The Joanna Stafford Trilogy: All in Paperback

As of today, all three of Nancy Bilyeau's Joanna Stafford series novels are in paperback: The Crown, The Chalice, and The Tapestry. Joanna Stafford is a Dominican nun who is cast out of her priory because of the Dissolution of the Monasteries (and the Friaries, and the Convents) perpetrated by Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell.

As you know if you read this blog with any regularity, I post often about the Dissolution of the Monasteries: It was the greatest cultural calamity ever inflicted upon England. It meant the loss of great art and architecture, books and music, order and rule, hospitality, education, and the spiritual, religious life. It left a gaping hole in English life: the prayer and penitence of good monks and nuns and the preaching and poverty of good friars.

It's easy to say that not all monks, nuns, and friars were good, but many, even the vast majority were faithful to their Rule and their vows. If the English Reformation was supposed to improve and revive the Church in England, it failed entirely in this case because all it did was destroy, pillage, and plunder the religious heart of England.

Although Bilyeau does not focus on these losses directly, since she is telling stories of intrigue, danger, and conspiracy, her choice of Joanna Stafford as a heroine means that calamity is part of the desperation at the heart of each plot. When we first meet Joanna Stafford at the beginning of The Crown she is on her way to offer some sort of comfort to her cousin, Margaret Bulmer, who is being burned at the stake for her role in the Pilgrimage of Grace, the northern uprising of commons, nobles, and monks against the suppression of monasteries and other changes in religion being enforced by the monarch and his minions. One of the last times we see her in The Tapestry, she is trying to comfort Catherine Howard as Henry VIII's fifth wife awaits her fate.

At the heart of each plot, each symbol (the crown, the chalice, the tapestry) is indeed the desperation of those English men and women who saw how destructive Henry VIII's Supremacy and tyranny were. Joanna Stafford witnesses and gets involved with these plots to thwart Henry VIII or even remove him from the throne through murder (The Chalice).

As I wrote in my review of The Tapestry last year:

In this novel, however, Henry has unraveled his own kingdom, setting factions against each other like colors in the pattern of Joanna's tapestries. Men and women are willing to do almost anything to remove him from power or keep him in power--the former was clear in The Chalice when Joanna almost participated in the murder of Henry VIII when he drank wine from a poisoned chalice--and the conspirators in this volume will even seek help from the occult to remove Thomas Cromwell from his position of influence on Henry VIII.

While Joanna is still in danger after Cromwell's fall and execution, Joanna recognizes that England is in even greater danger because nothing will stop Henry VIII. She realizes this when she sees Thomas Abel, Richard Featherston, and Edward Powell, three former chaplains and defenders of Queen Catherine of Aragon and Robert Barnes, Thomas Garrett, and William Jerome, three Lutheran supporters of Cromwell drawn on sledges to Smithfield. The Catholics would be hung and quartered, while the Lutherans would be burned alive. According to Henry VIII, the first three are traitors, the second, heretics:

So King Henry VIII showed his true heart. He did not favor the Catholics, nor did he follow the Lutherans. It was impossible to understand him, to live safely in his kingdom. The removal of Cromwell had not made him a better man. There was something twisted--even diseased--in a mind that would command that the condemned be paired as opposites on the hurdles. How foolish Bishop Gardiner and the Howards were to think they could predict what King Henry would do--or control his actions.

When it is impossible to live safely in a kingdom, the King has failed because he is a tyrant.

I recommend all three books as good historical fiction! More about the books from the publisher and more about Nancy on her website. Nancy Bilyeau discusses her books and the research she did with Christine Niles here.

Best Books Read in 2015, Part Two

A few more non-fiction works:

From Dom Bede Jarrett, a study of a Dominican saint and economics (S. Antonino and Medieval Economics):

Although the book refers to the saint and Medieval Economics in the title, Jarrett dedicates one chapter out of ten to "His Social Ideals". Jarrett provides a summary of St. Antonino's Summa Moralis on economic themes: Production, Distribution, and Consumption. The saint, who was Archbishop of Florence when Cosimo de Medici was resident in the Dominican convent of San Marco (which contains the great frescoes of Fra Angelico as referenced and illustrated above), writes about the moral aspects of commerce. He begins with the statement that riches are good and poverty is bad; riches are good because they allow a man to care for his family in relative security and comfort, provide for the common good, and give alms to the poor to alleviate their want. No one in a just state should be destitute of food, shelter, and clothing, but everyone must work according to their ability to support themselves and their families. Wealth also provides for the opportunity for prayer and meditation: riches are a means to good things, not an end. While good may be obtained through voluntary poverty (like that practiced by religious), poverty is not a good in and of itself.

St. Antonino did not expect or even suggest the even distribution of wealth, noting that inequality is part of Nature and while he joined in the universal condemnation of usury and was opposed to monopolies or cartels, he acknowledged that businessmen could and should make a profit, even on their invested capital, as it represents their industry and effort, not as money making money on itself. He condemns extravagance or conspicuous consumption: "For it is a sad thing to see, side by side, extravagance and penury, to see horses and mules gaily caparisoned while the poor perish from hunger; or in a plague-stricken city when the sick lie naked, cold, and foodless to find men and women dressed with vain and gaudy ornaments (II. 4, 4, vi. p. 581; II. 4, 5, ii. p. 591)" (p. 76). St. Antonino discusses the principles of just prices, just reward for labour, and just production and distribution of goods.

Our Greater Wichita chapter of the American Chesterton Society has been reading and discussing The Well and the Shallows two, three or four essays at a time for our monthly meetings at Eighth Day Books. Perhaps one of the best sections of this book was "My Six Conversions" in which Chesterton described some of the reasons he would become a Catholic if he wasn't one already:

I. THE RELIGION OF FOSSILS
II. WHEN THE WORLD TURNED BACK
III. THE SURRENDER UPON SEX
IV. THE PRAYER-BOOK PROBLEM
V. THE COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM
VI. THE CASE OF SPAIN 

VII. THE WELL AND THE SHALLOWS

AT least six times during the last few years, I have found myself in a situation in which I should certainly have become a Catholic, if I had not been restrained from that rash step by the fortunate accident that I was one already. The point is not merely personal but has some representative interest, because our critics constantly expect the convert to suffer some sort of reaction, ending in disappointment and perhaps desertion. As a rule, the most that they will concede to us is that we have found peace by the surrender of reason; which generally means in practice that we pass the rest of our lives in interminable controversies with a perpetual appeal to logic. But, as a fact, it is in a rather peculiar sense, the other way about. The strongest sort of confirmation often comes to the convert after he has received enough to establish conviction. In these articles I propose to discuss some examples of this singular sort of post-conversion conversion. I mean that things have happened, since I was received into the Church, which would in any case have rendered impossible any intellectual position outside the Church, and especially the position in which I originally found myself.

I did read some fiction in 2015. My husband and I read a Dean Koontz book, Lightning, out loud to each other. He had read it before but restrained himself from revealing the plot. The best thing about this book was how Koontz held off the explanation of the strange appearances of a sort of "guardian angel" in the protagonist's life.

Nancy Bilyeau sent me a review copy of The Tapestry, the third volume in her Tudor suspense trilogy:

In this novel, however, Henry has unraveled his own kingdom, setting factions against each other like colors in the pattern of Joanna's tapestries. Men and women are willing to do almost anything to remove him from power or keep him in power--the former was clear in The Chalice when Joanna almost participated in the murder of Henry VIII when he drank wine from a poisoned chalice--and the conspirators in this volume will even seek help from the occult to remove Thomas Cromwell from his position of influence on Henry VIII.

While Joanna is still in danger after Cromwell's fall and execution, Joanna recognizes that England is in even greater danger because nothing will stop Henry VIII. She realizes this when she sees Thomas Abel, Richard Featherston, and Edward Powell, three former chaplains and defenders of Queen Catherine of Aragon and Robert Barnes, Thomas Garrett, and William Jerome, three Lutheran supporters of Cromwell, drawn on sledges to Smithfield. The Catholics would be hung and quartered, while the Lutherans would be burned alive. According to Henry VIII, the first three are traitors, the second, heretics:

So King Henry VIII showed his true heart. He did not favor the Catholics, nor did he follow the Lutherans. It was impossible to understand him, to live safely in his kingdom. The removal of Cromwell had not made him a better man. There was something twisted--even diseased--in a mind that would command that the condemned be paired as opposites on the hurdles. How foolish Bishop Gardiner and the Howards were to think they could predict what King Henry would do--or control his actions.

When it is impossible to live safely in a kingdom, the King has failed because he is a tyrant.

I went back to read The Chalice, which I already had on Kindle, to understand the danger posed to Joanna throughout this novel. I found it an even more compelling read as Joanna was drawn into the so-called Exeter Conspiracy, the legacies of Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, and even the turmoil between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, as this book weaves the past and present dangers together, it is a compelling read.

Joanna is always loyal to her family, even though she is sensitive to the slights she receives and the horrors she witnesses. In this novel, she does all she can for Catherine Howard as she fears for how she is being used by the Howards and by Henry VIII. She nearly always does what someone tells her what not do (or does not do what someone tells her to do) especially when Geoffrey Scovill tells her what not to do or what to do. If she should stay, she leaves; if she should go, she stays--but that's what drives the story forward.

Catherine Howard and Thomas Culpepper's story in The Tapestry matches in a way the story of the Courtenays and the Poles in The Chalice, although Bilyeau does omit the involvement and execution of Francis Dereham, in a way I think to build up Catherine's innocence--especially because Dereham experienced the full agony of being partially hung, eviscerated, and quartered.

Throughout this trilogy, Bilyeau provides excellent character studies of the historical figures from Henry VIII, so sad at the end, through the Princess Mary, and of course Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester and Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. She also demonstrates the effects the English Reformation was having on the common people, with whom Joanna lives in Dartford. They are experiencing--and will continue to experience--the changes in religion after the break from Rome. Bilyeau shows how the same unraveling that is taking place at the very top of English culture is also occurring among the common folk: the same hatred, opposition of Protestant vs. Papist (which everyone had been before in England), and the same spying and conspiring against one another. As Joanna knows, it is impossible to live safely in Henry VIII's kingdom. How she and the man she chooses (no other revelations here) will live without interference from Henry VIII and his successors remains either to to seen or is up to the readers' imagination.
  

The other great fiction read of 2015 was The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera:

It was cold and snowy on the First Sunday of Lent in Wichita, Kansas. We went to Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and then stopped for lunch. Once back in the house we were in for the day and I read The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera. I read it right through the WSU basketball game, two loads of laundry, and letting the dogs out (and in). At least two friends had recommended the book, one lent us his copy, and my husband had already read it.

Although the novel has many delights for any reader, I think that a reader who accepts the worldview of Benedictine monasticism, Thomist philosophy, and Chestertonian paradoxes will fit right in the village of San Ireneo de Arnois and appreciate the awakening that Miss Prudencia Prim needs. While it seems like a love story, The Awakening of Miss Prim is really a conversion story (which would really be the same thing, right?) All of the people living and working in the village of San Ireneo de Arnois have converted, turned away from the modern world of acquisition and pressure to live in a community where leisure and education for children is the center of their activity. Miss Prim discovers that everyone plans their days and their work around the children and their well-being. Each shop is open only about six hours a day during the week and the proprietors, many of them women, manage their businesses to supply the needs of others the village, which is built next door to the Benedictine monastery. . . .

Catholicism and tradition are in the background throughout the story, but Fenollera does not catechize the reader. Miss Prim receives the catechesis slowly and organically, but the surprise of the novel is that she has to leave the village to understand what she's learned and how to live with it--and at the end she's ready to return and . . . --the author leaves it to us to imagine what Miss Prim does when she goes back to San Ireneo de Arnois to teach school.

I do think she should have named "the Man in the Wing Chair" but then other authors have played games with a main character's identity--Daphne Du Maurier never tells us the second Mrs. DeWinter's first name in Rebecca, and Rose Macaulay famously teases the reader all through The Towers of Trebizond whether the protagonist/narrator is a woman or a man. Perhaps that's not such a flaw, after all.

Nancy Bilyeau on Cromwell's Execution--and Sir Walter Hungerford

For the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, author Nancy Bilyeau writes about the former Earl of Essex, Thomas Cromwell's execution--and the other man who suffered beheading on July 28, 1540:

Cromwell was arrested on June 10, 1540, in a way meant to cause as much humiliation as possible. The Duke of Norfolk ripped the Order of St. George from around Cromwell's neck while the Earl of Southampton tore the Order of the Garter insignia from his gown."Traitors must not wear the garter," shouted Norfolk. Cromwell was then hustled directly to the Tower of London; within two hours, the treasurer of the royal household had emptied Cromwell's house of valuables while others ransacked his papers.

There was no trial. Cromwell was condemned of treason and "abominable heresies" and executed on July 28, 1540.

But Cromwell did not die alone.

Following Thomas Cromwell to the scaffold erected on Tower Hill (not Tyburn, as some historians have written) was Sir Walter Hungerford. The decision to behead two men that day was unusual, though not unprecedented. Two noblemen that Cromwell had targeted for destruction--Henry Pole, Lord Montague, and Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter--died together in late 1538. But those two men, condemned without trial for treason, were lifelong friends, distantly related, and requested a joint execution.

Why was Sir Walter Hungerford chosen for this ghastly honour? Cromwell was the author of the Reformation, a brilliant and ruthless statesman. His enemies sent Hungerford on the same path, from Tower of London cell to scaffold. It's a mystery that still swirls around that hot, pitiless day. In this post, I examine the myths, the theories and evidence. . . .

Cromwell was the first to die, in a bungled beheading infamous for its ghastliness. Hungerford followed. Both bodies were carted to the nearby Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, within the Tower walls. Their graves are a few feet from Anne Boleyn's. As Macaulay wrote, "In truth there is no sadder spot on earth than that little cemetery."

Because he was a traitor, Hungerford's estates and homes were claimed by the crown. Henry VIII gave Farleigh Hungerford Castle to his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Seymour. It was not a small acquisition. Which is perhaps as good a reason as any for the destruction of Sir Walter Hungerford.

Nancy depicts these executions, and the atmosphere of such public events, most immediately in the third novel of her Joanna Stafford trilogy, The Tapestry, which I reviewed here. Two days hence and we will see some of the fallout of Cromwell's demise as three Zwinglians suffer at Smithfield.

Elena Maria Vidal Interviews Nancy Bilyeau

From the Tea at Trianon blog, this interview with Nancy Bilyeau (above) has these last questions, and if you'll scroll down you'll see why the last one in particular piqued my interest:

5.) Thomas Cromwell, whom many regard as Henry's evil genius in the pillaging of the monasteries, has experienced some good press lately via Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. Why do you think Henry gave Cromwell such a free hand in despoiling Catholic religious houses and shrines, etc. in England?

NB: There were two reasons. Money and vindictiveness. Henry VIII was emptying his treasury. He spent a great deal of the money that his frugal father, Henry VII, left him on trying to wage war on France and on luxurious living. Cromwell opened up an enormous new source of cash: the land and buildings and valuables owned by the Catholic abbeys, priories and shrines. It was a land grab. Henry VIII would not have to beg Parliament for money or be forced to listen to his nobles if he had his own source of money. And by handing out properties to the “new men,” he bound them closer to him alone.

The vindictiveness comes from the king’s anger over the Pope not granting him the annulment he wanted. He had to wait for years, being frustrated and sometimes outmaneuvered by the opposition: his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, her nephew, the Emperor Charles V, and those loyal to them. By the time Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn and had himself declared head of the Church of England, he was seething. He seemed like he had won a victory, but by pulling away from the great Catholic powers he isolated himself. And then he had to defeat a very serious rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace, that broke out in the North of England, among people who feared and hated Cromwell’s religious reforms. Henry VIII blamed the monastic orders for stirring up dissent and also he distrusted them because he thought their loyalty was to their orders and to Rome, rather than to him. He took out his vengeance. His cruelty to some, such as the Observant Franciscans, the Carthusian Martyrs and the abbot of Glastonbury, is stomach turning. You don’t see any of this in Wolf Hall.

6.) Joanna is a devout but spirited heroine and anything but dull. Thank you for challenging the stereotypes that exist about pious people, namely that they are dull, bigoted and cannot think for themselves. Joanna is bursting with life, love and determination and actually reminds me of some nuns that I have known. Where do you think people get such dreary stereotypes of devout people?

NB: I think that some people who don’t know anything about nuns and monks believe they are strange, joyless creatures. They don’t see any happiness in devotion to a spiritual life. I met a sister at a real Dominican Order in the United States who was friendly and upbeat and told jokes. A nice “normal” person. She read my second and third books for accuracy. And in my books I tried to show the spirited intellectual life of the time, particularly in The Crown. Having a meal with Bishop Stephen Gardiner would be many things, I’m sure, but it would not be dull! I received two emails from friars after The Crown was published that said they felt I had captured what it was like to live in a religious community.

7.) For those who are inspired by your novels to explore Tudor England through their own research, what non-fiction books would you recommend?

NB: There are so many wonderful books! Here is a sampling:

The Stripping of the Altars and Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, by Eamon Duffy

Henry VIII, by Jasper Ridley

Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of His Spanish Ambassador, by Lauren Mackay

Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, by Thomas Penn

Henry VIII: The King and His Court and The Lady in the Tower, by Alison Weir

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, by David Starkey

The Creation of Anne Boleyn, by Susan Bordo

Supremacy and Survival, by Stephanie Mann

Read the rest there. Nancy also mentions my review on her blog!

Weaving Up Loose Ends: Nancy Bilyeau's THE TAPESTRY

Nancy Bilyeau, the author of the Joanna Stafford trilogy, kindly sent me a copy of the third volume in her trilogy--which also led me to look back on the first volume (The Crown) and read the second volume (The Chalice) this weekend. I am wrapped up in the reign of Henry VIII right now while the end of The Tapestry indicates Joanna Stafford, former Dominican novice, daughter of a second tier noble, tapestry weaver, and conspirator may not be back to involve herself in other Court intrigues. (The Tapestry originally had the alliterative title, The Covenant to go with the first two novels.)

I can't help thinking that Joanna's story should have another reason to go to Court so we can see her view of the end of Henry VIII's reign. She should be the witness of the last days of Henry VIII: the Prebendaries Plot, Katherine Parr bringing the three Tudor children together, the final Howard family fall, etc. Joanna Stafford is not just a fascinating character and actor in Bilyeau's fictional conspiracies, but she is a lens through which to view the Tudor Court and England after Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church, dissolved the monasteries and the friaries,. and changed his subject's religious lives.

This interview gives me some hope as Nancy Bilyeau states: "But I do have other ideas for Joanna Stafford, and it’s possible that I will write a second trilogy of Joanna novels. I really want to bring Joanna forward to the reigns of the children of Henry VIII, and particularly the Marian Counter-Reformation!"

In this novel, however, Henry has unraveled his own kingdom, setting factions against each other like colors in the pattern of Joanna's tapestries. Men and women are willing to do almost anything to remove him from power or keep him in power--the former was clear in The Chalice when Joanna almost participated in the murder of Henry VIII when he drank wine from a poisoned chalice--and the conspirators in this volume will even seek help from the occult to remove Thomas Cromwell from his position of influence on Henry VIII

While Joanna is still in danger after Cromwell's fall and execution, Joanna recognizes that England is in even greater danger because nothing will stop Henry VIII. She realizes this when she sees Thomas Abel, Richard Featherston, and Edward Powell, three former chaplains and defenders of Queen Catherine of Aragon and Robert Barnes, Thomas Garrett, and William Jerome, three Lutheran supporters of Cromwell drawn on sledges to Smithfield. The Catholics would be hung and quartered, while the Lutherans would be burned alive. According to Henry VIII, the first three are traitors, the second, heretics:

So King Henry VIII showed his true heart. He did not favor the Catholics, nor did he follow the Lutherans. It was impossible to understand him, to live safely in his kingdom. The removal of Cromwell had not made him a better man. There was something twisted--even diseased--in a mind that would command that the condemned be paired as opposites on the hurdles. How foolish Bishop Gardiner and the Howards were to think they could predict what King Henry would do--or control his actions.

When it is impossible to live safely in a kingdom, the King has failed because he is a tyrant.

I went back to read The Chalice, which I already had on Kindle, to understand the danger posed to Joanna throughout this novel. I found it an even more compelling read as Joanna was drawn into the so-called Exeter Conspiracy, the legacies of Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, and even the turmoil between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, as this book weaves the past and present dangers together, it is a compelling read.

Joanna is always loyal to her family, even though she is sensitive to the slights she receives and the horrors she witnesses. In this novel, she does all she can for Catherine Howard as she fears for how she is being used by the Howards and by Henry VIII. She nearly always does what someone tells her what not do (or does not do what someone tells her to do) especially when Geoffrey Scovill tells her what not to do or what to do. If she should stay, she leaves; if she should go, she stays--but that's what drives the story forward.

Catherine Howard and Thomas Culpepper's story in The Tapestry matches in a way the story of the Courtenays and the Poles in The Chalice, although Bilyeau does omit the involvement and execution of Francis Dereham, in a way I think to build up Catherine's innocence--especially because Dereham experienced the full agony of being partially hung, eviscerated, and quartered.

Throughout this trilogy, Bilyeau provides excellent character studies of the historical figures from Henry VIII, so sad at the end, through the Princess Mary, and of course Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester and Thomas Howard,  the Duke of Norfolk. She also demonstrates the effects the English Reformation was having on the common people, with whom Joanna lives in Dartford. They are experiencing--and will continue to experience--the changes in religion after the break from Rome. Bilyeau shows how the same unraveling that is taking place at the very top of English culture is also occurring among the common folk: the same hatred, opposition of Protestant vs. Papist (which everyone had been before in England), and the same spying and conspiring against one another. As Joanna knows, it is impossible to live safely in Henry VIII's kingdom. How she and the man she chooses (no other revelations here) will live without interference from Henry VIII and his successors remains either to to seen or is up to the readers' imagination.

The Tapestry is available for pre-order at Amazon here and at Barnes & Noble here.

Book Covers and History

When I see this cover my first thought is that the novel is set in the 18th century and the protagonist is a Jane Austen character:

But it's actually the third volume in Nancy Bilyeau's Tudor suspense trilogy:

Welcome to the world of Joanna Stafford, heroine of THE CROWN, THE CHALICE, and the upcoming THE TAPESTRY. The award-winning series takes place in Tudor England, with Joanna, a Dominican novice, struggling to survive the turbulent reign of King Henry VIII.

The trilogy made its debut in 2012 when THE CROWN earned rave reviews and went to No. 1 on Amazon.com. Oprah magazine said, "Bilyeau deftly weaves extensive historical detail throughout, but the real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy and betrayal."

In 2013 appeared THE CHALICE, revolving around a prophecy-fueled conspiracy against Henry VIII. Parade magazine said "English history buffs and mystery fans alike will revel in this richly detailed sequel." The book won Best Historical Mystery of 2013 from RT Reviewers.

On March 24, 2015, the final book in the historical trilogy will appear. In THE TAPESTRY, Joanna is drawn into the court of the king, becoming closer than ever to her friend Catherine Howard, tangling with Thomas Cromwell and the Duke of Norfolk--and trying to stay one step ahead of a plot against her own life.

Nun or wife, spy or subject, rebel or courtier, Joanna Stafford must finally choose her fate...

When I think of tapestry decoration in the sixteenth century, I think of mille-fleurs in the background:

The cover above looks more like a jacquard style pattern. I am certainly no expert in sixteenth century tapestries, but the cover does not seem to fit the era to me. According to the book description above, Joanna Stafford is deep into Henry VIII's reign and I rather presume that the slender neck of the silhouette above is meant to be Catherine Howard's!