Leanda de Lisle Provides Context for the Reign of Charles I

Leanda de Lisle writes brilliantly in an article for History Today about the reign of Charles I, particularly its religious context:

Charles’ reign began during the Thirty Years War. This was the world of Charles’ sister, the Winter Queen, of Protestant churches in flames and the advance of the Counter-Reformation, of a Spanish empire on which the sun never set and the new Puritan colonies of the Americas, a London of fast-moving media reporting on politics from Parliament as well as on the conflict in Europe. England – Britain – is part of this wider world.

Henry VIII’s nationalised form of Anglo-Catholicism did not survive him. From the reign of Edward VI, English Protestants saw the Church of England as part of international Reform Protestantism – a stripped-down Protestantism that would later be labelled Calvinism – just as Scottish Protestants did their Presbyterian kirk. The fate of British Protestantism was linked to what happened to their fellow Calvinists in Europe; there, Protestantism was in retreat. In the 1590s, Protestants held half the land area in Europe. A century later they would hold only a fifth.

Anxiety over Calvinist survival on the continent gave an edge to concerns at home about the half-reformed nature of the Church of England, with its episcopate (government by bishops) and other pre-Reformation hangovers. There was mistrust of Stuart enthusiasm for Elizabethan compromises, particularly among those labelled Puritans.

Protestantism had only survived where it had been imposed or permitted by rulers. To defend themselves, British Protestants had therefore developed ‘resistance’ theories, arguing that kings took their authority from the people, who had the right to overthrow any monarch of the ‘wrong’ religion, which included being the ‘wrong’ kind of Protestant. ‘Popery’ was the term applied to those who sought to spread Counter-Reformation; it was also applied to any reversal of Calvinism.

James had confronted resistance theory by arguing that kings, like bishops, drew their authority from God and that only God could punish them. Divine Right Kingship was not some mere expression of megalomania: it was a defence against religious extremists, both Protestant and Catholic. Charles grew up aware that resistance theory had cost his grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, her throne (at Protestant hands); it had justified kidnap and murder attempts against his father (at Protestant and Catholic hands); and it lay behind the assassination of his wife’s father (at Catholic hands – a reminder that a monarch faced threats even from those of their own religion). He embraced his father’s writings and his accession revealed a dynamic monarch.

In the first weeks of his reign, in 1625, he ended his father’s ‘long corrupted peace’ and took his kingdoms into the Thirty Years War, fighting for the interests of the Stuarts and the Protestant cause. At home he created a theatre of ceremony, ritual and beauty, designed to shape a deferential and hierarchical society appropriate to divine right monarchy.

The informality and hard drinking habits of James’ court were brought to an end. Charles asked that nobles not ‘enter his apartments in confusion as heretofore’. Each rank was to have its appointed place. In religion, Charles sought a move away from Calvinist sermons and extempore prayers to rituals and ceremonies, with pre-Reformation origins, but which were nevertheless Protestant and set in buildings fit for purpose. His reforms would have a lasting influence on the Church of England, which still mark it – and English culture – today.

Please read the rest there. She wants us to have a more measured and balanced view of Charles I, to strip away the accumulated easy mythology of the man, his marriage, and his reign. I haven't read the book, but it seems to me that she makes a compelling case in the articles I've read about it.

I wonder if she will write a biography of James II!

Image credit: "Charles depicted as a victorious and chivalrous Saint George in an English landscape by Rubens, 1629–30."

Leanda de Lisle on the White King, Charles I

For the Waterstones blog, Leanda de Lisle writes about her latest book: White King: Charles I - Traitor, Murderer, Martyr:

Myth has an insidious way of working into way into history. Stories that ring true, that appeal to our prejudices, become ‘fact’. Sometimes they are rooted in contemporary propaganda, the old lies giving a veneer of respectability to the new. But they are also nurtured by attitudes hard-wired into us over centuries.

In my Tudor books I described how our patterns of thought have distorted the reputations of historical figures, particularly women. But in the case of my latest book, White King, a biography of Charles I, there was still more to do. The character of the king and the women around him have been so maligned that readers have turned away from one the most dramatic reigns in British history: a tale of court glamour and political populism, of misogyny and religious violence, that speaks to our time.

The title of this book – White King – is drawn from a sobriquet used by Charles’s contemporaries, and was inspired by the story that he was crowned in white. It is a sobriquet that is unfamiliar today. I hope it inspires curiosity and encourages readers to approach the biography of this damned monarch with an open mind.

Charles the Martyr, and Charles the Murderer, lauded by his friends, and condemned by his enemies, is now largely forgotten, but in popular memory something just as extreme remains. He is pinned to the pages of history as a failed king, executed at the hands of his own subjects, and now preserved like some exotic, but desiccated insect. In many accounts it seems that Charles was doomed almost from birth, his character immutable.
We like to believe we have turned our back on our old prejudices, but the way we remember him shows they lie just below the surface, still influencing the way we think.

Please read the rest there. 

Peter Wentworth, RIP in the Tower

Peter Wentworth, MP for Northampton, argued often on matters of Church and State in Elizabethan Parliaments. He also ended up in prison for those arguments because they displeased Queen Elizabeth I. According to the History of Parliament website, he displeased her one more time, by reminding her that she should make it clear who would succeed her when she died:

In 1587, after the death of Mary Queen of Scots, he had drafted A Pithie Exhortation of her Majestie for establishing her successor to the crowne, a tract published by a friend after his death. Its language was forthright, his admonitions to the Queen at times needlessly and shockingly frank. In a letter to Burghley he later defended the sharpness of his language by quoting 'the spirit of God in Solomon': 'The wounds of a lover are faithful, and kisses of an enemy are deceitful'.

Wentworth intended to present his tract in the Parliament of 1589 and launch a campaign for settling the succession; but he evidently found the time unpropitious. He tried to persuade Burghley to approach the Queen on the subject, and again in 1590 came to London to renew this quixotic plan. Next year he turned to the Earl of Essex, hoping that he would present his tract to the Queen. But copies of the tract were leaked to the Privy Council, and in August 1591 they committed him prisoner, this time to the Gatehouse. He was incorrigible. Instead of seeking pardon, he tried once more to get Burghley to approach the Queen, convinced that this statesman believed as he did: which may, indeed, have been true. Wentworth was released from the Gatehouse in November, confined for a time in a private house, and finally set at liberty in February 1592. . . .

Wentworth was imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained till his death four-and-a-half years later. It is clear from several surviving petitions and letters that he could have secured his freedom within a reasonable time if he had been prepared to acknowledge his fault and give pledge of future silence, without which he remained a potential focus of unrest and disturber if the Queen's delicately poised policy for the peaceful transition of the crown at her death. Instead of repentance, in every petition he reiterated the argument of his "Pithie Exhortation": to do otherwise, he declared, would be to 'give her Highness a most detestable Judas-kiss'. In 1594, when Doleman's "Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England" was published—a disturbing Catholic tract—he was reckless enough, at the instance of some friends, to write an answer, entitled "A Discourse containing the Author's opinion of the true and lawful successor to her Majesty". It was published after his death along with his "Pithie Exhortation" and, fortunately for Wentworth, seems to have been kept secret from the authorities. Wentworth pronounced in favour of James VI's title to the succession—a judgement he would have strongly opposed earlier, thus, incidentally, vindicating the Queen in her policy of letting time simplify the problem. Doleman had been led to exalt the rights of Parliament. Thus, ironically enough, Wentworth found himself expounding the limitations of those rights.

To keep Wentworth where he could do no harm to the state was the main concern of Queen and Council. As he put it himself: 'The causes if my long imprisonment ... a truth plainly delivered. His second wife was permitted to live with him in the Tower, and there she died, July 1596, 'my chiefest comfort in this life, even the best wife that ever poor gentleman enjoyed' There was a proposal to release him on the pledges of sureties in July 1597, when he asked not to be sent home to Lillingstone Lovell, where memories of his wife would be too much for him. On 10 Nov. that year he died. An inquisition post mortem taken at Oxford in 1599 was concerned with his manor of Lillingstone Lovell and house, woods, etc. in the parish and in Lillingstone Dayrell. Wentworth's children married into puritan families, and one of his sons, Thomas, emulated his father in Parliament in James I's reign.

Elizabeth I did not want to name a successor! Since she had not married she had no children, but there was a line of succession either in England (the Grey sisters), or in Scotland (James VI). Leanda de Lisle has written two books about the choices Elizabeth I faced. It's ironic, isn't it, that her father's greatest concern was a stable and orderly succession--that her half-brother changed their father's will about the succession--that Mary I acknowledged that Elizabeth would succeed her, but Elizabeth would not name her successor until she was on her deathbed, and then only with a nod.

Father Robert Parsons, SJ, was likely the author of "Doleman's Conference". More about it here from the British Library.

Leanda de Lisle on New Elizabeth I Biography

Reviewed in The Spectator: Lisa Hilton's Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince:

Women are ‘foolish, wanton flibbergibs, in every way doltified with the dregs of the devil’s dunghill’. So a cleric reminded Queen Elizabeth I. His sermon reassured her that her personal qualities made her exceptional. But Elizabeth was not merely an ‘exceptional woman’, snorts Lisa Hilton. She was also ‘an exceptional ruler’ — one who refashioned her kingdom as ‘a modern monarch, a Renaissance prince’.

Elizabeth’s accession in 1558 coincided with the publication of John Knox’s notorious blast against the ‘monstrous regiment’ or ‘rule’ of women. Happily such views were ‘based more on hostility to Catholicism than to female ruleper se’, we are told. Royalty ‘negated gender’, and Hilton believes Elizabeth would reign largely unrestricted by the issue. While the doltified Mary had wanted to drag ‘England back to Catholic conformity’, Elizabeth was destined to take her kingdom ‘from the darkened constrictions of medievalism towards a recognisable world’, imbued with the ‘new learning’.

But de Lisle takes issue with Hilton's view of Mary v. Elizabeth:

Many of Hilton’s assertions are controversial, not to say startling, and there is plenty to take issue with. Mary I, far from being backward-looking, ruled at the cutting edge of the Counter-Reformation. It was Elizabeth who looked back, clinging to the Protestantism of her brother’s reign, rather than pushing reform forward — to the disappointment of Cecil and others. Her stubborn conservatism was encapsulated in her motto Semper Eadem (‘I never change’), and as a ruler she proved a master of inactivity. Essex (whom Hilton under-estimates) complained that Elizabeth could be ‘brought to nothing except by a kind of necessity’.

She notes that Hilton offers something new:

Whether you agree with Hilton or not, she brings balance to the view that we must judge Elizabeth through the prism of her gender. It is refreshing to be confronted by challenging arguments instead of tired anecdotes. This biography is also full of unusual and interesting insights. I loved the observation that the three most important men in Elizabeth’s life were Cecil, Robert Dudley (whom she loved) and Philip II of Spain. Apparently she kept a painting of Philip in her bedroom. Hilton takes an admirably unsentimental view of Elizabeth’s necessary ruthlessness, while the chapters on Turkey and Russia help place her rule in its wider international context.

More about the book here.

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Borman's Cromwell

I cited Leanda de Lisle's take on the new biography of Thomas Cromwell by Tracy Borman yesterday. Here's Diarmaid MacCulloch's view of Borman's grasp of religious issues:

How does Borman measure up to the challenge? She has a tin ear for religion, which is fatal in understanding the motives of a man who permanently altered its official expression in this land; it shows poor judgment to speculate that Cromwell "privately preferred the traditional faith" on the basis that a possible illegitimate daughter of his in Cheshire (their connection is questionable) became a Catholic recusant under Elizabeth I. Cromwell was deeply ideologically committed to Protestantism, already quietly helping to move the reformation forward in his years serving Wolsey; in fact, once he got the chance, he began steering England decisively past the relatively moderate reformation that Martin Luther constructed in north Germany. In 1537, at the height of his career, he did something suicidally risky, for no political gain: he established semi-clandestine relations with the far‑away Swiss city of Zurich, simply because its thoroughgoing (and non‑Lutheran) version of the reformation was the one he wanted England to follow, despite the king's evident hatred of Zurich's brand of Protestantism.

He does praise Borman for seeing a significant detail, and in the context of reading The Last White Rose, depicting Henry VIII's paranoia that everyone was out to get him, I understand hos it contributed to Cromwell's fall and execution:

Borman has spotted the significance of something others have missed: I remember how it brought me up with a jolt when I first noticed it. Cromwell married his son Gregory to Queen Jane Seymour's sister, and thus made himself King Henry VIII's uncle by marriage. Henry made a speciality of killing people who were potential dynastic rivals to himself and his children, so even if Cromwell had not been a Protestant, he might have had his head chopped off to stop him taking the throne. You did not have to make the attempt, you just needed someone with a grudge to whisper to the king that you might try.

His review concludes with reservations about the quality of the author's research:

Borman has read an impressively wide range of modern historical literature on Cromwell, though you have to know that literature already in order to see how it shapes her account: neither her footnotes nor the text itself are forthcoming about those sources. The book contains far too many little slips or misunderstandings of the period to inspire confidence. Its story is slightly out of focus, as is bound to be the case if a biographer almost exclusively uses the printed editions and Victorian summaries of original documents rather than the Tudor manuscripts themselves.

I must say, with two very different authors making the same point about Tracy Borman's confusion about Thomas Cromwell's religious views, this books seems more like a 21st century interpretation of Henry VIII's vice regent than an effective representation of Cromwell in his own time.

Leanda de Lisle on Borman's Cromwell

Writing for The Spectator, Leanda de Lisle reviews a new biography of Thomas Cromwell:

The travel writer Colin Thubron once told me that to understand a country and its people he first asks, ‘What do they believe?’ This is also a good place to begin when writing about the past, not least when your subject is Thomas Cromwell, a key figure in the English Reformation. But Tracy Borman’s Cromwell doesn’t have beliefs so much as qualities: ones that will appeal to fans of the fictional Cromwell of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels.

Borman’s Cromwell likes women, and is nice to the poor. True he fits up Anne Boleyn on treason charges, and has the illiterate nun Elizabeth Barton executed without a trial. But then he is a ‘pragmatist’, and much of his killing, torturing and bullying is ‘self-defence’. He is a loving husband, or at least there is no evidence that he isn’t. He is also a ‘witty and generous host’, unless your name is Mark Smeaton. In which case, your arrival at Cromwell’s lovely home will be followed by your confessing to having had sex with Henry’s VIII’s wife. Your next meal will be in the Tower.

This Cromwell also dislikes many bad things. Neighbours, for example: at least those with possessions he covets. When he builds a new house he pinches the gardens of those around him (and there are other lapses of kindness to ordinary folk). But in particular he hates the ‘corrupt’ Roman Catholic church, its ‘medieval seven sacraments’ (don’t they still have seven?), and ‘idolatry’. Although (naturally) a great lover of art, this obliges him to order that ‘statues, rood screens and images be destroyed in churches and religious houses across the land’. And in the case of monastic land, it soon belongs to the king.

Read the rest here. De Lisle is not impressed by Borman's understanding of what Cromwell believed about Jesus Christ and His Church:

Between 1533 and 1540 Cromwell carried out Henry VIII’s will as his secretary, enforcer and vicar-general. In this, according to Borman, he was always ‘a pragmatist rather than an idealist’ and ‘Henry VIII’s most faithful servant’. Like the king, Cromwell remained a Catholic, just not a ‘Roman’ Catholic, we are told. Unfortunately, Borman is very confusing on the religious issues. One minute Cromwell is ‘ambivalent’ about the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. Next he is a ‘radical’, pleased to see that the 1536 Ten Articles on religion have the words ‘justification’ and ‘faith’ used in close proximity. He is ‘frustrated’ that they continue to ‘assert that the body and blood of Christ were really present at the Eucharist’. Yet, we are reassured later, Cromwell believed firmly in the real presence.

Could Thomas Cromwell not have known what he believed about how Jesus Christ intended His Church to lead souls to Heaven? If he was so inconsistent, what he trying to achieve in all the religious changes he helped implement? If it was only his power and influence over his monarch, his wealth and financial security--then he is no one to admire but only pity, for then he would have been a fool. All through his career at Henry VIII's Court he had seen people fall from power (and he'd had a hand in some of those falls): he should have known he could not survive for long.

"Tudors v. Stuarts" or "Crown of Thistles"

Deep as I am in Jessie Childs' God's Traitors, reading about the Babington Plot and the Vaux family connections to the eponymous plotter, and Mary Stuart's role in the plot to depose "the usurper" so she could be free and reign in England--reading about Linda Porter's new book about the Tudors and the Stuarts resonated immediately.

From the U.K. publisher, with the U.K. title:

Mary Queen of Scots fervently believed she had a right to the English throne - a belief that cost her her head. A vivid account of why she came to this belief from an acclaimed Tudor historian

The struggle between the fecund Stewarts and the barren Tudors is generally seen only in terms of the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. But very little has been said about the background to their intense rivalry. Here, Linda Porter examines the ancient and intractable power struggle between England and Scotland, a struggle intensified during the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary's grandfathers. Henry VII aimed to provide stability when he married his daughter, Margaret, to James IV of Scotland in 1503. But he must also have known that Margaret's descendants might seek to rule the entire island. Crown of Thistles is the story of a divided family, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual licence on a breath-taking scale, and violent deaths. It also brings alive a neglected aspect of British history - the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the fringes of Europe towards an awkward unity that would ultimately forge a great nation. Beginning with the unlikely and dramatic victories of two usurping kings, one a rank outsider and the other a fourteen-year-old boy who rebelled against his own father, the book sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter, Elizabeth, and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.

 

From the U.S. publisher with the U.S. title:

 

The war between the fertile Stewarts and the barren Tudors was crucial to the history of the British Isles in the sixteenth century. The legendary struggle, most famously embodied by the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, was fuelled by three generations of powerful Tudor and Stewart monarchs. It was the marriage of Margaret Tudor, elder sister of Henry VIII, to James IV of Scotland in 1503 that gave the Tudors a claim to the English throne—a claim which became the acknowledged ambition of Mary Queen of Scots and a major factor in her downfall.

Here is the story of divided families, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual license, of battles and violent deaths. It brings alive a neglected aspect of British history—the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the northern fringes of Europe towards the union of their crowns. Beginning with the dramatic victories of two usurpers, Henry VII in England and James IV in Scotland, in the late fifteenth century, Linda Porter's Tudors Versus Stewarts sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter Elizabeth I and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.

 

It's interesting to note, not only the change in title for the U.S. audience, but the subtle changes in wording for the U.S. blurb (fertile vs. fecund!)--not to mention the different spellings of the same word (licence/license). The original title is much more evocative--the "crown of thistles" Mary of Scotland inherited contains an allusion to the "crown of thorns"; but I presume the publishers judged that U.S. audiences wouldn't get the meaning, or know that the thistle is the symbol of Scotland as the shamrock is the symbol of Ireland.

 

I also find it so fascinating now that there is a school, almost, of Tudor-Stuart biographers and historians available to review each other's works: Linda Porter, Leanda de Lisle, John Guy, Alison Weir, Giles Tremlett, etc. Here's a link to Leanda de Lisle's review of Crown of Thistles, summarized thusly:

 

In giving us the history of family rivalry to Mary’s reign and fall, Linda Porter has found a fresh approach to her biography, and told it with grace and humanity. She brings alive a thrilling story of cultured courts and violent deaths, of ambitious kings and tragic queens: executed on Elizabeth’s orders in 1587, Mary’s family’s past had indeed proved a fatal inheritance. 

What didn't happen--per Leanda de Lisle

Leanda de Lisle, author of Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England's Most Notorious Royal Family (the U.S. title) considers what could have happened if Henry VIII would have been granted the decree of nullity he sought:

In 1533, Henry VIII broke with Rome and claimed power over Church and state in England. This enabled him to get the marriage annulment Pope Clement VII had denied him. But what if Clement had overcome the great doctrinal obstacles of Catholic teaching and granted it? Would there have been a Protestant Reformation in England? And how might the history of the dynasty have then unfolded?

In 1527, when Henry first requested his annulment, he and his people were among the most contented Catholics in Europe, and loyal to the papacy. Henry had even written a book (with some help) condemning Luther’s attacks on papal authority. But Henry had long believed himself to be more than a mere secular monarch. Granted his annulment he would not have broken with Rome, but his ego would still have needed to be satisfied in this regard.

It would have pleased Henry to see the humanist scholar John Fisher made a cardinal and invited to the Council of Trent in 1535 (as Fisher was, shortly before being executed for his loyalty to Rome). Through Fisher, and later English cardinals, England would have helped shape the reformation of the Catholic Church. At home, the price of Henry’s loyalty would have been an Anglican Church, in communion with Rome, building on its own traditions, with the crown exercising greater power in the appointment of bishops, a concession granted to the kings of France.

Henry would have continued to take part in public discussions on theology, closed failing monasteries and addressed superstitious practises, in line with his humanist Catholic ideals. There would have been no Pilgrimage of Grace—the great rebellion in England triggered by opposition to the Reformation. But Henry would still have confronted “heretics” especially in areas with close trading contacts with Europe (he burned Lutherans until he died).

I find that note about Bishop John Fisher at the Council of Trent fascinating. As I read John O'Malley's book on that great council, I was surprised at how actively Henry VIII opposed the convening of it, because he and his ally King Francis I were determined to thwart their common enemy, the Emperor Charles V.

She also has some interesting "counter facts" about the reign of Henry VIII's son and heir by Anne Boleyn, Henry IX, and his cooperation with Reginald Cardinal Pole, were the latter elected pope as he almost was in 1550:

The Tudors were conservative and ruthless in temperament, and had Reginald Pole been elected Pope in 1550, as he nearly was, he could have persuaded Henry IX to institute an Inquisition to police orthodoxy in England. Henry’s kingdom would thus have been spared France’s Wars of Religion. But disgust at the suffering of fellow countrymen burned at the stake would also fuel English anticlericalism. This Henry IX would have exploited in any quarrels with the Pope on matters of ecclesiastical authority, a cause close to Pole’s heart, and one over which English kings had quarrelled with popes before.

In other areas, however, Pole and Henry IX would have continued to find agreement. On reform, Henry IX, influenced by his Boleyn inheritance, but also backed by Pole, would commission an orthodox bible in English (as Mary I actually did). In 1560 Henry IX would have helped to crush the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, a country eventually absorbed by dynastic marriage, and conquest, with future Tudors encouraging elite marriages with Scottish and Irish families to create a sense of Britain.

Read the rest here--what do you think?

Leanda de Lisle on Mary I

From The Catholic Herald:

There will be no ‘Mary I and her People’ exhibitions to match that of Elizabeth I currently showing at the National Gallery. While Elizabeth I is regularly voted our most popular ever monarch her Catholic elder half sister remains associated with her late seventeenth century sobriquet, ‘Bloody Mary’. It is assumed she was hated in her lifetime. In fact she was a popular queen, and one from whom Elizabeth learned much.

Mary’s accession to the throne in 1553 was not a smooth one. Her half brother, Edward VI, was a passionate Protestant, and when, aged fifteen, he fell gravely ill he wrote a will that excluded Mary from the throne. Instead it was left to his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey. The majority of the political elite signed up to Edward’s will, and the Imperial ambassadors, reporting to Mary’s most powerful ally, her cousin the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, advised him to accept the situation as a fait accompli. But Mary proved to be made of sterner stuff than the Imperial ambassadors,
launching a successful coup against Jane with the support of large numbers of the ‘common people’.

England was not then a predominately Protestant country. The fact Mary was a Catholic did not, therefore, greatly trouble her subjects. More important to them was Mary’s impeccable royal heritage. Each of her four grandparents was the head of their royal house, and, of course, her father was Henry VIII.

And she goes on to note the congruence between Mary's metaphor of the queen regnant's marriage to the kingdom and motherhood to her people and Elizabeth I's imagery:

Although it is often claimed that Mary did not have Elizabeth’s personal charisma, she too possessed qualities in this regard. They had been demonstrated most clearly in 1554, when a speech at the Guildhall had roused London in her defence against the most dangerous revolt of her reign. Mary had said then that she was married to her kingdom, describing her coronation ring as a wedding band, and her love of her subjects as that of a mother for her children.

These were phrases and motifs that Elizabeth would use repeatedly and would become absolutely central to her queenship. But while the dark side of Gloriana is forgotten, Mary is remembered predominately as a figure of gothic horror.

Read the rest here.

The English Reformation and the Wars of the Roses

Leanda de Lisle, author of After Elizabeth, The Sisters Who Would Be Queen, and Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England's Most Notorious Royal Family, visited this blog when I posted a link to her article on Anne Boleyn's execution with a sword and included a link to her article about Margaret Beaufort and her depiction in The White Queen, a BBC mini-series based on the Philippa Gregory book. The article reflects on how later generations, looking back on history through the lens of the English Reformation and the ongoing mistrust of Catholics in English Society, regarded Henry VII's mother with great suspicion, even shifting the blame for the murder of the Princes in the Tower from Richard III to Margaret Beaufort:

Richard showed no more inclination than Edward IV to allow Henry Tudor home but when the princes vanished that summer and rumours emerged that Richard had ordered their deaths Margaret saw an opportunity. She suggested to the mother of the princes - the "White Queen", Elizabeth Woodville - that she agree to marry her eldest daughter to Henry Tudor. Edwardian loyalists could then combine with remaining Lancastrians to overthrow Richard and make Henry king.

Less than two years later Richard III was killed in battle at Bosworth and Henry Tudor was crowned. Margaret - the Red Queen - would gain huge political influence and become one of the richest women in England. Clearly she had benefited from the disappearance of the princes but it would not be until 110 years after her death that she would be accused of child murder. The accusations first arose only during the reign of witch-burning misogynist James I. This was the era of the Stuarts, the Tudor line was defunct and so it was possible to re-assess Henry Tudor's enemy Richard III in a more positive light. That meant finding someone other than Richard responsible for the disappearance of his nephews. Cases in which children disappear are haunting and no one has forgotten the story of the Princes in the Tower.

Margaret was an easy target, in part because of the praise that had been lavished on her by her priestly confessor John Fisher. England had undergone the Reformation. Stuart England was thoroughly Protestant and Margaret's Catholic spirituality was now condemned, while her intelligence and toughness of character were regarded with equal suspicion.

In 1646 conman George Buck, who was passing off a history composed in 1619 by a great uncle as his own, published his uncle's accusation that Margaret was a "subtle and politic lady" who had sought to kill the princes with poison and sorcery to clear the way for Henry. As we see in the novels of Philippa Gregory and the BBC's White Queen, it is as a child murderer that she is being portrayed again.

Read the rest here. It's a wonderful day when an author like Leanda de Lisle notices your blog! I've haven't read her Tudor history, or her depiction of Margaret Beaufort, but here is an article from History Today by Michael K. Jones, author of The King's Mother that provides a detailed analysis of her life and character, including this conclusion which refers to St. John Fisher's memorial of his benefactor:

The sermon which Fisher preached at Lady Margaret's month's mind compared her with Martha in the gospel, the epitome of virtuous activity. She seemed to him the ideal representative of God-fearing orderliness for their days, a noble patron tempering her power with a humility which showed itself in respect for individuals. Like Martha she was busy about her household: he notices her astute handling of discord, her care for her almsfolk, servants and strangers fed by her charity, as well as personal qualities like her readiness to learn. All the estates of the realm had reason to mourn her: the students and learned men because she was their mother and patron; the religious with whom she conversed, the clergy whom she protected, the nobility to whom she was an example of honour, and the commons for whom she acted as a mediator.

There are other features of this tender icon painted by Fisher which appear there only dimly, but more strongly in the reminiscences of Henry Parker. He pictures her sitting one New Year's Day under a cloth of state with her guests, a figure comparable for him with an Anglo-Saxon ruler, Elfleda Lady of the Mercians, or with Matilda wife of Henry I. Both of those led lives made politcally important by marriage and were symbols of piety and justice, but were also of strong passions and active characters. We get a glimpse of this side of Lady Margaret in Fisher's recollection of her saying often that if the Christian princes would war upon the enemies of Christ's faith, she would gladly go with them to wash their clothes, for the love of Jesus. Her tears of devotion, like those shed at her son's coronation, were perhaps signs of an intense nature concentrated upon its chosen aims. The aims were those demanded not only by her loyalty to God but to her son and the security of the royal house. It has been suggested that once at least her concern for wealth and power overcame her conscience: she neglected to fulfil a trust left by Cardinal Beaufort for the benefit of St Cross Hospital Winchester, although it clearly affected part of her estates.

Lady Margaret was, after all, the victim of politics from an early age: a prize passed from Suffolk to Edmund Tudor, even if she was able to accept her marriage with the latter as God's will. She learnt painfully during the dangerous years of war and of Edward IV's peace how to safeguard her interests and those of her son. She was a mature conspirator under Richard III, ready to suffer disaster before Henry's final triumph. Margaret, translator of The Mirror of Gold and inspirer of Henry Watson's translation of The Ship of Fools, had learnt the themes of reversal and penitence in a practical school. She was imbued with the courtly military ideals of her time; the recipient of a papal indulgence for her contributions to war against the Turks, the first book she commissioned from William Caxton in 1489 was of 'the noble acts and feats of war by a noble and victorious prince named Blanchardin... for the love of a noble princess called Eglantine'. As a patron, the employer of Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson, and early helper of Skelton, she was for England a figure of Renaissance magnificence. Her epitaph was composed by Erasmus and her most moving likeness is the effigy sculpted by Torrigiano. Her great achievement was the self-discipline which allowed her to listen not just to the claims of power but to those of responsibility, whether for her own dependents or for the broader needs of religion and scholarship.

Anne Boleyn's Execution: Why with a Sword?

Leanda de Lisle explains why, in The Spectator:

With his wife, Anne Boleyn, in the Tower, Henry VIII considered every detail of her coming death, poring over plans for the scaffold. As he did so he made a unique decision. Anne, alone among all victims of the Tudors, was to be beheaded with a sword and not the traditional axe. The question that has, until now, remained unanswered is — why?

Historians have suggested that Henry chose the sword because Anne had spent time in France, where the nobility were executed this way, or because it offered a more dignified end. But Henry did not care about Anne’s feelings. Anne was told she was to be beheaded on the morning of 18 May, and then kept waiting until noon before being told she was to die the next day. At the root of Henry’s decision was Henry thinking not about Anne, but about himself.

That last sentence is the key to de Lisle's explanation: she connects Henry's concern with his hurt pride and reputation, disclosed in the trials of his queen and her courtiers with the image of Camelot:

In Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Guinevere was sentenced to death by burning. Henry decided Anne would be beheaded with a sword — the symbol of Camelot, of a rightful king, and of masculinity. Historians argue over whether Anne was really guilty of adultery, and whether Henry or Cromwell was more responsible for her destruction. But the choice of a sword to kill Anne reflects one certain fact: Henry’s overweening vanity and self-righteousness.

What do you think of her explanation?

Henry VIII's Niece, Lady Margaret Douglas, in "History Today"

Leanda de Lisle has published an article on Lady Margaret Douglas, Henry VIII's niece (his elder sister Margaret's daughter) in the August issue of History Today:

Lady Margaret Douglas, a favourite of Henry VIII, negotiated the shady politics and shifting alliances of the courts of four Tudor monarchs. Leanda de Lisle tells the story of the ‘progenitor of princes’, whose grandson, James VI of Scotland, became the first Stuart king of England.

Henry VIII ordered a dress from his Great Wardrobe for ‘our niece’, Lady Margaret Douglas, to welcome her arrival at court in April 1530. The 14-year-old princess was destined to be a player in key events over four Tudor reigns. Her youthful romances would see her caught up in the fall of two of Henry’s queens, she would be arrested at least four times, imprisoned in the Tower twice and plot – ultimately successfully – for her heirs to inherit Elizabeth I’s throne. In Margaret’s will of 1578 she still remembered her uncle fondly, listing a picture of Henry among her treasured possessions. Yet her dramatic life story and dynastic significance has been obscured by the story of a quarrel between them that never was.

Margaret Douglas was the child of Henry’s elder sister, Margaret Tudor (1489-1541), Queen of Scots by her second husband Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. As such she was third in line to the English throne in 1530, following her elder half-brother, the 16-year-old James V of Scots, and Henry’s daughter, Mary Tudor, who was four months her junior. Her parents’ unhappy marriage had been annulled in 1527. The following year her father sought to flee his step-son, who hated him. Archibald had kidnapped Margaret and sent her to Henry as a goodwill gesture, hoping to gain free passage to England in return.

Read the rest here.

English Titles and American Translations

Leanda de Lisle has a new book forthcoming in the UK and in the USA, but notice the different titles. The US title is much more sensationalistic: Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England's Most Notorious Royal Family vs. TUDOR: The Family Story :

Note, however, that Amazon.com uses the UK title in the book description:

In an epic narrative sweeping from 1437 to the first decade of the seventeenth century, Tudor: the Family Story traces the rise and rule of the Tudor dynasty. Brutal political instability dominated England during this infamous time, and Leanda de Lisle reveals the personalities, passions, and obsessions of the men and women at its epicenter to rediscover the true significances of previously overlooked figures: from the remarkable women, so wholly devoted to securing the line of succession, to the Princes in the Tower, whose disappearances have remained a mystery for centuries.

This groundbreaking story opens at the unlikely beginning of the Tudor dynasty—with Owen Tudor, a handsome Welsh commoner who, with a pirouette and a trip, landed squarely in the lap of the English Monarchy. The struggle of Owen’s grandson Henry VII and his heirs to secure the line of succession—and the hopes, loves, and losses of the claimants—are the focus of this book. The universal appeal of the Tudors also lies in the family stories: of a mother’s love for her son, of the husband who kills his wives, of siblings who betray one another, of reckless love affairs, of rival cousins, of an old spinster whose heirs hope to hurry her to her end.

Thrilling to read and bristling with religious and political intrigue, Tudor: The Family Story tells the true story behind the myths, throwing a fresh, new light on this perennially fascinating era.

Leanda de Lisle has recently started a facebook page, so I posted a message! and I let you know if I get an answer about why the U.S. title uses such strong words: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. Notorious! while the U.K. title refers to the "family story", so domestic and personal. UPDATE: I did receive a reply from the author and she said that U.S. publisher suggested that title and she trusts that they know their market, so approved the title.

Do you have an opinion about the difference in title? Is it because U.S. audiences are drawn to scandal?