Tudor England and a Tortured Writer

 

Nancy Bilyeau

 

My friend Sandy Morgan is one of the people I test things out on. She’s a fanatical reader of mysteries and thrillers, from P.D. James to Anne Perry. So while visiting her in late 2011, I showed her a draft of the jacket copy for my first novel, The Crown.

She was smiling as she read the jacket copy—good!—until she reached a certain sentence and then she frowned—bad!—and finally even recoiled. “You don’t have torture in your book, do you?” she asked, her eyes filled with concern.

My novels, The Crown, The Chalice, and The Tapestry, are set in England in the late 1530s and early 1540s, during the tumultuous time when Henry VIII broke from the Church of England because the Pope would not grant him a divorce. The protagonist of the books is Sister Joanna Stafford, who took novice vows at a Dominican priory in Kent.  This was a violent transition that led to rebellion (the Pilgrimage of Grace), executions for treason (Sir Thomas More and Cardinal John Fisher), martyrdoms (the Carthusian monks) and a diaspora of nuns, monks, and friars, forcibly ejected from their homes.

And yes, during this period in English history, there was torture, primarily inflicted within the thick walls of the Tower of London. Today’s visitors can see a curated room devoted to the fearsome rack and other devices. It’s quite clearly part of the draw of the Tower, a huge tourist attraction.

The records from history make grim, shocking reading. Before Henry VIII broke with Rome, he was one of the many people in England who respected and revered the Carthusian monks of The Charterhouse in London. This was a special place: the monks lived in small individual cells, rarely speaking, spending their days praying, meditating, and writing. Henry VIII was anxious to obtain the approval of the Carthusians to his religious revolution—that he, the monarch, would be the head of the Church of England and all must take a vow of obedience to his supremacy. But the Carthusians refused to take the vow, and, despite pressure, continued to refuse. In response, they were, in groups over a period of three years, hanged, drawn and quartered, or starved to death while chained to a pillar in the Tower of London. This is the reality of Henry Tudor, a far cry from the romantic bed hopper of popular culture.

My character, Joanna Stafford, is imprisoned in the Tower of London for several months in The Crown, suspected of treason and religious-driven rebellion—the very reasons that put prisoners in the hands of the torturer. So would I incorporate any scenes of it into my books, observed or endured? I struggled with this day and night.

What makes it even more challenging for me is that I personally can’t handle viewing torture and slasher gore in films. I thought that Casino Royale was ruined by Bond’s gratuitous torture. I’ve never seen any of the Saw, Friday the 13^th or Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

My books are thrillers but they are also historical fiction, based on years of research. I feel it is critically important not to romanticize the era. And so I did write a short scene, based on contemporary documents and completely driven by character, that includes torture observed in the Tower. And yet, when my friend Sandy looked at me so sadly, I asked my editor at Touchstone/Simon&Schuster to remove reference to it in the jacket copy. I didn’t want to scare off potential Sandy’s. When she eventually read the entire novel, she made no objection to that passage. It was part of the plot; it didn’t repel her.

But there’s another dimension: I blog quite a bit about the historical period in which I set my novels. One post for English Historical Fiction Authors, titled Little Ease: Torture and the Tudors, has more than 11,000 views as of this week. I am not sure what to make of this.  Will many readers actually be drawn to my book because of the violent underbelly of the glamorous Tudor age?  Should I have left that reference to torture on the jacket copy?

I continued to wrestle with these questions, of how much torture and violence to include in my novels. Sometimes I thought about the first novels set in Tudor England I ever read, The Concubine by Norah Lofts and The Sixth Wife, by Jean Plaidy. As much as I adored those writers, the motor of their plots was romantic, not political or theological. They weren’t writing thrillers, certainly. Yet their works were enduring classics.

Norah Lofts, Jean Plaidy and the other historical novelists I respect wrote in a different era, however. C.J. Sansom does not shy away from the violence of the Tudor era in his fine series of mysteries. And Hilary Mantel takes on the question of torture in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. The fact that she focuses on Sir Thomas More’s torture of suspected evangelical heretics and completely omits Henry VIII’s sanction of the torture of the Catholics who opposed him—such as the Carthusian monks, who were hanged, drawn and quartered—has brought her criticism. 

In my second book, The Chalice, there are scenes of violence, as Joanna witnesses the victims to Henry VIII and Cromwell. However, most of the tension is psychological. And the book went on to win the Romantic Times Reviewers Award last year for Best Historical Mystery.

The Chalice was also given the “Soft-Boiled Egg” Award from NYC’s Mysterious Bookshop.  The bookshop’s definition: “These are the best in traditional, historical and romantic suspense titles.  Death, yes, but violence plays a very small part in these stories which concentrate more on the character development of those who solve the murders.”

Had I gone Soft-Boiled? Some people have asked if my novels could fit into the category of “cozy mystery,” a genre in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously. Despite my second book having won the RT award, there is no sex in my books, just a great deal of sexual tension. So yes to part of that description. But violence? I certainly don’t wallow in it. Still…there is nothing cozy about the rack, so I fear I may have to say no to inclusion.

In The Tapestry, Joanna Stafford is pulled into the court itself, reluctantly presenting herself to Henry VIII at Whitehall in April 1540. I very deliberately chose that month, for it is when Thomas Cromwell, Joanna’s nemesis, is made earl of Essex and the tensions among the power players at court reach critical boil. The factions are battling to the death. That summer Cromwell lost and was executed at the Tower of London in one of the most harrowing beheadings of the entire Tudor period. And a day later, six men of different religious faiths were executed.

I couldn’t shy away from the true events—they were crucial in the life of my main character. Yet I could not subject my readers to the full gruesomeness, either. 

I decided to portray those bloody days, as I had many others in the mid-16^th century, through the eyes of Joanna Stafford, to draw on her horror and fear but also her pity and ultimately her compassion.

I hope that these are the decisions that would make even my friend Sandy proud.

Nancy Bilyeau is the author of The Crown, The Chalice and The Tapestry. On March 24, 2015, The Tapestry was published in North America and the United Kingdom. For more information, go to www.nancybilyeau.com

America buy link: http://amzn.to/1FP4UoK

UK buy link: http://amzn.to/1EE811d

The Strange Life of Elizabeth Barton

Nancy Bilyeau

The journey that Henry VIII made with Anne Boleyn to Calais in the autumn of 1532 is well known. This was when Henry presented his beloved Anne, newly elevated as Marquess of Pembroke, to the king of France, when the couple may have begun to sleep together, when by all accounts he was most deeply in love with her.

Yet just before leaving England, King Henry had a distinctly unromantic encounter with another woman. He met face-to-face with a female who was roughly Anne Boleyn’s age but was not a courtier’s daughter possessing style and Continental polish. Elizabeth Barton, humbly born, was a Benedictine nun of the Priory of St. Sepulchre, in Canterbury.

Sister Elizabeth was, like many people, loyal to the king’s estranged wife, Queen

Katherine of Aragon

Catherine of Aragon, and did not want him to marry Anne Boleyn. But unlike the vast majority of English men and women, she was determined to do something about it.

According to a statement taken later, Sister Barton told Henry VIII “she had knowledge by revelation from God that God was highly displeased with our said Sovereign Lord…and in case he desisted not from his proceedings in the said divorce and separation but pursued the same and married again, that then within one month after such marriage he should no longer be king of this realm, and in the reputation of Almighty God should not be king one day nor one hour, and that he should die a villain’s death…”

Henry VIII’s response to Sister Elizabeth’s threat in 1532 is unknown. But less than two years later, she would be dead, the only nun executed in the reign of the king. She had no trial. The methods that the king and his ministers used to persecute and condemn her for treason set the pattern to be used on others that Henry VIII wanted to destroy. She was the first of the retaliation deaths.

Anne Boleyn

Although she presented a serious obstacle to Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, and was later used as an instrument to bring down the highest-ranking of the king’s critics, Cardinal John Fisher, Sister Elizabeth Barton does not appear in hardly any historical fiction (or TV series or films) taking place in the 1530s. She is described dismissively in most works of nonfiction.  Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton called her “that deluded prophetess” and, more recently, Geoffrey Moorhouse described her as “the somewhat deranged and visionary serving maid.” 

What has undoubtedly diminished the legacy of Sister Elizabeth is the Tudor government’s propaganda machine. A long manuscript was written by Barton’s confessor; a printed tract of her life widely circulated throughout England; an illuminated letter was produced by a monk – all of these documents were destroyed. We cannot read them today. The accepted chroniclers of the 16^th century, all of them Protestant, are our sources of her life story, along with a few references made by foreign ambassadors. It is hard to glimpse a view of the human being through the distortions. 

Sister Elizabeth’s saga bears some resemblance to Joan of Arc’s, a century earlier. Joan was a peasant who experienced visions. Elizabeth was a servant who fell seriously ill in 1525, lost consciousness, and when she came to, made references to the health of a boy also ill whose fate she could not have had knowledge of.  She shared visions that called for veneration of God. Word spread, and those living in Kent began to make pilgrimages. She is supposed to have proclaimed prophecies and performed miracles but we don’t know the details. “She told plainly of divers things done at the church and other places where she was not present, which nevertheless she seemed most likely to behold as if it were with her own eye.”

Church authorities interviewed Elizabeth early on and proclaimed her a genuine mystic. They were not eager to anoint seers; quite the opposite. She was examined rigorously by a series of priests, monks and bishops, all of them on the outlook for “trickery.” The Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham personally saw her and said her visions were genuine. In a letter he described her as a “well -disposed and virtuous woman.” Elizabeth entered the nunnery of St. Sepulchre to be either protected or controlled, depending on how you look at it. “The Holy Maid of Kent” made appearances at a church in Canterbury, and at one point up to 2,000 people jostled to surround her.

What is beyond question is that Elizabeth Barton had some sort of chronic illness for the rest of her life, whether it was physical, neurological or psychiatric. Her visions often came to her while she appeared to be suffering painful fits, writhing on the floor, or in a trance.

Much later, the next archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, known for his skepticism and dislike of superstition, wrote this eyewitness account of Elizabeth’s fit: “Then there was a voice heard speaking within her belly, as if it had been in a tun, her lips not greatly moving, she all that while continuing in a trance. The which voice, when it told everything of the joys of heaven, it spake so sweetly and heavenly that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof. And contrary, when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly that it put the hearers in great fear.” In our modern minds, these bizarre breakdowns in health would hurt her credibility. But in the medieval era, holy women were often traumatically ill at the time of experiencing visions.

Elizabeth Barton became famous before Henry VIII launched his famous quest for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. She already had enemies, though. Elizabeth called for obedience to pious works and traditional worship, tenets that were under attack in a Germany transformed by Martin Luther. All of Europe was in turmoil over the spreading religious reform. 

Henry VIII derided Luther in writing and was rewarded by the pope’s proclaiming him “Defender of the Faith.”  What’s hard for us to grasp is that, before 1527, it was unthinkable to the world that the king of England would discard his longtime queen or that he would break with Rome. He was an orthodox ruler, an obedient son of the church.  Reformer and scholar William Tyndale, living in exile, called Elizabeth a “false, dissembling harlot.” (Protestant opponents often accused Barton of sexual misconduct, without any foundation whatsoever.) Since Henry VIII opposed, hunted down, persecuted and finally killed Tyndale--who died in the flames crying, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes”—Henry Tudor and Sister Elizabeth Barton were on the same side.

Until they weren’t.

The  "Holy Maid” did not publicly prophesy against the king. She repeatedly tried to warn him against his course of action, first to his ministers and finally to him in person. In 1528, Barton told Cardinal Wolsey that God commanded her to tell him that if he furthered the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn he would be “utterly destroyed.” (Wolsey was disgraced after he failed to get the king his divorce and died on way to trial.) John Fisher, the churchman who supported Catherine of Aragon, wept with joy when he heard Sister Elizabeth’s visions. Sir Thomas More was more cautious, telling her that her words were “reckless.” Catherine of Aragon herself was careful to never meet or corresponded with Elizabeth, her champion. The embattled queen could see the danger that Elizabeth and her many followers seemed oblivious to.

Although he knew of her activities, Henry VIII did not move against the nun for a long time. During one stage he tried to pacify her, even to bribe her. He offered to make her an abbess of her own priory. She refused the offer.

Elizabeth’s fame and influence continued to grow. She met with foreign ambassadors and the papal representative in England. She wrote letters to the pope, urging him to stop the king from divorcing. She had secret meetings with English nobility, including Gertrude Courtenay, the marchioness of Exeter, wife to the king’s first cousin. Collections of Sister Elizabeth’s prophecies were printed and widely circulated.

Barton herself said that she prevented Henry VIII from marrying Anne Boleyn in Calais, as he was rumored to be planning to do. When they did marry, it was in great secret. 

It was widely known that Sister Elizabeth predicted if Henry VIII wed Anne, he would soon lose his kingdom and die. After several months had passed and he was very much alive, the king moved against her. Barton and her most devoted followers were arrested and harshly questioned in late 1533. There is no proof of torture, although another woman, Anne Askew, would be racked nearly to death for her religious “crimes” a decade later.

Whatever the means of persuasion, Elizabeth Barton supposedly told her captors what they wanted to hear. She recanted her visions and said, Cranmer wrote, “all was feigned of her own imagination, only to satisfy the minds of them which resorted unto her, and to obtain worldly praise.” This did not save her. Henry VIII directed Parliament to pass a special act condemning her for treason without a hearing. The punishment was death.

Elizabeth Barton, around 30 years of age, was hanged and then beheaded on April 20, 1534, her head fixed on Tower Bridge, the only woman known to be so displayed after death. The head of Cardinal Fisher was later mounted as a warning to others when he was executed for treason, in part because he was charged with conspiring with Elizabeth Barton. Five men were executed with her the same day, all of them priests, monks or parsons who had believed in her prophecies. 

This same spring of 1534 was when Henry VIII demanded that the church and the people follow him into schism with Rome. The terms of the Act of Succession were proclaimed everywhere. People were warned that if they said or wrote anything against the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn or his lawful heirs by her, they would be guilty of treason, punishable by death. 

All the records of Sister Elizabeth’s confession come from the crown. In 1536, Queen Anne Boleyn would also be turned into a nonperson after execution: letters, documents, portraits destroyed. Because her daughter grew up to be a great queen, Anne’s reputation was restored. This never happened with Elizabeth Barton. She is usually dismissed as a tool of religious plotters, or mentally ill. The possibility that this was a young woman who felt compelled to have a say in the affairs of the kingdom, and possessed the courage to try to interfere, is rarely acknowledged.

Nancy Bilyeau is the author of The Crown and The Chalice, thrillers that take place in England in the 1530s. Sister Elizabeth Barton is a character in The Chalice. To learn more, go to www.nancybilyeau.com

 

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You Are Cordially Invited to a Tudor Pageant

In the next few days I will be launching an on-line Summer Tudor Pageant.  It will all take place here, on my blog, and I hope you will join in the fun and bring all  your friends along. Joining me on this historical extravaganza  are seven authors who write in the Tudor era. Although I am sure they need no introduction, I have listed them below in no particular order. And keeping us all on our toes, dressed in their Tudor best are The Tudor Roses who bring the history of the Tudor court alive with their wonderful authentic costumes.

Barbara Kyle, author of, among other things,  Blood Between Queens,  The Queen's Gamble and The Queen's Captive.

Also joining us is Nancy Bilyeau, author of The Crown and The Chalice.









 

Elizabeth Ashworth, author of The De Lacy Inheritance and By Loyalty Bound.

Claire Ridgway, a non-fiction author of The Fall of Anne Boleyn, The Anne Boleyn Countdown and On this Day in Tudor History.

 Linda Root, author of The Midwife's Secret,  The Other Daughter, and The Queen of Scots Suite.

Sandra Byrd, author of, among other things, Roses have Thorns, and The Secret Keeper.

And of course, yours truly.