Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

'She insisted that the ambassador must sit on the floor with her, with cushions under their knees, “or else she would never allow me to talk to her again.” This threat of exclusion demonstrates that Elizabeth was willing and able to assert her royal authority over foreigners as well as her own subjects, and she was clearly not afraid to reveal her strong will to anyone.'

‘While many scholars have focused on the marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and Francis, Duke of Alençon (which continued after he became the Duke of Anjou in 1576), Catherine de Medici actually offered all of her remaining sons as potential grooms to the English queen following the death of Francis II in 1560... she attempted to forge a union between Charles and Elizabeth on two separate occasions'

‘Hence, it may be suggested that the events at Sawley in early October were not prompted by events in Lincolnshire. North Craven rose partly out of fear of Richmondshire, partly in solidarity with it, but having risen, there was little that could be done and the movement was only called back into existence by the threat posed by the earl of Derby.’

‘If he [Aske] fashioned the Pilgrimage around this document, mediated by his own preoccupations, then he did not make the rebellion in Howdenshire, Beverley, or around York, but he did draw the rebels to him, as during the following week he was to draw the Richmondshire commons into his orbit. The Pilgrimage was, and remained, a spontaneous mass movement in response to the one in Lincolnshire.’

‘letter was sent to Lincoln denouncing ‘the unkindness of Lincolnshire to them who rose by their motions’. Within a few days the same men were considering trying to make their peace with the king through the duke of Suffolk. But if the fall of Lincoln seemed to some an end, to Aske it was a liberation, and the moment when he transformed an arm of the Lincolnshire rebellion into the Pilgrimage of Grace.’

‘The first demand was that the church was to have all its traditional privileges restored, meaning that the status quo of 1529 was to be revived. Secondly, all suppressed religious houses were to be restored except for those which the king had suppressed for his own power. Thirdly, a roll-call of royal servants and bishops, starting with Cranmer‘

‘The rising at Louth was founded on the expectation that the plate and other liturgical gold and silver of the parish church would be confiscated on Monday, 2 October. The rising at Horncastle was founded on the lie that the confiscation had taken place. As Louth had a considerable investment to protect, it is easy to appreciate why these fears should have had a particular resonance amongst its inhabitants’

‘Broadly speaking, three types of rumour can be distinguished, all of them nervous reports of future royal policy. First, there were reports of penal taxation, including the taxation of animals, wheat-bread; and births and deaths; second, claims that church goods were to be confiscated; and third, a belief that parishes were to be amalgamated.’

‘The Pilgrimage was not, to any significant degree, about taxation. While the subsidy was being assessed in early October 1536, the previous assessment made a year earlier had not prompted disturbances. Both collections were, in any case only levied on the very richest taxpayers. The taxation complaint contained in the Lincolnshire petition refers to the collection of the fifteenth scheduled for the following year.‘

‘Historians, then, have failed to come to any consensus about the character of the northern revolt of 1536-7. Some have regarded it as a conspiracy, others as a popular movement. It has been read as a movement of social and economic protest against taxation and the damage which the dissolution wrought on northern society; it has also been made into something holy and spiritual’

‘The insurrections - and the flickering into renewed flame of the autumn rising in the New Year - are collectively called the Pilgrimage of Grace. In fact this term was only used in Yorkshire. We should therefore distinguish between the rising in Lincolnshire, the mature movement in east Yorkshire... and the rising in Richmondshire’

‘The evidence suggests that Jane, at least outwardly, remained loyal to George’s memory after his death. She also appeared publicly as a dutiful wife during George’s imprisonment, with the Lieutenant of the Tower recording that Sir Nicholas Carew and Sir Francis Bryan came with a message to George from Jane to ‘see how he did’’

‪’George arrived in London around 20 February and was reunited with his wife, mother, and sister. Within a week, he also made the acquaintance of the Imperial ambassador, who took an immediate liking to the young man. Chapuys reported that he found George charming, exceedingly courteous, and in possession of a frankness of mind which Chapuys found refreshing.‘

‪‘It is a popular notion that Wolsey met his ruin in the rise of the Boleyns, a family who had reached impressive heights by 1527 but, as we have seen, Thomas and Wolsey had worked well together for years, with Wolsey helping facilitate George’s modest rise at court. Neither Thomas nor his family had any reason to be at odds with the Cardinal at this stage, for who else was capable of achieving an annulment?‘

‪‘But it is clear that Thomas’ star was on the rise long before his daughters became mistresses to the King. It even managed to remain stable to some extent after their fall, as we shall see, most likely because Thomas’ sources of power, wealth and influence were numerous, with several foundations, and evidently not solely tied to his children.’

‘For Thomas it was both a positive conclusion to his first embassy, and a personal triumph in that he secured a position for his daughter, Anne - who would have been approximately 13 at the time - at Margaret’s court. To have secured such a position speaks volumes about Margaret’s relationship with him, and about Thomas’ relationship with his daughter’

‘The Boleyn family followed a pattern of investing, by marriage, in families who had encountered financial misfortune during the Wars of the Roses, but who were on the cusp of being restored to their former glory. Such families were not uncommon... In this context, Thomas made a very favourable marriage with Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, sometime between 1497 and 1500.’

‘Geoffrey and Alice had numerous children, but their two sons, Geoffrey and Thomas, presumably named for their father Geoffrey and grandfather Thomas, were the first to embark on the family’s foray into the world of trade and commerce. Their accomplishments would henceforth connect the Boleyn name with the higher echelons of nobility - and away from petty crime.’

Now I know a lot of you will be wondering why I am giving this a go as I am not Weir’s biggest fan, but there are several reasons. The main one is that it was on sale. The second is that it is an audiobook, so the lack of references at least won’t bug me. And the third is that I actually haven’t heard much about this one and thought that, after all this time, I should at least try it.

‘It is, one might think, a very minor matter. In itself, no doubt it is; but perhaps this little journey of the young Earl’s marks his exist from the nursery and the first initiation in the ways of the world. The time was approaching when, despite his young age, Lord Surrey was to leave the family home: he was destined to soon become the companion of the king’s bastard, of the Duke of Richmond.’

‘Anne thought that calumny would be the best weapon, and, having chosen this weapon, she launched a campaign with her sister-in-law Lady Rochford whose aim was to be Henry’s dismissal of her rival. Probably Anne and Lady Rochford strategised poorly, and the “maiden’, who we know was “clever”, was able to foil their plot; in brief, it was not she who in October was banished from court, but Lady Rochford herself.‘

‘George Boleyn made it his glory and his study to become the greatest seducer of the English Court, and he succeeded only too well in this task. Until approximately the end of 1529, this was the young man’s almost exclusive occupation. After this date, he had from time to time a nobler calling for his energies, and on several occasions distinguished himself as a diplomat.‘

I forgot how old this book was until they started going on about keeping Mina in the dark about what is going on as she is ‘just a woman’ and they are men and even they struggle with the task ahead of them.

‘That Elizabeth should turn to him at this point in her life should occasion less surprise than it does. He was not as unknown before Ireland as his biographers have traditionally suggested, notwithstanding the fact that his reputation tended more towards the disreputable and infamous than he would later care to recollect - something that he contrived to have painted otherwise in contemporary histories’

‘Whatever Ralegh sought from his youthful experiences of war, its principal impact was to impress on him a profound understanding of the meaning and experience of defeat. He was still restlessly ambitious, but the nervous explosive energy that led him to war, the lust for limitless freedom of action, now also had to accommodate an acute awareness of failure and its shames, which in turn fuelled the anxiety’

‘In constructing his public persona, Ralegh would take after his father and his name would be a byword for self-aggrandisement, for ambition, vanity and pride; but he would privately experience his successes with a churning visceral sense of worthlessness and doubt, fear and self-loathing. It was his parents’ gift to him: he grew up to be a man divided against himself.’

‘The conversion of the English to Christianity in the seventh century was a catalyst for the use of the written word, in Latin, in the service of the Church. But comments by Bede, and the survival of a few texts as well as early law-codes preserved in much later manuscripts, show that English was also used as a literary and legal language in the seventh and eighth centuries.’

‘In the first half of the ninth century, the balance of power within Britain shifted, catalysed by internal tensions that were amplified by external pressures from rival kingdoms as well as hostile viking forces. The so-called ‘Mercian Supremacy’ imploded after the death of Coenwulf in 821 as rival families vied for control, creating opportunities for those that had been subservient to Mercian authority.’