S PERRY - The Angel’s Mark

The forceps mishandled by Fulke Vaesy at his wife’s childbirth were introduced into England by the Chamberlens, a family of refugee Huguenot physicians who fled Paris in 1569. In the long-running battle between the physicians, the barber-surgeons and the midwives, forceps were invariably kept hidden, lest they became commonplace and thus lost their financial value. The true nature of Mathew Quigley’s haemophilia was not properly understood until the early nineteenth century.

In 1876 the Board of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons – the successor to the Company of Barber-Surgeons – resigned en masse rather than allow women to sit for a diploma in midwifery. It wasn’t until 1909 that a woman became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. The surgeons caught up two years later. Neither event – though great achievements for the women involved – can be considered exactly ground-breaking: five centuries had passed since Dorotea Bucca was appointed professor of medicine and philosophy at the University of Bologna, a post she inherited from her father in 1390.

A little over a century after John Lumley returned Nonsuch to royal ownership, Charles II gave the estate to his mistress, Barbara Villiers. Just like Lumley, she too was burdened by immense debt. Her solution was somewhat more extreme than his: she had Nonsuch – renowned as one of the most glorious Renaissance palaces in Europe – demolished.

It is now a municipal park.

This story is, of course, a fiction, though some of the characters in it did exist. We can never really know what it was like for them to live in Elizabeth’s England. Like all their kind, they thought differently, spoke differently, understood their world differently. But I’m sure their emotions were no less vibrant, no less unruly, than ours.

Fortunately for us scavengers of history, so many superb historians and writers have thoughtfully left their best dishes lying alluringly within reach, to provide us with at least a taste of the world in which those characters lived. I am indebted to Ian Mortimer and Liza Picard, whose The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England and Elizabeth’s London respectively are such wonderful gateways to the world in which my story is set. John Stow’s A Survey of London , written in 1598, was equally indispensable; as was Jeffrey Forgeng’s Daily Life in Elizabethan England . I should also make mention of Lauren Kassell’s Medicine & Magic in Elizabethan London ; Thomas Wright’s Circulation , a fascinating account of how William Harvey discovered the true function of the heart; Roy Porter’s Blood & Guts ; and John Dent’s The Quest for Nonsuch.

I must also offer deep gratitude – though, sadly, neither is alive to receive it – to my English teacher, Mr Mortimer, and to Mr Pugh, my history teacher; both from Enfield Chase Secondary School. It’s indicative of schooling in the 1960s that I have absolutely no idea of their first names.

Nor must I fail to acknowledge the immense help I’ve received from my agent, Jane Judd, and from Sara O’Keeffe, Susannah Hamilton and the team at Corvus. I must also thank Mandy Greenfield for her eagle’s eye.

But the greatest debt – given that the writing life can be uncomfortably solitary, and not just for the author – I owe to my wife Jane. Without her belief and encouragement, I doubt a word of this tale would have survived to reach the printed page.