The Reign of Henry VIII, Personalities and Politics - David Starkey

This deceptively slim volume is Starkey at his best, one of his earliest books (written in 1995, republished in this form in 2002), before he became a TV character, cartoonish contraversialist and fawning royalist.

The attitude here is what made his name - that Henry VIII was the source of political power, not powerful in himself, and that his court was driven - and riven - by faction.
Because Starkey here is not aiming for sales but for reputation, he does not shy away from explaining his thesis and discussing the views of others. That gives tremendous life to the text. He also paints vivid pen portraits of the key players, not only Wolsey and Cromwell but figures like Anthony Denny, Groom of the Stool and absolute controller of access to the king. Likewise he offers assessments of the court women, especially the queens, that are fresh and which invite debate.


Essential reading, then, for both those new to the idea of court politics and those who simply want a vigorous and invigorating refresher. This Vintage paperback, however, sorely needs a better bibliography. A discursive one is not good enough for a thesis so heavily reliant on court papers of the time.

Tudor: The Family Story - Leandra de Lisle

I was a big fan of de Lisle’s book about the Grey sisters The Sisters Who Would be Queen, and there was much here that I liked. Eventually, though, I had to give up, because de Lisle’s conservative agenda became too much. I have no problem with conservative writers; it sometimes does me good to be reminded how the other half think. I read the Daily Telegraph from time to time – I have even read Leandra de Lisle in the Telegraph – but she also writes for the unacceptable, inexcusable Daily Mail and when she got to discussing Bloody Mary in this book the tone became out-and-out Daily Mail – incoherent ranting along the lines of Everyone’s wrong ‘cept me, the bastards! Yes, I daresay Mary I had her good side, and much of her problems later in life can be attributed to the appalling way her mother was cast aside, but the fact is her burning-at-the-stakes stats are much worse than those of Henry VIII who everyone agrees was a self-indulgent tyrant. She burned more people over a much shorter reign, and that is the yardstick by which to judge her.

The first half of the book was pretty good. De Lisle is excellent on Lady Margaret Beaufort and she introduced me to a character I had not come across before, Owen Tudor’s illegitimate son David, who was brought up for a time with the future Henry VII and who featured at various Tudor family occasions. Where I think she started to go wrong was when Henry VIII lost interest in governing, circa 1540. There is too little about the Pilgrimage of Grace, which must have shocked even Henry to the core, and even less about the Western and East Anglian rebellions in Edward’s reign, and next to nothing about Wyatt’s Rebellion in 1554, which she tries to attribute to the ineffective Marquess of Dorset.

Yes, this is expressly an account of the Tudor family, but I would argue that in order to understand the tumultuous eleven years between Henry VIII’s death and the accession of Elizabeth you have to understand the very real threats to the first cabinet government in English history, the self-appointing juntas of Somerset and Northumberland. This is probably where de Lisle’s politics start to get in the way. As a contemporary conservative she has to believe that government by a cabinet which is not even in tune with its own party, let alone the people, is acceptable. I don’t – and nor did the ordinary people of England 1547-1558. It is my firm belief that nobody outside London gave two hoots about kings until Henry VIII, having time on his hands as England’s first non-warrior king, started to interfere with their beliefs. It may even be that they weren’t that worried about liturgical changes, that what really prompted their rebellion was the removal of their welfare state, the safety blanket of the monasteries which, corrupt as they were, nevertheless provided alms, sanctuary and medical care to the poor.

Returning to Mary, if she cared anything about popular support, she would have refounded the monastic system, but she didn’t because she cared about authority, those who sided with her, and the proceeds of the dissolution which she happily shared with them.

One final criticism: De Lisle chooses to call the Marquess of Dorset ‘Harry’ Grey. In her notes she says that King Edward used the diminutive in his journal and that she uses to lessen the number of Henrys in her text. To me it sounds wrong. No one called him Harry (or Henry) outside his immediate family (of which Edward was one by marriage). They called him Dorset and later Suffolk. Surnames were not important in early modern England; titles were everything.

Young & Damned & Fair - Gareth Russell

You wait years for a serious biography of Henry VIII's fifth queen, Katherine Howard, then two comes along almost simultaneously. I have already reviewed Josephine Wilkinson's (below). This, by one of the emerging Tudor historians, is the deeper, more thoroughly researched, and therefore the better. It is by no means the better written. 390 pages on a girl who was only about twenty when she died and who only figured on the public stage for perhaps two years, tends to speak for itself.


Russell's problem, in some ways, is that he knows too much. He has done his research and he means you to know that. What he lacks, in my view, is understanding of human nature. He sets up a persona for his principals, and sticks with it. Henry is a querulous ogre, Norfolk a lickspittle, and Katherine herself a bit of a gormless tart. They are the puppets of history rather than its drivers. Russell does not understand that people respond to events; they make choices and they change their opinions.


Where Russell succeeds however, is in those areas where his deep research pays off, for example in the detail he provides for the comings and goings of Francis Dereham, Katherine's fatal fascination. He is very good indeed in describing the way the apparatus of state turned on Katherine and basically crushed her. It really is astonishing how much persecution the Tudor statesmen could cram into their day.


Ironically then, the reader who wants a broad insight into Katherine Howard and her very limited world needs to read both Russell and Wilkinson. Which would be my tip.

Katherine the Queen - Linda Porter

Like every other biography of Katherine Parr, Porter's book claims to be the first "full-scale" life of Henry VIII's sixth queen.  This is nonsense - publisher's puff - and should not be held against the author.  The facts are generally well known and I have to say I was a little let down by Porter's coverage of the Anne Askew affair, surely the most dangerous moment of Katherine's public life.  Other than that, Porter provides a thorough, well-written and entertaining account.  A modern biographer, of course, has to determine a persona for their subject.  Traditionally Katherine has been presented as something of a bluestocking, churning out tedious and pompous leaflets on the New Learning.  Certainly she wrote such material, and certainly her puritanical streak got her into hot water with her husband.  But Katherine was clearly also a woman of passion who, when finally free of arranged marriages, threw herself into marriage with the rakish Thomas Seymour within weeks of old Henry's death.  She was also, as Porter points out, popular with her stepchildren, which can't have been easy with such a bunch.  This latter, I suggest, is what Porter really brings fresh to the party.  Katherine the Queen may not be the first in its field, but it may well be the best to date.

Blood Sisters - Sarah Gristwood

This is something of an odds-and-sods adjunct to the Tudor women genre revived recently by Philippa Gregory and Gristwood herself.  It purports to show that women were powerful players in the Wars of the Roses (or Cousins War, as Gristwood prefers) but ends up, by and large, proving that they weren't. 

Elizabeth Woodville was certainly the epicentre of a powerful clique, mostly her relations, but was either a nonentity or a completely heartless bitch.  Because Gristwood wants to play the feminist card, she opts for the nonentity option.  Margaret Beaufort, on the other hand, was certainly a woman of brains and ambition - but had to exercise her talents through the single son she gave birth to at the age of thirteen or younger, the future Henry VII.  Elizabeth of York looked like a plumper version of her mother and was certainly a nonentity.  Margaret of Burgundy was the dowager duchess of a small but wealthy and influential duchy.  She brought up people of significance, like Philip the Fair, but threw her backing behind anyone who could pass as one of the murdered Princes in the Tower.  She was, therefore, a rotten judge of character.  Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, suffered more bereavement than anyone should and outlived more or less everybody involved in the Cousins War, but she let her reputation be trampled in the mud at the whim of her ruthless sons.  Margaret of Anjou, queen of the hopeless Henry VI, was another who had a rotten time and lost everything when she lost her son, the Prince of Wales.  The poor old Neville sisters, wives of dukes, princes and kings, seem to have existed only to give birth and die.  They were absolutely pawns in the games of sleazy men and completely undermine Gristwood's argument.  One woman who does seem to have had skills as a courtier and who is only mentioned in passing here - Katherine Gordon, wife of the pretender Warbeck, who seems to have flourished after his execution - is the one I would like to learn more about.

Sarah Gristwood is a cracking writer and this book is a pleasure to read.  Whilst I criticise her thesis, I have only two criticisms of her technique.  Firstly, she really overdoes the Fortune's Wheel device.  Secondly, after properly branding as unreliable the writings of Tudor propagandists like More, who weren't there and didn't know the people concerned, why then rely so heavily on Shakespeare, who didn't even know Thomas More?  There is no conspiracy behind the fact that Shakespeare overlooks Margaret Beaufort - he just didn't have an actor who fancied playing a midget in drag.  I really appreciated the extensive notes where she makes many of her more scholarly arguments.