THE COLD TRUTH OF WINTER 1482
In the winter of 1482, the royal court gathered in London for what would be Edward IV's final, lavish Christmas. Nobody knew the King would be dead within a matter of months.
I wanted to explore Francis Lovell not just as the legendary Ricardian loyalist history remembers him as, but as a pragmatic young courtier surviving under Edward IV — long before the sudden shock of his death in April 1483 changed history forever.
In 1482, Edward was the sovereign, and any ambitious young man had to pledge his loyalty to the current crown if he wished to secure his titles, his safety, and his future, and Edward had promised Francis a Viscountcy.
My story also includes a disgruntled Duchess Anne Neville, who has been commanded south by the King. Dragged away from her secure, comfortable northern stronghold at Middleham Castle, Anne is forced to endure the suffocating social politics of a capital she despises, surrounded by the predatory Woodville faction, all while Edward IV uses this grand winter assembly to demand a show of family unity. Beneath her royal duty lies a quiet, long-term bitterness toward Richard himself; most novels depict their story as a fairy-tale romance but I see it differently - she cannot forget that he had rejected her when she was a penniless widow, only entering into their marriage under the king's strict direction, once her family inheritance was legally secured.
TAXES, TREASON, AND THE FRENCH BETRAYAL
In the 1470s, King Edward IV launched his grand "French Enterprise," a massive, heavily hyped military campaign designed to reclaim the Plantagenet's ancestral lands in France. To fund this looming war, the King bypassed Parliament and demanded unprecedented donations from his subjects through a universally hated arrangement he called the "Benevolence"- a forced financial gift demanded directly by the Crown from wealthy citizens and merchants. In 1475, Edward crossed the Channel with a glittering army, only to completely undermine the expectations of his war-hungry nation by signing the lucrative Treaty of Picquigny with King Louis XI of France. Instead of glory and territory, Edward received a massive, annual cash pension from the French king and the promise of a royal marriage alliance for Edward’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York.
Meeting of Edward IV and Louis XI at Pecquigny
by J Doyle A Chronicle of England 1864
However, in December1482, the entire fragile French peace shattered. King Louis XI, famously known as the "Universal Spider" for his brilliant, conniving diplomacy, abruptly changed his mind, tore up the treaty, and permanently cut off Edward's annual pension payments. The grand French alliance evaporated overnight. Edward IV was left humiliated, financially strained and desperate to refill the royal treasury. Rumours flooded the frozen alleys of London that the King was preparing to enforce another harsh round of Benevolences to fund a new campaign, pushing an already heavily taxed merchant class to the absolute brink of open defiance.
It is precisely against this real-world backdrop of economic outrage and broken royal treaties that my new character, Leo Fairbrook, enters the dark streets of London in The Colour of Malice. Leo represents the very real, dangerous undercurrent of popular resistance brewing in the capital: a man fiercely plotting to organise the local guilds and citizens to resist paying the King’s reinstated Benevolences for an unnecessary war. When you dive into Sebastian Foxley's latest mystery, you are stepping directly into a city teetering on the edge of financial revolt, where a single spark can trigger a revolution.
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