To indicate to what degree and where this book reproduces authentic history would need, however, far greater space than can be spared in a Note. This is a novel, and much in it is, necessarily, imaginary. But I have been scrupulous to preserve undistorted any fact known to me, with two minor exceptions.*1 In broad outline the account which I have given of historical events is as correct as I have been able to make it, and there are besides, indistinguishable to the reader among the imaginary scenes and persons, many such intimate yet authentic facts as the devotion of Aske’s servant to his master, the dislike of Anne Boleyn for monkeys, or the quarrel of Mr. Patchett’s servant with the ostler at Cambridge. The music of the song on p. 610 may be found in the Antiquaries’ Journal, vol. XV, 1935, p. 21.
*1 The name of Robert Aske’s servant was Robert Wall, but the name was changed to avoid confusion. The disposition of the buildings of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, was not that which is here described. In one important particular I have differed from other writers upon the Pilgrimage of Grace. My authority for the King’s vengence upon Robert Aske is Wriothesley’s detailed account of the execution of the leaders of the Pilgrimage, in which he mentions the punishment which each received, and distinguishes between the hanging of Sir Robert Constable and that of Robert Aske (Wriothesley, I, 65).
Appendix II: List of works consulted
Documents and texts
Antiquaries’ Journal, XV, 1935. Two mediaeval love songs.
Archaeologia, XLIII, 1871. Inventories and Valuations of Religious Houses...
Ascham, R. English Works (var. ed.).
Best, H. Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641... farming and account books of Henry Best, Surtees Society, 1857.
Berners, Juliana. A treatyse of fysshinge wyth an angle (facs.), 1903; The Boke of St. Albans (facs.), 1881.
Cavendish, G. Life of Thomas Wolsey, Temple Classics, 1899.
Chambers, E.K., and Sidgwick, F. Early English Lyrics, 1907.
Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, 1835–43, vol. V, pp. 100 and 221. Ground plan and charters of St. Andrew’s Priory... of Marrigg (Marrick)...
Cox, J.C. William Stapleton and the Pilgrimage of Grace, East Riding Antiquarian Society, X, 1902.
Deputy Keeper of the Public Records. Third Report; App. II, pp. 247–51.
Dugdale, W. Origines Juridiciales, 1780; Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Cayley, 1817–30.
English Historical Review, V, 1890. Notes and Documents, pp. 330–45, 550–73.
Early English Text Society:
Caxton’s Mirrour of the World, E.S. 110.
Early English Meals and Manners, O.S. 32.
Prologues and Epilogues of W. Caxton, O.S. 176.
Songs, Carols and other Miscellaneous Poems, E.S. 101.
Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, O.S. 91.
Fitzherbert, A. The boke of husbandry (var. ed.).
Flower, W. The Visitation of Yorkshire... 1563–1564, Harleian Soc., XVI, 1881.
Foster, J. (ed). The Visitation of Yorkshire... 1584–5, 1875; The Register of admissions to Gray’s Inn, 1521–1889, 1889.
Henderson, E.F. (tr. and ed.). Select historical documents of the Middle Ages, 1896.
Inventory of the Wardrobe and Plate, etc., of Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond..., Camden Miscellany, 1857.
Leland, J. Itinerary, ed. L. T. Smith, 1906–10.
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer and J. Gairdner, 22 vols., 1862–1932.
Merriman, R.B. Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, 1902.
Notes and Queries. 11th Series, IV, p. 441, ‘Robert Aske’.
Percy, Henry Algernon, Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon, 5th Earl of Northumberland, ed. T. Percy, 1827.
Plumpton Correspondence, Camden Society, 1839.
Raine, J. (ed). Memorials of the Priory of Hexham, Surtees Society, 1864–5; Testamenta Eboracensia, IV, V, VI, Surtees Society, pp. 53, 79, 106.
Skelton, J. Poetical Works (var. ed.).
State Papers published under the authority of His Majesty’s Commission, 1830–52.
Stonor Letters and Papers, ed. C.L. Kingsford. Royal Hist. Society, 1919.
Stow, J. Survey of London, ed. C.L. Kingsford, 1908, 2 vols. Tanner, T. Notitia Monastica, 1744.
Tonge, T. Visitation of the Northern Counties, Surtees Society, 1863.
Tusser, T. Five hundred points of Good Husbandry, ed. D. Hartley, 1931.
Wright, T. Three Chapters of Letters on the Suppression of the Monasteries, Camden Society, 1834.
Wriothesley, C. Chronicle, Camden Society, 1875–7.
Yorke, P., 2nd Earl of Hardwicke. Miscellaneous State Papers from 1501–1726, 1778.
Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1912. The Suppression of the Yorkshire Monasteries.
Modern works
Baskerville, G. ‘An attempt to divorce an ex-Nun, 1541’, English Historical Review, 1936; English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries, 1937.
Bennet, H.S. The Pastons and their England, 1922.
Bolland, W.C. The Year Books, 1921.
Boothroyd, B. The History of the Ancient Borough of Pontefract, 1807.
Brewer, J.S. The reign of Henry VIII... to the death of Wolsey, London, 1884 (Prefaces reprinted from the Calendar of Letters and Papers... Henry VIII, vols. I–IV).
Chambers, R.W. Thomas More, 1935.
Clayton, J. Robert Kett and the Norfolk Rising, 1912.
Coulton, C.C. Social Life in Britain, 1918.
Crisp, F. Mediaeval Gardens, 1924.
Cunningham, W. Growth of English Industry, Vol. I, 4th ed., 1905.
de Fonblanque, E.B. Annals of the House of Percy..., 1887.
Deanesley, M. The Lollard Bible, 1920.
Dictionary of National Biography.
Dixon, R.W. History of the Church of England from the abolition of the Roman jurisdiction..., 2nd ed., 1902.
Dodds, M.H. and R. The Pilgrimage of Grace..., 1915.
Froude, J.A. History of England..., vols. II and III (var. ed.).
Gotch, J.A. The Growth of the English House, 1910.
Gower, Lord R.C.S. Leveson. The Tower of London, 1901–2.
Hartley, D.R., and Elliott, M.M. Life and Work of the People of England (The 16th Century), 1925.
Holdsworth, W.S. A History of English Law, 1896.
Hugo, T. Mediaeval Nunneries... of Somerset, 1867; The last ten years of the Priory of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, 1865.
Jacka, H.T. The Dissolution of the English Nunneries, 1917 (Unpublished Thesis deposited at the University of London).
Kingsford, C.L. ‘A London Merchant’s House... 1360–1614’, Archaeologia, LXXIV; Prejudice and Promise in 15th Century England, 1925.
Larwood, J., and Hotten, J.C. A History of Sign Boards, 3rd ed., 1866.
Liveing, H.G.D. Records of Romsey Abbey, 1906.
Lloyd, N. A History of the English House..., London, 1931.
Orde, J.W. History of Cleveland, 1846.
Orwin, C.S. The Open Fields, 1938.
Owst, G.R. Literature and the Pulpit in Mediaeval England, 1933; Preaching in Mediaeval England, 1926.
Pollard, A. F. Henry VIII, 1913.
Power, E. Mediaeval English Nunneries, 1922: The English Wool Trade, 1941.
Quennel, M. and C.H.B. A History of Everyday Things in England, 1938.
Reid, R.R. The King’s Council in the North, 1921.
Salzman, L.F. England in Tudor Times, 1926.
Seebohm, M.E. The Evolution of the English Farm, 1927.
Seton-Watson (ed.). Tudor Studies, 1924.
Shakespeare’s England, ed. C.T. Onions, 1917.
Smith, H. Maynard. Pre-Reformation England, 1938.
Social England, 2nd ed., 1901–4.
Victoria History of the County of Yorkshire, 1907.
Whitaker, T.D. History of Richmondshire..., 1823.
About H.F.M. Prescott
H.F.M. PRESCOTT was born in Cheshire in 1896. She rea
d Modern History at Oxford and later received MA degrees there and at Manchester, as well as an honorary doctorate at Durham. Her biography of Mary Tudor, Spanish Tudor, won the James Tait Black Prize in 1941. The daughter of a clergyman, she was a committed member of the Church of England, and her wide-ranging interests included travel and a deep love of the English countryside that lasted all her life. She died in 1972.
About the Introducer
John Cooper studied and taught Tudor history at Oxford before moving to the University of York. His book The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I was serialised on BBC Radio 4. His interests include royal propaganda and popular rebellion in sixteenth-century England. He is currently researching a book for Head of Zeus about the Palace of Westminster. John regularly gives public lectures on the Tudors. He lives in North Yorkshire with his wife, the art historian Suzanne Fagence Cooper, and their two daughters.
Endpapers
About the cover and endpapers
Title page of the second ‘Great Bible’, 1540. Vellum. The Great Bible was the first authorized edition of the Bible in English. It was prepared by Myles Coverdale, working under commission of Thomas Cromwell. In 1538, Cromwell directed the clergy to provide ‘one book of the bible of the largest volume in English, and the same set up in some convenient place within the said church that ye have care of, whereas your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and read it.’ This coloured title page is very probably from Henry VIII’s personal copy.
© British Library, London, UK / Bridgeman Images
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The Apollo list reflects in various ways the extremity of our time, and the ways in which novelists responded to the vertiginous changes that the world went through as the great empires declined, relations between men and women were transformed and formerly subject peoples found their voice.
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First published in 1952.
This paperback edition published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Apollo, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © J. W. Prescott and Mrs S.C. Thedinga
Introduction © John Cooper, 2016
The moral right of H.F.M. Prescott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PB) 9781784977719
ISBN (E) 9781784977702
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The Man On a Donkey Page 88