Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘for many they were the very substance of their own home. The houses of religion were the oldest of all in many places and to those living among them their physical presence defined the locality as much as any natural feature. At Canterbury the precinct of the cathedral monastery and its watercourses had fixed the position of streets, shops and residential tenements for as long as anyone could remember.’

‘’Send for his Grace,’ Katherine ordered, as the others tried to calm her. But she was beyond consolation. The world would never again be such a happy place as when Arthur was in it. He was gone from her, completely and irrevocably. He was but a memory now. The cruel realisation cut so painfully to her heart that she did not think she could go on.’

‘Victoria announced that she would wear her usual widow's dress and bonnet,
albeit decorated with diamonds, rather than her state robes and crown. Moreover, while
this would be the largest ever gathering of royal houses, the biggest celebration of all
was to take place in Hyde Park, where 20,000 underprivileged children would be
entertained with tea and cakes’

‘Poor Warwick; poor, simple boy, who had never deliberately done anyone any harm, and whose only crime had been to have royal blood in his veins. She thought of his sister Margaret, now happily married to Sir Richard Pole, the chief gentleman of Prince Arthur’s privy chamber; she would be devastated to lose her brother. Elizabeth wished that she could be at Ludlow to comfort her.’

‘Harry, however, doted on the newcomer. Every so often, he would hasten over to her cradle to coo at her and check that she was all right. He was inordinately delighted when he got a broad smile for his pains. It was a joy to see how much he loved Mary. Elizabeth thought again of the child who would never again run into her arms, and also spared a thought for Arthur, who was far away from his siblings’

‘Henry – or Harry, as they called him – was so much the image of her father that he won all hearts. She could not help but wish that he had been the firstborn son, rather than Arthur; he was infinitely stronger and there was something innately special about him, as if God had showered him with gifts and talents. Look at those plump little hands, stretching out to grab everything in reach!‘

‘In March 1488, although Arthur was only eighteen months old, Henry began looking for a bride for him. Nothing but the best would do for his heir, but he ventured into the royal marriage market cautiously, for, he had confided to Elizabeth, he feared that the other ruling houses of Europe regarded him as a usurper. He was jubilant, therefore, when the prospect of a marriage alliance with mighty Spain opened up’

‘Norfolk’s youngest half-brother, the twenty-four-year-old courtier Lord Thomas Howard, had been wooing Lady Margaret Douglas, the daughter of the king’s sister sister, Margaret, and half-sister to James V of Scotland, since the end of 1535 - two years after he had arrived at court. Theirs was a heady, whirlwind romance and some time before the middle of 1536, probably at Easter, they married secretly.‘

‘providing space for the Queen's family, it marked an important step in the Palace's transformation from private residence to public monument. On 1 May 1851, the day of the opening of the Great Exhibition, the Queen and Prince Albert appeared on their new balcony (an addition to Bore's plans suggested by Albert), to crowds of onlookers, for the very first time, starting a tradition that continues to this day.’

‘Plans of the Palace reveal that by 1847 the nursery consisted of 12 rooms: a number of bedrooms and recreational areas as well as a kitchen, dining room and bathroom. It is hard, today, to appreciate that, during this period, the nurseries of the upper classes were not just single rooms but entirely separate households, with younger children sleeping and eating all their meals within the nursery itself.‘

‘He was auburn-haired, with delicate features, and favoured his father. The resemblance brought forcefully home to her that this tiny babe was destined to shoulder the heavy responsibilities of kingship. Her heart contracted. Her son was to usher in a new era in England and live up to the high expectations of his subjects. He would be hers for such a short time; he would be taken from her’

‘Marriage, Elizabeth found, was an adjustment. Henry was loving, but he was complex – a dark prince and infinitely suspicious, which was not surprising, considering that, from childhood, his life had been overshadowed by war and intrigue. He was always imagining secret conspiracies. It was clear that he did not feel safe on his throne.’

‘Indeed, the Palace that Victoria inherited was not only unloved and unlived-in but
partially unfinished. Large areas remained undecorated and many essential fixtures
and fittings, such as sinks, fireplaces, carpets and curtains, were missing. Aware of
the Palace's unfinished state, Victoria's ministers had urged her to consider remaining
at Kensington Palace a little longer’

‘He had ordered Georgiana to renounce Grey and have the baby adopted as soon as it was born. If she refused he would divorce her and she would never see her three children again. She did not hesitate even though she had no guarantee that the Duke would not change his mind and divorce her anyway. But Grey could not forgive her choice and when she tried to make him understand his replies were savage.’

‘Jack’s persistent and myriad illnesses were one of the reasons why he lived for the moment, and this was one explanation for why he loved sex and women. For Kick, it was another odd mixed message. She was a convent girl, expected to behave well at all times, to obey her mother’s commands and her insistence on etiquette and social form.‘

‘The Duke regarded himself as an injured man. He required two things of Georgiana: not to gamble away the family estate, and to produce an heir, and she seemed to be incapable of performing either one. He was also furious that she had been deceiving him about her debts for the past two years. But his habit of shutting out unpleasant thoughts spared Georgiana a repetition of the scenes at Chatsworth.’

‘silently pleading for Georgiana’s forgiveness for a far greater betrayal than the co-opting of her friends: she was three months pregnant with the Duke of Devonshire’s child.
Her letter crossed with one of Georgiana’s, bringing the news that she too was three months pregnant. When Bess counted the weeks she realized angrily that their babies could have been conceived within days or even hours of each other

‘The Morning Post was the first to run the story about her kissing voters on 31 March: ‘We hear the D—s of D—grants favours to those who promise their votes and interest to Mr Fox.’ Thereafter it ran vicious stories almost every day. It concentrated on three themes: she was selling her body for votes, she was Fox’s mistress, and she was betraying her rank and sex by her undignified behaviour.’

‘perhaps she no longer saw any reason to remain faithful to her adulterous husband. Nothing is certain except that Georgiana shared her contemporaries’ horror of breaking the patriarchal bloodline. It was an unwritten rule in eighteenth-century society that a wife should present her husband with a legitimate first son, whatever she chose to do afterwards.’

‘“Your Grace, I have learned that the King has been lodged in the Tower, as is customary for a monarch about to be crowned.”
The royal palace within the Tower had been one of Father’s favourite residences. Elizabeth could remember many happy times there. Ned would like it, although he might be a little lonely. If only they could all go and stay with him.’

‘Mother glared at Father, and Elizabeth wondered if she had wanted Clarence’s estates for her own sons. Then a horrible thought occurred to her. Did Uncle Gloucester know that Mother had pressed Father to execute Clarence? Did he think she had done it in revenge for the killing of her father and brother? Was that why he was being so cold towards her?’

‘As she kissed him tenderly, it occurred to her that, within a couple of years, she might have a babe of her own to love, one like this, if God was good. Her twelfth birthday was now only eleven months off. Still she prayed that she would be allowed to stay in England a little longer. She did not feel ready for marriage. Mother had briskly explained what to expect in the nuptial bed, and Elizabeth shrank from it’

‘Henry VII’s prayer-book, inscribed by him to his daughter Queen Margaret, wife of James IV of Scotland, is an unlikely a possession of this house as is Henry VIII’s rosary. How did it find its way into the strong-room? Oh, because General Wade gave it to Lord Burlington for designing a Palladian house for him. And how did General Wade, builder of military roads and beautiful bridges, come by it?‘

‘It is an enormous house, with 297 rooms, 3,426 feet of passages, 18 staircases, 359 doors, 2,084 lights bulbs, 7,873 window panes and with a visitors' route over half a mile long. Up until the late 1980s, the House closed at the beginning of October, just before the Horse Trials, after which the housekeeping staff would take a week's holiday before the deep cleaning began.‘

‘The pupils and teachers of Penrhos College spent the duration of the war at Chatsworth, sleeping in the State Rooms, the Great Dining Room and some of the corridors. After the war the school returned to its proper home, but there were regular reunions at Chatsworth until the closure of the school in 1995, the last reunion being in March 1996. The one thing they all used to mention was how cold they were’

Brookland:
‘In the north-east chapel, some fragments of fourteenth-century glass survive, while in the south-east chapel a rare thirteenth century wall painting of the Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket was uncovered in 1964. Also in this chapel is the altar tomb of John Plumber (d. 1615) who, as a Baron of the nearby Cinque Port of New Romney, helped to carry the canopy over James I at his coronation in 1603.’

‘Deborah took up the challenge, set by Mr Attlee, of making Chatsworth thrive as a commercial enterprise. Andrew, who like most true aristocrats was without snobbery, was insistent that the public should enter through the main front door, that as much of the house as possible be open to them, and that they should wander and picnic as they wished in the gardens (only the Old Park is private: home to the deer).‘

‘But to be jailed with no notion of when one will be freed is a peculiarly refined kind of torture. Hope remains – perhaps this will be the day? – then as the day passes, and nothing changes, hope becomes merely a mockery. When the bombs fell on London in 1941, and thirty-eight incendiaries exploded in the grounds of Holloway jail, what Diana minded was the noise; the possibility of death was an irrelevance.’

‘Forget Joan of Arc. Her mother was
Violet of Mayfair, and neither plague nor
pestilence nor perfidious paramour would
stop her in her quest to see all eight of her
children happily married. There were only
two remaining, Gregory and Hyacinth, but
Gregory was still just twenty-four, which
was (rather unfairly, in Hyacinth's opinion)
considered a perfectly acceptable age for a
gentleman to remain a bachelor.’

‘So Unity, frantically learning German, began visiting the same restaurants as Hitler (as Deborah later put it, today she would have been arrested as a stalker). This is where that extraordinary blithe Mitford confidence played its part. She seems to have had no doubt that she could command the attention of this player on the world’s political stage’