"The Bastard Princess" by Gemma Lawrence

I just finished a six-week course on the Tudor dynasty, offered (free, with some payment options) by the University of Roehampton in London. The course covered British history from 1485 to 1603, roughly the period from Henry VII through Elizabeth I. It was a fascinating look at a tumultuous period, including the English Reformation, Henry VIII and his six wives, the religious conflict that continued even with the Reformation, and how all three of Henry’s surviving children occupied the throne.

It was a good introduction to reading The Bastard Princess, a historical novel by British author Gemma Lawrenceabout the life of Elizabeth from childhood to her half-sister Mary becoming queen.

It is one compelling novel.

The story begins in 1603, the last year of Elizabeth’s life. She’s looking backwards at her family, her times, what she accomplished, and, most of all, how she learned to survive. Lawrence writes the account in the first person, reading almost like a journal or diary, and that perspective provides a sense of immediacy, urgency, and individuality. The Elizabeth that emerges from these pages is a girl who loves her father, understands early on how easy it is to make a misstep that can lead to imprisonment or death, and quietly mourns her mother, executed when Elizabeth was a young child:

“They said my mother had never my father; she had never been the Queen. They said she had done bad things. And then…they stopped talking of her at all. Her pictures and portraits disappeared from the walls…

Gemma Lawrence

“I was no longer to be called My Lady Princess or Your Highness. I was now just the Lady Elizabeth, the King’s bastard daughter. It was though I had never had a mother. But I remembered her…”

We walk with Elizabeth in her gardens, sit with her in her rooms, listen as she considers all that has happened and is happening, and become shocked when she falls in love with her stepmother’s husband. We see her learn from her tutors and how she teaches herself the art of survival. The story captures our attention and doesn’t let go. It shows Elizabeth as a highly intelligent, highly observant young woman.

Lawrence, an independently published author living in Cornwall in the U.K., is the author of a considerable number of historical novels. Her series include The Story of Catherine Howard, The Chronicles of Matilda, Lady Anne, and Elizabeth of England, of which The Bastard Princess is the first of eight.

Gemma Lawrence has told an enthralling story here. The Bastard Princess gives us an Elizabeth who is flesh and blood, always conscious of who she is, and always watchful of those who might both help and harm her. 

Peter Ackroyd’s “Tudors”

They ruled England for less than a century. But their influence and impact was enormous, and reaches to our contemporary times.

They were the Tudors – Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547), Edward VI (1547-1553), Mary (1553-1558), and Elizabeth I (1558-1603). They ruled England from 1509 to 1603, and their reigns included the English Reformation, the first English explorations of the New World, the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada, and the cultural explosion that was Elizabethan England.

Their reigns also experienced plots, attempted overthrows, and more burnings at the stake than any other period in English history (usually for heresy, of both the Protestant and Catholic varieties). And who better to tell the story of this powerful family and the period they shaped and lived through than Peter Ackroyd?

Tudors is the second volume in Ackroyd’s History of England, the first being Foundation, which covered the beginnings to the reign of Henry VII.

Edward VI

And what a great story Ackroyd tells. The story of 16^th century England is the story of religion. No other issue had as much impact on governments, power alignments, politics and the royal court than did religion. While the impetus for the English Reformation was Henry VIII’s desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, because of no male heir, the Reformation was actually multi-faceted, with ebbs and flows by the Reformers; Henry himself continuing as a practicing Catholic with the exception of acknowledging the Pope’s sovereignty; the dissolution of the great monasteries, abbeys, convents and friaries; and constant changes in diplomacy and continental power politics.

Mary

Ackroyd tells the story chronologically and tells the story factually. The worst religious excesses (not counting Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries) occurred in the two shortest reigns – the boy king Edward VI and his immediate successor and half-sister Mary. The first was more to the Reformer extreme; the latter to the Catholic reactionary stream (including the burning of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, at the stake on Oxford). Elizabeth would steer the nation’s religious life back to the middle, and it was in her reign that the final shape of the Anglican church known today came to be.

Elizabeth I

Because this is history focused on the country’s rulers, it’s also a history of the powerful courtiers, religious leaders, and aristocrats who surrounded them and often opposed them. Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, numerous dukes, Mary Queen of Scots, Lady Jane Grey (queen for nine days), the Seymours, the Duke of Essex, William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, among many others, are treated fully. Treason was not taken lightly; many aristocrats and would-be royals lost their heads or were hung, drawn and quartered.

Tudors is the story of sixteenth-century England and the Tudor family that dominated it, in all its color, pageantry, glory and gore. It is also the story of the development of religion in England, and how Anglicanism fianlly took hold (with portents of the Puritans to come).

Related:

My review of Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation.

Reading Peter Ackroyd.

A Revolt over a Prayer Book.

Top illustration: Henry the VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1537.

A Tale of Two Gardens

For decades during the reign of Elizabeth I of England, two men circled around the queen, competing for influence and power, vying with each other, plotting against each other, and often working with each other in common cause.

William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598), was Elizabeth’s chief advisor, served in multiple high offices including Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer, member of Parliament, leader of the Privy Council. and diplomat. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-1588), had known Elizabeth since they were children, was a suitor for her hand in marriage, a rumored lover of the queen, leader of the English army during the Dutch revolt against the Spanish in 1586-87, and known to be Elizabeth’s favorite.

The two men vied for influence and power. They used every asset at their disposal.

Including gardens.

As historian Trea Martyn explains, in Queen Elizabeth in the Garden: A Story of Love, Rivalry, and Spectacular Gardens, the queen loved gardens. She had spent much time in the garden growing up at Hatfield House, and she had even been given permission to walk in the garden when her sister Mary imprisoned her in the Tower of London. And gardens, and the trees, plants, and flowers they contained, had a very different meaning in Elizabethan England than they do today. The names of plants and flowers could hold double meanings (William Shakespeare knew that). Gardens were places of rest and repose, but they could also be places where a romantic, and often dramatic, rendezvous could unfold.

And if Elizabeth loved gardens, then Cecil and Dudley would attempt to outdo each other to give her the most spectacular and memorable experience.

William Cecil

Dudley’s estate (given to him by Elizabeth) was Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire; the story of what Dudley and Elizabeth was popularized (and somewhat embroidered) by Sir Walter Scott in his novel Kenilworth. Cecil’s estate was Theobalds in Hertfordshire.

It’s difficult to grasp what the two men achieved with their gardens, partially because of what they were able to do. Dudley added a lake and staged an elaborate pageant that included mermaids; Cecil did a total makeover of his gardens with the aim of pleasing the queen at every turn.

Robert Dudley

These aren’t the only gardens that feature in Elizabeth’s story (and Martyn’s book), but they are the most prominent, and Martyn goes into incredible detail to describe them. In the process, she provides an unusual look at Elizabethan power politics (and romance) played out against the backdrop of international conflict, religion still established itself in England, and power politics among the courtiers.

Today, Theobalds exists as a park; the palace was destroyed during the civil war in the 1640s. Kenilworth, too, fell victim to the same civil war; the Parliamentarians blew up the northern wall to disable the castle’s military use; in the process, they destroyed the gardens. The famous lake was drained and turned over to soldiers for farming.

Queen Elizabeth in the Garden is a fascinating account of a familiar period, and yet told with an unusual angle that adds color and detail not previously recognized.

Top photograph: a recreation of the overall plan of Kenilworth Castle.

Bottom photograph: What the palace at Theobalds looked like.