The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory – Book

From a Google Image Search – Flickr – (C)KIM BECKER

A friend gave me the book The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory for Christmas. I had read several Philippa Gregory books, but not this one. Gregory writes period fiction, usually about English history, especially royalty. These books are very readable and immersive. In The Queen’s Fool Gregory focuses on the short reign of Edward, too young to be king and too ill to rule for long and the sisters who followed him on the throne of England.

Many readers know this story well because two half-sisters were waiting to be queen. Mary was first in line. Mary was the daughter of Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine Parr. He divorced her mother to marry Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was the child of this marriage. Although she was declared illegitimate when Anne Boleyn was executed, she was later declared legitimate.

Mary was not the queen most of the English people wanted. Henry, her father left the Catholic church (and the authority of the Pope) when he wanted a divorce, and the church would not grant it. England was turned upside down as Henry closed the monasteries, took the riches that had been amassed, and executed formerly powerful church officials. He eventually founded the Church of England which was closer to Protestantism. Mary was a devout Catholic who, once she became queen, turned England upside down again by restoring the Catholic church and punishing prominent Protestants. Subjects who wanted to stay alive had to return to behaving like loyal Catholics. Mary’s half-sister was not old enough when Edward died to be queen, but she was a Protestant who had no fixed ideas about God or the Church.

The Queen’s Fool, threading her way through all this religious upheaval, was Jewish, a religion that was unwelcome in almost every nation at the time. Jews had to pretend to be Protestants when that was expedient and Catholics when nations were loyal to the Pope. Hannah became the queen’s fool because she had the “sight.” If you remember your history of Mary and Elizabeth, then you remember that Lord Robert Dudley and Elizabeth were an item for a while. Hannah Green once saw Robert Dudley in the street and behind him she saw the angel Uriel. Dudley was the one who recommended her to be a fool for the Tudors. Lord Dudley’s protection kept Hannah alive through many tense moments.

Reading books about royalty is a guilty pleasure that I don’t often indulge anymore but I was happy to enjoy this book. Adding the Jewish faith into this mix, at this time when religions were matters of life and death, was a new twist. Hannah lived with her mother and father in Spain until her mother was burned at the stake by the Inquisition. Hannah and her father kept moving around Europe trying to find somewhere they could live in safety. It was dangerous for Hannah to be involved with the Catholic reign of Mary.

The Jewish people have been hunted throughout history until they found safety in America and Israel, but they realize that this safety could be ephemeral once again. We all live with some religious uncertainties in the twenty-first century, but no people have been as consistently hounded as those of the Jewish religion. Exploring a historical moment we have explored in other books, as seen through the lens of religious turmoil and of one Jewish girl at the mercy of fate, kept me reading and reminded me of how fraught the Jewish diaspora has been for believers in the Jewish faith. Gregory took a timeless story we are familiar with and added another layer.

This book may be out of print.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel – Book

*The Mirror and the Light*, by Hilary Mantel – NPR

The Thomas Cromwell that Hilary Mantel gives us in her trilogy, and especially in this last offering, The Mirror and the Light is half real, half imagined and yet he seems entirely real. Thomas Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith who drank. Thomas never knew when his father, Walter, would turn abusive and beat him, but he was always bruised and on the verge of running away. He grew up in a situation that could have led to a harsh life and an early grave. A few relatives intervened when they could and eventually he was given a place in the kitchen of a wealthy family. Then he, in a fit of anger, killed a boy his own age who liked to bully him. He did not intend to kill him and there was never a charge resulting from his violence. But killing someone changes you.

This third book in the trilogy has Thomas in his 50’s. He has succeeded in law, in business, and he has become the closest advisor of the King, Henry VIII. Henry needed to bypass the Pope in Rome when he wanted to divorce his first wife so he could marry Anne Boleyn. Cromwell, knew the sins of the Catholic Church, the usual sins of greed, gluttony, lust, and the scams involving the sale of relics and the statues that cried blood. He did not think the Catholic Church represented any true connection to God. It is the time of Martin Luther, but he is considered a heretic. Anyone who challenges the church in Rome is, by association, also considered a heretic. When Henry declares himself the head of the church in England, when he basically combines the functions of Pope and King in one body (his), Cromwell backs him up, and keeps sending emissaries into Europe to keep track of repercussions against England. Will the Catholic nations go to war against Britain. Cromwell also helps Henry break up the monasteries and nunneries and move their wealth from the church to Henry’s treasury. He also helps himself to some of the properties that become available and divvies others out to British royals and aristocrats. He is valuable to the king. He has become a very stable, organized, and talented man – and very rich.

Cromwell straddles the Catholic religion and the new religions that allow even poor people to read the Bible, now that it has been printed in every language. His mentor in his early years was Cardinal Wolsey, a Catholic who is turned out of all his houses and left, as an old man, in conditions far cruder than he is used to. Wolsey will not back the King’s divorce. He is on the way to his execution when he dies of natural causes. When Cromwell is asked to rid the King of Anne Boleyn, he sees his chance to also take down Wolsey’s enemies. He holds this grudge and takes his revenge. Killing so many courtiers though may lead to his eventual downfall.

Cromwell lives, in this third book, both in his past and in his present. Is he too distracted to make the decisions he has always made with confidence? Henry VIII is a very unstable king to serve. He imagines that he is still young and heroic, when he is actually old and portly, with a injured leg which will not heal. He looks in his mirror and he finds himself bathed in the light of earlier days (there are many mirrors in this book so full of self-reflection). He is shocked when his new wife, in a marriage that Cromwell helped arrange, cannot hide her disappointment that she will marry this old man. She is not as beautiful as Henry thought she would be. The marriage does not take and Henry blames Cromwell. He wants out.

At this critical time Cromwell has a return bout with the malaria he picked up in Italy and while he is ailing others in the council and the parliament creep in and influence the King. Cromwell is arrested and charged as a heretic who supports the church of Luther, and he is charged with treason because jealous men attest untruthfully that Cromwell wished to marry the King’s daughter Mary and place himself on the throne of England. Although Cromwell is guilty of pride and has feathered his own nest and enjoyed the advancements the King has offered, although he has his fingers in every British pie, he is not guilty, according to what records are available, of either heresy or treason. But the King is ever worried about betrayal and once he thinks you have betrayed him all your loyalty means nothing.

These books are a tour de force and I am sorry to leave the England of Hilary Mantel and Thomas Cromwell. Mantel’s writing alone evokes the mid 1500’s in the reign of Henry. There is an immediacy in her prose:

“The Cornish people petition to have their saints back – those downgraded in recent rulings. Without their regular feasts, the faithful are unstrung from the calendar, awash in a sea of days that are all the same. He (he is always Cromwell) thinks it might be permitted; they are ancient saints of small worship. They are scraps of paint-flaked wood or stumps of weathered stone, who say and do nothing against the king. They are not like your Beckets, whose shrines are swollen with rubies, garnets and carbuncles, as if their blood were bubbling up through the ground.”

And this is just a tiny taste. It’s a long book, but since I didn’t want to leave it, the length made me happy.

Bringing Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel – Book

From a Google Image Search – the absolute.com

Bringing Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel is the second book in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. Mantel’s books are full of detail and paint a picture of life in 1500’s England. Her prose is exceptional and her descriptions are so well done that the book plays like a movie in your head.

Apparently Cromwell has not been the subject of in-depth research. Mantel brings him to life using the known to extrapolate about the unknown. She fleshes the man out. She uses fact and imagination to make him a living contemporary of Henry VIII. In this second book, we begin to understand why Cromwell was a formidable figure. Cromwell, in Wolf Hall, had been loyal to his mentor Cardinal Wolsey. Great men trained up younger men with promise, and Wolsey saw much promise in Cromwell. When Henry VIII wanted to set aside his first wife Katherine to marry Anne Boleyn, the Catholic Church stood in the way. Cardinal Wolsey, wealthy, learned, and powerful, represented the Catholic Church in England.

Wolsey could not approve the King’s divorce. His property was seized and he lost all his comforts, was forced to live in rougher circumstances than his advanced age could tolerate, and he died of illness before he could be executed. Cromwell happened upon a play that mocked the fall of Wolsey. This masque was described in Wolf Hall, Book 1. Cromwell happens to look behind a screen as the players shed their disguises. He makes a mental note of who is the left front paw, the right front paw, the left rear paw, and the right rear paw of the beast in the play.

In Bringing Up the Bodies, Cromwell gets his revenge. He also reveals himself as so much more than the intelligent businessman and mentor of his own domain and the friend and ally of Henry, the King. We see his dark side. Previously we understood people’s envy and incredulity that this commoner could rise so high; now we understand how Cromwell becomes an object of fear. He becomes a man to deal with cautiously. Henry is now convinced that he needs to be free of Ann Boleyn so he can marry Jane Seymour. Cromwell makes it so in horrifying fashion. I was liking Cromwell. However, he is slipping in my regard, even though I still admire his many talents.

Cromwell and the King have already found a way to make the King the head of the church of England. Now they are beginning to dismantle the holdings of the Catholic Church and transfer the wealth to the King. Cromwell is ‘way out over his skis.’ Will he fall or remain upright? People near the King are falling like flies. Cromwell might be making too many enemies. I could look up the outcome online but I want to wait and let Mantel take me there. I’m looking forward to Book 3.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – Book

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is the story of Thomas Cromwell, an abused child of an English blacksmith who ran away to be a soldier to save his own life, a choice that strikes me as an unusual way to save your life, but there were not a lot of choices then. He did much more in his travels than just soldiering and, by the time he returned to England, his experiences had turned him into a formidable young man. He became the advisor and confidant of the King, and held so many royal offices and honors that envy earned him aristocratic enemies who did not dare to act as enemies.

In Wolf Hall, named after an estate that actually figures very little in the first book, we find Henry VIII who wants to set aside his first wife, Katherine, the Queen, so he can marry Anne Boleyn, a woman with many seductive skills. Henry needs a son as heir and since Katharine has not given him one, he hopes the younger, prettier Anne, will.

England is Catholic and there are all kinds of problems with the Pope and the Cardinals who believe the first marriage is legal and cannot be set aside. Cromwell has an ingenious solution to make this marriage happen, a solution that turns England upside down. Maybe you already know what it is, but you didn’t hear it from me.

The history of England has always interested me. My mother’s ancestors trace back to Shoreditch, which was an actual place near London even in the days of the Tudors, so perhaps I am genetically inclined to be an Anglophile, or perhaps I am just a fan of royalty. But I don’t think the attraction comes from either of these passions. I think it has more to do with the longevity of British history. The nation is old, and the human kindnesses and cruelties get so exaggerated when a succession of kings and queens becomes the focus of both hope and despair for an entire nation, one generation at a time. It’s fascinating. All the best and worst traits of humans, especially humans with power, are revealed., but at a safe time remove.

If Mantel’s book, Wolf Hall, starts slow at first, it may be the pronouns that are at fault. It sometimes seems difficult to figure out the antecedent to “he” or “her or “they.” There are so many characters involved. Just don’t get hung up on figuring our exactly who is talking. The writing pace is quick and the pronoun trick helps speed things along. Stay with it. It does not take long at all to get your Brit geek in gear. On to Book 2. (It’s a trilogy!)