Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘This was to be the first of many times in
the days and months ahead that words would tumble forth without my understanding of whence they came. Every time this would happen, it seemed as though I was being guided from beyond my understanding by Anne herself. It was from these experiences that gradually over time, I would also come to know more of the real Anne Boleyn.’

Audiobook version

The elite of England, brave fighting men, backed up by untrained ploughmen, blacksmiths and grim-faced monks whose flanks were ungirded, armed only with clubs and maces. To one side, the archers stood ready, their arrows stuck into the ground around them, ready to fly in rapid succession. While my stomach heaved with fear, all of England stood ready; prepared to spill without mercy the Norman blood upon our shore.

‘As Henry’s thirtieth year as king ended, for the first time his regime had removed religious orders entirely. The collapse of the friars’ congregations in scarcely nine months may have been formalised by the king’s commissions but its cause lay in their local circumstances. Across the country, their income had suddenly melted away. From the winter of 1537, the laity stopped providing them with alms.’

I felt suddenly guilty, aware of the awful crime I was committing upon this woman. In her eyes, she was Harold’s wife. They’d been wed for nigh on twenty years; hand-fasted and accepted, by all but the church, as his wife. Now, because of me, she must step back and allow him to announce me to replace her as his legal, church-wed wife. How did she find the strength of mind to stand by while I took him from her?

“She isn’t my wife. We were hand-fasted twenty years ago. Eadgytha is a good woman and has given me many happy years and some fine sons. I will never abandon her but the king and queen agree that I need a gently born wife. One who can climb to the heights with me, who will fight at my side and, if we go under, will rise with me again, still fighting. I say you are that woman, Eadgyth. Say you will have me.”

‘For some reason, Queen Edith had decided that I was to be a favourite. She slipped her hand through the crook of my elbow and proceeded to lead me around the room, introducing me in such a way that no one dared snub me. Her conversation did not falter and her voice was loaded with insincerity as she gushed and simpered over me as if we were old friends. The court looked on with feigned delight’

“I say that as the life drains from me, I will curse you. All that is now yours will perish, your strongholds will fall, your treasures will be lost and your people will turn from you. Your country will founder, and never again rise to power. Your countrymen will be vassals … forever more. That is my curse, Gruffydd ap Llewellyn, and I will die willingly if it may be so.”

‘Memory distorts: time is compressed and events are selectively preserved. Perhaps the only really reliable insight to be taken from these original witnesses is of the pace of the episode: between Easter 1536 and Easter 1540 – four years, five festivals – the 660 monasteries and 180 friaries of England and Wales were closed, their communities dispersed, and their assets taken into the ownership of the Crown.’

‘There is no one in this stricken land who flees King William more diligently than we, for Eadgytha, long time known as the Gentle Swan, was twenty years King Harold’s mistress, and I, also named Eadgyth, was Harold’s queen, and mother to the Ætheling, Harold Haroldsson, who even now tumbles in play with his brother upon the dusty floor.’

Audiobook version, not on here

You can hear her getting upset when she realises her mother caused her anorexia.

It is even more heartbreaking with the added emotional and sexual abuse from ‘the Creator’ (we can all guess who that is) and Nickelodeon. I hope this launches an investigation. So far they haven’t commented, although they will have to eventually, but the fact she says they tried to pay her to keep quiet speaks volumes.

She says ‘the creator’ a lot, but we all know who she means. He is encouraging the kids to drink, saying the kids on his other show (Victorious) do it. Just no.

“You shame yourself, Madame. Get up.” He yanked me to my feet. “We think it best you concern yourself with other matters. As well you remember, the lady afore you meddled all too often in our affairs of state. Look what has become of her in consequence. It would be a great pity if you were to share her fate.”

Giving a 6 year old sugar-free red-bulls before an audition to give her energy to help with the comedy…

“I shall put it plainly, Your Grace: there is great danger in striving to make the king happy. For when you reach that point, where you believe you have accomplished this impossible task, you will be lulled into a false sense of safety. And that is the most dangerous place to be.”

“I shall put it plainly, Your Grace: there is great danger in striving to make the king happy. For when you reach that point, where you believe you have accomplished this impossible task, you will be lulled into a false sense of safety. And that is the most dangerous place to be.”

Estimating expenditure on charity in the valuation of 1535, Bishop Gardiner was surprised that ‘the finding of young children to scole’ was ‘so called as the other almes’. Richard Smith (d. 1563), chaplain to the Catholic Queen Mary and presiding genius at the trial of Thomas Cranmer, recalled how he had been ‘nouryshed . . . at [an abbey’s] schole’ and ‘els I shulde never have bene learned’.

Andrew Cavendish realized that, as well as selling land in Scotland and Derbyshire, the only real option was to relinquish Hardwick Hall, widely regarded as one of the most beautiful of late-Elizabethan mansion houses still standing. With its tall glazed façades and
elaborate decoration, it was also a symbol
of the origins of the Cavendish dynasty in the person of its builder, the powerful and mysterious Elizabeth

All I keep thinking is how terrifying it must have been for Jane Seymour after Anne Boleyn was executed. I know a lot of people don’t like her because they feel she caused Anne’s death, but really there was no precedent for that and that was all Henry. Also do we really think these women had much of a choice in the matter?

‘Would he still be so keen if I told him the truth, that while I happily sowed seeds of discord in the king’s mind, I never once dreamed the fruits would be so deadly?’

‘Unlike Anne, who had spent years combing the bible for passages that helped her to understand her lesbianism as a God-given quality, Ann Walker had had almost no time to reconcile the sexual attraction she felt to another woman with her rigid interpretation of the scripture. Now, the memory of the adultery she had committed with Ainsworth forced her to confront the transgression of her relationship with Anne.‘

‘A new sigil had been worked in alongside the king’s—a phoenix. My phoenix. I hated it on sight. The bird was a grim reminder of the destruction worked in service to my elevation. It felt like an insult—a bastardization of the Seymour wings that had represented our house for generations. My husband had commandeered it for his own, remaking it in his image. I was losing myself piece by piece.’

‘A mere fortnight after the spilled blood of their mistress stained the scaffold stairs, Anne Boleyn’s maids pledged their fealty to me. It happened almost effortlessly; there were no tears, no outbursts, no angry words. Still, the weight of our shared betrayal sat heavily upon me. When each girl knelt before the throne, I found myself gazing at the woven tapestries on the wall, desperate to hide the shame’

‘Jane Ashley was the last person I wanted to find the necklace. She hated Anne Boleyn ever since the queen and Lady Rochford had conspired to get her exiled from court and taken to mocking her with the name Mistress Marchpane. Mistress Ashley never forgave her for it, and neither did she forget. I had yet to see a piece of the sweet she loved so much cross her lips since.’

‘the danger of distraction and aimed always to descend on them either very early or very late, when their cult traditions were dormant. The live charge of their daytime customs was all too apparent when his colleague, Richard Pollard, arrived at Canterbury in September 1538 to bring down the shrine of Thomas Becket. At once he seemed to forget his brief and ‘buzid [himself] . . . in prayer with offeryngs’.

‘for the traces of their forebears. Ten days after the bill for the suppression of monasteries became statute law in 1536, Thomas de la Warr explained to Cromwell his attachment to the priory at Boxgrove (West Sussex), ‘[where] lyeth many of my annsytorys and also my wyffys mother’, and his plan at the last for himself to be joined with that past, ‘[I] have made a power chapel to be buryd in’.’

‘My pride had been wounded by the rapid ascension of this son of a carpenter. What hypocrisy. I was the daughter of no one, given my place at court by those better than me. We were one and the same. Yet, I begrudged every crumb sent his way. Smeaton had caused no harm to me, save revelling in the attention lavished upon him. Attention I coveted. The interrogations began soon after my careless words.’

‘Holbein's working drawing of Henry VIII for the left-hand side of the Whitehall wall painting was kept in The Devonshire Collections until the 1950s, when, in lieu of death duties, the government allocated it to the National Portrait Gallery, London. Numerous copies were made of Holbein's painted portrait, a supreme work of royal propaganda, including this version, which is attributed to… Hans Eworth’