henry Newman: Snapdragon in the Wall (Gracewing) or Fr Juan Velez’s Holiness in a Secular Age: The Witness of Cardinal Newman (Scepter Publishers).

Please read the rest there.

A "What If" for November the Fifth

Dr John Cooper, senior lecturer in early modern history at the University of York, writes about what could have happened if Guy Fawkes had set off all that gunpowder under the House of Lords for the BBC History Magazine:

Two totally different scenarios could then have played out. Everything pivoted on the person of Prince Charles, Duke of York. At just four years old, Charles was the next heir to Prince Henry. The gunpowder plotters were unsure how to factor Charles into their plans, probably because they couldn’t be certain whether he would have been present at the opening of parliament. Charles was not a robust child (he had only just learned to walk), and might not have been capable of attending a long and tiring day of royal ceremony. If he escaped the explosion at Westminster, then Charles would be king by inheritance. Thomas Percy was deputed to kidnap him from his household in London.

With the Prince of Wales dead and both Charles and Elizabeth in the hands of the rebels, loyalists to the monarchy would have had no figurehead around whom to rally. But if Charles had been moved to safety, to Scotland or to his mother’s native Denmark, then the Protestant establishment might have been able to regroup. Faced with the demand to proclaim Elizabeth as queen, many towns would probably have played for time until their corporations could establish which side was likely to win, just as they had done in 1553 during the attempted Protestant coup to put Lady Jane Grey on the English throne.

What next? A religious civil war, like those which had crippled France during the later 16th century? The break-up of the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, barely two years old and wholly dependent on the person of James VI and I? Instead of the Flight of the Earls from Ulster [when a large proportion of Ulster’s Gaelic aristocracy fled Ireland for the continent], a resurgence of Catholic forces in Ireland and the overwhelming of the Protestant plantations? All of this is speculation; but sometimes taking a counterfactual perspective can reveal the deep forces underlying the accidents of history.

Please read the rest there.

England's Bloody Reformation

Peter Marshall writes for the BBC History Magazine (May 2017 issue):

. . . Recent scholarship on the changes taking place after Henry VIII’s break with the papacy tends to assert their relatively peaceful character, and points to continuities across the Reformation divide. Certainly, some important things didn’t change – most folk carried on worshipping in the same church, for example. It’s also true that England witnessed no slaughter on the 
scale of the German Peasants’ Rebellion of 1524–25 (when as many as 100,000 people were butchered), or the Wars of Religion breaking out in France after 1562 (in which as many as 4 million may have lost their lives).

But only by such selective comparisons does England’s experience of the Reformation look ‘peaceful’. Thousands died in the convulsions of 1549, and blood was spilled in encounters between armies fighting for religious causes in every decade between the 1530s and 1570s: after the Pilgrimage of Grace (a rising in the north of England against Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1536–37); during Wyatt’s Rebellion (against Mary I in 1554); and in the Rising of the Northern Earls (a Catholic attempt to overthrow Elizabeth I in 1569–70). Over the same period and beyond, hundreds more were put to death for opposing the state’s religious policies. People were willing to die, and to kill, because they rightly believed that momentous, unprecedented, and perhaps irreversible transformations were taking place. For good or ill, England’s first exit from a European union, anchored on the church, rather than the Treaty of Rome, was a hard, 
not a soft one.

He analyses the divisions between Catholics and "Protestant" Evangelicals throughout the reigns of Henry VIII and his children. Marshall discusses the central positions of both the Catholic Mass--for which the BBC insists on using the lowercase ("mass") and the Evangelical Bible and describes various instances of violence and bloodshed. He concludes:

The Reformation in England ‘succeeded’, 
in the sense that people born after Elizabeth’s accession, and coming to adulthood before the turn of the 17th century, usually identified as Protestants. Their cultural outlook was shaped by the Prayer Book, the English Bible and a sense – long to endure in the English 
psyche – that Catholic foreigners were 
not to be trusted. [nor native-born Catholics!]

Yet to see the story of the English Reformation solely as the transformation of a Catholic country into a Protestant one minimises the extent to which its most vital result was an entrenched religious and cultural pluralism. [a pluralism the government constantly wanted to suppress] It is also to misconstrue the significance of the process itself. Through decades of incessant public debate, punctuated by episodes of intense suffering and violence, the very meaning of ‘religion’ changed. Before the Reformation, the word meant an attitude of mind, devoted service of God. Afterwards, it came to signify a programme, party or identity: ‘my religion’, ‘the true religion’.

The realisation, by significant numbers of English people, that their monarch was not 
on the side of ‘true religion’ had momentous, long-lasting effects for political authority. That kinsfolk or neighbours might also be wrong-believers was equally novel and troubling. Five centuries on, the challenge 
of how to live non-violently with difference remains a very real one.

Those sentences, "Through decades of incessant public debate, punctuated by episodes of intense suffering and violence, the very meaning of ‘religion’ changed. Before the Reformation, the word meant an attitude of mind, devoted service of God. Afterwards, it came to signify a programme, party or identity: ‘my religion’, ‘the true religion’." demonstrate the influence of John Bossy's view of religion before and after the Protestant Reformation. Eamon Duffy cited that thesis often in his book, Reformation Divided. Marshall's article was written to promote his book, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation. As he notes in the preface to that book--and in this artcle--whatever victory Protestants achieved in England over Catholics, it was Pyrrhic: it weakened the Monarchy, destroyed the bonds of community, and drastically changed religion from focusing on God to focusing on the self. That was not what Henry, Cromwell, or Cranmer wanted to accomplish.

Elizabeth I and Her Catholic Subjects

Jessie Childs, the author of God's Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England, had this article ("Elizabeth I's War with England's Catholics") published in the May 2014 issue of the BBC History Magazine:

In 1828, builders removing a lintel over a doorway at Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire were surprised to see an old, beautifully bound book come down with the rubble. They decided to investigate and knocked through a thick partition wall, exposing a recess, about 5 feet long and 15 inches wide. Inside, wrapped up in a large sheet, was an enormous bundle of papers and books that had once belonged to Sir Thomas Tresham, a Catholic gentleman in the reign of Elizabeth I.

There have been other discoveries in other counties: a secret room chanced upon by a boy exploring a derelict wing of Harvington Hall, near Kidderminster, in 1894; a small wax disc bearing the imprint of a cross and a lamb (an Agnus Dei), found in a box nailed to a joist by an electrician working in the attic of Lyford Grange, Berkshire, in 1959; and a ‘pedlar’s chest’ containing vestments, a chalice and a portable altar, bricked in at Samlesbury Hall, Lancashire. Each bears testimony to the resourcefulness and courage with which Catholic men and women tried to keep their faith in Protestant England.

Under Elizabeth I, Catholics grew adept at concealment. Their lifeblood – the Mass – was banned. Anyone who heard it risked a fine and prison. Hence the need for secret Mass-kits and altar-stones small enough to slip into the pocket. Their priests – essential agents of sacramental grace – were outlawed.

Reconciling anyone to Rome (and, indeed, being reconciled) was made treason. After 1585, any priest ordained abroad since 1559, and found on English soil, was automatically deemed a traitor and his lay host a felon, both punishable by death. Hence the need for priest-holes, like the one at Harvington Hall, or at Hindlip, where a feeding tube was embedded in the masonry.

Even personal devotional items like rosary beads or the Agnus Dei found at Lyford were regarded with suspicion, since a statute of 1571 had ruled that the receipt of such ‘superstitious’ items, blessed by the pope or his priests, would lead to forfeiture of lands and goods.

It is impossible to know how many Catholics there were in Elizabethan England, for few were willing to be categorised and counted. John Bossy (defining a Catholic as one who habitually, though not necessarily regularly, used the services of a priest) estimated some 40,000 in 1603, less than one per cent of the population.

Read the rest there (for as long as it's available!)

The Prayer Book Rebellion

Like the Pilgrimage of Grace in northern England during Henry VIII's reign, the Prayer Book Rebellion in Cornwall during Edward VI's reign demonstrates that some of the people didn't want the religious change that was being imposed on them after Henry proclaimed himself Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England. The BBC History Magazine posts this story, including links to nine locations associated with the Prayer Book Rebellion:

Then, in 1549, the government introduced a new Book of Common Prayer. Printed in English, the book was alien to the common people, who were accustomed to hearing their church services in Latin. It proved even more incendiary in Cornwall, where many people still spoke Cornish, a Brythonic language very like Welsh. Here, the replacement of the Latin service with an English version awoke cultural sensitivities as well as religious ones.

In June 1549, the county exploded into rebellion and thousands of angry commoners, together with many parish priests and some gentlemen, gathered at the ancient hill fort of Castle Canyke near Bodmin. Within a few days, the rebels had captured all who remained loyal to the king, and nowhere in Cornwall held out in support of the crown.

The protest soon spread to the Devonshire village of Sampford Courtenay, where, the day after the new prayer book came into force, the villagers demanded that their priest wear his old garments and read from the old service book. The minister swiftly reverted to “his old popish attire and sayeth mass and all such services as in times past accustomed”, while a local yeoman who tried to oppose the protestors was killed. . . .

“The rebellion was the outcome of an accumulation of grievances, some of which dated back to before Edward came to the throne”, says Professor Mark Stoyle of the University of Southampton. “The revolt was primarily fuelled by religious conservatism, but a desire to protect Cornish cultural distinctiveness also played its part.”

Among the list of demands that the rebels sent to the government was one which stated that: “We will not receive the new service because it is but like a Christmas game, but we will have our old service of matins, mass, evensong and procession in Latin not in English, as it was before. And so we the Cornish men, whereof certain of us understand no English, utterly refuse this new English.”

After laying siege to Exeter and failing to take the city, the rebels fought battles with the royal forces and were finally defeated. Then the usual process of punishing the rebels began--four of the nine sites included in the BBC History Magazine are associated with executions and a massacre. Two priests supporting the rebellion were hung in chains: "Henry Joyes, the vicar of Chipping Norton" in Oxfordshire and "Robert Welsh, a Cornishman by birth and the vicar of St Thomas church near Exeter". More than 900 rebel prisoners were murdered at the orders of John Russell, Earl of Bedford at Clyst St Mary and of course the rebel leaders were executed, including Sir Humphrey Arundell, in London.

In 2007, the Anglican Bishop of Truro, William Ind, apologized for the government's actions in the Prayer Book Rebellion:

In acknowledging the "brutality and stupidity" of the atrocities on behalf of the Church, Bishop Bill Ind tried to heal much of the hurt felt by many Cornish people, who believe the Church of England has long tried to ignore the events of 1549 Prayerbook (sic)Rebellion.

In a wide-ranging address at Pelynt Parish Church in South East Cornwall, the man dubbed "The People's Bishop" attempted to draw a line under a moment in history which left one in ten of the Cornish population dead.

Bishop Bill, who was in Pelynt to be presented with the prestigious Trelawny Plate, said: "I am often asked about my attitude to the Prayerbook Rebellion and in my opinion, there is no doubt that the English Government behaved brutally and stupidly and killed many Cornish people. I don't think apologising for something that happened over 500 years ago helps, but I am sorry about what happened and I think it was an enormous mistake."

On The Son Rise Morning Show: Thomas More, Either/Or?

Anna Mitchell contacted me Thursday afternoon, asking me to discuss my comments on the BBC History Magazine article "Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on after the 7:45 a.m. Eastern break (6:45 a.m. Central). Please listen live here.

Either/Or: Thomas More

I said that when I finally was able to get a copy of the May issue of BBC History Magazine, I'd read and comment on the cover article by Joanne Paul on "Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?". I had to wait until the Friday of the long Memorial Day weekend to purchase my copy at our only Barnes & Noble in town.

As the subtitle on the cover states, Paul wants to depict "The real character of Henry VIII's controversial statesman". She begins with the dichotomy of saint and sinner, contrasting Catholic and Protestant views that are absolute. Paul cites R.W. Chambers and Robert Bolt as offering the modern Catholic interpretation of More as a saint (though neither of them was Catholic); Richard Marius, G.R. Elton, and Hilary Mantel as offering the modern Protestant interpretation of More as a villain (I don't know their confessional standings). The beginning and first few paragraphs of the article set out opposites: "flawless Catholic saint vs. cruel ogre"; "saintly scholar or stubborn zealot"; "self-righteous villain" and "saintly hero"; and then Paul offers an anodyne alternative: consider More as a "flesh-and-blood individual" as though that precludes sanctity or villainy. I know what she means, of course, but because the opposites are so extreme (and one of them is straw man), it seems weak to me as an alternative to the dictate: "We are told we must pick a side." I don't think that's where we should start at all. We should start with his life and times, not with a judgment as final as "saint or sinner?".

Joanne Paul follows the lead the of Richard Rex in his chapter for the Cambridge Companion to Thomas More (Chapter 5, "Thomas More and the heretics: statesman or fanatic?"). She proposes, for example, that More's prosecution of heresy cases as Chancellor and his writing of polemics attacking the heretics and apologetics defending Catholic Church teaching were part of his efforts to maintain unity and the common good: first in England, then in the Church, and then in Christendom. There is one odd line: "We cannot know how much of a personal hand More took in the fight against heresy in England." I think that Richard Rex and others have indicated how personally More took his fight against heresy in England--so much so that he wished his efforts were successful and therefore could be forgotten.

I mentioned that one of the alternatives is a straw man: the idea of a "flawless Catholic saint" and the tone of hagiography and the smell of incense in the biographies of Thomas More written by his proponents. Just reading the Catholic Truth Society pamphlet on St. Thomas More by Alvaro de Silva for the CTS Saints of the Isles series would show that's not the only view his admirers have of him. The Catholic Church does not require our saints to be perfect: if that were true, there would be only one saint: the Blessed Virgin Mary. More knew he was a sinner and that's why he spent his time in the Tower of London preparing for death, expiating his sins, and meditating on the Lord's Passion. Also, the sins of which More is accused today are according to modern, secular standards of tolerance and individual autonomy, and those standards will shift with time. Who knows of what sins our heroes will be accused in 400 or 500 years?

When I presented an "expert" talk for the Tudor Society, I also participated in a chat room, and this issue of Thomas More: Saint or Sinner came up. Discussing Catholic doctrine in almost twitter-length comments is difficult, and, of course, I thought of a good answer after the chat was over.

While those extreme views of Thomas More are deceiving and misleading, there is one set of choices that is not deceiving. For Catholics and Christians, there are two alternatives for eternal life: Heaven or Hell (remember that the Poor Souls in Purgatory are on their way to Heaven). Either Thomas More is in Heaven or Hell: the Catholic Church only proclaims that the dead are in Heaven; if someone condemns him to Hell (as a villain, zealot, or cruel ogre), he or she is taking on an authority that the Catholic Church has never dared to do. Jesus gave St. Peter and the Apostles authority on Earth and in Heaven; He never gave them authority over Hell and its denizens. The Catholic Church had every right to proclaim More a saint: reading his devotional works can't help but impress the reader that he loved Jesus and His Church; he died heroically dedicated to the unity of that Church: he is a martyr and a saint.

There They Go Again: the Saint or Sinner Choice

It will be a couple of weeks before I'll see the May 2016 issue of the BBC History Magazine at our local Barnes & Noble, but their cover story, by Joanne Paul, has the headline I'm tired of seeing, posing a poor question: "Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?" If it must be answered, it's simple: "Both". The Catholic Church never says that a saint is not a sinner or that a sinner cannot become a saint. Moral perfection is not a requirement, although of course the desire never to be separated from God is necessary for sanctity. 

The subtitle is also interesting: "The real character of Henry VIII's controversial statesman". That second adjective, "controversial", could apply to almost all of Henry VIII's statesmen, Wolsey, Cromwell, Wriothesley, etc. I eagerly await this article by Joanne Paul, who is working on a monograph for Wiley's Polity Classic Thinkers Series and other works considering More as a statesman, according to her website:

Thomas More's works are analysed in history, politics, literature, philosophy and theology departments throughout the world. He remains one of history's most alluring and enigmatic figures - his reputation fiercely debated since the moment of his execution in 1535.

My monograph on More focuses on his place within the history of political and philosophic thought, and will be published as a part of Polity's Classic Thinkers Series, October 2016, coinciding with the quincentary of More's most famous text, Utopia (1516). I have published on Utopia in History Today (April, 2016), and I am currently developing a monograph on Utopia for Palgrave, at the request of the editors.

You can be sure that I'll let you know what I think of this article once I obtain the magazine. In the meantime, I have a little bit of a lull before starting on two projects for June (one article and one presentation), a presentation in July, and one in August--and then a nice break until November, when I'll teach a class at the Regan Catechetical Institute for Catholic teachers in the Diocese of Wichita. 

The Tudor Rose and the Wars of the Roses

From the BBC History Magazine, Dan Jones wonders if the dynastic battles called "the Wars of the Roses" were the creation of the victorious Tudor dynasty:

In England, the 14th century ended badly – with regicide. Richard II, having been deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, was murdered in prison during the early days of 1400. The usurper Henry IV endured a troubled reign, but his son, Henry V, achieved stunning successes in the wars with France – notably the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and the treaty of Troyes in 1420, by which Henry V laid claim to the French crown for his descendants.

But in 1422 Henry V died of dysentery. His heir was a nine-month-old son, Henry VI, whose birthright – the dual monarchy – required the men around him both to pursue an expensive defensive war in France and also to keep order in an England that was fairly groaning with dukes, earls and bishops of royal blood. Disaster surely loomed.

Or did it? It is often assumed that the Wars of the Roses began simply because, by the 15th century, there were too many men of royal blood clustering around the crown, vying for power and influence over a weak-willed king. Yet if that were the case, civil war would have broken out straight after Henry V’s death. The baby king was watched over by two charismatic and extremely ‘royal’ uncles, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. In addition, many more adult relatives of royal descent were expecting a stake in power, including Cardinal Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, who maintained a bitter feud with Gloucester.

Yet the 1420s saw no serious unrest. Rather than fighting one another, the English nobles showed a remarkable unity of purpose at the moment of greatest royal weakness. They did not hive off into dynastic factions, but stuck together, kept the peace and attempted to preserve a normal system of royal government. Even when men came to blows, as Beaufort and Humphrey did in 1424, the violence was quickly stopped and the protagonists reprimanded. There were no roses. There was no blood. And this peace lasted a long time.

Read the rest here.

Jessie Childs reviewed Dan Jones' book-length treatment of this story, which in the U.K. edition had the title, The Hollow Crown, for The Telegraph in 2014:

The Hollow Crown is exhilarating, epic, blood-and-roses history. There are battles fought in snowstorms, beheadings, jousts, clandestine marriages, spurious genealogies, flashes of chivalry and streaks of pure malevolence. There is a “Parliament of Devils”, a “Bloody Meadow”, a “Red Gutter” and even a “Love Day”: Henry’s bizarre attempt to reconcile Beauforts and Percys with York and the Nevilles by having them process, arm in arm, through the streets of London. Jones’s material is thrilling, but it is quite a task to sift, select, structure and contextualise the information. There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skilful piece of storytelling.

Jones takes the story beyond the Battle of Bosworth of 1485 and the burial of the king in the car park. Despite his victory over Richard III, Henry VII was acutely aware of the frailty of his bloodline and terrified of a Yorkist revival. The Tudor rose was one way of shoring up his position. No matter that the red rose of Lancaster was pretty much a Tudor device: it could be scribbled, retrospectively, into the old scrolls. The conjoined red and white rose gave parity and victory to the Tudors, along with a sense of an ending: “Now civil wounds are stopp’d; peace lives again,” (Richard III, act five, scene eight).

In reality, the blood of the Wars of the Roses seeped into the Tudor tapestry. Pretenders were exterminated and in 1541 Margaret Pole, the 67-year-old niece of Edward IV and Richard III, was hacked to death by an amateur executioner. Soon afterwards, one of her grandsons disappeared in the Tower of London just as her cousins, “the princes in the Tower”, had also faded from sight.

It is often wondered why Sir Thomas More did not finish his History of King Richard III. One theory is that he grew uncomfortable with the Tudor version. “These matters,” he wrote, “be kings’ games, as it were, stage plays, and for the more part played upon scaffolds.” Wise men, he added, “will meddle no further”.

Why We Study History

Anna Whitelock writes for the BBC History Magazine:

Has there ever been a better or more important time to study history? The past is alive, dynamic, controversial and hugely relevant. History is constantly being written and rewritten, contested and reinterpreted. History is more than simply looking backwards and studying the past – it is also about critically engaging with the present and the future. It is about individuals, families, nations and the global community.

A history degree is not just for those who want to be professional historians – it is for anyone who is curious about the world around them and who wants to be a critically engaged citizen. It is, in fact, one of the most versatile subjects you can choose to study. Facts and dates are merely the basic building blocks. Historical study teaches us to think critically, analytically and creatively, to read and interpret all kinds of information, to evaluate opinions and to write persuasively. . . .

The study of history is so much more than learning about kings, queens and governments; it is also about societies all across the world and how people have lived over the centuries. It is about justice and injustice, innovation and continuity, freedom and repression. It is about race and religion, ideas and beliefs, about travel, exploration and discovery, about medicine, sex and death, about architecture and art, literature and music. It is, in short, about life. To be a historian is to be questioning, to have a vivid imagination and an insatiable curiosity.

In publishing and in broadcasting, history is a phenomenon that continues to exceed expectations; television shows, films, books, plays and computer games attest to the huge public appetite for all things historical.

She then discusses the challenges of digital communication and social media. Read the rest here.

One Drowning Victim Among Many: Robert Parsons

The BBC History Magazine posts an extra: why did so many people drown in Tudor England?:

Travel across and beside water was as risky as travel on it. Rickety bridges, slippery banks, panicky horses, and fords where the depth of the water or the speed of the current were hard to judge all posed threats.

Everyone was at risk, from a labourer like John Hayward, walking the six miles from Broadway to market in Evesham across the brook at Childswickham on a dark December morning, to a yeoman like Richard Mongombery, riding the eight miles from Uppingham to Kirby late on a February afternoon beside the flooded river Welland.

Animals and water were a dangerous combination. The easiest way to wash a horse was to ride it into deep water, but falling off could be fatal, as Griffin Home found when he rode a black horse into the ‘horse pool’ at Bishop’s Castle and it stumbled. Even taking excitable horses to drink was risky. William Hill, aged 17, took two colts to the river Soar at Burton on the Wolds on 15 June 1558, but they ran into the river and pulled him in after them.

Sheep needed washing before they were sheared and that too could have tragic consequences. One June morning in 1560 Alice and Katherine Bonde were washing sheep in the river Hodder at Slaidburn. A wether (castrated ram) jumped up and knocked Alice head over heels into a whirlpool. Seeing her sister in trouble, Katherine went after her, while John Swinglehirst jumped in from the bank to help. All three died.

Children’s curiosity could get them into trouble with anything that moved. John Choppinge, a Hertford toddler, followed a gosling into a pond in the yard of his family home in April 1560 with fatal results.

One drowning in every ten involved women fetching water for cooking or washing. They died this way three times as often as men, as we might expect from their predominant role in domestic work. Wells, slippery-sided streams and rivers like the Tyne at Newcastle, where Elizabeth Garret fell in on 26 June 1560, all posed problems.

Washing linen in rivers could also prove fatal for women. And in the devastating epidemics of the late 1550s, men and women alike drowned in the attempt to slake their fevered thirst. Some were described as losing their reason in the heat of the fever, like Dorothy Cawthorn of Belton in Lincolnshire, who got out of bed between 4 and 5am on 19 October 1559 and smashed a hole in the kitchen wall so she could get out into her mistress’s hop-garden, where she drowned in a pit five-feet deep. . . .

Read the rest there. Robert Parsons, the great Tudor composer, died of drowning. Naxos posts this biographical note:

Little is known about the life of Robert Parsons. Much of his music has survived to the modern day, however, often in incomplete editions. Born in England around 1535, Parsons was appointed as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1563, a post he held until his death in 1572, when he was succeeded by William Byrd.

Parsons’ output of music was varied, and although the majority of his surviving scores are for choir, he is believed to have written a large amount of instrumental music for the Chapel Royal as well. It is the story surrounding the death of Robert Parsons that arouses great intrigue. On a cold and wet January day, Parsons fell into a swollen River Trent and drowned. Such was the upset and suspicion surrounding his death that much of his music ceased to be performed in the Chapel Royal, as musicians tried to move on and forget this tragic incident. These unfortunate circumstances may also have led to the poor maintenance of Parsons’ music over the years. The consequence of the lack of performance of Parsons’ works after his death has, in the course of time, led to this English polyphonic master being largely unrecognised and even forgotten. His vocal writing is very gifted, and he must have been well versed in composition to have access to the skills of writing music for seven part viols.

His Ave Maria, here sung by the Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge, is one of his best known works. The Cardinall's Musicke performed several of his works on their 2011 release, pictured above:

Gramophone award-winning ensemble The Cardinall’s Musick return to another master of the Renaissance, Robert Parsons. Very few records remain of the composer’s short life, and his musical output is often overlooked, perhaps in the shadow of the prolific William Byrd, his successor as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. However, his vocal writing is some of the most opulent of the period.

The Cardinall’s Musick give sublime performances of some of the composer’s most sumptuous choral works, from the remarkably sophisticated Magnificat to the dramatic O bone Jesu. As demonstrated in their previous recordings, their resonant, pure-toned singing is the perfect advocate for such exquisite polyphony. The ensemble’s seemingly effortless and magical performance of the glorious Ave Maria is the perfect conclusion to an enlightening recording.

Elizabeth I's War on Catholics

Jessie Childs wrote about recusant and penal laws passed against Catholics in Elizabethan England for the BBC History Magazine when her book God's Traitors was released last year:

Under Elizabeth I, Catholics grew adept at concealment. Their lifeblood – the Mass – was banned. Anyone who heard it risked a fine and prison. Hence the need for secret Mass-kits and altar-stones small enough to slip into the pocket. Their priests – essential agents of sacramental grace – were outlawed.

Reconciling anyone to Rome (and, indeed, being reconciled) was made treason. After 1585, any priest ordained abroad since 1559, and found on English soil, was automatically deemed a traitor and his lay host a felon, both punishable by death. Hence the need for priest-holes, like the one at Harvington Hall, or at Hindlip, where a feeding tube was embedded in the masonry.

Even personal devotional items like rosary beads or the Agnus Dei found at Lyford were regarded with suspicion, since a statute of 1571 had ruled that the receipt of such ‘superstitious’ items, blessed by the pope or his priests, would lead to forfeiture of lands and goods.

It is impossible to know how many Catholics there were in Elizabethan England, for few were willing to be categorised and counted. John Bossy (defining a Catholic as one who habitually, though not necessarily regularly, used the services of a priest) estimated some 40,000 in 1603, less than one per cent of the population.

This was not a homogenous group, rather a wide and wavering spectrum of experience. Many were branded ‘church papists’: they attended official services according to law, but some conformed only occasionally or partially. William Flamstead read his book during the sermon “in contempt of the word preached”, while for two decades of attendance Sir Richard Shireburn blocked his ears with wool.

Read the rest of the article on the BBC History Magazine website.

Another Brave Blogger on Mary I

Via Tea at Trianon. Conor Byrne sums up Mary I's reign and religion:

It is important to recognise that the negative depiction of Mary I's religious policies ultimately lies in the success of Protestant propaganda and its impact on the creation of national history. As Weikel explains, this propaganda has obscured the many positive aspects of the queen's religious regime. It is virtually impossible to know with any certainty how popular her restoration of Catholicism was, for we lack the attitudes of ordinary people across the country. Historians have uncovered evidence of a desire to return to the old religion, and celebrations across England at news of Mary's accession speaks volumes about her initial popularity among her subjects. In the end, circumstances beyond the queen's control defeated her efforts at Catholic restoration: 'Mary's regime was fatally undermined, not so much by failings in policy, but by disasters beyond human control' (Brigden). Pole was recalled by a vengeful pope, which demoralised both him and the queen, while a 'devastating mortality crisis' in 1558-9 was significant in that the queen was one of its victims. Mary died in November 1558, aged only 42, with no Catholic heir and having been queen for only five years: the shortest reigning of the five Tudor monarchs. Had she given birth to a Catholic heir, had she reigned for longer, it is quite conceivable that England's return to Roman Catholicism might have been, in the long-term, successful. The Marian regime was not 'backward' or 'stagnant' in its religious reforms and policies. It was energetic, vivacious, resourceful and purposeful in seeking to restore the old religion. As eighteenth-century historian John Lingard explained, Mary's policies failed, not because they were unpopular or 'wrong', but because her reign was too short to fully establish them, while natural disasters beyond her control ultimately undid her efforts. Elizabethan propaganda skilfully 'stamped Catholicism as an alien presence in England, and has consequently prevented 'a just assessment of the aims and achievements of the Marian Church'' (Weikel and Duffy). We, however, do not have to uncritically read such propaganda in our own times. We can afford England's first queen regnant respect and admiration for her concerted attempts to restore Roman Catholicism to a country which, in many respects, cried out for its return upon her accession.

In the Christmas 2014 issue of the BBC History Magazine "Anna Whitelock argues that, despite her bloody reputation, Mary I was a highly impressive queen cut off in her prime." In the February 2015 issue, however, one letter writer rejected Whitelock's thesis most thoroughly--those 300 burned at the stake rightly haunt her legacy. Anna Whitelock wrote one of the recent biographies of Mary I which attempts to bring some balance to our view of her reign, which I wrote about here, in First Things online.

Elizabeth I's Persecution of Catholics and Blessed John Storey

I purchased the May issue of BBC History at our local Barnes & Noble bookstore--the only reason we go to our local B&N is for magazines (or CDs and DVDs), of course, with Eighth Day Books in town. The cover story is by Jessie Childs, based on her book God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England and the article includes a sidebar on the plots that some Catholics did support to remove the queen from the throne and bring Mary, Queen of Scots or another Catholic claimant to rule in England.

But the story of Blessed John Storey also indicates that Elizabethan authorities saw plots were there were no plots. John Storey had left England, renounced his allegiance (the closest thing in the 16th century to renouncing citizenship), started a new life, and entered the service of King Philip II of Spain--there is no indication of any plotting against Elizabeth I on John Storey's part. Elizabeth's agents violated the sovereignty of another ruler to enter the Spanish Netherlands and entrap, then kidnap Storey, and bring him to England to torture, try, and execute him. In the wake of the Northern Rebellion, Elizabeth was certainly tracking down any associate of the rebel leaders, however tenuous.

Blessed John Story or Storey experienced and was involved in all the religious changes of the Tudor Dynasty during each reign: Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. He endured imprisonment and exile, torture and execution, success and failure at the University of Oxford, in Parliament, and at Court:

John Story or Storey was born in northern England in 1504 and educated at the University of Oxford. He became a Doctor of Law and served at the President of Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College) from 1537 to 1539.

John might have fallen away briefly from the Catholic Church or at least decided that he could accept the king’s control of the Church in England, for he did take Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremacy. After becoming a member of the House of Commons for Hindon in Wiltshire in southwest England in 1547, he seems to have reverted. (He also got married to a woman named Joan in 1547.) In 1549 he protested against the Act of Uniformity introduced in Parliament by the government of young king Edward VI. This Act promulgated Thomas Cranmer’s new Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England.

This law was controversial in Parliament and John Storey spoke against it—and against the boy king. Because he cried out “Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child,” the House of Commons imprisoned him.

Eventually, House of Commons released John Storey; he and his family went into exile in Louvain in the Low Countries under the rule of Spain, now in Belgium. There he joined the faculty at the University of Louvain and the community of English Catholic exiles, including William Rastell, Thomas More’s nephew and publisher.

In August of 1533, Storey and his family returned to England after Edward VI died and Mary, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon’s Catholic daughter succeeded to the throne in spite of the attempt to supplant her by the Protestant Lady Jane Grey. Story went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of Law but then took on important duties in the revived Catholic Church, serving as Chancellor for the dioceses of London and Oxford, and Dean of the Arches, the ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his role as Chancellor for the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, he took part in heresy trials. He also served as proctor or representative for Queen Mary I at the trial of Thomas Cranmer in Oxford and joined efforts to control the publication of heretical books in several dioceses.

When Mary I and Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury, died on November 17, 1558, Storey, like other Catholics in England, waited to see what direction Elizabeth I would take in religion. Her first Parliament began to introduce bills leading to the establishment of the Church of England, and John Storey found himself under attack for his opposition and for his work during Mary I’s reign. In May of 1560 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Fleet, from which he escaped briefly, being recaptured and taken to Marshalsea Prison in April or May of 1562. He escaped from Marshalsea before he could be confronted with the taking of Elizabeth I’s Oath of Supremacy and fled again to Louvain, leaving everything he owned behind in England. His family joined him in exile again and the Duke of Alba offered him financial assistance and a position as a customs official. John Storey renounced his allegiance to Elizabeth I and placed himself in the service of Philip II of Spain, ruling in the Spanish Netherlands. He remained there for seven years.

English agents used his position as customs agent to capture Storey and return him to England. William Cecil, Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State set a trap by having spies pose as refugees from England seeking Spanish protection in the Netherlands. Storey went aboard a ship in Antwerp to search it and the ship sailed to Yarmouth where he was placed under arrest. In London he was tortured and held there from August of 1570 until his trial on May 26, 1571 in Westminster Hall.

St. Edmund Campion attended this trial at which Storey protested that he was a subject of the King of Spain and therefore not accountable to English treason laws. Accused of plotting the death of Elizabeth I, he refused to plead. The only evidence against him was his association with the Norton family who had been part of the Northern Rebellion of 1569, when Catholics rose up against Elizabeth’s religious policies. On April 27, 1570 Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in the Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, which also released her subjects from any allegiance to her. Certainly a former English subject, living in exile under the protection of one of England’s enemies did not stand a chance against the presumption of his guilt. The fact that he had opposed religious changes in Parliament during two reigns and participated in heresy trials in another compounded his danger. The verdict was a foregone conclusion and Storey was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

St. Edmund Campion’s presence at this trial confirmed him in his reversion to Catholicism as he was on his way to join the English exiles in Douai to study for the priesthood. Evidently he did not witness John Storey’s execution on June 1, 1571 at Tyburn in London. Even though Story was 70 years old, the execution was carried out as brutally as possible—and he was posthumously mocked in pamphlets for having cried out in agony.

Philip II arranged for his widow and family to receive a pension—and his son John became a priest. The elder John Storey was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. Blessed John Storey offers a great example--his willingness to stand up for the Catholic faith in spite of repeated imprisonment and exile, culminating in his final capture, torture, trial and execution. The fact that his example influenced one of the greatest of the Elizabethan era martyrs, St. Edmund Campion, demonstrates what a model of faithfulness and fortitude he was and is.

King St. Henry VI?

 

Desmond Seward writes about the veneration of Henry VI in spite of his failings as a monarch in the April issue of the BBC History Magazine. According to the article, which is not available free on-line of course, pilgrimage to his tomb at Windsor rivaled and even eclipsed the pilgrimage traffic to Canterbury and St. Thomas a Becket's tomb. He was never canonized even though Henry VII supported his  cause for sainthood and Henry VIII maintained devotion to him. This blog from the College of St. George at Windsor Castle provides some of the same background as Seward highlights:

 

The tomb of Henry VI became the object of veneration and the scene of miracles of healing attracted many pilgrims.  Miracles attributed to the King included those connected with one of his treasured relics – an old hat – the King’s Medicine against Headache.   Relics were kept at Windsor until the Reformation.  The metal collecting box for alms still stands beside the tomb. . . .

Henry VI was not considered a successful king but rather a good and holy man widely regarded as a saint.   His one lasting achievement was in education, founding Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge.  At Windsor we commemorate his birthday with the ceremony of the Lilies and Roses.  Boys from Eton College attend an obit service together with representatives from Eton and King’s to lay lilies and roses on the tomb of Henry VI while special prayers are said.

“Let Thy blessing O Lord, be upon the Colleges of Thy servant King Henry VI and as Thou has appointed unto them diversities of gifts, grant then also the same spirit, so that they may together serve Thee to the welfare of Thy realm, the benefit of all men, and Thy Honour and Glory; through Jesus Christ Our Lord”.

Seward notes that one reason Henry VI was held in veneration was his mistreatment and death: not accused or tried, but simply murdered in the Tower of London. Known for his piety, leniency and charity, Henry's death seemed so undeserved. Although Henry VII may have supported his Lancastrian cousin's cause for political reasons, it seems clear that the source of devotion to Henry was lay piety--at least two men condemned to death prayed to Henry and reported that he prevented their being hanged to death by placing his hand between their necks and the rope!

Although he was a failure as a monarch, Henry VI successfully founded two great institutions: King's College, Cambridge (The King's College of Our Lady and St. Nicholas at Cambridge), and Eton (The King's College of Our Lady at Eton besides Windsor), both in 1441. Seward also describes Henry's devotional life, as he was dedicated to spiritual reading, prayer, and monastic retreat--it seems he might have been a better monk than monarch.

I look forward to the May issue of the BBC History Magazine as it will feature an article by Jessie Childs about recusants during Elizabeth I's reign, based upon her book, God's Traitors!

BBC History Talks and Festivals in July and October

Two upcoming events:

History Live! hosted by the English Heritage Society at Kellmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire features a BBC History Magazine Lecture Tent with many important scholars and interesting topics, including several on English Reformation era topics. For example:

~Elizabeth I: The Queen's Two Bodies

Anna Whitelock will look at the life of Queen Elizabeth I, as both a public and a private person.

About the speaker: Anna Whitelock is a senior lecturer in early modern history at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is also a popular historical author, and her latest book Elizabeth's Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen's Court is published in May.

and  

~Scars on the Landscape: Encountering the Dissolution of the Monasteries

By examining some of those places one can visit today, Suzannah Lipscomb will explore the extraordinary impact of Henry VIII's suppression of the monasteries. She will draw out the poignant insights that remaining sites can give us into the enormous extent of the Tudor devastation.

About the speaker: Suzannah Lipscomb is a historian and broadcaster who specialises in the Tudor period. She is Senior Lecturer and Convenor for History at New College of the Humanities. Her most recent book is A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England.

History Live! is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, 20-21 July.

The BBC History Magazine is hosting its own festival, the BBC History Weekend in Malmesbury, Wiltshire:

This autumn sees the launch of the very first BBC History Magazine weekend festival, in the ancient hilltop town of Malmesbury in Wiltshire. It is the oldest borough in England, with a charter given by Alfred the Great in 880. It’s also the burial place of Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred and the first king of all England, and the abbey that houses his tomb is Malmesbury’s crowning glory. In 1000 AD, Eilmer the flying monk had an early attempt at aviation from the Abbey’s tower (it failed; he broke his legs), and in the churchyard is buried one Hannah Twynnoy, famously eaten by a tiger in the town in 1703. The 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, so it’s an ideal venue for a history festival.

More than 20 top-name historians will be speaking over the course of the weekend in two lecture rooms in Malmesbury’s Town Hall. There will be a fully-stocked history bookshop, courtesy of Waterstones Cirencester, within the Town Hall for the duration of the festival, where our speakers will be signing books.

Speakers range from Leanda de Lisle to Alison Weir, from Dan Jones to Helen Castor, Linda Porter and Michael Wood, and topics they will discuss are most wide-ranging.

Malmesbury Abbey is now an Anglican parish church, but of course it was a monastery before the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. It was founded in the 7th century as a Benedictine monastery and King Athelstan is bured there. This event is scheduled for October 25 through 27.