Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

'the baby will be the next heir to the throne and she tells me that a woman can count how long it takes. She says it is ten months from your last course, and I will be able to tell if it is a boy or a girl by how it lies in the belly, and whether I crave sweet things or salt. If I feel seasick in the first months the baby will not die at sea. If I put away my kittens from my rooms he will be an honourable man.'

'They have to be together, they cannot help themselves; everyone can see that. But there will be no talk of marriage ever again: William Cecil had seen to that. It was he who spread the rumours that Dudley would kill his wife, and it was he who told everyone that the country would never bear a Dudley as king. It doesn't really matter if either of these things is true or false: the whole of Christendom believes it'

"I know that the queen won't want to marry you to a lord who has his own claim to the throne. And she won't let you marry while she is unmarried herself, and risk you having a son who would have a stronger claim than she does. I can see what the Seymours are thinking: obviously the queen won't want a Tudor-Seymour boy at court until she has a husband and son of her own."

'The impecuniosity of his early years doubtless to some extent explains his assiduous attention to his financial interests for the rest of his life, the meticulous fostering of his revenues, and the prominence of his trusted financial agents during his reign. He could not do other than rely greatly upon those who had had experience of financial management in the past'

'intervened in deliberations, even sometimes in judicial matters, and specifically sought councillors' opinions, particularly in matters of foreign policy, is clear. It is equally clear that it was advice that he sought, and that the ultimate decision in matters about which he wished to decide for himself remained with him. There is no hint that the council or any councillors would, or could overbear him.'

'It is also an unfortunate circumstance that the evidence surviving for the judicial activities of council, although not very extensive, is much greater than that for the far more important and basic work of the king's councillors, i.e., the work of giving the king counsel on any and all the multifarious affairs of state. This circumstance has resulted in a distortion of our picture of the council under Henry VII.'

'Elizabeth chooses this moment to restore our title as Princesses of the Blood. In death, my mother has achieved the ambition of her life: to have us recognised by Elizabeth, named as her cousins, defined as royal, titled as 'Princess', and so the first of all the possible heirs. My mother, God forgive her, would have thought it cheaply bought by her death, well worth the sacrifice.'

'I don't care for anything at court. I have become a young lady of the royal house again. I am restored. I can hardly believe that I ever had a sister Jane at all, for no-one ever mentions her. I had no father, I had no sister Jane. Little Mary and I are Queen Mary's loyal maids-in-waiting and my mother accompanies her everywhere as her favoured cousin and senior lady at court.'

'The Cornish insurrection was ostensibly not against the king but against the counsellors who had advised him to raise the taxation voted in the parliament of January 1497, largely for preparations to resist the threatened invasion by James IV and Warbeck. The most serious feature of the insurrection was the ease with which a large number of rebels were able to march up from Cornwall to near London'

'The Treaty of Medina del Campo, the first substantial alliance into which Henry VII entered, apart from its somewhat delusive provisions aimed at France, not only foreshadowed the later marriage between his son and heir and a Spanish princess, but also included a reciprocal undertaking that neither sovereign would harbour or aid any rebels against the other.'

'When, therefore, Lambert Simnel appeared in Dublin, suitably trained beforehand, the Irish lords had no difficulty in deciding that he was the earl of Warwick, the very son of George, duke of Clarence, who had been born in Dublin in 1449, and who, with his alleged son, could be regarded as in some sense an 'Irish' prince.'

'The failure of Lovel and his fellow-plotters had shown that the Yorkists, if they were to challenge Henry, must have a Yorkist prince to set up against him. But there was no male descendant of York who was available and suitable for so formidable an undertaking. Edward IV's sons, Edward V and Richard duke of York, had never left the Tower of London, so far as anyone knew,'

'Much more menacing were the circumstances which enabled the first of the Yorkist imposters, Lambert Simnel, to become crowned king of England in Dublin, and, with the heir of York, John, earl of Lincoln, and Burgundian and Irish help, actually to give battle at Stoke in June 1487.'

'who had been attainted under Richard III 'late in dede and not in right king' or under Edward IV, whether those who had rebelled and fled to the continent in 1483 or later, or whether persons who had incurred penalties for their faithful service to Henry VI, now received their alleviation. Not only the still living but some of the dead got restitution, for what it was worth - Henry VI himself, Queen Margaret'

'I read, with growing disbelief, this sermon - the only goodbye from my older sister that I will ever get. I read it again, only this time I am furious. I really don't know what she thinks I am going to do with this miserable letter. I don't know what good she thinks it will do me... She wasn't anxious to tell me that she loves me, that she is thinking of me, that she is heartbroken that we won't grow up together.'

"You're in prison, condemned to death, your husband a prisoner condemned to death. There is nothing here that I would be jealous of! I want to live. I want to be married and have children. I want to wear beautiful gowns and dance! I want life. And I know you do, too. Nobody could want to die for their faith at sixteen. In England! When it is your own cousin on the throne? She will forgive you!"

'Before Henry had left the continent, he had sent letters under his signet initialled 'H. R.', and, when in his first parliament the question arose of attainting 'Richard, late duke of Gloucester, calling and naming himself by usurpation King Richard III', and others, it was convenient to accuse them of having committed treason on 21 August against King Henry.'

'He owed much, perhaps everything, in his final progress towards Bosworth, to either Welsh support or at least Welsh abstention from opposition in the crucial days of August 1485. He could and did make some political capital out of his Welsh ancestry, and on occasion flaunted the red dragon banner of Cadwallader... but there is no evidence that he regarded himself as primarily a Welshman'

"Well, I shall go home," I decide. I sound determined, but secretly I am hoping she will order me to her house in London, or command me to wait here for my father to rescue me.
"You can't. They've closed the gates on the Tower... D'you think I would be here with you if I could leave? You were a queen; but now you are a prisoner. You bolted the gates to keep your people in; now they are bolted to keep you in."

'"You cannot be crowned king," I say quietly to him. "Only if parliament asks it, and I endow you with it. You are not named as Edward's heir. I am. If I am to be the queen you have to be my husband, not a king."
"Guildford is king consort," his mother interrupts me, coming behind us. "He'll be crowned king at your side."
"No." I feel, wildly, that this is worse than my usurpation. I, at least, am Tudor.'

"We didn't expect this, we didn't prepare for this, but he isn't well, and he wants this settled now. You can do that for him. It would be godly work to ease his troubled conscience. You marry Guildford Dudley, take to childbed, and the king knows that he is getting two young people, raised in the reformed Church, with two experienced fathers to advise them, and a boy in the cradle to come after him on the throne."

'It is as well that I don't set my heart on handsome Ned Seymour as a husband. His father's return to power is short-lived and ends in his death. He was caught conspiring against John Dudley, and arrested, charged and then executed for treason. The head of the family is dead, and the family ruined again.'

'My baby sister, Mary, was born into original sin and cannot grow out of it. She is quite tiny. She is as pretty as a little miniature version of our sister, Katherine, tiny as a doll. My lady mother would have sent her away as a baby to be raised far from us, and spare us the shame, but my father had too much compassion for his last stunted child, and so she lives with us.'

"It's no use at all, is it?" I said.
"What isn't?" He rubbed his hand on the ragged breeches.
"Being angry with you. You don't care a bit whether you give yourself pneumonia, or get eaten by bears, or worry me half to death, so you?"
"Well, I'm no much worrit about bears. They sleep in the winter, ye know."

"You have been gone from your place for most of a year. Your first husband will have begun to reconcile himself to your loss. Much as he may have loved you, loss is common to all men, and we are given means of overcoming it for our good. He will have started, perhaps, to build a new life. Would it do good for you to desert the man who needs you so deeply, and whom you love"

"Aye," he said flatly, not looking at me, "aye, I suppose I must. I should have done so before... but I was coward enough to hope I need not." His voice was bitter and he kept his head bowed, hands clasped loosely around his knees. "I didn't use to think myself a coward, but I am. I should have made Randall kill me, but I did not. I had no reason to live, but I was not brave enough to die."

'Around this time, on 1 November 1455, the marriage of Margaret Beaufort to Edmund Tudor took place. It had been almost definitely arranged by Henry VI. As Margaret was the deceased John Beaufort's only child, her marriage to Edmund would easily solve the financial problem of how he could live in the style of an earl. Edmund and Margaret wed at Bletsoe Castle, Margaret's birthplace.'

'It was now necessary to find a suitable (i.e. wealthy and well-connected) bride for each of the new earls, and as a first step, on 24 March 1453 they were jointly granted the wardship and marriage of one of England's richest heiresses, the Lady Margaret Beaufort, only surviving daughter and heiress of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.'

'"I curse you with knowledge, Jonathan Randall - I give you the hour of your death." ... I could see the lines of Frank's genealogical chart as though they were drawn on the mortar lines between the stones of the wall, and the names listed by them. "Jonathan Wolverton Randall," I said softly, reading it from the stones. "Born third September 1705. Died -" He made a convulsive movement towards me, but not fast enough'