Susan Higginbotham's Blog: History Refreshed by Susan HIgginbotham, page 22

A Book to Avoid: The Nine Days Queen by Mary Luke

Last week, I picked up this 1986 biography of Lady Jane Grey by Mary Luke, a historical novelist who also dabbled in nonfiction. While I had been warned that this book was a heavily fictionalized account of Jane's life, I had no idea just how fictionalized it was. In fact, it's essentially a novel, and should have been published as one.

It's common for biographers to speculate as to what their subjects might have felt; Luke, however, takes this a step further and tells us exactly what her historical figures were thinking, even when she has no way of knowing. This starts at the very beginning of the book, when we meet Jane's mother, Frances, on her wedding day and are told, "If true beauty would never be hers, she'd long ago made her mind that its lack would not prevent her from obtaining whatever she wanted in life. And now, at this moment of triumph, she was elated at how well everything had worked out."

Luke does not confine herself to divining the unrecorded thoughts of historical figures. She goes well beyond that, especially with Frances, who is the clear villain of this biography, and simply invents incidents that have no basis in recorded fact. Although the worst thing Jane ever accused her parents of doing (if the words attributed to her long after her death were recalled accurately) was giving her "pinches, nips, and bobs," here Frances is depicted as shaking her infant children: "Baby Katherine was almost asleep . . . Her mother didn't like any child to cry, and often, if she was around, she'd shake little Katherine to make her stop. Jane could remember her mother shaking her too, and that had been very frightening, for she hadn't even been crying." Not content with this, Luke goes on to invent other episodes of Frances physically abusing Jane: "Chattering on one day about a pleasant occasion with the Queen Dowager and Lord Admiral, [Jane] was shocked when, suddenly and unexpectedly, her mother silenced her with a swift blow to the side of her head."

Years after the fact, Roger Ascham recorded Jane as praising her tutor John Aylmer: "who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him." Armed with this single sentence, Luke imagines at length the early encounters between pupil and master: "After several meetings with the marchioness [Frances], of observing her attitude and treatment of Lady Jane, he understood that the child's shy and withdrawn attitude hid a basic distrust and fear of all adults, excepting those who served in the nursery.  .  .  . Whenever she succeeded he praised her generously, and after several words were put together to make a phrase–and she repeated it in English–he was rewarded with the child's first smile." Isn't this heartwarming?

But all good things must come to an end, and soon Luke is uncovering the horrors of Jane's wedding night: "The marriage bed had proven a shock; nothing had prepared her for the assault on her senses, much less her body. Her nature, gentle to the point of timidity, was outraged at the behavior expected of her, even when Guildford told her that his conduct was no different from that of any other man with his wife or, indeed, any other man and woman. He was her husband, he told Jane, and he had his rights, which chose to exercise at will, saying she was lucky he did not beat her."

Not surprisingly, this book contains no citations to sources, though it does include a bibliography, which includes one of Luke's own novels.

It  would take pages to list all of the historical liberties Luke takes here, in a book which she firmly declares "is not a novel, not a fictional biography." It may not be either of these things, but it's not a reliable work of nonfiction either. Quite simply, it's a fraud on the reader and, frequently, an exercise in character assassination.  Avoid it.

Jane in the Court of at Least Three Queens

In writing my forthcoming novel about Jane Dudley, Duchess of Northumberland, and Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, one of my biggest challenges with Jane Dudley (née Guildford) was to figure out which queens she served.  She can be linked with the last three of Henry's queens: the first three are questionable.

In his 1973 biography of Katherine Parr, Anthony Martienssen claimed that in 1523, Catherine of Aragon set up a schoolroom for her daughter Mary, under the tuition of Juan Vives, and that the princess's fellow pupils included Katherine Parr and Jane Guildford.   While Vives did produce a treatise, The Education of a Christian Woman, at Catherine of Aragon's request, and he did offer guidance for Mary's education, subsequent biographers of both Mary and of Katherine Parr have rejected the notion of Vives presiding over a royal schoolroom full of young ladies or of Katherine Parr sharing Mary's lessons.  As for Jane Guildford, Martienssen is a most unreliable source. He mistakenly writes that she was the daughter of Jane, Lady Guildford (she was the daughter of Eleanor West), and he writes that she was about four years old in 1523 and did not join the "school" until two or three years later; in fact, Jane Guildford was born in 1509 and thus was about fourteen in 1523. At the time that Martienssen has her joining the so-called royal school, i.e., 1525 or so, Jane Guildford had married John Dudley and was bearing his children. The unsupported story that Jane Guildford was tutored by Vives, however, has made its way even into academic nonfiction.

Nothing that I have found indicates that Jane Dudley (then simply Lady Dudley; it would be many years before she became a duchess)  served as one of Catherine of Aragon's ladies before or after Jane's marriage. A post on another blog recently claimed that she was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520 as one of Catherine of Aragon's maids of honor, but I have found no evidence of this. Two Ladies Guildford, referred to as the elder and the younger, are listed as attending upon the queen, but one is listed as a baroness and the other as a knight's wife; neither can be the eleven-year old Jane, the then-unmarried daughter of a knight.

This isn't to say that Jane Dudley couldn't have served Catherine of Aragon at some point; her father, Edward Guildford, was well-connected at court, as was his younger half-brother, Henry Guildford. (For those of you who have read The Queen of Last Hopes, Henry Guildford's mother, Joan Vaux, was the daughter of Margaret of Anjou's faithful lady-in-waiting, Katherine Vaux.) Through her father or her uncle, Jane might have obtained a position with Henry's first queen, but we don't know whether she did.

David Loades claims in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that Jane Dudley was a member of Anne Boleyn's privy chamber, although he does not make this statement in his biography of John Dudley. I have not found any evidence of this, other than Martiessen's statement that Jane Dudley stayed at court after Henry VIII's second marriage for lack of any better prospect: "No marriage arrangements were in the offing for any of the three girls [Jane, Anne Parr, and Joan Champernown], and the alternative to remaining at Court in the service of the new Queen would have been banishment to the dull backwoods of their country homes." Since Jane Dudley had been married for some years when Anne Boleyn became queen and was a mother several times over by then, Martiessen's statement is clearly nonsense where she is concerned.

There are, however, some signs that the Dudleys were friendly with the new queen. Nicholas Bourbon, a French poet, was engaged by Anne Boleyn in 1534 to teach her nephew Henry Carey and several other boys, including Sir John and Jane Dudley's oldest son, Henry (died in 1544). Bourbon, an evangelical, urged John and Jane in one poem to "remain true to Christ"; in another, he remarked upon "the love and devotion with which you and your noble wife adorn the ties of sacred marriage." This tie to a member of Anne Boleyn's circle, of course, does not indicate that Jane served Anne Boleyn, but it does suggest she could have.

It does seem likely that Jane Dudley attended Jane Seymour. She received a gift of beads from that queen, and was one of the ladies on horseback following the second chariot at the short-lived queen's funeral. When Anne Basset and her sister, whose stepfather, Arthur Plantagenet, had been married to John Dudley's mother, were campaigning to be given positions among Jane Seymour's ladies, Jane Dudley was one of those who "highly feasted" the young women.

With Anne of Cleves, we at last move to certainty, for Jane Dudley was one of those ladies appointed to meet Anne of Cleves at Dover.  Later, she was named as one of the ladies and gentlewomen attendant upon the queen.

When Henry took his fifth bride, Katherine Howard, Jane Dudley continued in royal service, again as one of the queen's ladies. Fortunately for her, she does not seem to have been close enough to the queen to have become entangled in the events that led to Katherine Howard's execution.

John Dudley became Lord Lisle in March 1542. When Henry married his sixth queen, Katherine Parr, in July 1543, the Viscountess Lisle was among the select group of guests in attendance. She was later one of the ladies of the queen's household who lodged at court with their husbands.

Famously, Katherine Parr, an advocate of the new religion, and some of her ladies became the target of Bishop Gardiner and other religious conservatives in 1546. Was Viscountess Lisle one of them? Jane was not named as one of the ladies thought to associate with Anne Askew, burned at the stake that year, but Anne had been questioned about her connections with Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk and Anne Seymour, Countess of Hertford. It was these two ladies, along with Jane Dudley (referred to as "the Admiral's wife" because of her husband's position as Lord Admiral) that Eustace Chapuys mentioned on January 29, 1547, as influencing the queen in matters of religion: "If the King of England gives his countenance to his stirrers-up of heresy, the Earl of Hertford [Edward Seymour] and the Lord Admiral (which may be feared for the reasons mentioned by the ambassador, and because, according to report, the Queen, instigated thereto by the Duchess of Suffolk, the Countess of Hertford,  and the Admiral's wife, is infected by the sect, which she would not be likely to favour, at least openly, unless she knew the King's feeling) it would be quite useless to attempt to turn him from his fancy by words and exhortations, even if they were addressed to him in the name of the Emperor. " It is also interesting to note that in November 1546, after the plot against Katherine Parr and her ladies had failed, John Dudley struck Bishop Gardiner at a council meeting. The reason is not recorded. Might Dudley have been angry, at least in part, about the fright that had been given to his wife?

Whatever the truth about Jane Dudley's role in the events of 1546, when Chapuys wrote on January 29, Henry VIII was beyond caring about the religion of his queen's ladies. He had died the day before. Soon, the heresy to which Chapuys had referred would be the law of the land, and John and Jane Dudley would be the Earl and Countess of Warwick.  When a Dudley woman next served a queen, it would be Jane Dudley's daughters, Mary and Katherine, serving Elizabeth I as queen regnant.

Sources:

Eric Ives, "A Frenchman at the Court of Anne Boleyn." History Today, August 1998.

Susan James, Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999.

Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.

David Loades, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, 1504–1553. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

David Loades, 'Dudley, John, duke of Northumberland (1504–1553)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article..., accessed 30 Aug 2011]

Judith Richards, Mary Tudor. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2008.

Sunday Search Terms

Terms people used to reach my website:

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Well, I've tried not to let my new title turn my head too much, but you can't please all of the common folk, now can you?

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I don't know, but that just might explain why my dog looked so guilty the other day.

The Christening of Frances Brandon

On July 17, 1517, John Alen wrote to George, Earl of Shrewsbury, to report that Henry VIII's sister Mary, known as the French Queen because of her brief marriage to Louis XII, "was yesterday delivered of a daughter." Mary, as is well known, had married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, after Louis's death.

Born at Hatfield, the palace of the Bishop of Ely, between two and three in the morning, Frances, as the girl would be called, was Charles's and Mary's first daughter. Their son, Henry, had been born in 1515 and had received a grand christening, with the king himself attending as one of the godfathers. Frances's christening, though more modest, was nonetheless a splendid affair. It took place on July 18:

The road to the church was strewed with rushes; the church porch hung with rich cloth of gold and needlework; the church with arras of the history of Holofernes and Hercules; the chancel, with arras of silk and gold; and the altar with rich cloth of tissue, and covered with images, relics, and jewels. In the said chancel were, as deputies for the Queen and Princess, Lady Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Grey. The Abbot of St. Alban's was godfather. The font was hung with a canopy of crimson satin,   powdered with roses, half red and half white, with the sun shining, and fleur de lis gold, and the French Queen's arms in four places, all of needlework. On the way to church were eighty torches borne by yeomen, and eight by gentlemen. The basin, covered, was borne by Mr. Sturton, the taper by Mr. Richard Long, the salt by Mr. Humphrey Barnes, the chrism by Lady Chelton. Mrs. Dorothy Verney bore the young lady, was assisted by the Lord Powes and Sir Roger Pelston, and accompanied by sixty ladies and gentlemen, and the prelates Sir Oliver Poole and Sir Christopher, and other of my Lord's chaplains. She was named Frances, being born on St. Francis's day.

The queen and princess, of course, were Catherine of Aragon and Princess Mary. The princess, born on February 16, 1516, was not much older than her new goddaughter. But who was the mysterious "Lady Boleyn"?  Walter Richardson suggests that she was Anne Boleyn–not the future queen, who was at the French court, but her aunt, the wife of Edward Boleyn. Others, like Retha Warnicke, have suggested that she was Elizabeth Boleyn, the future queen's mother; Eric Ives, Anne Boleyn's biographer, does not discuss the matter, but in an endnote cites the ceremony as an example of Elizabeth Boleyn's presence at court.  A seating chart for a great banquet at Greenwich held on July 7, 1517, names Lady Elizabeth Boleyn and Elizabeth Grey (and the expectant mother herself) among the prominent guests; Elizabeth Boleyn, then, might have been readily at hand to dispatch to the christening when news arrived of Frances's birth.

The description of the christening indicates that Frances was named for St. Francis (ironically, given St. Francis's status as the patron saint of animals and the undeserved reputation that Frances has acquired in our own century as an insatiable huntress, based on a single occasion where she is known to have been part of a hunting party). Erin Sadlack points out, however, that the infant's name might have also honored King Louis's successor, Francis.

Charlotte Merton describes Frances as the first Englishwoman to bear that name. There was a Frances born to Arthur Plantagenet some time between 1512 and 1520, however. As she was married in 1538 to her stepbrother, John Basset, who was eighteen, it seems likely that she was about the same age as her husband and thus would have been born around 1520 or so–thereby making it likely that her name was inspired by Frances Brandon's.

Sources:

Muriel St. Clare Byrne, ed., The Lisle Letters, vol. 1. Chicago and London: The Chicago University Press, 1981.

Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. 2.

Charlotte Merton, "Women, Friendship, and Memory." In Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, eds., Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Walter C. Richardson, Mary Tudor: The White Queen. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1970.

Erin A. Sadlack, The French Queen's Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth Century Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Retha Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Ten Things to Like About John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland

On August 22, 1553, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, died upon the scaffold at Tower Hill for his attempt to divert the succession from Mary Tudor to Lady Jane Grey. His reputation remained poor for centuries to come and only in the past few decades has undergone a much-needed reappraisal by historians.

I came to quite like the duke when I was researching my forthcoming novel. Here are ten reasons why:

Dudley was a loyal brother to his younger brothers and to his younger half-sisters, looking after their interests and those of their spouses. In  1538, for instance, he wrote to his stepfather, Arthur Plantagenet, when he became concerned that his sister Elizabeth was being treated unfairly.  He helped to promote the career of his younger brother Andrew and took responsibility for his brother Jerome, who was mentally or physically disabled.
Dudley had a dry sense of humor. Writing to excuse himself for not being able to bring some goldsmith's work back from France to his wife, he explained, "I assure you this journey hath been extremely chargeable, after such sort as I think I shall be fain to hide myself in a corner for seven years after."
Dudley helped to save a  lady's leg. In July 1548, he wrote, "I am urgently written to by a lady who, having been destroyed by bad London surgeons, has been eased by the surgeon of Boulogne. Please have my lord [protector] let him remain or she may lose a leg." (This lady has been confused with John's own wife, but the new edition of The Calendar of State Papers identifies her only as "a lady.").
Dudley was an indulgent father. When his son John fell into debt, he wrote, "[T]herefore you should not hide from me your debts, whatsoever they be, for I would be loathe but you should keep your credit still with all men. And therefore send me word in any wise of the whole sum of your debts, for I and your mother will forthwith see them paid."
After William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, suffered an embarrassing defeat during the Norfolk Rebellion, Dudley, the more experienced soldier, was put in charge.  Sympathizing with his humiliated friend, he offered to serve either jointly with Northampton or under his command: "Wherefore, if it might please his Grace to use his services again, I shall be as glad for my part to join with him, yea, rather than fail, with all my heart to serve under him, for this journey, as I would be to have the whole authority myself; and by this means his Grace shall preserve his heart, and hable [enable] him to serve hereafter, which, otherwise, he shall be utterly in himself discouraged [to do]."
Though Dudley crushed the rebellion, he treated the survivors with restraint, telling the local gentry, "There must be measure kept, and above all things in punishment men must not exceed."
Having removed his former friend, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, from power, Dudley nonetheless attempted to reconcile with Somerset. He restored Somerset to the council and married his son to Somerset's oldest daughter. The effort failed and Somerset began to plot to have Dudley himself arrested, a scheme which instead led to Somerset's own final downfall. Sending his former friend to the block seems to have weighed on Dudley's conscience to the very end: on the day before his own execution, he asked forgiveness of Somerset's sons.
Condemned to die, John Dudley begged the queen to spare the lives of his children: "considering that they went by my commandment who am their father, and not of their own free wills."
John Dudley's wife, who had known him since she was around three and he was seven, loved him dearly. Begging Lady Paget to intercede with the queen's ladies to spare his life, she described him as "the most best gentleman that ever living woman was matched withall."
Following John Dudley's execution, his former servant, John Cock, later Lancaster Herald, begged the queen for his head so that he could give it burial at the Tower (instead of the head being displayed). Queen Mary granted him the head and the body, which Cock buried between Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Katherine Howard.
Bonus: John Dudley, with a consideration for future historical novelists that was rare at the time, named two of his sons Ambrose  and Guildford and one of his daughters Temperance, thereby doing his bit for the noble cause of variety in Tudor first names. Of course, he also named two of his sons Henry, two of his daughters Katherine, and one of his daughters Mary–but hey, nobody's perfect.

 

The Life of a Dog: The Pleas that Failed

At eight in the morning of Monday, August 21, 1553, ten thousand people crowded together at Tower Hill to see John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, pay the price for having attempted to keep Queen Mary off the throne of England. As the imperial ambassadors reported it, "The scaffolding was erected; the townsmen were in arms; the people had assembled." All was ready, down to the sand and straw to soak up the dead man's blood.

But to the crowd's disappointment, there would be no execution that day: instead, there would be a mass at the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. As a disgusted Lady Jane Grey watched from her lodging on Tower Green,

then mr. Gage went and fetched the duke; and sir John Abridges and mr. John Abridges dyd fetche the marques of Northampton, sir Androwe Dudley, sir Herry Gates, and sir Thomas Palmer, to masse, which was sayde both with elevation over the hed, the paxe geving, blessinge, and crossinge on the crowne, breathinge, towrninge aboute, and all the other rytes and accydentes of olde tyme appertayning. And when the tyme came the prysoners shoulde receive the sacrement, the duke tourned himself to the people and saide, first, theis wordes, or suche like, "My masters, I lett you all to understande that I do most faithfullie belyve this is the very right and true waie, oute of the which true religion you and I have ben seduced theis xvj. yeres past, by the false and eronyous preching of the new prechers, the which is the onelie cause of the greate plagges and vengeaunce which hathe lighte apon the hole realme of Inglande, and nowe likewise worthelly falne apon me and others here presente for our unfaythfulnesse. And I do beleve the holye sacremente here most assuredly to be our Saviour and Redemer Jesus Christe; and this I praye you all to testifye, and praye for me."

After which wordes he kneeled down and axed all men forgevenes, and likewise forgave all men.

Whether the duke's religious conversion was genuine, or a desperate attempt to save his life or those of his brother and sons, will likely never be known. Taken into custody by the Earl of Arundel on July 21, Northumberland had been a prisoner in the Tower since July 25 and had had a month to contemplate his downfall; he could have easily concluded that he was being punished for his promotion of the new religion. Perhaps what had started as a gambit to win the queen's forgiveness had turned into sincere conviction.

Having gratified Queen Mary by renouncing his past beliefs, the duke might have hoped for a royal pardon. He was wrong. That evening, he received the news that he was to die. Desperate, he wrote to the Earl of Arundel, who had betrayed him weeks before:

Honorable lord, and in this my distress my especial refuge; most woeful was the news I received this evening by Mr. Lieutenant, that I must prepare myself against tomorrow to receive my deadly stroke. Alas my good lord, is my crime so heinous as no redemption but my blood can wash away the spots thereof? An old proverb there is and that most true that a living dog is better than a dead lion. O that it would please her good grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, that I might live and kiss her feet, and spend both life and all I have in her honorable service, as I have the best part already under her worthy brother and her most glorious father. O that her mercy were such as she would consider how little profit my dead and dismembered body can bring her, but how great and glorious an honor it will be in all posterity when the report shall be that so gracious and mighty a queen had granted life to so miserable and penitent an object. Your honorable usage and promises to me since these my troubles have made me bold to challenge this kindness at your hands. Pardon me if I have done amiss therein and spare not I pray your bended knee for me in this distress, ye God of heaven it may be will requite it one day on you and yours. And if my life be lengthened by your mediation and my good Lord Chancellor's (to whom I have also sent my blurred letters) I will vow it to be spent at your honorable feet. O my good lord remember how sweet life is, and how bitter ye contrary. Spare not your speech and pains for God I hope hath not shut out all hope of comfort from me in that gracious, princely and womanlike heart; but that as the doleful news of death hath wounded to death both my soul and body, so that comfortable news of life shall be as a new resurrection to my woeful heart. But if no remedy can be found, either by imprisonment or confiscation, banishment and the like, I can say no more but God give me patience to endure and a heart to forgive the whole world.

Once your fellow and loving companion, but now worthy of no name but wretchedness and misery.

JD

Somewhere else in London or its environs, probably at Chelsea, Northumberland's duchess, Jane, must have also been praying that her husband, whom she had known since she was about three and he was seven, would be spared. Having spent several days in the Tower as a prisoner herself, she had sought an audience with Mary to beg for the lives of her sons and probably of her husband as well. Five miles outside Beaulieu (New Hall) in Essex, where Mary was staying at the time, she had been turned away and ordered back to London. Literally sick with worry and frantic to save the life of the man she would describe in her will as "my lord my dear husband," she had written her own heartfelt plea to Anne, Lady Paget. The letter (the spelling of which I have modernized) bears no date, but I believe that it was written sometime after August 18, when Northumberland had been tried and sentenced to death. The women the duchess names, Gertrude Courtenay, Marchioness of Exeter, and Susan Clarencius, were intimates of Queen Mary:

Now good madame for the love you bear to God forget me not: and make my lady Marquess of Exeter my good lady & to remember me to Mistress Clarencius to continue as she hath begun for me: & good madame desire your lord as he may do: in speaking for my husband's life: in way of charity I crave him to do yet madame I have held up my head for my great heaviness of heart that all the world knows cannot be little: till now that indeed I do begin to grow in to weak sickness: and also such a rising in the night from my stomach upward that in my judgment my breath is like clean to go away as my women can full say it as they know it to be true by their own pain they take with me: good madame of your goodnes remember me: so God to keep your ladyship with long life with your lord & yours

your ladyship's poorest friend Jane Northumberland as long as please the queen

& good madame desire my lord to be good lord unto my poor v sons: nature can not otherwise do but sue for  them  although  I do not so much care for them as for their father who was to me & to my mind the most best  gentleman that ever  living woman was matched withall: as neither those about him nor about me cannot say the contrary & say truly: how good he was to me that our lord & the queen's majesty show their mercy to them

Jane's heartbreaking letter did not succeed in saving her beloved husband's life. Northumberland's own plea was equally futile. The day after Northumberland wrote to the Earl of Arundel, a crowd again assembled on Tower Hill to see the duke die. This time, August 22, 1553, their vigil would not be in vain.

Sources:

Calendar of State Papers, Spain, vol. 11.

S. J. Gunn, "A Letter of Jane, Duchess of Northumberland, in 1553." English Historical Review, November 1999.

David Loades, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland 1504-1553.

Henry Machyn, A London Provisioner's Chronicle. Online here.

John Nichols, ed., The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Two Years of Queen Mary. Online here.

National Archives PROB 11/37/194.

From Hearsay to History: The Fate of Edward VI's Body

On August 16, 1553, John Burcher, a cloth merchant living in Strasburgh, wrote to Heinrich Bullinger of the recent events in England, which of course included the recent death of Edward VI, the brief reign of Jane Grey, and the triumph of Mary I. Burcher wrote:

That monster of a man, the duke of Northumberland, has been committing a horrible and portentous crime. A writer worthy of credit informs me, that our excellent king has been most shamefully taken off by poison. His nails and hair fell off before his death, so that, handsome as he was, he entirely lost all his good looks. The perpetrators of the murder were ashamed of allowing the body of the deceased king to lie in state, and be seen by the public, as is usual: wherefore they buried him privately in a paddock adjoining the palace, and substituted in his place, to be seen by the people, a youth not very unlike him whom they had murdered. One of the sons of the duke of Northumberland acknowledged this fact.

The rumor that King Edward had been poisoned was by no means unique to John Burcher; almost every contemporary source mentions it. His tale of body-switching, however, appears in no other source.

Leaving aside the claim of poisoning, which few modern historians believe (though it's likely that some of the remedies administered to the king did more harm than good), it is extremely improbable that Northumberland, or anyone acting under his orders, substituted another body for Edward's. Edward VI died in the evening of July 6, 1553, and had not yet been buried by the time Jane's government imploded on July 19, 1553. There was nothing sinister about this initial delay. Royal funerals took time to arrange under the best of circumstances: Henry VIII had died on January 28, 1547, and was not buried until February 16, 1547.  Mary I would die on November 17, 1558, and was not buried until December 14, 1558. In the case of Edward VI, the government was acting under the worst of circumstances: by July 10, 1553, when Jane's council learned that Mary intended to fight for the crown, the government was focused on its own survival, not on arranging a funeral for the unfortunate Edward.

Mary, of course, gained a bloodless victory over her opponents, and on July 23, 1553, Northumberland was arrested. The next day, Mary informed the imperial ambassadors that she wanted Edward buried with Catholic rites. In the discussion that ensued, faithfully recorded by the ambassadors, no one expressed any concern that Edward's body, still resting at Greenwich where the young king had died, might be that of someone else; all the discussion centered around what form the religious rites should take. Since almost all of Northumberland's colleagues were scrambling to ingratiate themselves with Queen Mary at the moment, there would have been no shortage of people to inform the queen if they had indeed suspected a substitution of one body for another. Moreover, as Edward was not buried until August 8, 1553, there was plenty of time for Mary's government to ascertain the identity of Edward's corpse for itself if there were any doubts about the matter. If anyone did have such concerns, no source except for Burcher in far-off Strasburgh mentions the fact.

Hastings Robertson, who edited Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, the compilation of letters in which the extract above appears, scoffed at Burcher's tale, finding him "far too credulous" on this matter. Even Agnes Strickland in her Lives of the Bachelor Kings of England sniffed at the story as "utterly devoid of truth."

All that changed, though, when Hester Chapman  published her popular biography Lady Jane Grey in 1962. Chapman states, "No one knew exactly what Northumberland arranged. A few weeks later one of his sons said that the Duke, not daring to let Edward lie in state, had 'buried him privately in a paddock adjoining the Palace, and substituted in his place, to be seen by the people, a young man not very unlike him, whom they had murdered.'" Chapman thus gives the impression to her readers that she is quoting a direct statement made by one of Northumberland's sons, rather than quoting Burcher's recollection of what his anonymous informant had told him that the son said.

Alison Weir, writing in The Children of Henry VIII in 1996, goes even further than Chapman. She writes, "We do not know for certain what happened to Edward VI's corpse. A letter written a few days later by one of Northumberland's sons states that the Duke had not dared to let the late King lie in state but had 'buried him privately in a paddock adjoining the palace, and substituted in his place, to be seen by the people, a young man not very unlike him, whom they had murdered.'" Weir, whose book contains no citations to sources, thereby allows the reader to think that she is quoting an extant letter by one of Northumberland's sons, when she of course is simply quoting the hearsay statement repeated by Burcher.

Weir makes matters even worse in her novel Innocent Traitor,  which features Northumberland calling in a pair of ruffians to find and murder a royal lookalike in order to accomplish the body-switching. As a novelist, Weir is certainly entitled to take liberties, but in her author's note, she writes, "[M]y account of the fate of Edward VI's body is not as incredible as it sounds, for what happened to that body is described in a letter written by the Earl of Warwick, Northumberland's son." Thus, the nonexistent letter is now given a specific author, and many readers, relying on the author's note to be accurate, will close the novel under the firm conviction that Northumberland poisoned Edward VI and substituted another boy's body for the king's.

Thus, through Chapman and Weir's cavalier handling of an original source, hearsay has been transformed into history. As these authors' books continue to be widely read and to be used as a research source by many novelists and popular historians, it's likely that Burcher's tale of body-snatching, unlikely as it might be, will live on, centuries after the king's own death.

Gambling with the Greys

In February 1534, when the seventeen-year-old Henry Grey, then the Marquis of Dorset ,was newly arrived at court, his mother, the dowager marchioness, took it upon herself to write to Thomas Cromwell, "And when you shall happen to see in my son marquis either any large playing, or great usual swearing, or any other demeanour unmeet for him to use, which I fear me shall be very often, that it may then please you, good master Cromwell, for my late lord his good father's sake, whose soul God pardon, in some friendly fashion to rebuke him thereof, whereby you shall bind him at his farther years of knowledge and discretion, if he then have any virtue or grace, to consider and remember your goodness now shewed unto him, to do you such pleasure as shall lie in his little power for the same. And for a small part of recompense of your manifold goodness and pains taken for me, I do send you at this time, by my son Medley this bearer, a little gilt pot."

Whether Thomas Cromwell, encouraged by the gilt pot, found it necessary to give Henry Grey friendly rebukes is unknown, but years later, after Henry Grey had become the Duke of Suffolk, he found his habits once again under scrutiny, this time by his chaplain, James Haddon.

In August 1552, James Haddon wrote to Heinrich Bullinger, a pillar of the Protestant Reformation. Having updated Bullinger, who lived in Zurich, about the progress of the reform movement in England, Haddon got down to business: "the regulations of the duke's household." His specific target: the duke and duchess's enjoyment of playing cards or dice for money. As Haddon put it, "The duke has forbidden all his domestics to risk any money upon amusements of this sort; but yet he himself and his most honourable lady with their friends, not only claim permission to play in their private apartment, but also to play for money."

It's important to remember that the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk were by no means alone in their enjoyment of cards and dice. Mary Tudor, the duchess's first cousin, was fond of gambling for stakes; at one point in the 1530′s, according to Linda Porter, she was spending nearly a third of her income on the pastime. Both the duchess's maternal grandparents, Henry VI and Elizabeth of York,  enjoyed gambling for stakes, as their expenses show. Whatever youthful folly or overindulgence might have concerned Henry Grey's mother back in 1534, nothing suggests that the adult Henry Grey and his wife gambled more than others of their social class or that they risked insolvency as a result.

But Haddon believed that any gambling for money was impermissible. "I am of opinion that I can nowise admit it to be allowable for a Christian so to risk his money at any game whatsoever, as to leave off as a winner, with some pecuniary advantage, or else as a loser, to his pecuniary loss."

Haddon's strict anti-gambling stance had already caused some friction between him and his employers. At first, he wrote, he had reproved the duke and duchess in private, after which "they left off for a time: upon which I was very glad, and began to entertain great hopes." Soon, however, the Suffolks began to backslide, and Haddon determined to denounce the vice of gambling from the pulpit over the Christmas of 1551–it being a season, as he put it, where people "amuse themselves by indulging in mummeries and wickedness of every kind; and rejoice together with the wicked, and are especially serving the devil, in imitation, as it seems, of the ancient Saturnalia." Haddon hastened to add, "I am not now speaking of the family in which I reside, for the case is not so with them."  Accordingly, Haddon gave a sermon in which he reproved "in common and general terms, [those] who played for money." The Suffolks gave the sermon a chilly reception: "But since the duke himself and his lady have secretly played with their friends in their private apartment, they thought it was my duty merely to have admonished them in private."

Poor Haddon, therefore, was in a quandary when he wrote to Bullinger in August 1552: "And so far I put up with and allow the practice; that I do not reprove it publicly and in my sermons. . . . I bear with it of compulsion, that I may gain them over in other things of greater importance; I bear with it, just as a man who is holding a wolf by the ears.  But I perceive some good arising from this concession, which in fact is no concession at all, but in some measure a remission of duty, or rather of strictness in the performance of it; because I do not find fault in public, although individually and in conversation I always reprove in the same way as heretofore. But because they see that I in some measure yield to them, even against my own opinion, and consider that I deal tenderly with this infirmity of theirs, they are willing to hear and attend to me more readily in other respects." What, Haddon asked in conclusion, did Bullinger think? "[G]ive me your advice as to how far you think I may concede in matters of this sort, and to what extent I may connive at them. But do this at your leisure."

Bullinger's reply, sadly, is lost to us, but Haddon was well satisfied. About two months later, he reported that Bullinger's letter was "exceedingly gratifying to me, not only because you seem entirely to agree with me."

Haddon's anti-gambling mission soon ended, however, in a way that was no doubt satisfactory to both parties: Haddon was appointed as a canon of Westminster on August 29, 1552, a post he never took up because he was named dean of Exeter in October. He added, "But it has pleased God to render his grace [i.e., the Duke of Suffolk] so much attached to me, and me too in my turn so devoted and attached to his grace, that I cannot entirely separate from him, but must occasionally visit him."

Unfortunately, whether to play cards for  money soon became the least of Suffolk's concerns. In July 1553, slightly less than a year after Haddon wrote to Bullinger, Mary I sat upon the throne and Suffolk's daughter Jane was a prisoner in the Tower. In November 1553, Haddon wrote, "The duke himself holds to the true God, and I hope by God's help will fully retain his opinions about true religion, in opposition to the devil, whose agents are striving with all their might to lead his lordship astray." Three months later, following Suffolk's ill-advised participation in what is known as Wyatt's rebellion, both Suffolk and his daughter Jane were beheaded. It had been the duke's last, and fatal, gamble.

To escape Marian persecution, Haddon fled abroad to Strasbourgh. His last extant letter was written at Frankfurt on March 1, 1556. It is thought that he died soon afterward.

References:

C. S. Knighton, 'Haddon, James (b. c.1520, d. in or after 1556)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article..., accessed 8 Aug 2011].

Hastings Robinson, Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, Vol. 1. Cambirdge: Cambridge University Press, 1846.

Mary Anne Everett Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, Vol. 2. London: Henry Colburn, 1846.

As You Know, Bob, When Henry VII Founded the Tudor Dynasty . . .

One of the biggest pitfalls which can befall the historical novelist is what has been called the  "As you know, Bob" syndrome. This is where the writer, needing to give the reader some necessary information, has one character impart it in a conversation with the other character, as in "As you know, Edward, in 1485 Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field, thereby beginning the Tudor dynasty."

The main problem with this sort of device (which I've been guilty of using myself) is that too often, the character being addressed doesn't need the information: he knows perfectly well what happened in 1485. It's the equivalent of one modern-day American adult telling another in casual conversation, "As you know, Dave, in the 2008 election, Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States by defeating John McCain . . . "

"As you know, Bob"  often crops up in first-person narratives. I recently gave up  on one novel where the author forced one character to give the listening character about fifty years' worth of dynastic information in three or four paragraphs: the result read more like a genealogical table with quotation marks added than a dialogue between two human beings. Third-person narratives, however, are by no means immune to the syndrome. One of the most egregious examples I saw was in a third-person narration set during the Wars of the Roses where two young women, who had known each other for years and who saw each other regularly, were made to recount about ten years of recent history to each other, as if both had recently emerged from comas.

There are some instances when "As you know, Bob" can sound natural. One is when the character being addressed is ignorant of what's being told him, for instance, where a child is being given a history lesson. (This can get dull for the reader awfully fast, though, if not used sparingly.) Sometimes the speaker can be made to have the habit of stating the obvious, thereby putting the dialogue to double duty as both a means of showing character and of informing the reader. At other times, the character on the receiving end can be made to protest, "Well, I knew that already. What do you think I am, a fool?"

A close cousin of "As you know, Bob" is the "your father, the King of England" syndrome, as in, "Mary, you know your father, the King of England, would not approve of these measures." This can work in some contexts, such as where the characters are speaking very formally or where the speaker wants to emphasize the gravity of the situation, but too often it's employed just to let the reader know, or to remind him, that Mary is the king's daughter.

Both the "As you know, Bob" and the "your father, the King of England" syndrome  in historical fiction arise, I think, from the admonition to authors to "show, don't tell." The dread of being caught in the act of "telling" means that instead of using narration to give the reader information, the author makes the characters do the job in dialogue. Of course, all the author is doing is making the characters do her dirty work for her.

The key to avoiding these syndromes, and the other literary sin of extended exposition, is to weave the historical background into the story unobtrusively as possible. This is by no means easy, as I can certainly testify; as I said earlier, I've been caught as-you-know-Bobbing myself. I'll keep trying to avoid it. In the meantime, to get it out of our systems, perhaps writers should take a cue from "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and have an "As You Know, Bob" day. What about it?

Plantagenet (and Tudor) Game Shows

While looking at the statistics for my website today, I saw that someone had used the search term "Plantagenet game shows." So naturally, I decided that just in case the searcher tries again, it was time to create some Plantagenet game shows. And being the bighearted soul that I am, I've created a few Tudor ones as well. Here, therefore, are some royal game shows and their hosts (the shows are taken from a Wikipedia list of American game shows):

Edward II: "Just Men!"

Edward III: "The Name's the Same"

Henry VI: "Family Feud"

Elizabeth Woodville: "The Love Connection"

Edward IV: "Studs"

Edward V: "The Big Surprise"

Richard III:  "I'd Do Anything"

Elizabeth of York: "How's Your Mother-in-Law?"

Henry VII: "Show Me the Money" (alternative, "Okay, Mother")

Henry VIII: "Your Number's Up"

Catherine of Aragon: "He Said, She Said"

Anne Boleyn: "Love Me, Love Me Not"

Jane Seymour: "You're in the Picture"

Anne of Cleves:  "Next"

Katherine Howard: "I've Got a Secret"

Katherine Parr: "Whew!"