Rediscovering Shōgun - by Lesley Downer

‘In 1600 an Englishman went to Japan and became a samurai ...’               

In the late 1970s I lived in a provincial town an hour’s train ride from Kyoto. Most weekends I’d go to visit. Each time I’d look for a new temple to explore and spend the day there.

One day I wandered into a little temple called Kōtō-in. I sat on the veranda, gazed at the sand and rock garden and idly picked up the English-language leaflet. The temple, I read, had been founded in 1601 by Hosokawa Tadaoki, a samurai lord whose wife had been a Christian convert and who was a famous bowman. There in one of the paper shoji screens was the very hole through which he had shot three arrows - one after the other, with perfect precision.

Map of Japan with picture of Will Adams meeting
shogun, 1705, by Pieter van der Aa

I was staggered. It was the very story that I was reading at that moment in Shōgun. Hosokawa was Buntaro. This was Buntaro’s temple! Clavell had changed his name but not his story. Did that mean that all of Shōgun - despite the changed names - was true?

Reading it again more than forty years later, having spent much of that time absorbed in Japanese culture and history, I’m hugely impressed with how accurate it is, not just in the historical detail but in Clavell’s insight into how it feels to be Japanese.

James Clavell
Clavell led quite a life himself. Born in 1921 into a Royal Navy family, he was captured by the Japanese and interred in Changi prison throughout most of World War II. He went on to become a screenwriter and director in Hollywood. He wrote his first novel, King Rat, in 1960. Shōgun was published in 1975 and sold more than 15 million copies. Apparently it took him three years to research and write and he didn’t plan it out. Some of the plot twists, he said, were as much of a surprise to him as to the reader. He died in 1994.

Closeup of Will Adams meeting the shogun,
1705, Pieter van der Aa

For some reason everyone thinks that Shōgun is not literature. I was interviewed once by Mariella Frostrup and was supposed to speak on books on Japan. She was horrified when I began with Shōgun.

Literature or not, it is undoubtedly one of the most enjoyable books you will ever read and a brilliant source not just of Japanese history but of east west relations at the time, not to mention ships and nautical matters. Clavell’s skills as a screenwriter are readily apparent. Shōgun is dramatic, cinematic, a master class in historical fiction, immersing you in seventeenth century Japan and keeping you hooked from beginning to end.

William Adams the Pilot

Will Adam's ship Liefde lands in Japan -
monument  in De Liefde arrival memorial
park, Kurushima, Usuki City, by N. Tamada 

Clavell takes as his starting point the true and amazing story of William Adams (1564 - 1620), shipwrecked in Japan in 1600, the first Englishman ever to arrive there. Adams was a contemporary of Shakespeare, a ship’s pilot who under Sir Francis Drake helped repel the Armada and fought in the ongoing war against Spain and Portugal. The Japan in which he found himself was at an equally pivotal moment. It was the climax of the warring powers era, when samurai armies battled to control the country. The Portuguese had arrived half a century earlier and were making converts and sizing the place up for colonisation. The last thing they wanted was a Protestant Englishman turning up to tell the Japanese that the outside world was not as they portrayed it. Adams revealed their deceit and changed the course of Japanese history.

Clavell leaves the framework of history pretty much as it is. But he changes the names of the players which allows him to fictionalise freely, taking liberties with the details to make the story even more gripping and exciting. Readers are kept on their toes, anxious to find out how the characters will weather the next terrible ordeal that befalls them.

Tokugawa Ieyasu
by Kanō Tanyū (1602 - 1674)

The story begins in the stinking claustrophobic innards of Blackthorne’s storm-tossed ship, the Erasmus, ‘two hundred and sixty tons, a three-masted trader out of Rotterdam, armed with twenty cannon and sole survivor of the first expeditionary force sent from the Netherlands to ravage the enemy in the New World.’ Most of the Dutch crew are dead or dying of scurvy. The survivors are on the brink of mutiny.

Only one man can control them - Blackthorne, tough, competent, fearless and, as we soon discover, the best pilot on the planet. We learn about their nightmarish two year voyage, in which all the other ships in the fleet were lost, and the rough Elizabethan world that he comes from. As a Navy man, Clavell lards his tale with colourful and authoritative detail about ships, seas and how ships work, the job of the pilot, who commands the ship, and the importance of rutters - the annals which pilots kept, laying down their routes and recording their daily activities.

After the horrors of the tempest comes a complete change of pace. Blackthorne wakes up in a small house in a fishing village in Izu. We see Japan through his eyes - the neatness, cleanliness and occasional nakedness, the Portuguese priest who declares him a pirate and demands he be killed, the samurai casually lopping off a man’s head. Clavell has a lot of fun with cultural differences such as the bath, a daily necessity to a Japanese but a death sentence to an Elizabethan Englishman. The bath becomes a marker of how Blackthorne is adjusting, as he starts to compare the sparkling clean Japanese houses and cities with the disease-ridden filth back home.

 

Will Adams meets Shogun Tokugawa
Ieyasu - by William Dalton 1866

Like Gulliver in Lilliput, Blackthorne and his crew endure a series of humiliations and ordeals, which Blackthorne overcomes through sheer obstinacy, refusal to be cowed and the quickness of wit to fathom how to get by in this disorienting new world.

As the canvas broadens we meet an extraordinary range of people and start to see their world through their eyes as well as through Blackthorne’s. We also begin to discover how much goes on that Blackthorne knows nothing about.

We meet Mura the village headman, ‘small and lean with strong arms and calloused hands’ and a secret judo master; it’s many pages before we find out who he really is. Then there’s Omi, the handsome young samurai, who behaves with suitable disdain to Blackthorne and his crew and equally suitable deference to his uncle, Yabu, the daimyo of the region.

Yabu is a wonderful character, ‘short, squat and dominating,’ forever plotting who to betray in order to advance his own interests. He’s fearless and without scruples and finds death, his own and others’, both erotic and poetic. Early in the story he is trapped at the bottom of a cliff by the incoming tide. Having ascertained that there is no escape he sits down calmly to compose his death poem. Blackthorne meanwhile desperately seeks to rescue him even though Yabu has committed terrible deeds that make them deadly enemies. Yabu survives and continues to be a lethal yet strangely likeable and entirely untrustworthy presence throughout the book.

The women too are vividly portrayed. There’s Kiku the courtesan, exquisitely beautiful yet down to earth too. Her kimonos ‘sigh open’, ‘whisper apart’. Like a flower, her task is to rise above earthy reality, to laugh gaily and take men’s minds off whatever is going on around them, no matter how terrible. There’s also Gyoku-san, the Mama-san, who knows everyone’s darkest secrets, wielding them to advance her own position while appearing to be utterly humble, as a person such as she, on the bottom rung of society, has to be.

Will Adams with daimyo and attendants
by William Dalton 1866 

Meeting the Shōgun

The canvas expands to encompass the entire country as Blackthorne arrives in the giant metropolis of Osaka and is ushered into Osaka Castle, a gargantuan fortress which ‘makes the Tower of London seem like a pigsty.’

Here he meets Toranaga, Clavell’s name for the great warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 - 1616) who was to become shōgun, taking over the whole of Japan and bringing about 250 years of peace. Toranaga is a consummate politician and statesman who controls and manipulates whatever happens and gives nothing away. He’s also likeable, warm and funny.

Blackthorne also meets Mariko, the Christian convert, modelled on Gracia, the wife of the warlord famous for his archery skills. Buntaro, Clavell’s fictionalised Hosokawa, is rather a tragic character. ‘A short, thickset, almost neckless man’, he is a brilliant warrior and a poet with the bow, utterly loyal to his lord. But he is also a man of terrifying rages, driven mad by his hopeless love for his wife.

Mariko is tiny, beautiful and fearless, a true samurai, prepared to die for her lord. She becomes Blackthorne’s interpreter, confidante and ultimately lover. She shows him how to flourish in this alien world by becoming more Japanese, finding inner peace.

Tokugawa Ieyasu by
Utagawa Yoshitora (1836 - 1880)

Blackthorne communicates with his crew in Dutch and in Portuguese with Mariko, the Japanese Christians and the Portuguese fathers and seamen. With Mariko he also has a secret language of love - Latin; though the two have to be wary. There are always samurai around who may turn out to be secretly Catholic and to understand them.

At one point Mariko and Blackthorne are talking. ‘How childish’, she says to herself, ‘to speak aloud what you think.’ Like children, the westerners are what they appear to be. The Japanese conversely are eternally acting. Apart from Blackthorne, who is an outsider, they all know that this is how you play the game. Clavell gets a lot of fun out of the difference between what the Japanese say and what they’re thinking, let alone what they really intend to do. It’s a key distinction that Japanese recognise between one’s true feeling and the face that one chooses to present to the world.

As the story goes on the focus changes. Blackthorne slips into the background as we step more and more inside the fascinating and complex mind of Toranaga. Clavell spends a great deal of time unravelling the great daimyo’s innermost thoughts as he plays everyone like chess pieces in order to achieve his ultimate aim - to master and bring peace to Japan. Which is why the book is called quite accurately Shōgun.

There are occasional errors. Clavell confuses the shamisen (a lute) and the koto (a zither). He uses the wrong tea for the tea ceremony, and there are small mistakes with the Japanese language. Some of the names are a little odd. But none of this matters. The book is written with such verve that we are totally swept up in the excitement of the narrative and barely notice the occasional small hiccup.

To read Shōgun is to be picked up and thrown into Japan at one of the most exciting moments in its history. For Clavell totally gets Japan. He gets it right, it’s totally convincing, which makes it a great and very satisfying read even for a Japan hand after forty years of engaging with the country.


All pictures courtesy of wikimedia commons.

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and an inveterate traveller. She is the author of many books on Japan, including The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale of love and death, out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

'Tearing down the Past' by Karen Maitland

Bishop Absolon topples the statue of the god Svantevit in 1169
Painter: Laurits Tuxen 1853-1927, 
Ferederiksborg Hillerod Museum, Denmark

Ever since kingdoms first began waging war on others, conquerors have begun their reign by pulling down the statues and emblems of the old regime. Likewise, rebels and reformers in every age have defaced, drowned, smashed or burned the statues of those who represent their present or historical enemies. The physical symbols of religion or power have always been the focus of attack in times of change and none more so than Cheapside Cross in London, which repeatedly became the unlikely target of hatred throughout the Reformation.

This seemingly innocent cross was one of the 12 Eleanor Crosses, erected in memory of Edward I’s wife, Eleanor of Castile, between 1291-1295. It stood at the commercial heart of London, then called Westcheap, and presided over many transactions made in the market there. It was one of the places where notorious wrong-doers were punished; important civic speeches made and new kings proclaimed. Heretical literature and seditious writings were publicly burned there.  

Statue of Jesus toppled by
Spanish Republican Forces
in anticlerical action, 1936
Photo: Sharon Mollerus

Cheapside Cross was remoulded several times over the centuries and in Tudor times it stood 36ft high, with three tiers whose niches housed statues of religious figures, such as Edward the Confessor, the Virgin Mary and infant Christ. The edifice was crowned by a great gilded cross and a dove. 

By the time of the Reformation, it had become both a Catholic and royal symbol. Even in 1553, the authorities feared it might become a target for vandalism by those opposed to the visit of Catholic King Phillip of Spain during Mary’s reign and a high ‘pale’ was erected to protected it, which was later removed by Elizabeth. But on Midsummer’s night 1581, a group of young men defaced the statue of the Virgin and child, and dragged down some of the other statues with ropes. Despite a handsome reward of 40 crowns being offered, no one was arrested. It was possibly just an act of drunken vandalism fuelled by Midsummer celebrations, but the figures which were mutilated suggest it might have been carried out by fervent Protestants against perceived symbols of Catholicism and the Pope. 

There had been several previous defacings of the Virgin on the Cheapside Cross. So, after this last one, Elizabeth had the statue of the Virgin Mary replaced with the goddess Diana which, in complete contrast, spouted Thames water through the nipples of her bare breasts – Diana representing the virgin Queen Elizabeth herself.  In 1601, the cross was again renovated and the bare breasted goddess was replaced by the Virgin Mary once more. Railings were erected to protect the cross. But within two weeks, the statue of Virgin Mary had been vandalised again, her chest stabbed and her crown ripped off. 

'Coronation Procession of Edward VI passing Cheapside Cross 1547'
Published in Vol1 'Old & New London'  by Walter Thornbury, pub. 1873 
based on a mural (now lost) at Cowdray House, Sussex
Book held in British Library

There were many vociferous Protestant campaigns to have the Cheapside Cross removed as idolatrous, some Puritans even saw it as symbol of Dagon, ancient god of the Philistines. But although most other Catholic symbols were removed, Cheapside Cross continued to be preserved by the London authorities, and ever greater defences were erected to protected it from repeated attacks. But in January 1642, the statues on the cross were severely damaged by attackers overnight. One man was mortally wounded when he fell on the spikes of the railings whilst trying to pull down the figures. Such was the heated emotion on both sides that people passing the cross over the next few days found themselves confronted by gangs demanding to know if they were for or against it. 

'Ancient View of Cheapside' 
in 'Old & New London', Vol 1 pub.1873

The cross had become a focus for the hatred of Charles I who had left London and the city authorities were forced to deploy soldiers to protect it at night. Puritan demands for its removal grew with countless pamphlets and petitions. Finally, in April 1643, Parliament appointed a Commons Committee chaired by Sir Robert Hale who had long campaigned against Cheapside Cross. The committee was set up to oversee the destruction of offensive religious images and three days later the London Court of Aldermen ordered the removal of Cheapside Cross because of the ‘idolatrous and superstitious’ figures. The soldiers who had been protecting it were now forced to guard the demolition crew from those who were determined to prevent it coming down, even at the cost of their lives.

'Demolition of Cheapside Cross', in 'Old & New London' pub 1873
Book in British Library

The funeral of the cross was marked with ringing of bells and bonfires, and in a final sting in this sad tale – the ‘Book of Sports’, considered ‘profane and pernicious’ because promoted such ‘abominations’ as maypole dancing, was ritually burned by a hangman on the spot where Cheapside Cross had stood.

Remnants of Cheapside Cross in
Museum of London
Photo: MattFromLondon

Most of the other Eleanor Crosses were also torn down during the Civil War, but three survived and still stand at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross.

Colouring in Oxford by Janie Hampton

The tower of Magdalen College was built in 1492 beside the River Cherwell
Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

The River Cherwell (pronounced ‘Charwell’) flows into the River Thames- but where it flows through Oxford, the Thames is called the Isis! It then goes back to being the Thames until London and then the English Channel. On May Morning, Magdalen choir sing from the top of the tower at dawn. Then drunk students leap off Magdalen Bridge into the River Cherwell. It is shallow enough to punt, so a dangerous pastime. On the left are the Oxford Botanical Gardens, home to many exotic and wonderful plants.

It is far too hot here in Southern England to read much. So here are some drawings of the history of Oxford you may print out. Then go and sit under a tree, or any shadey, cool place, and colour them in. Choose your favourite. Or print out several and offer them to friends, or neighbours. But don't sell them or use them for commercial gain. You can use paint, coloured pencils or felt pens, or a combination of all three. There are no rules for colouring. Use any colour you like, stay in the lines, go over the lines, add your own flowers, leaves and people. The only rule is that you should enjoy doing it. This is not work, or school prep, it is for fun!

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) visited Oxford once, in 1566.
The castle mound in the background is still there. Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

In 1566 Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) visited Oxford during her annual ‘Royal Progress’ around England. The Queen and her courtiers were entertained by university students with debates, plays and music. She attended discussions at the Church of St Mary the Virgin and closed the final debate herself with a speech in Latin. Five years later in 1571, she founded Jesus College, the first Protestant college. Her father, Henry VIII, had ensured she was well-educated and although she had no children of her own, she paid for the education of many of her 100 godchildren.

Alice Lidell (left) and her sisters Lorina and Edith with ukuleles in 1848.
From a photograph by Lewis Carroll, author of ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

The drawing above of Alice Lidell (1852-1934) and her sisters is possibly the first ever photo of anyone playing a ukelele. Though some people dispute these were exactly like ukeleles that we play today. Can you spot the characters from ‘Alice in Wonderland’? 

Stained glass window in Christ Church Cathedral, designed by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) . Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

Christ Church cathedral was built on the site of St Frideswide's monastery, which dates back to the 12th Century. Christ Church College, where many British Prime Ministers were educated, was built in 1525, funded by Henry VIII as part of his dissolution of Roman Catholic monasteries and establishment of the Church of England.
Oxford, originally called Oxnaforda, (the place where Oxen could cross the river without a bridge) has been here for over a thousand years. I have lived in Oxford thirty four years this week, and little has changed, apart from more traffic, more visitors and more cafés with wi-fi. It is not often I really look at this beautiful, old city. Doing these drawings made me look, and think, and appreciate. One day I may have enough to make a whole book. But for now, I share a few of them with you, gentle readers. If you like them I shall do some more.

www.janiehampton.co.uk 

Mary Beard's "Women & Power: A Manifesto" by Janie Hampton

Professor Mary Beard, © Caterina Turroni

Professor Mary Beard is Britain’s most famous classicist and The History Girl’s History Girl. Her book Women and Power: A Manifesto is a reminder of  the progress, or lack of, that women have achieved in the last hundred years.
This highly readable book of 100 short pages is based on two lectures Mary Beard gave for the London Review of Books at the British Museum in 2007 and 2014. She uses classical examples to remind us of the deep strata of ugly gender prejudice that underlie what women are still up against. “This is not,” Beard insists, “the peculiar ideology of some distant culture, however distant in time it may be.”

Telemachus tells his mother Penelope to keep on weaving, Athenian pot, 500 BC

She takes the story right back to the first known account of misogyny: Homer’s Odyssey, composed almost 3000 years ago. Telemachus, the teenage son of Odysseus, ordered his middle-aged mother Penelope to be quiet and go back upstairs to her weaving, and leave the men to get on with the important job of talking to each other. Haven't we all been there? I am old enough to have been to dinner parties where after the cheese course, the women withdrew to the drawing room to chat about childcare and recipes, leaving the men to drink port, smoke cigars and discuss world affairs (or so we assumed). My innocent husband once tried to join us women, but was physically barred from leaving the dining room by our host! Telemachus was learning the art of being a real man, which included telling women to be quiet. How many women readers of The History Girls have sat on committees, and either not been allowed to speak or had their bright idea taken up by, and credited to, a man?
Beard explores with wry wit and accessible language, the early history of misogyny and how it has been reinforced ever since Western “civilization” began. She gives the stories of three women who spoke up in the Roman forum. Unfortunately, according to the male Roman writing about her, Maesia "really had a man’s nature"; and as for Afrania, her speech was “yapping and barking”. Her demise in 48 BC was recorded, only because "with unnatural freaks like this" it was more important to record her death than her birth. The third woman, Hortensia, was only permitted to speak for other women, and not on behalf of men too. There are echoes here of modern governments that have Ministries of Women. “Look,” say the ruling men. “We have a Ministry for Women. We can’t possibly be misogynists." Like the dinner parties, the women are encouraged to knit and cook, leaving the men to govern the important things like the economy and war.
Demeaning language about ‘yapping’ women also continues today. In 2017, a Times headline screamed “Women prepared for Power Grab of London in Church, Police and BBC.” While men are awarded positions of power and authority, women have to grab them, pushing aside those unfortunate, less qualified men who previously gained the work or positions.
Little has changed in two thousand years. The image of Donald Trump as the Greek god Perseus holding aloft the decapitated head of Hillary Clinton as Medusa, was an unpleasant and graphic warning during the 2016 U.S. election campaign of how Trump would rule as president.

Donald Trump as Perseus with the head of Medusa depicted as Hillary Clinton, 2016.

Beard’s saddest observation is that women are their own worst enemies. Women often condone and reinforce misogyny, and behave and present themselves as "almost men." In 1588, Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have encouraged her troops who were about to face the Spanish Armada, with the words, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” In other words, “Forget I’m a woman, I’m as good as a man.” She knew that only by ignoring her sex could she hang onto her power: with marriage and babies she would lose it. 

Elizabeth I rousing her troops at Tilbury, 1588.
She seems to be giving  'two fingers' to the Spanish.

Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May both reached their positions of high power by emulating men’s deep voices and long strides. Neither woman has behaved, at least in public, in a feminist or friendly way to other women, although they have both cleverly made use of a symbol of womanhood to reinforce their positions: Thatcher’s hand-bag became a weapon and May’s uses her kitten-heeled shoes to mollify. Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel both wear trouser suits, presumably to ‘blend in’ with the men. “Having women pretend to be men may be a quick fix, but it doesn’t get to the heart of the problem,” writes Beard.
Even though Mary Beard has broken through many of the barriers preventing women from achieving their potential, she still suffers abuse just for being herself. Without appealing for sympathy, she reflects on how she has been treated in both print and social media. She has not been judged on her skills or intelligence, but on what she looks like. The late food critic A.A. Gill commented not on the content of her television programmes but on her teeth, hair and clothes; and judged her to be "too ugly for television". Although undoubtedly hurt, (even tough, hard-working women have feelings) she fought back against "the blokeish culture that loves to decry clever women" and hoped to show young women that there was more than one way of being a woman, and of growing older.
Despite gratuitously rude men like Gill, Beard is both respected by her academic peers and admired by television viewers for her authenticity. In 2013, I saw her presented with “The Oldie Pin-up of the Year Award” at the smart London restaurant “Simpson's in the Strand”. In a forthright and witty speech to the male-dominated audience, she made no concessions. She was probably the only woman present not wearing lipstick, and certainly the only one in a comfortable grey cardigan.
Beard considers how the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded, and how the views of male ancient Greeks are still repeated, in order to make gender violence seem normal. As Jacqueline Rose wrote in The Guardian, Beard describes “the poison of patriarchy as it drips into the body politic of what parades under the banner of civilisation.”
All round the world there are women who dare not speak at all, even when raped. Let’s hope that the news of sexual harassment from Hollywood and Westminster will not become tomorrow’s chip-wrappers. Those who support the ‘witch-hunt’ hypothesis certainly hope so. Beard notes that sexual predation is about power, and it is the men who usually have that; if they happen to be film producers or politicians, even more so.
Beard makes a plea that women should be allowed to make mistakes, and then pick themselves up without being pilloried. “If I was starting this book again from scratch,” she writes, “I would find more space to defend women’s right to be wrong.”
The conclusion that Beard comes to is a surprise. Women must stop trying to gain equal power because power itself is designed by men, and not what we really want or need. Society will only improve when power is redefined. "We don’t have a model or a template for what a powerful woman looks like,” she writes. “We only have templates that make them men." This brilliant and readable book will hopefully make us all wonder how can we help men to achieve equality for women. And ask, what would a world with articulate women allowed to speak look like? Would there be less violence? No rape, no guns? More equality?
Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard published by Profile (£7.99).
PS I have noted the irony that I have used Mary Beard’s father’s name – the patrilineal. Even journalists and academics model themselves against men!

Children of the King by Lynne Benton

Recently I read a fascinating book called “Bringing them up Royal”, about the relationships of royal children with their parents, from 1066 to the present day.  

After a great deal of deliberation I decided to talk about the three royal children of one notorious king.

Henry VIII would never have won any prizes as a husband, as we know only too well.  But what is also painfully clear is that this incredibly narcissistic king was an equally bad parent.

Henry VIII

When his daughter Mary was born to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, he was delighted with the little girl, fully confident that many more children, especially boys, would follow.  Sadly, when Catherine failed to produce the desired son – all her subsequent babies either miscarried or were stillborn – Henry decided it must be Catherine's fault, and that their marriage was cursed because she had been his dead brother’s fiancée.  He convinced himself that what was best for him was best for the country too, so as is widely known he decided to divorce Catherine, something which was forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church, to which they both belonged at the time.  The Pope refused to give his consent to the divorce, so, unprepared to be thwarted, Henry decided to break away from the Roman Catholic church and form his own, Protestant religion, the Church of England, thus setting in train many years of division and retribution among his people which in many places still resonates today.

At this time Mary was ten years old, and fond of both her parents, so she was very confused and upset by their split, though she felt her mother was the innocent party.  She also believed, as she’d been brought up to believe, that the Roman Catholic Church was right, and divorce was wrong.  But Henry continued to court Anne Boleyn, banished Catherine from court while showering Anne Boleyn with favours, and refused to see his daughter.  

Mary Tudor

In 1533, he finally got his own way, divorcing Catherine and marrying Anne, and shortly afterwards Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was born.  Then things became even worse for Mary, now aged 15.  Two days after Elizabeth's birth, Henry announced that Mary was no longer a princess, but simply Lady Mary, and he also refused to let her see her mother at all.  Then he sacked all her ladies-in-waiting and announced that Mary was to be merely lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth.  Anne didn’t help, either – she persuaded Henry to confiscate most of Mary’s jewels.  Shortly after this Henry announced that Elizabeth, not Mary, was to be his heir.  So effectively, Henry divorced not only his wife but his older daughter too.  One can only imagine how this affected the teenage Mary, and her feelings about her baby sister.

Elizabeth, aged 13

At first Mary denied her father, but from time to time she attempted a reconciliation with him, but to no avail.  He wanted nothing more to do with her.

Of course, it wasn’t long before Anne Boleyn fell out of favour too.  When she too failed to produce a male heir Henry’s eye began to wander again, and soon fell on one of Anne’s other ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour.  Happy to listen to his sycophants’ tales of Anne’s supposed infidelity, he had Anne beheaded in the Tower of London when Elizabeth was only two years old, and married Jane.

Now Elizabeth was an outcast too, and Henry totally ignored her.  Nobody knows whether he even told her why he’d had her mother executed.  To her credit, Jane Seymour was a good stepmother and did her best to bring Henry and his daughters closer together, and when her son, the future Edward VI, was born, both Mary and Elizabeth were allowed to play important parts at his christening.

Unfortunately Jane died twelve days after Edward’s birth, but by then Mary was back in favour with her father.  Henry decided she should have the honour of being chief mourner (though she had been forbidden to attend her own mother’s funeral), and granted her a household and a lady-in-waiting of her own.  Meanwhile Elizabeth and her baby brother were sent to Hatfield Palace, in the care of Elizabeth’s governess, under whose care the two small children became friends.

After Henry’s fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves, and speedy divorce, he became infatuated with the teenage Catherine Howard, who was ten years younger than Mary, which must have been very difficult for both his daughters.  However, Catherine soon proved, or was reputed to be, unfaithful to him, so he had her executed too.  This may have reminded him of the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, because he took out his misery on the nine-year-old Elizabeth and exiled her from court.  By now Elizabeth was clever enough to realise that if she was down, her half-sister was up, as once more Mary was given an honoured place at court.  They both knew that not only their status but also their lives were at the irrational whim of their spiteful, petulant father.

Finally, in 1543, Henry made a sensible marriage, to Katherine Parr, who became a good stepmother and carried on Jane Seymour’s good work of trying to mend Henry’s relationship with his children.  She got on particularly well with Elizabeth, and quickly persuaded Henry to allow his younger daughter back to court.  Then, having no children of her own, she also persuaded him to revoke his earlier decisions and restore both Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession, after their brother Edward VI. 

Edward VI

All three of Henry’s children subsequently ruled the country, but thanks to Henry the reigns of both Edward, a staunch Protestant like his father who insisted on punishing Catholics, and Mary, a staunch Catholic like her mother, who insisted on punishing Protestants, were fraught with intrigue, fear and bloodshed.  It was only when Elizabeth came to the throne that things began to calm down a little, though it took a while for everyone to come to terms with the new regime.  Considering the difficult childhood she’d had it is perhaps surprising that she coped so well in her adult life, but she was intelligent and pragmatic enough to realise that some degree of religious tolerance would benefit her people.   A useful lesson indeed.

THE TUDOR WOMEN'S POWER LIST – Elizabeth Fremantle

In the wake of the Radio 4 Woman's Hour power list for 2015 let's forget Nicola Sturgeon and Caitlyn Jenner for a moment to consider the female movers and shakers of the Tudor age.

The second half of the sixteenth century was uniquely characterised by a half-century of female rule and it was also a period when noble women were educated to an unprecedented level. So as the primary preoccupation of my Tudor trilogy is the theme of women and power, I have compiled a Tudor Women's Power List power list to rival that of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, featuring many of the women I have written about and some I have not.

1. ELIZABETH TUDOR

Still considered one of England’s greatest monarchs, history has perhaps glossed over some of the failures of Elizabeth I’s 44 year reign, choosing instead to focus on the triumphs. The defeat of the Spanish Armada was one such victory, indeed because the Catholic world deemed the Protestant Elizabeth a heretic, her reign was characterised by England’s successful defence against a perpetual and very real Spanish threat.

The period saw a great flourishing of culture supported by the Queen, in particular the rise of English drama with playwrights like Shakespeare and her encouragement of the exploration of the New World by figures such as Frances Drake, all helping to establish the English cultural identity that persists to this day.

Unlike her sister Mary, Elizabeth understood the mechanics of power for a woman on the throne and that her potential for marriage allowed her to play one foreign state off against another. To commit herself in marriage, she realised, would mean a compromise of that power, so she remained single at great personal cost and without the ability to produce an heir to continue the hard-won Tudor line.

Elizabeth features prominently in all three of my Tudor novels.


2. MARGARET BEAUFORT

The Tudors would have remained a family of ordinary nobles were it not for the indomitable Margaret Beaufort. As the mother of Henry Tudor (Henry VII), an upstart king, with a tenuous claim to the throne, who won his crown on the battlefield, she understood the importance of establishing the Tudor dynasty as a force to be reckoned with.

A mother and widow by the age of twelve, Margaret Beaufort managed to place herself, through marriage, into a position from which she could pull the strings to eventually see her son crowned. The English throne had been contested for decades, passing between the houses of York and Lancaster in an endless bloody struggle and it was Margaret who managed to broker a marriage between the Lancastrian Henry and Elizabeth of York, thereby uniting the warring houses.

Once Henry VII was on the throne she ran the royal household with a rod of iron, setting down codes of behaviour and helping negotiate illustrious and powerful marriages for her royal grandchildren to create alliances across Europe: the eldest Arthur to Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon; Margaret to James IV of Scotland; Mary to Louis XII of France and we all know what became of younger brother Henry.


3. MARY TUDOR

The eldest daughter of Henry VIII with his first wife Catherine of Aragon is remembered as Bloody Mary. This is somewhat unfair as, though it is true 280 people were burned for heresy in her four-year reign, many other monarchs of the period were responsible for equally brutal punishment regimes, indeed her younger sister Elizabeth ordered the execution of no less than 600 in the aftermath of a Catholic uprising in the north of England alone.

Mary’s route to the throne was not straightforward and she was compelled to raise an army to overthrow her young cousin Lady Jane Grey, who had been named as her brother Edward VI’s successor. Staunchly papist, Mary dragged England back to Catholicism kicking and screaming, re-establishing papal power and marrying her cousin Philip of Spain. Unfortunately this marriage was the source of much anxiety as the English worried about becoming an annex of Spain. An uprising ensued but Mary stood her ground and quelled the rebels gaining the respect of her people.

But Mary’s Spanish marriage caused England to join in Spain’s European war, which ultimately led to the loss of Calais (the last English territory on the continent) and her lack of an heir meant that when she died she had no choice but to pass the crown to her popular Protestant sister, thwarting her hopes of a Catholic England.

Mary Tudor and her reign are explored in Sisters of Treason.


4. CATHERINE OF ARAGON

Catherine of Aragon is remembered primarily for the humiliation of her divorce from Henry VIII in favour of Anne Boleyn and miserable end in a damp castle separated from those she loved. But that is a mere fragment of her story. As Henry’s queen for more than twenty years, and with her illustrious family ruling over most of Europe, she was the most powerful woman in England, prompting Thomas Cromwell to say of her ‘if not for her sex, she could have defied all the heroes of history,’ and this from an enemy.

She promoted education for women and relief for the poor and during Henry’s French campaign she was made Regent of England, raising an army to fight the invading Scots, who thought with the King away they would find an easy victory in England. This was not to be, James IV was killed at Flodden Field and the pregnant Catherine, who had ridden north in armour to encourage her troops, sent a piece of the Scottish King’s bloody coat to her husband in France to mark her triumph.


5. KATHERINE PARR

Katherine Parr is not an obvious choice for the Tudor power list as she is remembered as the wife who managed to survive marriage to Henry VIII by being meek, uncontroversial and managing to outlive him.

This was far from the case: Katherine used her position as queen to forward her reformist political agenda in a volatile, polarised court. Her Catholic enemies tried to bring her down but failed miserably as she managed to stay a step ahead of them causing them to topple in her stead. At a time when women were supposed to be seen and not heard, she was one of the first women to publish in the English language, penning two widely read books, one a highly dangerous political text that might have seen her follow her predecessors to the block.

Like Catherine of Aragon, Katherine Parr was the only other of Henry’s queens to hold the position of Regent of England, while Henry was campaigning in France, a role she performed with aplomb, managing the politically divided council and ensuring the safety of the realm. It was Katherine who encouraged Henry to reinstate his outcast daughters to the succession, thus playing an important role in the eventual half-century of female rule in England, and played a pivotal role in the education of the young Elizabeth Tudor.

Katherine Parr is the focus of Queen’s Gambit.


6. BESS OF HARDWICK

Bess of Hardwick is the only woman on the Tudor power list without a direct connection by blood or marriage to the monarchy, but as an ordinary woman born into a family of minor gentry who eventually became the Countess of Shrewsbury, amassed great wealth and land and oversaw the building of some of the great Elizabethan houses such as Chatsworth and Hardwick Hall, she deserves a mention.

Some might dismiss Bess as a canny gold-digger but this is far from the case. In the period as a woman if you didn’t manage to elevate your family through marriage you were deemed a failure, so Bess’s marital mountaineering was more about clever negotiation than seductive pulchritude. Her final marriage contract with George Talbot the Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the primary nobles in the land, was cleverly constructed to include the marriage of her son and daughter, from an earlier union, to Shrewsbury’s son and daughter, meaning that her children and their progeny would also become part of the illustrious Talbot line.

Shrewsbury managed his money badly and lost a fortune as Elizabeth’s jailor to Mary Queen of Scots, who he was impelled to house, with her vast queen’s entourage, for nearly twenty years. Bess in the meantime shored her fortune up, cultivating powerful friends, building houses and accumulating land in Derbyshire. But her ambitions were greater and she managed to marry one of her daughters to Charles Stuart, the grandson of Margaret Tudor, meaning that the daughter of that union, Arbella Stuart, was a strong contender for the English throne after Elizabeth. Bess’s hopes of becoming the queen’s grandmother were, however, dashed when Elizabeth handed the crown to Arbella’s cousin James VI of Scotland.

Arbella is to be the protagonist of my next novel.

7. PENELOPE DEVEREUX

An less obvious candidate for the power list as she's a little known figure, but as a prominent and well-connected woman who forwarded the ambitions of her family at court, was involved in risky secret espionage with the Scottish Court on the matter of the Stuart succession and lived openly in an adulterous relationship, having several children with her lover, a very bold move for a woman of the period, she deserves her place.

Forced into a deeply unhappy marriage aged eighteen, Penelope became the muse of Sir Philip Sidney, inspiring his sonnet cycle Astrophil and Stella and was highly influential in the Elizabethan cultural world of poets and playwrights. Her refusal to be shamed in her adultery, in which she behaved in a way that was the norm for men of the period but completely taboo for women, marks her out in my mind as a proto-feminist. Also she was listed as one of the perpetrators of her brother The Earl of Essex's rebellion and not only was she the sole woman listed but was the only person not to be tried for her part in it. This points to her having great power and influence behind the scenes.

Penelope Devereux is the heroine of Watch the Lady

Find out more about Elizabeth Fremantle's Tudor trilogy on www.elizabethfremantle.com 

Elizabeth I, Richard II and Dr Who

 ‘I am Richard II, know ye not that,’ is what Elizabeth I is recorded as saying in 1601, with reference to Shakespeare’s play of that name, demonstrating the extent to which such a drama, written in the late years of her reign was as much about the present as the past. The most recent production of Richard II from the RSC is running at the Barbican with David Tennant in the title role. Most well known, judging by the queues of fans at the stage door, for his stint as Dr Who, Tennant takes us on another sort of time travel with a rendition of the beleaguered king that manages to combine both Elizabeth and Richard, visiting at once two distinct periods in history, each turbulent in its own way. In the late sixteenth century the deposition of Richard II, within such a dramatic context, articulated the suggestion that there were circumstances under which justification could be found to go against the divine right of Kings and be rid of a flawed ruler. This would have resonated with an Elizabethan audience aware that Richard’s demise allowed for the rise of two legendary monarchs (Henry IV and V) known for their great martial victories over France. Indeed, the deposition scene was sufficiently controversial in its time, drawing dangerous parallels between Richard and Elizabeth, as to have been left out of most performances and printed versions of the play.

We tend to think of the long reign of Gloriana as a great triumph from start to finish, with the Spanish threat defeated and the violent religious polarisation of her sibling’s reigns solved. But as the Queen aged she relied increasingly on unpopular advisors and her vacillating temperament, which had worked in her favour for so long (playing off the rulers of Europe one against the other with indecision over which she would marry) crystallised into a stubbornness that was ruled by fear. Elizabeth’s refusal to name a successor, for fear of people’s tendency to look, as she described it, ‘to the rising than to the setting sun,’ and having passed the age when she might realistically be able to bear an heir of her body, had by the 1590s created a problematic instability in an England that was increasingly perturbed.  For years after the great defeat of the Armada the country was in a state of jitters, fearing Spanish reprisals and, despite Elizabeth’s policy of religious toleration, the threat of Catholic rebellion within England’s shores had become a permanent concern, added to that four consecutive years of failed harvests meant people were starving. It is no wonder then that plays such as Richard II, with a weak and vacillating king at its heart, emerged at this moment in time, to hold up a mirror to the Elizabethan court. It was an oblique way to criticise the status quo without ending up on the scaffold. Shakespeare’s Richard, a man clearly demonstrated as being overly dependent on the advice of suspect favourites, is deposed by the decisive and assertive Bolingbroke who stands to represent just the safe pair of hands late Elizabethan England might have wished for.

Tennant brings to the role of Richard less of the fay girlishness of some interpretations and more of a regal stiffness and distance, a rigidity of mind and body that articulates an entrenchment of stubbornness and an inability to change. He has long hair, white wafting robes, a ghoulishly pale face and, as he is lowered into view to sit motionless in his throne above the action, he is both a sexless image of the saviour and also the doll-like Elizabeth of her famous coronation portrait. At a distance it is easy to forget, given the many successes and the length of Elizabeth’s reign, the extent to which it was difficult for England to accept a woman at the helm. These difficulties are articulated in the figure of Richard who displays many of the negative tropes considered to be the essence of femininity in the period: weakness, mutability and so on. Elizabeth had successfully rebranded herself, from the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII and the loathed Anne Boleyn, into the Virgin Queen, mother to the nation, an untouchable icon of perfect ethereal womanhood, as if she were an Athena born from her father’s helmet. However as her body began to decay, forcing people to think of the uncertainty beyond her reign, her status as icon became increasingly difficult to pull off, requiring increasing artifice as each year passed.

In the play’s final scene when the enthroned Bolingbroke is lowered down onto the elevated set, as was his predecessor at the play’s beginning, we see an entirely different figure. As Henry IV he has discarded his chainmail for something altogether more regal, but beneath the purple silk sits a warrior ready to take on his enemies, an ideal the beleaguered English could only hope for. In 1661, on the eve of the Essex rebellion – in which the disaffected Earl of Essex, the popular warrior with the common touch, hoped to raise the people up to depose Elizabeth in favour of her Scottish cousin James – Essex’s steward bribed the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to put on a performance Richard II including the deposition scene. The intention was that it would encourage people, girded by the sight of a weak king deposed in favour of a strong one and the dangerously subversive notion that there are times when divine right is wrong, to join the cause. The plot failed, Essex lost his head and two years later James Stuart came to the throne anyway.

What then is the political relevance of such a play for the twenty-first century audience? Is it possible to see echoes of post-Iraq Tony Blair pushed off his perch by Gordon Brown – not really, because we no longer live under the tyranny of absolute rule or divine right. Richard II does not have the contemporary parallels of a play like Hamlet, with its focus on surveillance and political paranoia. Its lessons are more personal and intimately psychological, allowing us to see the problems of intractability and the reliance on dubious advice writ large. What it also tells us is that history always remains relevant – I feel sure the Time Lord would approve.

The RSC production of Richard II runs at the Barbican until 25^th January and is being screened at cinemas nationwide.

For novel news go to: ElizabethFremantle.com