Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘The openly agreed outcome of the two parley was that Howard and the Earl of Shrewsbury’s son, Francis, Lord Talbot, should go south without delay, accompanied by Robert Bowes and Sir Ralph Ellerker representing the Pilgrims, to present the petition and further arguments to the King himself. They would then return with the royal response to their overtures. Meanwhile, there would be a truce’

I will finally finish this today, it has taken me a while due to being busy and the length of the audiobook (45 hours).

‘His father had paid the royal armies eightpence a day but Henry had reduced this to sixpence, which was tuppence less than the Pilgrims were given out of their own infinitely slimmer treasury; and, though he was begged by Howard and others to restore the old eightpence, Henry wouldn’t hear of it. It was not as though this was pocket money... they were expected to pay for their own food when campaigning’

‘But no symbol was more potent or more evocative than the religious insignia of the Five Wounds of Christ, which depicted a bleeding heart (sometimes a Host) above a chalice, both being surrounded at the corners of the illustration by the pierced hands and feet. This derived from a cult that had developed across Europe over 200 years or so’

‘The siege, in fact, lasted no more than five days and the town surrendered on 19 October. The balance swung in favour of the rebels because Hull started to run out of provisions and because there was a genuine fear that the place might be burned down. Another important factor was that Sir Ralph Ellerker decided to negotiate‘

‘Eventually, there must have been at least 40,000 men under arms and hostile to the government across the North of England; maybe as many as 50,000. Overwhelmingly, they were commoners, who eventually managed to attract to their cause, by one means and another, six members of the nobility, twenty knights and thirty-five lesser gentlemen’

‘something that Aske and his closest followers insisted on throughout the coming months, in all their various oaths and other statements; echoing William Stapleton, it insisted that their quarrel was not with the King or the nobility, but with the government of the realm, with Cromwell, Cranmer and others of their kind, who had crept close to the throne and were now manipulating it’

‘Brandon sent them a message from the King which they anxiously debated in the Cathedral Chapter House on Tuesday, 10 October. It promised the most terrible vengeance if they did not submit forthwith, including the destruction of all their property by an army of 100,000 which was simply waiting to be unleashed upon Lincolnshire: a characteristic Henrician bluff.’

‘He was interrupted by a sudden bang we the door flew open and rebounded from the wall. Startled, we turned to look. In the doorway stood a young girl I had never seen before. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, with long flaxen hair and big blue eyes. The eyes were somewhat bigger than normal, and filled with an expression of horrified shock...
“Daddy!” she said, in tones of total outrage. “Who is that woman?”’

‘They were told very loudly by one John Porman, gentleman, that the commons did not at all mind the King making himself Supreme Head of the Church, that he should have the first-fruits and tenths of every benefice as well as the subsidy, as before, but that there must be no more suppressions and no further monies taken from the commons. They also wanted Cromwell handed over to them’

‘There were other reasons for the next episode in Henry VIII’s turbulent reign. Since 1527 there had been a series of crop failures due to repeated bad weather and in 1535-6 wheat prices were eighty per cent higher than in the previous year, which had led to riots in Yorkshire in June 1535 and in Somerset the following April. The 1536 harvest was better, but it didn’t have to be much good to be an improvement‘

‘Finding the prospect of parliamentary meddling in their ordinances more than they could endure, the bishops in convocation accepted his demands without reservation, in a document known as the Submission of the Clergy; what they had merely not contradicted in 1531 they now, twelve months later, actively embraced. Henry VIII had become, in cold fact, the supreme legislator of the Church in England.’

‘It has been argued that Henry was not a deeply believing Catholic, that he was more superstitious and conventional than devoutly spiritual and enthralled by the numinous. He was certainly conventional enough to be regarded as a possible leader of the Holy Roman Empire, before Charles V, always the more likely candidate, secured the approval of the German electors.’

‘Henry gave her gifts and granted titles to her brother in hopes of impressing Katherine. She must have been crushed at this new development in her situation - her hottie boyfriend was sent away, and now another much older man was proposing marriage. She reluctantly agreed, believing this was the path God had placed before her. Maybe He had a divine reason for doing so.’

‘Katheryn Howard was, to be blunt, foolish. Gossip was a professional sport for courtiers, and everyone knew everyone else’s secrets. I’d love to know exactly what was going through Katheryn’s mind as she accepted gifts and love tokens from the king, knowing full well he intended to make her his next bride. To be fair, when do you bring up your less-than-wholesome past to King Henry VIII?’

‘asking if she [Elizabeth] could come and meet her... Anne was touched by the letter and showed it to Henry. He, in turn, gave it to Cromwell because, as we’ve seen, Henry was terrible at fighting his own battles face-to-face with his wives. Henry told Cromwell to deny Elizabeth’s request, adding, “Tell her that she had a mother so different from this woman that she ought not to wish to see her.”’

‘Some sources say Henry VIII waited years between Wife #3 and Wife #4 because he was too heartbroken to replace his beloved Jane Seymour soon after her death. He was distraught over her death, but the search for Henry’s next wife started the month after Jane died. It wasn’t considered insensitive; it was more about practicality.’

‘Jane, likely born in 1508 or 1509, was less educated than Catherine and Anne because she was raised in a slightly less progressive household. She was taught to dance, do needlework, run a household, and to be obedient to her father and brothers. There are conflicting sources about Jane’s literacy level, but she could at least read and write her own name.’

‘“Some o’ the auld woman at Lallybroch say ye were a wise woman - a white lady, or maybe even a fairy. When Uncle Jamie came home from Culloden without ye, they said as how ye’d maybe gone back to the fairies, where ye maybe came from. Is that true? D’ye live in a dun?”
...”She escaped to France after Culloden,” Ian broke in suddenly, with great firmness.’

‘When Cardinal Compeggio left England for Italy, he took with him love letters written by Henry and sent to Anne Boleyn during their courtship. These letters remain in the Vatican Library to this day.’

I know they were stolen, but I’ve never read that Campeggio was the one who stole them.

‘Catherine became pregnant very easily, especially in the earlier years of her marriage to Henry VIII. Within months of their wedding day, Catherine was with child. Catherine and Arthur were married for four and a half months, and he visited her chamber several times. If they’d had sex during that time, there’s a good chance Catherine would have become pregnant, unless something was medically wrong with Arthur’

‘So the English monarch looked around for a potential bride. It would have to be a woman young enough to have children. He didn’t have to look far, since there was a Spanish princess waiting in the wings already... When the idea was floated by Catherine’s parents, they immediately went “Noooooooope.” They wanted more for their youngest daughter than to be the wife of an old king likely to die soon.’

‘Isabel and Fernando were in the thick of their campaign against the Moors of Granada when their youngest child was conceived. The queen was thirty-four, beyond childbearing years by the standards of the day, and determined to continue with her cause. During a cold and rainy December 1485, in Alcalá de Henares in central Spain, Princess Catalina was born. She was the last of the Catholic monarch brood.’

“I’ve seen ye so many times,” he said, his voice whispering warm in my ear. “You’ve come to me so often. When I dreamed sometimes. When I lay in fever. When I was so afraid and so lonely I knew I must die. When I needed you, I would always see ye, smiling, with your hair curling up about your face. But ye never spoke. And ye never touched me.”
“I can touch you now.”

‘Essex’s cup ran over. In early June, while still on the Munster campaign, he received news of Cecil’s appointment as Master of the Wards. It had happened again: once Devereux was away from the Queen, his enemies had got to her, and clever, stay-at-home Sir Robert had come out ahead. Essex was trapped in a cursed land where nothing went right; his best efforts earned only scorn and criticism’

‘Unfortunately Essex’s financial sweet was not without its occupational and political sour sauce. He had to share his mistress’s favour with that knave Raleigh. Worse, he had to struggle with the hidden eddies and dark currents of the Queen’s mind, and in doing so he twice blundered - once in February and again in July - and revealed the defects of his personality that would in the end destroy him.’

“Bree is mine, my daughter,” he said, as though to himself. “The only child I’ll ever have. I couldn’t give her up.” He gave a short laugh. “I couldn’t give her up, but you couldn’t see her without thinking of him, could you? Without that constant memory, I wonder - would you have forgotten him, in time?”
“No.”

‘once he was caught up in the costly web of patronage and competition for political recognition, had no retreat. Neither silence nor retirement were a defence against royal or governmental wrath. Sir Thomas More attempted both, only to be informed at his trial that ‘even though we should have no word or deed to charge against you, yet we have your silence, and that is a sign of your evil intention‘’

‘If he had no true freedom, he did at least have air, and light, space to stretch his limbs, and the sight of mountains and the lovely horses that Dunsany bred. The other grooms and servants were understandably suspicious of him, but inclined to leave him alone, out of respect for his size and forbidding countenance. It was a lonely life‘

‘Anthony Cooke was destroyed by his own outstanding incompetence. He was clearly one of those economic malcontents who were ‘not able to live at home but on beggry’, and whom Lord Burghley instinctively suspected of potential treason. Cooke, however, like most of his generation, blamed his failure not on ineptitude but on the enemy who was ever ready to take advantage of his mistakes and to slander him’