Queen Elizabeth did visit Sudeley on progress in 1592, twenty-eight years after my story ended, ostensibly to celebrate the anniversary of the defeat of the Armada, but also to escape a particularly bad summer of the plague in London. A three-day celebration included a rich feast and pageant of mummers, bear baiting, and jousting.
Dorothy Broadbelt did indeed get her man—she married John Abington, clerk of the kitchen, in 1567. Nicholas Pigeon, along with his father Edmund Pigeon, Clerks of the Wardrobe, worked tirelessly in the Queen’s Great Wardrobe, keeping extremely detailed records down to the location and price of pins. Among these records are generous gifts of clothing from the queen to Ipollyta the Tarletan, “our woman,” including a velvet hat, a caul of gold and silver, and a clout of Spanish needles. The last time Ipollyta is mentioned in the warrants is 1569.
Family legend says I’m related to Lady Jane Grey, godmother to Mary Seymour and chief mourner at Katherine Parr’s funeral and, later, the tragic queen of nine days. My mother’s ancestor John Gray, a one-armed pensioner of the British navy, came over to America in the seventeenth century. His great-grandson James Gray fought alongside his father and father-in-law during the American Revolution.
On the list of Mary Seymour’s nursery items of rich bedding, “good and stately gear,” and other necessaries that were to be sent to the Duchess of Suffolk were two milch cows for maids who would soon be marrying, three silver goblets, an embroidered scarlet tester (a bed canopy—likely embroidered by Katherine Parr), and a lute. In an inventory of a jewel chest owned by Katherine Parr, the following items are found: twelve cramp rings (for morning sickness) and two pieces of unicorn horn. Mary Seymour’s governess was indeed a Mrs. Eglionby, and a Mrs. A(E)glionby did replace Kat Ashley after her death at court, but it’s my own conjecture that they are one and the same. The real Mary Seymour disappeared from history on the eve of her second birthday. It is interesting to ask, if she died as a child, as most historians believe, why wasn’t the death of a queen’s child noted somewhere? Perhaps it was, but is lost to us in history. Or perhaps, perhaps…
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my agent, Rosemary Stimola; my editor, Virginia Duncan; and everyone else at Greenwillow Books, especially Paul Zakris for his beautiful jacket design and Chris Borgman for the haunting cover photo.
About the Author
Suzanne Crowley has always been fascinated with Elizabethan England, and according to family lore, she is a distant relative of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen. She is also the author of The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous, a Book Sense “Top Ten” Pick.
Suzanne Crowley lives with her family in Southlake, Texas.
www.suzannecrowley.com
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Credits
Jacket art © 2009 by Chris Borgman
Jacket design by Paul Zakris
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE STOLEN ONE. Copyright © 2009 by Suzanne Crowley. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-186161-1
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