Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

'I wish you a Merry Xmas but no compliments of the season.'
I love this from a letter Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra on Christmas Eve 1798. I need to use that one.

Audiobook version (not on here)

'Holbein's portrait drawing of Jane had also passed into Henry's possession following the artist's death in 1543; poignantly, Holbein's book of 'patterns for physiognomies' was among the first items that the nine-year-old King Edward requested to be brought to him after his father's death.'

'Jane's memory seems to have been treasured at Henry's court, with her clothing going into long-term storage in Whitehall Palace rather than being dispersed. She was also the only one of Henry's first five queens whose portrait he kept. The 1547 inventory lists 'a table like a book, with the pictures of king Henry the eighth and Queen Jane'.'

It is an interesting thought that the men of this time that were condemned/accused of affairs were often musicians, as has been pointed out in this chapter. They mention Henry Manox with Katherine Howard, David Rizzio with Mary, Queen of Scots, then of course Mark Smeaton and Thomas Wyatt with Anne Boleyn (although Wyatt was set free).

'If Anne entertained such 'womanish' men as Smeaton and Wyatt in her private circle, it suggested a mutual lack of discipline that gave credence to the outlandish allegations against her. Given the popularity of the rich literary tradition praising the virtue of the equilibrium of the soul and the perils that emerged when an imbalance was caused by excess and indulgence'

'Mary's loyalty to her mother is perhaps most evident in her personal motto 'Truth, the Daughter of Time', her choice of a Spanish husband, and in her mother's 'Tau' cross that she chose to wear around her neck in her portraits as Queen of England.'

'Queen Mary was known as Bloody Mary because of the large number of people she killed. And also because of misogyny. She was the first properly crowned woman to rule as queen regnant, not just queen consort. You weren’t supposed to be able to do this job if you were a woman, so a lot of people didn’t like it.'

'Next morning, when he’s pale as death but on his feet again, she urges him once more. 'This can’t go on,' she says. 'Get Lizzie married into Portugal and show the world your brother’s living sons.'
He only shakes his head and says that he will speak again to Portugal. 'But I will not have my nephews hounded and harassed.'
'Yet you are hounded and harassed yourself,' she reminds him.'

'She keeps an all-night vigil before the boy is buried, but God keeps His silent distance. Only the ghosts of her own dead sons crowd at her back: grey-eyed Edmund on the tail of his father’s battle, George with his vicious teeth stained red with wine, Edward’s kissing mouth a gaping darkness, hollow and empty as his crown.'

'And yet it sometimes seems to Cecily that there’s a caution in men’s dealings with him now. As if behind their hands they whisper, ‘There’s the king who put his brother to death. A mad, treasonous brother, but still … Had him upended in a barrel of malmsey.’ For that’s the story that was put out; that Edward allowed his brother the choice of how to die and George chose to drown in drink.'

'But news is scant, and the terms of his imprisonment bar all visitors, even her. She saw the sense of it at first; let the shock of being alone bring him to his senses. But time feeds her uncertainty. Six months should be long enough for George to grow reasonable, or for Edward to find a way to make him so. But the King only says, ‘Not yet, Mother,’ and will not look her in the eye.'

'The charge is witchcraft and soon will be made public. Leaden images have been found: a man and a woman, a king and a queen. By these, the charge says, Jacquetta brought about her daughter’s marriage by sorcery. And another figure, an armed man pierced with a wire. By this, she sought to bring about the Earl of Warwick’s death.
'Hasn’t worked then, has it?' Cecily sneers beneath her breath.'

'There are three royal daughters in Elizabeth’s nursery now. The last came at winter’s end, bringing nothing but disappointment with her. For everyone except Edward of course, who is disappointed at nothing and deals with failure by pretending not to see it. ‘Sons will come,’ he said, smiling into this new one’s face while little Lizzie tried to climb his legs'

'That night, while Edward wins back Warwick’s friendship with drink and promises, Cecily sits alone and thinks. There isn’t a nobleman in England who’ll like this match. They’ll look at Elizabeth Woodville and say to their wives, well, if Edward can marry that one, he could have married our daughter. We’re as good as any Woodville. Better. There’ll be anger, resentment, and from Warwick more than any.'

'Don't compound your crassness with idiocy, Edward. Your marriage is a thing of policy, not a drunken tumble. Your marriage can buy us an alliance with France, or peace with Scotland. If nothing else it can bring us a rich dowry, which your treasury badly needs. It's not a thing to be thrown away on Eleanor Talbot. Pretty though she may be.'

'Cecily finds she can smile at the sight. She's had the little Tudor brought here to Eltham and reunited with his mother for the season; a Christmas gift all unexpected that brought Margaret to her knees this morning, pressing her forehead against Cecily's clasped hands and kissing her fingers in thanks.'

'Her memory, as he knew from the ex-girlfriends conversation, was phenomenal. Her instincts, meanwhile, were spot on. Her actions on that hay bale in West Sussex had been nothing less than genius. With her artless schoolgirl sympathy, she had hit on the absolute perfect subject to excite the prince's powerful self-pity. In doing so, she had snatched glorious victory from the jaws of certain defeat.'

'10,000 Scots, including a bishop, two abbots, twelve earls, thirteen lords, five eldest sons of peers and up to 300 other men of rank, perished with James IV. It was said that more than eighty members of the extended Hay family fell that day. Nor should it be forgotten that 4,000 Englishmen died too. Astonishingly, no monument was erected on the battlefield until 1910.'

'The battle began between four and five of the clock in the afternoon... with marvellous slaughter of men.' - Contemporary English account of the Battle of Flodden, 9 September 1513

'Henry VIl was an affectionate father but he knew what he was asking of his elder daughter. At thirteen years old, she was about to undergo a huge change in her life, having passed, as did other aristocratic women, from childhood to womanhood at the age of twelve. Her marriage to James IV of Scotland would cement relations between two neighbours always on the brink of war'

Audiobook version (not on here)

‘Department of Health and Social Care guidance that there is no need to test hospital patients for Covid prior to discharge because even those who are infected ‘can be safely cared for in a care home’. At the time, with the crisis in Northwick Park revealing how closely we are teetering towards the unthinkable prospect of having to ration care and deny patients ventilators, I do not think to question that’

'17,000 hospital beds lost since 2010; only 2.5 beds per 1000 people in the UK, compared to three times that number in Germany; an NHS workforce so depleted it has unfilled vacancies for over 10,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses; and in social care – the NHS’s much-neglected and impoverished sister – an eye-watering 120,000 unfilled vacancies.'

'But where, we keep thinking, is everyone else? The people with heart attacks, strokes, kidney stones, bleeding stomachs? Coronavirus hasn’t merely overwhelmed the department, it has somehow displaced from the NHS the thousand and one additional reasons to be rushed on a trolley through the locked-down dark, sirens screaming, blue lights flashing, your stricken brain or heart or guts'

I'm listening to the audiobook version, not listed on here. I have wanted to read this for a while, having heard and read bits about what happened over the years, but I guess it hits a bit too close to home. You see my family has owned a post office for nearly 50 years now. My great-grandfather ran a post office, then my grandfather, then my father. My dad is a subpostmaster. (1)

'It has been estimated that the dissolution brought £1.3 million (today, about £400 mil-lion) to the Crown between 1536 and 1547, through the rents from, and the sale of, confiscated lands, and the acquisition of gold, silver plate and jewels. Buildings like Nonsuch Palace and Hampton Court, or coastal fortifications were funded from the proceeds of the dissolution.'

'Between 1536 and 1540, over 800 religious houses were suppressed, and 7,000 monks, nuns, friars and their servants were turned out into the community. It was an act of incalculable cultural vandalism: invaluable medieval libraries were ransacked, irreplaceable jew-ellery was dissipated, finely crafted plate was melted down and architecturally important Gothic buildings were demolished.'

'In early 1537, between 144 and 153 people were executed for their involvement in the revolts, and the leader Robert Aske was 'hanged in chains' (in the gibbet irons) in York. Convinced that monks were leading figures in the rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace was also pivotal to Henry's decision to suppress not only the 'lesser monastic houses', as ordered in March 1536, but all 800 religious houses in England.'

‘After Anne of Cleves' death, Hever had passed to the Waldegrave family, whose staunch Catholicism had landed them in trouble during the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth. This has been used to explain the fact that there is no record of Elizabeth visiting Hever as queen, but recent research by the curator there has revealed that the Waldegraves never actually lived in the castle and that it was rented out.’