К Сэнсом - Lamentation

The details of religious differences in sixteenth-century England may seem unimportant today, but in the 1540s they were, literally, matters of life and death. Henry VIII had rejected the Pope’s supremacy over the English Church in 1532–33, but for the rest of his reign he oscillated between keeping traditional Catholic practices and moving towards Protestant ones. Those who wanted to keep traditional ways – some of whom would have liked to return to Roman allegiance – were variously called conservatives, traditionalists, and even papists. Those who wanted to move to a Lutheran, and later Calvinist practice, were called radicals or Protestants. The terms conservative and radical did not then have their later connotations of social reform. There were many who shifted from one side to the other during the years 1532–58, either from genuine non-alignment or opportunism. Some, though not all, religious radicals thought the state should do more to alleviate poverty; but radicals and conservatives alike were horrified by the ideas of the Anabaptists. Very few in number but a bogey to the political elite, the Anabaptists believed that true Christianity meant sharing all goods in common.

The touchstone of acceptable belief in 1546 was adherence to the traditional Catholic doctrine of ‘transubstantiation’ – the belief that when the priest consecrated the bread and wine during Mass, they were transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ. That was a traditionalist belief from which Henry never deviated; under his ‘Act of Six Articles’ of 1539, to deny this was treason, punishable by burning at the stake. His other core belief was in the Royal Supremacy; that God intended monarchs to be the supreme arbiters of doctrine in their territories, rather than the Pope.

The political events in England in the summer of 1546 were dramatic and extraordinary. Anne Askew really was convicted of heresy, tortured, and burned at the stake, and she did leave an account of her sufferings. The celebrations to welcome Admiral d’Annebault to London did take place, and on the scale described. The story of Bertano is true. There was a plot by traditionalists to unseat Catherine Parr; and she did write Lamentation of a Sinner . It was not, though, so far as we know, stolen.

Whitehall Palace, taken by Henry from Cardinal Wolsey and greatly expanded by him, occupied an area bounded roughly today by Scotland Yard, Downing Street, the Thames and the modern thoroughfare of Whitehall, with recreational buildings on the western side of the road. The whole palace was burned to the ground in two disastrous accidental fires in the 1690s; the only building to survive was the Banqueting House, which had not yet been built in Tudor times.

Some words in Tudor English had a different meaning from today. The term ‘Dutch’ was used to refer to the inhabitants of modern Holland and Belgium. The term ‘Scotch’ was used to refer to Scots.

The name ‘Catherine’ was spelt in several different ways – Catherine, Katharine, Katryn and Kateryn – it was the last spelling which the Queen used to sign her name. However, I have used the more common, modern Catherine.

In this novel there is an unusually large number of characters who actually lived, although, of course, the portrayal of their personalities is mine.

The royal family

King Henry VIII

Prince Edward, age 8, heir to the throne

The Lady Mary, age 30, strongly traditionalist

The Lady Elizabeth, age 12-13

Queen Catherine Parr

Family of Catherine Parr, all reformers

(see Family Tree, here)

Lord William Parr, her uncle

Sir William Parr, her brother

Lady Anne Herbert, her sister

Sir William Herbert, her brother-in-law

Members of the King’s Privy Council

John Dudley, Lord Lisle, reformer

Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, reformer

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, reformer

Thomas, Lord Wriothesley, Lord Chancellor, no firm alignment

Sir Richard Rich, no firm alignment

Sir William Paget, Chief Secretary, no firm alignment

Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, traditionalist

Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, traditionalist

Others

William Somers, the King’s fool

Jane, fool to Queen Catherine and the Lady Mary

Mary Odell, the Queen’s maid-in-waiting

William Cecil, later Chief Minister to Queen Elizabeth I

Sir Edmund Walsingham

John Bale

Anne Askew (Kyme)

I DID NOT WANT to attend the burning. I have never liked even such things as the bearbaiting, and this was to be the burning alive at the stake of four living people, one a woman, for denying that the body and blood of Christ were present in the Host at Mass. Such was the pitch we had come to in England during the great heresy hunt of 1546.

I had been called from my chambers at Lincoln’s Inn to see the Treasurer, Master Rowland. Despite my status as a serjeant, the most senior of barristers, Master Rowland disliked me. I think his pride had never recovered from the time three years before when I had been – justly – disrespectful to him. I crossed the Inn Square, the red brickwork mellow in the summer sunshine, exchanging greetings with other black-gowned lawyers going to and fro. I looked up at Stephen Bealknap’s rooms; he was my old foe both in and out of court. The shutters at his windows were closed. He had been ill since early in the year and had not been seen outside for many weeks. Some said he was near death.

I went to the Treasurer’s offices and knocked at his door. A sharp voice bade me enter. Rowland sat behind his desk in his spacious room, the walls lined with shelves of heavy legal books, a display of his status. He was old, past sixty, rail-thin but hard as oak, with a narrow, seamed, frowning face. He sported a white beard, grown long and forked in the current fashion, carefully combed and reaching halfway down his silken doublet. As I came in he looked up from cutting a new nib for his goose-feather quill. His fingers, like mine, were stained black from years of working with ink.

‘God give you good morrow, Serjeant Shardlake,’ he said in his sharp voice. He put down the knife.

I bowed. ‘And you, Master Treasurer.’

He waved me to a stool and looked at me sternly.

‘Your business goes well?’ he asked. ‘Many cases listed for the Michaelmas term?’

‘A good enough number, sir.’

‘I hear you no longer get work from the Queen’s solicitor.’ He spoke casually. ‘Not for this year past.’