by David Field
‘If I judge you aright, you already have a solution?’
‘Indeed, Your Majesty — if I may presume by calling you that already. There is a need for others to take the blame for what in truth were your father’s policies. I believe that the vulgar term for such persons is “scapegoat”. At present, it is felt by those who have suffered the most that the persons responsible are Sir Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson. Your first act as King must be to have these men arrested on charges of treason and conveyed, very publicly, to the Tower. I would also respectfully suggest that you yourself take up immediate residence in the Tower, since not only may it be easily defended against any London mob, but it is also the place where tradition requires that a monarch reside prior to their coronation.’
The chamber door opened, and a groom’s head appeared round it.
‘The time has come, sirs,’ he advised them, and the two men made their way back to the deathbed, Prince Henry thanking Wolsey profusely for his wise advice, and assuring him that his days as a royal confidante were by no means over.
Four days later, in the chapel he had created, Henry VII of England was laid to rest at the side of Elizabeth his queen. Sometime after that an inscription was carved around their memorial plinth, whose words may still be read through a narrow grille that now surrounds the joint memorial. It reads:
‘Here is situated Henry VII, the glory of all the Kings who lived in his time by reason of his intellect, his riches, and the fame of his exploits, to which were added the gifts of bountiful nature, a distinguished brow, an august face, an heroic stature. Joined to him his sweet wife was very pretty, chaste and fruitful. They were parents happy in their offspring, to whom, land of England, you owe Henry VIII.’
*****
Want to continue the adventure through Tudor England? Read The King’s Commoner — Book Two in the Tudor Saga Series!
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A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to read this first novel in my Tudor series, and I hope it lived up to your expectations. The Tudor era in English history has been one of the most popular with novelists over the years, and the one most familiar to those of us who remember our History classes at school. But what we were taught was very patchy, and further research rewards us with new knowledge and insights into this most significant period in our nation’s history.
The drama of the reign of Henry VII is no exception. Ask the average school student what they know about the first Tudor, and they will reply along the lines that he was the father of Henry VIII, and the man who defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. The sad fact is that while those monarchs who reigned before and after him suffered from bad press (‘fake news’, to employ the current idiom), Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, suffered from no press at all. But his life was just as dramatic — romantic in places — and his twenty-four year reign marked the birth of an England that would progress to be one of the most powerful nations on earth.
Prior to Bosworth, England was at the mercy of powerful barons who were the heavily armed equivalent of our modern crime gangs. And the King was as much at their mercy as the common folk, relying on this faction or that to keep him in power. Losing the support of a noble who could put thousands of seasoned fighters onto the battlefield meant disaster, and the Wars of the Roses could not have been waged for so long without power brokers such as Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who was responsible for the confusing switches between their occupations of the throne by Henry VI (Lancastrian) and Edward IV (Yorkist) that earned him the soubriquet ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’.
Henry Tudor was no muscular warrior, but after almost thirty years on the touchline of Courtly life he’d come to appreciate that there were other ways of ruling a nation, and he took the crown of England with two priorities. First of all, he had to instigate stern financial measures that would rescue a Treasury that was all but bankrupt; secondly he needed to suppress the power of the warlords whose marauding depredations had left the English countryside littered with corpses.
Modern England began to take shape as he implemented strategies to achieve both ambitions. First and foremost was the need to appoint, as his closest advisers, not the latest scion of the ‘old families’ that had dominated Medieval life, but men with actual ability who would owe their preferment to him personally, and would serve him loyally in return for their promotion from the ranks of the lowly. During Henry’s reign the warriors of steel would be replaced around the Great Council table by men with inky fingers who knew all about the balancing of account ledgers and the management of international trade.
By the end of his reign, England was a trading nation served by diplomats and ambassadors of great ability and unswerving loyalty who owed everything to Henry Tudor. When the time came to hand over the throne to his second son Henry, the nation was rich, at peace, and strong enough to negotiate treaties with its nearest potential rivals, France and Spain.
Hence why his reign should never be undervalued, even by historians. He was, at one and the same time, the last monarch of the Middle Ages, and the first ruler of modern England, a stern but able ruler who could command men of great ability from humble origins. The old order was at an end, but they took a long time to appreciate that, and bellicose warhorses like the Howard patriarchs needed constant suppression. These men who saw political power as their birth right were still causing trouble during the reign of Henry’s grand-daughter Elizabeth, and they resented upstart newcomers such as Wolsey, the son of an Ipswich butcher, and Cromwell, the son of a Putney blacksmith.
It’s therefore appropriate that the next novel in the series — The King’s Commoner — has, as its central character, the butcher’s son who rose spectacularly from his lowly beginnings to become Lord Chancellor of England, Archbishop of York, and Papal Legate, before crashing back to earth when he finally failed the man who had raised him so high. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey deserves his rightful place in the century-long account of this intriguing and formative period of English history.
As ever, I look forward to receiving feedback from you, whether in the form of a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Or, of course, you can try the more personal approach on my website, and my Facebook page: DavidFieldAuthor.
Happy reading!
David
davidfieldauthor.com
MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD
The Tudor Saga Series:
The King's Commoner
Esther & Jack Enright Series:
The Gaslight Stalker
The Night Caller
The Prodigal Sister
The Slum Reaper
The Posing Playwright
The Mercy Killings
The Jubilee Plot
The Lost Boys
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Copyright © David Field, 2019
David Field has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 9781913028381
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