Great Tales from English History, Book 2

by Robert Lacey

  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 m
uch 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, KingJames 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.

  Bradford, William ( ed- S. E. Morison), Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-47 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf), 1954.

  1622: The Ark of the John Tradescants

  The Tradescants, father and son, are buried in the beautiful St Mary-at-Lambeth, just across the Thames from the House of Commons. The church was saved from destruction in 1977 by the Tradescant Trust, who turned it into the world’s first Museum of Garden History, complete with its own replica seventeenth-century knot garden of miniature box trees. www. museumgardenhistory. org.

  Leith-Ross, Prudence, The John Tradescants (London, Peter Owen), 1984.

  1629: God’s Lieutenant in Earth

  Charles Is cradle can be seen at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire where Elizabeth I, a virtual prisoner, was brought the news that her sister Mary had died and she had become Queen. The Tudor building was largely torn down and we see Hatfield today as it was rebuilt in the reign of James I by Robert Cecil. Tel: 01707 287010.

  1642: All My Birds Have Flown

  It is difficult to better C. V Wedgwood’s classic account of this episode. Tristram Hunt movingly brings together the voices of the time.

  Hunt, Tristram, The English Civil War at First Hand (London, Phoenix), 2003.

  Wedgwood, C.V., The King’s War (London, HarperCollins), 1955.

  1642-8: Roundheads v. Cavaliers

  No study of the Civil War can omit the inspired and seminal work of Christopher Hill. Royle shows the impact of the wars on Scotland and Ireland. Blair Worden brilliantly shows how the Civil Wars have been fought through the subsequent centuries.

  Hill, Christopher, Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London, Secker & Warburg), 1958.

  Royle, Trevor, The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638-1660 (London, Little, Brown), 2004.

  Worden, Blair, Roundhead Reputations Ltd: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (London, Penguin Books), 2001.

  1649: Behold the Head of a Traitor!

  The magnificent Banqueting House from which Charles I walked to his execution still stands opposite Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall. Designed by Inigo Jones as a setting for the plays and pageants of Ben Jonson, it is decorated with ceiling panels that illustrate Charles’s disastrous theories on the nature of kingship: one tableau shows James I rising to heaven after his death like a latter-day Christ, to take his place among the immortals. www.hrp.org.

  1653; ’Take Away This Bauble!’

  The remains of Oliver Cromwell, like those of the other regicides, were dug up and dismembered after the Restoration. His rotting head was set on a pole outside Westminster Hall for a quarter of a century. But you can see his death mask, warts and all, in the Museum of London, www.museumoflondon.org.uk, and you can visit the house where he lived from 1636 to 1647 in St Mary’s Street, Ely. Tel.: 01353 662062.

  Hill, Christopher, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 1970.

  Morrill, John (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, Longman), 1990.

  1655: Rabbi Manasseh and the Return of the Jews

  The dark oak benches from the Creechurch Lane synagogue, which opened in 1656, were moved in 1701 to the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Bevis Marks Street, now Britain’s oldest synagogue. Built by a Quaker, the exterior resembles a nonconformist chapel, while the interior reflects the influence of Sir Christopher Wren. Tel.: 020 7626 1274.

  1660: Charles II and the Royal Oak

  Richard Ollard colourfully recreates Charles II’s adventures after the Battle of Worcester — and we are now entering the age of the great diarists, whom Liza Picard quotes along with a host of other contemporary sources in her charming and intimate-feeling social history.

  Bowle, John (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford, Oxford University Press), 1983.

  Latham, R. (ed.), The Shorter Pepys (London, Bell & Hyman), 1985.

  Ollard, Richard, The Escape of Charles II (London, Constable), 1986.

  Picard, Liza, Restoration London (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 2001.

  1665; The Village That Chose to Die

  Every year on Plague Sunday (the last Sunday in August) the modern inhabitants of Eyam hold an outdoor service to commemorate the heroic sacrifice of their predecessors. In 2000, Eyam’s enterprising little museum was awarded the Museum of the Year Shoestring Award. www.eyammuseum.demon.co.uk. The Folio Society has recently republished Walter George Bell’s classic account of the plague year.

  Bell, Walter George, The Great Plague in London (London, Folio Society),2001.

  1666: London Burning

  The tragedy of the Great Fire produced the finest building of the seventeenth century, and arguably England’s finest building ever. ’Lector, Si Monumentum Requeris, Circumspice (’Reader, if you seek a monument, then look around you’) runs Sir Christopher Wren’s inscription beneath the dome of St Paul’s. Since Saxon times all five churches on this spot had been destroyed by fire. Wren designed the sixth as a sparkling symbol of London’s rebirth, and he was there to witness its completion thirty-five years later. In the cathedral library you can see the huge and fabulously expensive oak model that the architect constructed to persuade Charles II to back his revolutionary co
ncept. www.stpauls.co.uk.

  Bell, George Walter, The Great Fire of London in 1666 (London, Folio Society), 2003.

  1678/9: Titus Oates and the Popish Plot

  John Dryden’s poem Absalom and Achitophel feverishly evokes the hysteria of the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis. J. P. Kenyon recounts the story masterfully.

  Kenyon, J. P., The Popish Plot (New York, Sterling), 2001.

  1685: Monmouth’s Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes

  Christopher Lee starred as Judge Jeffreys in The Bloody Judge (1970), a film that has now acquired cult status. It is available on the DVD The Christopher Lee Collection by Blue Underground.

  1688-9: The Glorious Invasion

  Lord Macaulay virtually invented modern history, and his great five-volume work remains the classic study of the 1688/9 turning-point. Eveline Cruickshanks coldly dissects his Whig interpretation, but without destroying it.

  Cruickshanks, Eveline, The Glorious Revolution (London, Macmillan), 2000.

  Macaulay, T. B., The History of England from the Accession of James II 1849-61. The five volumes of Macaulay’s classic are currently in print at three publishers (R.A. Kessinger Publishing, the University Press of the Pacific, and Indypublish.com) and also accessible online at various locations, including www.strecorsoc.org / macaulay/title.html#contents and www.gutenburg. net/etext/ 1468.

  1687: Isaac Newton and the Principles of the Universe

  There are modern apple trees in the orchard of Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham in Lincolnshire, Isaac Newton’s birthplace. Tel.: 01476 860338. The best account of the ferment of science and superstition surrounding the birth of the Royal Society is Lisa Jardine’s sparkling study of Newton’s great rival. The project to put all Newton’s words on the web can be accessed on www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk.

  Jardine, Lisa, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke (London, Harper-Collins), 2004.