Great Tales from English History, Book 2 (27 page)

The original manuscripts of the Paston Letters are in the British Library (Catalogue nos. 27443-58, 34888-9, 43488-91, 39848-9,
36988, 33597, 45099), but you can read them online in several versions from the Old English to the modern abridged edition
on various electronic libraries most easily accessed from
www.google.com
(because individual addresses tend to be long and change frequently). The University of Virginia’s online library at
www.lib.virginia.edu
has all 421 letters or 1380 kilobytes’ worth!

Starkey, David,’Henry VI’s Old Blue Gown’,
The Court Historian,
vol. 4.1 (April 1999).

1432-85: The House of Theodore

Knowing that Pembrokeshire is Tudor country gives an extra dimension to visiting this south-west corner of Wales. Henry VII
was born inside the dramatic thirteenth-century curtain walls of Pembroke Castle,
www.pembrokecastle.co.uk
, ten miles from Milford Haven where he landed in 1485 to claim the throne.

1461-70, 1471-83: House of York: Edward IV,
Merchant King

Warwick Castle, the home of Warwick the Kingmaker, who made and was then unmade by Edward IV, was recently voted
Britain’s most popular castle, ahead of the Tower of London. With its gardens landscaped by‘Capability’ Brown in a later century,
it is today impressively maintained by Madame Tussaud’s:
www.warwick-castle.co.uk.

Seward, Desmond,
The Wars of the Roses
(London, Robinson), 1995.

1474: William Caxton

Caxton is buried within yards of the site of his printing press, in St Margaret’s, the little church that is so often overlooked
in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. Along with his edition of
The Canterbury Tales,
the British Library has digitised a number of his works on
www.bl.uk.
To read his charming, often eccentric, publisher’s prefaces, visit
www.bartleby.com.

Painter, George,
William Caxton: A Quincentenary Biography of England’s First Printer
(London, Chatto & Windus), 1976.

1483: Whodunit? The Princes in the Tower

The little princes were lodged by their uncle in the relatively luxurious royal apartments of the Tower. Visit the dungeons
and watch the water come creeping under Traitors’ Gate to enjoy the sinister chill of this fortress, prison, and high-class
beheading place:
www.hrp.org.uk.
Dockray presents the contemporary evidence on the mystery, so you can make up your own mind.

Dockray, Keith,
Richard II A Source Book
(Stroud, Sutton), 1997.

1484: The Cat and the Rat

’Now is the winter of our discontent…’ Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film portrayal of Richard III is the ultimate version of Shakespeare’s
crookback baddie. It might seem strange that the fullest and fairest account of this film is to be found on
www.r3.org
, the website of the Richard III Society, founded to clear and glorify the King’s name. But that is the nature of this deservedly
thriving association of historical enthusiasts.

1485;
The Battle of Bosworth Field

This account of the Battle of Bosworth is based on the recent book by Michael K.Jones. Virginia Henderson examines the legend
of the Tudor Rose in her article on Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey, while Illuminata’s definitive compendium on heraldic
badges contains all you could possibly need to know about symbolic roses, Tudor and otherwise.

Henderson, Virginia,‘Retrieving the “Crown in the Hawthorn Bush”: the origins of the badges of Henry VII’, in
Traditions and Transformations in Late Medieval England,
ed. Douglas Biggs, Sharon D. Michalove and A. Compton Reeves (Leiden, Brill), 2002.

Jones, Michael K.,
Bosworth 1485
(Stroud, Tempus), 2002.

Siddons, Michael Powell,
Heraldic Badges of England and Wales
(London, Illuminata Publishers for the Society of Antiquaries of London), 2005.

1486-99: Double Trouble

Again,
www.r3.org
, the website dedicated to his bitterest enemy, contains the most comprehensive and the latest material on Henry VII, and it
is difficult not to recommend another visit to Westminster Abbey to view Henry’s eerily lifelike death mask in the museum
in the corner of the Cloisters.

1497: Fish‘ri Ships

www.matthew.co.uk
relates the recent recreation of Cabot’s historic voyage of exploration and the building of the modern replica Matthew, which
can be visited in Bristol and, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, cruised upon in the still waters of Bristol Harbour.

Pope, Peter E.,
The Many Landfalls of John Cabot
(Toronto, University of Toronto Press), 1976.

1500:
Fork In, Fork Out

Stanley Chrimes wrote the classic biography. Thompson’s collection of essays re-evaluates the idea that Henry was a‘new’ and
non-medieval monarch.

Chrimes, Stanley B.,
Henry VII
(New Haven, Yale University Press), 1999

Thompson, B. (ed.),
The Reign of Henry VII
(Stanford, Stanford University Press), 199$.

1509-33: King Henry VIII’s‘Great Matter’

Built by Thomas Wolsey, Hampton Court breathes the grandiose spirit of its founder and, even more, that of the man who confiscated
it from the cardinal, Henry VIII. The King enjoyed three honeymoons here, could entertain five hundred diners at one sitting,
and worked up a sweat in the‘real’ tennis court. In the garden is the famous maze.
www.hrp.org.uk.

Thurley, Simon,
Hampton Court: A Social and Architectural History
(London, Yale University Press), 2003.

1525:‘Lei
There Be Light’
—
William Tyndale and the English Bible

This account is largely based upon Brian Moynahan’s revealing and passionate book.

Moynahan, Brian,
William Tyndale: If God Spare My Life
(London, Little, Brown), 2002.

1535:
Thomas More and His Wonderful‘No-Place’

To read the complete text of Utopia visit the electronic library of Fordham University that contains so many wonderful original
sources:
www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/thomasmore-utopia.html.
Thomas More himself is buried in two places: his body in the Tower of London, and his head, retrieved by his devoted daughter
Margaret Roper, in the Roper Vault at St Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury.

1533-7:
Divorced, Beheaded, Died
…

Scarisbrick and Starkey share the honours in the large and distinguished field of those who have written about Henry VIII,
his wives and his world.

Scarisbrick, J. J.,
Henry VIII
(London, Eyre & Spottiswoode),1968. Starkey, David, Six
Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII
(London, Chatto & Windus), 2003.

1536;
The Pilgrimage of Grace

In recent years the work of Eamon Duffy, Christopher Haigh and Diarmaid MacCulloch has done honour to the strength of traditional
Catholic faith and practice in sixteenth-century England. They have shown how the Reformation did not so much reform as re-form
— and in a variety of complex ways.

Duffy, Eamon,
The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England C.1400-C.1580
(London, Yale University Press), 1992.

Haigh, Christopher (ed.),
The English Reformation Revised
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 1987.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid,
Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700
(London, Penguin Books), 2004.

1539-47:…
Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

Henry VIII
is
buried in the centre of the nave in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the company of the wife for whom he overturned his country
and who bore him the healthy male heir he desired so much.
www.royal.gov.uk.

1547-53 Boy King
—
Edward VI,‘The Godly Imp

Some grammar schools apart, there are few Tudor remnants dating from the boy king’s short reign — and, sadly, an almost endless
catalogue of Christian art was destroyed by the whitewash brush and the plundering fingers of those who‘purified’ the Church
in his name. Jordan’s two-volume work is the best survey of the reign.

Jordan, W. K., vol .I,
Edward VI: The Young King;
vol 2,
Edward VI: The Threshold of Power
(London, George Allen & Unwin), 1968,1970.

1553:
Lady Jane Grey
—
the Nine-day Queen

Jane Grey spent her youth in Sudeley Castle at Winchcombe near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, where Henry VIII’s last wife,
Catherine Parr, lies buried. In the Civil War it was for a time the headquarters of the dashing Prince Rupert.
www.sudeleycastle.co,uk
,

1553
-8: Bloody Mary and the Fires of Smithfield

If one man created the legend of Bloody Mary, it was John Foxe, who painstakingly compiled the stories of her victims and
brought them together in his
Book of Martyrs
— probably the bestselling book of the sixteenth-century and, arguably, the most influential. For the complete text visit
www.ccel.org/f/foxe.
Jasper Ridley’s lucid modern account is largely based on Foxe.

Ridley, Jasper,
Bloody Mary’s Martyrs
(London, Constable), 2001,

1557:
Robert Recorde and His Intelligence Sharpener

The School of Mathematics and Statistics at Scotland’s University of St Andrews has produced an excellent account of Recorde’s
life and work on:
www-gap.des,st-and,ac.
You can find the details of his horseshoe brain-teaser in Adam Hart-Davis’s book:

Hart-Davis, Adam,
What the Tudors and Stuarts Did for Us
(London, Boxtree), 2002.

1559:
Elizabeth
—
Queen of Hearts

David Starkey concentrates on the early years of Elizabeth. Christopher Haigh’s‘profile in power’ is the best condensed analysis
of her life.

Haigh, Christopher,
Elizabeth I
(London, Longman), 1988.

Starkey, David,
Elizabeth
(London, Chatto & Windus), 2000,

1571;
That’s Entertainment

The contemporary descriptions in this chapter come from Liza Picard’s brilliant evocation. If you can’t visit the Globe in
Southwark, you can enjoy Torn Stoppard’s whimsical but scenically accurate
Shakespeare in Love,
now on DVD.

Picard, Liza,
Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 2003.

1585:
Sir Walter Ralegh and the Lost Colony

Ralegh once owned Sherborne Castle
in
Dorset, though there is not much left of it today after Oliver Cromwell’s Civil War siege:
www.sherbornecastle.com.
And, in the spirit of Sir Walter himself, let me not forget to mention my own biography of the great adventurer, happily
still in print.

Lacey, Robert,
Sir Walter Ralegh
(London, Phoenix Press), 2000.

1560-87: Mary Queen of Scots

Inns and castles where Mary Queen of Scots is said to have stayed are almost as numerous as those that boast‘Queen Elizabeth
Slept Here’. Tutbury overlooks the Dove Valley in Staffordshire: tel.: 01283 812129. Nothing much remains of Fotheringhay
on the River Nene near Oundle in Northamptonshire where she was executed, but nearby is the beautiful fifteenth-century church
of St Mary and All Saints. Antonia Fraser’s biography is definitive.

Fraser, Antonia,
Mary Queen of Scots
(London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 1969.

1588: Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada

Drake lived at Buckland Abbey, eleven miles north of Plymouth. This beautiful thirteenth-century Cistercian monastery had
been
spared destruction in the Dissolution when Henry VIII granted it to Sir Richard Grenville, whose grandson Richard, himself
a naval hero, sold it to Sir Francis, Tel: 01822 853607,

Cummings, John,
Francis Drake: The Lives of a Hero
(London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 1995.

1592;
Sir Johns Jakes

Named in honour of the modern populariser of the water closet,
www.thomas-crapper.com
graphically sets out the tale of sewage through the ages in more detail than most would consider strictly necessary. Again,
Adam Hart-Davis provides a lively and intelligent summary.

Hart-Davis, Adam,
What the Tudors and Stuarts Did for Us
(London, Boxtree), 2002.

1603: By Time Surprised

Outliving three husbands, that other Elizabeth, Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury, built up a fortune that she devoted
to building the redoubtable Hardwick Hall, near Chesterfield in Derbyshire. Tel: 01246 850430. Mercifully spared the‘improvements’
of later generations, it is a remarkably vivid and accurate example of a great Elizabethan country house.

1605: 5/11:
England’s First Terrorist

The cellar where Guy Fawkes stacked his gunpowder was destroyed in the fire of 1834 that devastated the medieval Houses of
Parliament, but thanks
to
the Tradescants you can still see the lantern Guy Fawkes carried in 1605 in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Fraser, Antonia,
The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in
1605 (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 1996.

1611: King James’s Authentical’ Bible

James VI and I’s own prolific writings have been skilfully edited by Rhodes, Richards and Marshall. McGrath tells the story
of the Bible he inspired.

McGrath, Alister,
In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible
(London, Hodder & Stoughton), 2001.

Rhodes, Neil, Richards, Jennifer, and Marshall, Joseph,
King
James VI and I: Selected Writings
(Aldershot, Ashgate), 2003.

1616:‘Spoilt Child’ and the Pilgrim Fathers

The sentimental Disney cartoon film Pocahontas enraged her descendants, who set out their objections on their website:
www. powhatan. org.
The best source on the Pilgrim Fathers remains William Bradford’s first-hand account which is extracted, along with many
other original documents, on the excellent
www.mayflowerhistory.com.