The Dark Rose Quotes

“the summer wore on, Nanette’s pessimistic views were born out by events. Prices were again rising steeply, the coinage had been devalued again, foreign traders were becoming wary of accepting English gold for anything, and the number of the unemployed was rising to a level where they began to roam the countryside in bands, getting a living by robbery. The poor laws provided for indigents who came within the towns to be provided with work, food and lodgings, to pay for which a rate was levied from the town residents, but out in the country there was no control, and workmen who had been turned off because their masters could no longer afford to pay their wages might wander without ever coming within the scope of the law. In September, at the same time as Elizabeth, who had conceived again immediately, gave birth to her third child, a daughter they named Jane, a rebellion broke out in Norfolk. Like the Pilgrimage”
― Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Dark Rose

“The man who invites the wolf in over his threshold is no longer in a position to ask him to leave. That is a truth it were better none of us ever had to learn.’ BOOK THREE THE ROSE AND THE CHERRY Her lusty ruby ruddes Resemble the rose buddes; Her lippes soft and merry Enblooméd like the cherry: It were an heavenly bliss Her sugared mouth to kiss.”
― Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Dark Rose

“in. I was glad of the break with Rome. I never felt that it was good that our affairs should be governed by an outside power, or that the fruits of our labour should be paid to a prelate who never set foot in the country. But it seems few are willing to go thus far and no further – not even the King himself.’ ‘But Paul – the King is a true Catholic. No-one could be more devoted than him. He hates heresy. He is a true son of the Church.”
― Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Dark Rose

“Nor for a woman,’ said another. ‘My bairns are growing wild for want of order.’ ‘But the factory is to your advantage as well as mine. If you all work at home, I have to employ men to bring you the wool and collect the cloth, and those men have to have horses or mules. It costs more, and so I pay you less. Don’t you see that?’ ‘Aye, that’s very well, but we had liefer be at home for all that. We have not been able to work for much of this winter. We could have worked if we had been at home.’ ‘Well I promise you that I will think about it,’ Paul said. ‘If I were to close the factory, it would take time to arrange matters, so for the time being you must continue with it the way it is. Does everyone who works in the factory agree with you?”
― Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Dark Rose

“Aye, and another thing,’ said a woman, ‘it’s cruel hard to take a man away from his home, when there’s work to be done there. I cannat chop t’wood and dig up t’clamps, as well as everything else I have to do, and when my man gets back from t’mill he is too cold and too tired to do it. When he worked upstairs he helped me with ploughing and sowing and tending t’beasts.’ ‘But what is it you want me to do?’ Paul said helplessly. ‘Close t’factory, Master,’ Will said concisely, ‘that’s what.’ ‘Let us go back to the old way,’ said someone else. ‘It’s not natural for a man to be working away from his home.”
― Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Dark Rose

“The talk was mostly about the weather and the difficulties it had brought. Ploughing was still impossible, so only quick-growing crops would be planted this year, which meant shortage next winter; more sheep and cattle than usual had died because of the extended winter, which meant shortage next year; hundreds of peasants had died, which meant there would be fewer people to do the work of the land, and that, too, would mean shortage. It was very bad. Master and man alike discussed the trouble, united by their common predicament; and master and man alike looked gaunt and pale in the bitter winter sunlight.”
― Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Dark Rose