The Truth About Halloween and Tudor England

by Nancy Bilyeau

I have a passion for 16th century England. My friends and family, not to mention my agent and editors, are accustomed to my obsession with the Tudorverse. Namely, that for me, all roads lead back to the family that ruled England from 1485 to 1603. Could it be possible that Halloween, one of my favorite days of the year, is also linked to the Tudors?

Yes, it turns out, it could.

The first recorded use of the word "Halloween" was in mid-16th century England. It is a shortened version of "All-Hallows-Even" ("evening"), the night before All Hallows Day, another name for the Christian feast that honors saints on the first of November.

But it's not just a literal connection. To me, there's a certain spirit of Halloween that harkens back to the Tudor era as well. Not the jack o' lanterns, apple-bobs and haunted houses (and not the wonderful Christopher Lee "Dracula" movies that I watch on TCM network every October, two in a row if I can). It's that mood, frightening and mysterious and exciting too, of ghosts flitting through the trees; of charms that just might bring you your heart's desire; of a distant bonfire spotted in the forest; of a crone's chilling prophecy.

The Oxford Astrologer

In pre-Reformation England, the Catholic Church co-existed with belief in astrology and magic. It was quite common to attend Mass regularly and to consult astrologers. "The medieval church appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power," writes Keith Thomas in his brilliant 1971 book Religion and the Decline of Magic. Faithful Catholics tolerated the traditions of the centuries-old Celtic festival of Samhain ("summer's end"), when people lit bonfires and put on costumes to scare away the spirits of the unfriendly dead. In fact, an Eighth Century pope named November 1st as the day to honor all Catholic saints and martyrs with an eye toward Samhain.

Soul cakes

Nothing shows the merger of Celtic and Christian beliefs better than "soul cakes." These small, round cakes, filled with nutmeg or cinnamon or currants, were made for All Saints’ Day on November 1st. The cakes were offered as a way to say prayers for the departed (you can picture the village priest nodding in approval) but they were also given away to protect people on the day of the year that the wall was thinnest between the living and the dead, a Celtic if not Druid belief. I am fascinated by soul cakes, and I worked them into my first novel, The Crown, a thriller set in 1537-1538 England. Soul cakes even end up being a clue!

In the early 16th century, Halloween on October 31st, All Saints’ Day (or All Hallows Day) on November 1st and All Souls’ Day on November 2nd were a complex grouping of traditions and observances. Life revolved around the regular worship, the holidays and the feast days that constituted the liturgy. As the great Eamon Duffy wrote: "For within that great seasonal cycle of fast and festival, of ritual observance and symbolic gesture, lay Christians found the paradigms and the stories which shaped their perception of the world and their place in it."

Sculptures smashed at Worcester Cathedral.

Henry VIII changed the perceptions of the kingdom forever when he broke from Rome. A guiding force in his reformation of the Catholic Church was the destruction of what he and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell scorned as "superstition." Saints' statues were removed; murals telling mystical stories were painted over; shrines were pillaged; the number of feast days was sharply reduced so that more work could be done during the growing season. "The Protestant reformers rejected the magical powers and supernatural sanctions which had been so plentifully invoked by the medieval church," writes Keith Thomas. The story in The Crown is told from the perspective of a young Catholic novice who struggles to cope with these radical changes.



My children love Halloween as much as I do. Yet somehow Halloween, the day before All Saints’ Day, survived the government's anti-superstition movement, to grow and survive long after the Tudors were followed by the Stuarts. It’s now a secular holiday that children adore (including mine, who are trying on costumes four days early). 

As for me, I relish the candy handouts, costumes and scary movies—and I also cherish our society’s stubborn fondness for bonfires and charms and ghosts and sweet cakes, for in them can be found echoes of life in the age of the Tudors.

This is an Editor's Choice and was originally published on October 27, 2011.

~~~~~~~~~~

Nancy Bilyeau is a historical novelist and magazine editor based in New York. She wrote the Joanna Stafford trilogy, a trio of thrillers set in Henry VIII’s England, for Simon & Schuster. Her fourth novel is The Blue, an 18th century thriller revolving around the art & porcelain world. Her latest novel is Dreamland, set in Coney Island of 1911, is published by Endeavour Quill. A former staff editor at Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and InStyle, Nancy is currently the deputy editor at the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College and contributes to Town & Country, CrimeReads, and Mystery Scene magazine.

For more information, visit www.nancybilyeau.com.

Little Ease and the Tower of London

by Nancy Bilyeau

In 1534, a man and woman hurried past a row of cottages on the outer grounds of the Tower of London. They had almost reached the gateway to Tower Hill and, not far beyond it, the city of London, when a group of yeomen warders on night watch appeared in their path.

In response the young couple turned toward each other, in what seemed a lover’s embrace. But something about the man caught the attention of a yeoman warder. He held his lantern higher and within seconds recognized the pair. The man was a fellow yeoman warder, John Bawd, and the woman was Alice Tankerville, a condemned thief and prisoner.

So ended the Tower’s first known escape attempt by a woman. But Alice’s accomplice and admirer, the guard John Bawd, was destined to enter the Tower record books too, and for the grimmest of reasons—he is the first known occupant of a peculiar torture cell used during the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts. The windowless cell measured 1.2m (4 square feet) and bore the faintly prim name of Little Ease. The prisoner within it could not stand nor sit nor lie down but crouched over, in increasing agony, until freed from the suffocating, dark space.

In 1215 England outlawed torture through the passage of Magna Carta, except by royal warrant. The first king to authorize it, reluctantly, was Edward II. He submitted to intense pressure from the Pope to follow the lead of the king of France and demolish the Order of the Knights Templar, part of a tradition begun during the Crusades. King Philip IV of France, jealous of the Templars’ wealth and power, charged them with heresy, obscene rituals, idolatry and other offenses. The French knights denied all, and were duly tortured. Some who broke down and “confessed” were released; all who denied wrongdoing were burned at the stake.

Once Edward II had ordered imprisonment of members of the English chapter, French monks arrived in London bearing their instruments of torture. In 1311 the Knights Templar “were questioned and examined in the presence of notaries while suffering under the torments of the rack” within the Tower of London as well as prisons of Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate and Bishopgate, according to The History of the Knights Templar, the Temple Church, and the Temple, by Charles G. Addison. And so the Tower—principally a royal residence, military stronghold, armory, and menagerie up until that time—was baptized in torture.

Did the instruments remain after the Knights Templars were crushed, to be used on other prisoners? We cannot be certain, although there is no record of it. The next mention of a rack within the Tower is a startling one—an unsavory nobleman made Constable of the Tower pushed for one to be installed. John Holland, third duke of Exeter, arranged for a rack to be brought into the Tower. It is not known if men were stretched upon it or if it was merely used to frighten. In any case, this rack is known to history as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter.

It was in the 16th century that prisoners were unquestionably tortured in the Tower of London. The royal family rarely used the fortress on the Thames as a residence; more and more, its stone buildings contained prisoners. And while the Tudor monarchs seem glittering successes to us now, in their own time they were beset by insecurities: rebellions, conspiracies and other threats both domestic and foreign. There was a willingness at the top of the government to override the law to obtain certain ends. This created a perfect storm for torture.

“It was during the time of the Tudors that the use of torture reached its height,” wrote historian L.A. Parry in his 1933 book The History of Torture in England. “Under Henry VIII it was frequently employed; it was only used in a small number of cases in the reigns of Edward VI and of Mary. It was whilst Elizabeth sat on the throne that it was made use of more than in any other period of history.”

Yeoman Warder John Bawd admitted he had planned the escape of Alice Tankerville “for the love and affection he bore her.” Unmoved, the Lieutenant of the Tower ordered Bawd into Little Ease, where he crouched, in growing agony. The lovers were condemned to horrible deaths for trying to escape. According to a letter in the State Papers of Lord Lisle, written on March 28, Alice Tankerville was “hanged in chains at low water mark upon the Thames on Tuesday. John Bawd is in Little Ease cell in the Tower and is to be racked and hanged.”

Today no one knows exactly where Little Ease was located. One theory: within the nooks and crannies of the White Tower. Another: in the basement of the old Flint Tower. No visitor sees it today; it was torn down or walled up long ago. Besides Little Ease, the most-used torture devices were the rack, manacles, and a horrific creation called the Scavenger’s Daughter. For many prisoners, solitary confinement, repeated interrogation, and the threat of physical pain were enough to make them tell their tormentors anything they wanted to know.

Often the victims ended up in the Tower for religious reasons. Anne Askew was tortured and killed for her Protestant beliefs; Edmund Campion for his Catholic ones. But the crimes varied. “The majority of the prisoners were charged with high treason, but murder, robbery, embezzling the Queen’s plate, and failure to carry out proclamations against state players were among the offenses,” wrote Parry. The monarch did not need to sign off on torture requests, although sometime he or she did. Elizabeth I personally directed that torture be used on the members of the Babington Conspiracy, a group that plotted to depose her and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. But usually these initiatives went through the Privy Council or tapped the powers of the Star Chamber. It is believed that in some cases, permission was never sought at all.

Over and over, names pop up in state papers of those confined to Little Ease:

“On 3 May 1555: Stephen Happes, for his lewd behavior and obstinacy, committed this day to the Tower to remain in Little Ease for two or three days till he may be further examined.”

“10 January 1591: Richard Topcliffe is to take part in an examination in the Tower of George Beesley, seminary priest, and Robert Humberson, his companion. And if you shall see good cause by their obstinate refusal to declare the truth of such things as shall be laid to their charge in Her Majesty’s behalf, then shall you by authority hereof commit them to the prison called Little Ease or to such other ordinary place of punishment as hath been accustomed to be used in those cases, and to certify proceedings from time to time.”

After the death of Elizabeth and succession of James I came the most famous prisoner of them all to be held in Little Ease, Guy Fawkes. Charged with plotting to blow up the king and Parliament, Fawkes was subjected to both manacles and rack to obtain his confession and the names of his fellow conspirators. After he had told his questioners everything they asked, Fawkes was still shackled hand and foot in Little Ease and left there for a number of days.

And after that final burst of savagery, Little Ease was no more. A House of Commons committee reported the same year as Fawkes’ execution that the room was “disused.” In 1640, during the reign of Charles I, torture was abolished forever; there would be no more forcing prisoners to crouch for days in dark airless rooms, no more rack or hanging from chains.

And so, mercifully, closed one of the darkest chapters in England’s history.


This article is an Editor's Choice and was originally posted May 7, 2012. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Nancy Bilyeau has written five novels of historical suspense. She is the author of the best-selling art and porcelain thriller “The Blue,” set in 18th century England, and the Tudor trilogy “The Crown,” “The Chalice,” and “The Tapestry,” on sale in nine countries. Nancy is a magazine editor who has lived in the United States and Canada and worked on the staffs of “InStyle,” “Good Housekeeping,” and “Rolling Stone.” She is currently the deputy editor of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at the Research Foundation of CUNY and a regular contributing writer to “Town & Country" and "Mystery Scene Magazine."

Nancy’s mind is always in past centuries but she currently lives with her husband and two children in Forest Hills in the borough of Queens. "Dreamland," coming out in January 2020, is her first novel set in her adopted hometown of New York City. For more info on "Dreamland," go to https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47812578-dreamland

Tudor Christmas Gifts

by Deborah Swift

In Shakespeare's Day it was more usual to give gifts at New Year, but if you were lucky you might receive one at Christmas. Christmas gifts were known as Christmas Boxes and were usually given by a master to his servants, or an employer to his apprentices or workmen. They were a mark of appreciation for work done over the previous year.

New Year's gifts were a more equal exchange between friends or relations.

So what might you expect in a Tudor christmas stocking?

Maria Hubert in her book "Christmas in Shakespeare's England" suggests that Shakespeare might have enjoyed receiving paper as it was very expensive, a new quill pen, or a knife with which to sharpen it.

Well in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" a pedlar is selling:

Lawn as white as driven snow,

Cyprus black as e'er was crow,

Gloves as sweet as damask roses;

Masks for faces and for noses,

Bugle bracelet, necklace amber,

Perfume for a lady's chamber;

Golden quoifs and stomachers

For my lads to give their dears."

Elizabeth herself had a liking for candies and sugar fruits. The Sergeant of the Pastry (what a great title!) gave her a christmas 'pye of quynses and wardyns guilt'. In other words a gilded pie of quince and plums.

Everyone in her household was expected to give her a gift for the New Year, the more lavish the better, as your gift indicated your status. The gifts are well documented and include a gift even from her dustman, who gave her 'two bolts of camerick' (cambric) in 1577 . In the same year Sir Philip Sidney gave her 'a smock of camerick, wrought with black silk in the collor and sleves, the square and ruffs wrought with venice golde'. It seems the dustman's gift was somewhat outclassed!

Other gifts she received were 'eighteen larkes in a cage' in 1578, and a fan of white and red feathers which included her portrait, from Sir Francis Drake in 1589.

You can see that she is wearing an amber necklace like the one described in Shakespeare's verse, and carrying embroidered gloves and a feather fan in this portrait. Were any of them Christmas gifts I wonder?

For the artisan and lower classes it was the custom to send foodstuffs to your lord or master who owned the land you tenanted. Typical gifts included pigs, fowl, eggs, dried apples, cheeses or nuts and spices such as nutmegs and almonds.

But what about the man in your life? Well, socks of course. Or hose to be more precise. On the left you can see a pair of embroidered hose made for a small boy. Thanks to www.genevieve-de-valois.com for this picture.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Deborah Swift's book "The Lady's Slipper" is available in the UK and in the US.

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For Sale: Rich Orphans - The Tudor Court Of Wards

by Barbara Kyle 

       

       In the late 1400s a young woman named Jonet Mychell was abducted. Her step-father, Richard Rous, wrote to the Chancellor of England asking for help. According to Rous, Jonet had been living with her uncle in London when some "evil disposed" people led by one Otis Trenwyth took her away so that "neither father nor mother, nor kin nor friend  that she had could come to her, nor know where she was." She was subsequently forced to marry against her will to "such a person that was to her great shame and heaviness."

       To modern eyes, the crime of a man abducting a young woman is a sexual one. But Tudor eyes saw things differently. The main dispute in Jonet Mychell's abduction was about wardship and marriage, and what those two things entailed, above all, was money. What concerned Tudor bureaucrats was the abduction of young women who were heirs to property.

Henry VII

 Abduction of heiresses was not uncommon. Certainly it occurred frequently enough to necessitate a statute passed in 1487 under Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch:  "An Act Against Taking Away of Women Against Their Will."  A stolen heiress meant lost revenues for the Crown.

The revenue stream went back for centuries. The wardship of minor heirs of any tenant-in-chief was one of the king's ancient feudal rights, a royal prerogative dating back to the feudal principle of seigneurial guardianship. It entitled the king to all the revenues of the deceased's estate (excluding lands allocated to his widow as dower) until the heir reached the age of majority: twenty-one for a male, fourteen for a female. The king generally sold the wardships to the highest bidder or granted them gratis to favoured courtiers as a reward for services.

       
        In other words, all orphans, male and female, who were heirs to significant property became wards of the king, who then sold the wardships. Gentlemen bid for these sought-after prizes, because control of a ward's income-generating lands and their marriage was a significant source of revenue. The guardian pocketed the rents and revenues of the ward's property until the young person came of age, at which time the guardian often married the ward to one of his own children.

Henry VIII

       
        When Henry VIII, the second Tudor monarch, came to the throne he fully exploited the royal right of wardships. Monarchy had to be a money-making business, and wardships provided an excellent way to replenish the royal treasury. Surveyors were appointed to search for potential royal wardships throughout the realm. Managing all of this was a Master of the King's Wards who supervised royal wardships and administered the lands and revenues of wards during the period of crown control, and sold those not to be retained. The revenues went into the king's private funds.

       
       In 1540 Henry VIII replaced the office of Master of the King's Wards with the Court of Wards, which assumed complete control of wards and the administration of their lands and the selling of the wardships. Eventually, the Court of Wards became one of the Tudor crown's most lucrative ministries. In the reign of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, the Court of Wards was supervised by Sir William Cecil (later Lord Burghley) who exerted enormous control over this court, keeping several lucrative and important wardships for himself.

      
       I became familiar with the situation of royal wardships when I wrote The Queen's Lady. My book features Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII's chancellor, who famously went to the execution block rather than swear the oath that Henry was supreme head of the church in England, a title Henry created in order to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.

Sir Thomas More

 Sir Thomas More had two wards, Anne Cresacre and Giles Heron. He brought them up in his household where they were educated alongside his children. Eventually Anne married More's son John, and Giles married More's daughter Cecily. The marriages seem to have been happy ones.

Sir Thomas More and Family

Anne Cresacre (sketch by Hans Holbien)

       

       Anne Cresacre's story inspired me to create another ward for Sir Thomas More: Honor Larke, the heroine of my novel The Queen's Lady. Honor grows up revering More and becomes a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon. Forced to take sides in the religious extremism of the day, Honor fights to save the church's victims from death at the stake, bringing her into conflict with her once-beloved guardian. She enlists Richard Thornleigh, a rogue sea captain, in her missions of mercy, and eventually risks her life to try to save Sir Thomas from the wrath of the King.

                         ____________________________________________

Barbara Kyle is the author of The Thornleigh Saga series:

Visit Barbara at www.barbarakyle.com.

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Blank Tudor Faces

Judith Arnopp

 We have all become so familiar with royal Tudor images that we no longer really see them. One glance tells us who they are. We think we know them. They exude power, majesty and the iron fist of mastery.

Earlier portraits of the Plantagenet kings, and even the early portraits of Henry VII are very different to that of his son and grandchildren. But it was Henry VII, the first ‘Tudor’ king who began to develop the ‘Tudor’ brand.

The royal portraits of Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III are all quite sombre, the artist doing his best to portray an ordinary man who was king. Even this portrait of Henry Tudor has nothing overtly regal about it; there is even a glimpse of personality, perhaps a measure of distrust, cynicism, impatience, or is it amusement? However you interpret his expression, it is a portrait of a human being, not a representation of royal supremacy.

 In the early days of Henry’s reign his position was unstable, he was an unknown quantity. There were no guarantees of peace and there were several Yorkist attempts to take his throne. The Tudors were the new kids on the block; nobody could foresee what sort of king Henry would make and his popularity depended very much on that of his wife, Elizabeth of York. Yorkist propaganda demeaned his claim to the throne, declaring that his mother’s line was illegitimate and that Lancaster had stolen the crown in 1399. They also sneered at his great grandfather who had been a lowly innkeeper.

Henry, realising he needed to reinforce his hold on the country, invented (or perhaps ‘embellished’ is a better word) his family history to create an impressive Tudor dynasty. He stressed the royal connection of his mother, Margaret Beaufort, and her descent from John of Gaunt and, to strengthen his claim further, he legally removed the stigma of bastardy from the family. He reiterated the royal descent of his grandmother, Katherine of Valois and, more surprisingly, claimed descent from the ancient Welsh King Cadwaladr, and King Arthur. To further cement his link to Arthur he named his first born son in his honour and embellished the round table at Winchester with the Tudor rose.

With the blood of both York and Lancaster flowing in the veins of his two sons and several daughters the Tudor line looked set to continue but Arthur’s sudden death in 1502 taught Henry that a king can never have too many sons. He lost no time in teaching his remaining son, later to become Henry VIII, the finer points of kingship. He stressed the importance of his role, the unreliability of the fickle populace, and the crucial need for strong male heirs to perpetuate the dynasty. The importance of heirs was a lesson young Henry never forgot, and one he fought tooth and nail for the rest of his life to achieve.

The blooming of the Renaissance and the introduction of men like Holbein to the royal court helped to reinforce this new Tudor image, and during Henry VIII’s reign new style of royal portraiture began.

I think of them as ‘power portraits’ that were loud declarations of Tudor permanence and dominance.

This one was painted by Holbein the younger after 1537, at a time when Henry was at the height of his power. He had freed himself from Anne Boleyn and the Pope, and Jane Seymour had finally provided the son and heir he’d been craving.

Today, we are used to seeing this image and others like it but imagine its impact in a world in which images were rare and people’s lives were not dominated by photographs or colour. Everything in this portrait is designed to impress; we cannot take our eyes from the breadth of shoulder; the sumptuous quality of his clothes; his immovable stance; the potent codpiece, and the unflinching expression in his eye. The portrait exudes wealth, power and uncompromising control. It is an unspoken declaration. ‘I am the king; it shall be as I say.’ There is not the slightest hint of insecurity, yet Henry was very insecure.

We all know about Henry; his failed marriages, his quest for an heir, his break with Rome, his megalomania, and ruthless rule but, what about the man behind the grandeur? Take a closer look at his face. What does it tell us about the inner man?

He looks bullish at first glance but on closer inspection you will see his eyes are blank, his expression closed. You might say he looks belligerent or mean but is that really what we are seeing, or is that a preconceived idea, because of what we already know? Personally, I think his inner feelings are obscured by my pre-knowledge but, if I try to wipe my mind and focus solely on his face, I see ennui, and sadness. As if he is hiding behind his own splendour.

All the Tudor monarchs have this same expression. The portraits as a whole are only concerned with an outward show of majesty, a declaration of authority. Edward VI was ten years old when he became king, a young skinny boy with a burgeoning ego that would soon match his father’s. Here he is carefully painted in a similar stance to Henry. He is well-padded and embellished in satin and fur, and a much smaller cod-piece than his father’s promises future virility and heirs to carry on the Tudor name. But again, it is the image of a king with an empty face. ‘I may be young,’ he is saying, ‘but do not underestimate me; I am my father’s son.’

Edward’s short reign was one of religious persecution as the Protestant king tried to terrorise his subjects into following his will. His premature death was greeted with relief by many Catholics for now it was the turn of the Protestants to be subjected to the will of Mary Tudor.

Unlike her father and brother, Mary is seated, but her portrait is no less authoritative. Her erect posture and uncompromising stare are enough to turn living flesh into stone but there is little to be read there; we cannot see beyond her steely gaze to the woman within.

Her attempts to reinstate the Catholic religion and wipe out the much newer Protestant religion resulted in the burnings and torture that earned her the posthumous name ‘Bloody Mary.’ But viewed more objectively, her personal sorrows were immeasurable. Mary had lived a sorry life; rejected by her father, disinherited from the succession, stripped of her title ‘princess’, separated from her mother, Katherine of Aragon, Mary channelled all her frustration and anger into her religion. Her devotion to God and the Catholic Church was matched only by her passion for her husband, the reluctant Philip of Spain, and her wish for a son to follow after her.

Her health was never good; there is some evidence that her menstrual cycle was erratic and she suffered both physically and mentally from a young age. In later years her failure to conceive, her phantom pregnancies and failing marriage compounded her misery until she died a painful death in 1558 leaving no heir. Mary, who had gone to extreme lengths to rid England of the new religion, was now forced to leave the realm in the hands of a Protestant queen, her sister Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was the greatest Tudor of them all and the one who exploited royal portraiture to the full. The queen was very aware of the power of image and iconography. Encouraged by her adviser, John Dee, her portraits became more and more extreme. In every image she is majestic and fabulously dressed, her tiny frame all but obliterated by satin, velvet, lace and jewels. In looks Elizabeth resembled her great grandmother, Margaret Beaufort and her grandfather, Henry VII but by nature she was very much like her father.

If her grandfather and father had coveted England and parts of Europe, Elizabeth's ambitious eye went further - to the New World. In the Armada painting below, her hand rests on a globe and, just in case the viewer should forget who wears it, the crown of England is just above. If you look closely, her famously long, white fingers are covering the Americas and behind her are commemorative paintings of the Spanish fleet being driven onto a rocky shore by a storm that became known as the 'Protestant Wind,' suggesting God's approval of England's victory over Catholic Spain. Elizabeth is proclaiming herself the saviour of her people; the mother of her expanding empire: a victorious, virgin queen, blessed by God.

These are the things the Tudors wanted the world to see and believe. Their private 'selves', their inner thoughts and feelings were none of our concern and so they turned their faces into masks - a blank page devoid of personality yet replete with majesty.

Although the Tudors are well-documented and easily accessible through portraits and records, writing about them is not easy. We know what they did and when they did it; we know the relationships they had, the political scene, the style of their clothing, the shade of their hair and eye colour but there are only the tiniest glimpses of their inner selves. In order to populate my novels with believable characters I have to mentally prise off their masks, strip off their rich finery, and try to reach inside their minds. What is left are people as ordinary as you and I. In their natural state it is easier to consider these icons of monarchy as human beings, and imagine the emotions that triggered their most bizarre behaviour.  Each Tudor monarch had hopes and fears (mostly of failure) and insecurity, and they had dreams too, and a vast self-disappointment that ate away at them all.

For all their power, all their wealth and status, they could not have or hold the things they most desired: fidelity and adulation.

Photographs in the public domain from Wikimedia Commons

Judith Arnopp is the author of eight historical fiction novels including:

The Beaufort Bride: Book one of The Beaufort Chronicles - Available to pre-order NOW

A Song of Sixpence: the story of Elizabeth of York and Perkin Warbeck

Intractable Heart: the story of Katheryn Parr

The Kiss of the Concubine: a story of Anne Boleyn

The Winchester Goose: at the court of Henry VIII

The Song of Heledd

The Forest Dwellers

Peaceweaver


For more information please visit the webpage

Author page: click here

or look for her on Facebook.