Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

The martyrs died because Mary, Pole and the bishops believed that heresy must be extirpated lest it ‘infect’ more; because ‘there is no kind of treason to be compared with theirs’. They died because some among the lay governors and the common people, hating their heresy, reported them, knowing the consequences. Above all they died because they would never recant.‘

‘Time after time she had seen herself leaving him, leaving Tom’s tyranny as she had left that of her father, stealing away in the night, bags piled in the trunk of her Cutlass. She was not a stupid woman, certainly not stupid enough even now, standing on the rim of this incredible shambles, to believe that she had not loved Tom and did not in some way love him still. But that did not preclude her fear of him...‘

I like the fact King wrote this chapter from Beverley’s husband’s point of view. It is rare you read something from the abuser’s point of view. It is really creepy and disturbing, yet IT isn’t even in it.

‘My Eddie cannot take physical education. I repeat: he canNOT take phys ed. Eddie is very delicate, and if he runs... or jumps...

Mrs Kaspbrak, I have the results of Eddie’s last physical on file in my office - that’s a state requirement. It says that Eddie is a little small for his age, but otherwise he’s absolutely normal. So I called your family physician just to be sure and he confirmed -‘

‘Though the new laws terrified, they were kept as a threat which was usually unfulfilled. In England, unlike the rest of Europe, torture was not used as an ordinary part of the legal process. Under the first Tudors, no judges were removed, and very few juries punished. Even packed juries sometimes acquitted. Yet people remembered the fear. Edward VI’s councillors denounced ‘the cruel and bloody laws’ of his father’

‘He looked around at her. She thought the look on his face was one of gentle abstraction, perhaps mixed with minor annoyance. It was only later, replaying the scene in her mind again and again, that she began to believe it was the expression of a man who was methodically unplugging himself from reality, one cord at a time. The face of a man who was heading out of the blue and into the black.’

“Very wise indeed. Therefore I will introduce myself. I, Georgie, am Mr Bob Gray, also known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise, meet George Denbrough. George, meet Pennywise. And now we know each other. I’m not a stranger to you, and you’re not a stranger to me. Kee-rect?”

‘When the old guard among his councillors complained that the new king was too wedded to pleasure and urged that he attend Council meetings more often, Wolsey counselled the contrary. Here, for him, was the way to exceptional favour and power. Wolsey determined, according to his gentleman-usher George Cavendish, to show himself keenest ‘to advance the King’s only will and pleasure’’

‘boy in the portrait was perhaps nine or ten, with a childish tenderness still lingering about his face, and his hair was a soft chestnut brown, not red. But the slanted blue eyes looked out boldly over a straight nose a fraction of an inch too long, and the high Viking cheekbones pressed tight against smooth skin. The tilt of the head held the same confident carriage as that of the man who had given him that face.’

‘The first sacrament in the life of a Christian was baptism. Baptism was the rite that incorporated the newborn child into the Church and Christian society (Christendom), and it was a sacrament of faith. Without baptism there was no salvation, and the unbaptised child was consigned to limbo, forever denied heaven and the beatific vision. Every child was born innocent but with a proclivity to sin‘

‘Henry was, from his accession, the greatest royal landowner since the Norman Conquest. He held five times more land than Henry VI had done and learnt from his predecessor’s disastrous example: what he gained he held, never alienating these vast possessions. To Henry came the duchy of Lancaster, the whole estates of the duchy of York and the Mortimer earldom of March.‘

‘Richard’s supporters were in disarray, not knowing whether to resist or to make terms with the new order. Some fought on, some were imprisoned, some were executed, some fled, but most made peace. And still Henry felt acutely threatened and insecure. He would never be free from the fear that a challenger would arrive with a stronger claim to the allegiance owed to blood.’

‘A quarter of the personal wealth of Leicestershire villagers in the early sixteenth century was held by 4 per cent of the people. Such inequalities were taken as part of the divine and natural order, which no one should question. As the first Tudor king passed by, the common people looked on, their lives affected more by the fecundity of the harvest, which happened to be good in 1485’

‘seldom mentioned but significant clue is the fact his uncle, Arthur Tudor, and his half-brother, Henry Fitzroy, died of a nearly identical mystery ailment. It is unlikely that all three previously healthy teenage boys were struck down by pulmonary infections or re-activated tuberculosis. Instead, the similarity of their deaths would be more readily explained by a genetic, heritable factor heretofore unconsidered.’

‘Although it is historically popular to credit Northumberland with all manner of undue influence over the king, the historical evidence does not bear this out. Northumberland was a trusted and beloved councillor, but Edward was no man’s puppet. Edward’s journal, letters and participation in government paint an undeniable picture of a monarch who was completely aware of the intricacies of ruling’

I’m really enjoying this, especially the different actors portraying the characters. Tom Conti is brilliant as Poirot.

‘I saw his point; Laoghaire was not going to be pleased at hearing that her eldest daughter had eloped with a one-handed ex-pickpocket twice her age. Her maternal feelings were unlikely to be assuaged by hearing that the marriage had been performed in the middle of the night on a West Indian beach by a disgraced - if not actually defrocked - priest, witnessed by twenty-five seamen’

‘Edward had other concerns beside his sister Mary and her Catholic supporters. He was keenly aware he needed to marry, and marry well. In April the king sent the Marquess of Northampton to France to bestow the Order of the Garter on King Henri II and to negotiate a potential marriage... Edward knew that the emperor would attempt to prevent a match between England and France if he could.’

‘Not only was Somerset failing as a military leader, he soon proved himself to be over his head when it came to ruling the country. He would swing back and forth between draconian measures and bribes to those he needed as allies, alienating even those he wished to charm. Somerset also issued contradictory proclamations - some tolerant and some intolerant of Catholicism’

‘The protector and the privy council made out like bandits in the few weeks between Henry VIII’s death and Edward VI’s coronation. Edward Seymour, already Earl of Hertford, became Duke of Somerset and inducted himself into the Order of the Garter. John Dudley moved up from lord admiral and Viscount Lisle to the Earl of Warwick, and was also appointed Great Chamberlain.’

‘Was this what the goat-woman had meant? That Claire had swum ashore on this island? He felt a welling of hope that was as refreshing to his heart as the water had been to his parched throat. Claire was stubborn, reckless, and had a great deal more courage than was safe for a woman, but she was by no means such a fool as to fall off a man-of-war by accident.’

‘If not for the headache, it could be simple gastroenteritis - but not with this many men stricken. Something very contagious indeed, and I was fairly sure what. Not malaria, coming from Europe to the Caribbean. Typhus was a possibility; carried by the common body louse, it was prone to rapid spread in close quarters like these, and the symptoms were similar to those I saw around me‘

‘As soon as Norfolk was ready for the spectacle, Aske climbed to the gallows on top of the tower, asked for forgiveness again ‘and after orisons made on the ladder, commended his soul to God’. When they had finished butchering his body, it was hung there in chains; and John Aske, summoned with others of the Yorkshire gentry to be present, was one of those who watched all the things they did to his youngest brother.‘

‘Dacre had been alerted by the Duke of Norfolk, who was at Fountains Abbey when he heard about the battle at Kirkby Stephen bridge and the failure of Sir Thomas. Clifford having proved himself useless, Norfolk sent an urgent despatch to Dacre, asking him to be ready for an attack on Carlisle and to conduct at least a holding operation there until the Duke could reach him with reinforcements’

‘The Duke was charged with reaching Doncaster by Candlemas and there he would be met by the gentry who were most likely to serve his purposes. He would administer a new oath to them, the local commons would receive it next, and this swearing of obedience would be enacted wherever else in the North Thomas Howard went. From Doncaster he was to ride on to Pontefract, where more gentlemen would be waiting‘

‘When Wednesday’s deliberations came to an end, Aske and his companions returned to their Franciscan retreat, to report progress to the rest of the 300 stationed on the island. Being informed by the negotiators that they would thereby gain the free parson, the assurance of a new Parliament and the holding operation on the monasteries, these agreed to the deal that had been struck with the Duke of Norfolk’

“I have noticed,” she said slowly, “that time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is - in the blink of an eye, the mother can see the child again as it was when it was born, when it learned to walk, as it was at any age - at any time, even when the child is fully grown and a parent itself.”

I loved this book as a kid and looking forward to listening to the audiobook version narrated by Scarlett Johansson (who my history friends will know for her role as Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl)

‘The moment he set eyes on Bowed and Ellerker, the monarch flew into one of his famous tempers, which continued for some time until Howard and other royal counsellors managed to calm him down... Had he been aware how very insecure his throne really was that night in Windsor, he might seriously have considered making some concessions to the Pilgrims.‘