Search results

In the final days of Henry VIII, one man is there to witness the demise of a legend... King Henry VIII, a fearsome figure of power and stature, lies upon his deathbed diminished by sickness and haunted by ghosts from his past. Only Will Somers, long-serving jester and confidant, sees all. While Henry is confined to his chamber, Will begins a journal that will document his King's last turbulent days.The country is fraught with tension. And with the King's son and heir just nine years old, there...

Whether you've seen the recent movie starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie or the classic 1970's film starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, this vibrant work of history will give you new insight into the life of Mary, Queen of Scots and her rivalry with Elizabeth I of England. Mary Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart, was one of the most well-known and controversial monarchs of the sixteenth century. She ascended to the throne of Scotland at only six days old and would eventu...

Will Montague is a page to Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII. As the King's favourite, Will gains many enemies in Court. His enemies convince the King that Will's father has committed treason and he is thrown into Newgate Prison. Will flees Hampton Court and goes into hiding in the back streets of London. Lost and in mortal danger, he is rescued by a poor boy, Nick Drew. Together they must brave imprisonment and death as they embark on a great adventure to set Will's father free.

Whalley, 1537: On a day like any other, a devastating fire changes the lives of two young girls. What happens next triggers a series of events leading inexplicably to the cells of Lancaster Gaol. Lancashire, 1612: The most notorious witchcraft trials in England are taking place. Among the accused, three generations of the same family. A family rooted in Pendle, tied to the infamous Malkin Towers and always followed by a whisper of evil. A family destroyed by the evidence given by a nine year...

This is a story of the Elizabethan underworld. It is a full-length investigation of the killing, tracing Marlowe's shadowy political dealings, his involvement in covert intelligence work, the charges of heresy and homosexuality against him. Critical new evidence is uncovered about his three companions on that last day in Deptford. Through Charles Nicholl's detailed research, a complex, unsettling story of entrapment and betrayal, chimerical plots and dirty tricks emerges. The author has written...

The little known story of the inseparable brother and sister, lights of the Romantic circle, privately haunted by madness Wordsworth thought that if there were such a thing as a good man, it would be Charles Lamb, while Hazlitt believed Mary Lambto be the only sensible woman he knew. The couple's literary reputation rested partly on the famous Tales from Shakespeare. And yet there was an unhappier side: Charles was an alcoholic and Mary, in an attack of insanity, stabbed their mother to death. T...

Fifty years after his seminal Tate gallery London exhibition, ‘The Elizabethan Image’, leading authority Roy Strong returns with fresh eyes to the subject closest to his heart, The Virgin Queen, her court and our first Elizabethan age From celebrated portraits of the Queen and paintings of knights and courtiers, to works depicting an aspiring ‘middle class’, Strong presents a detailed and authoritative examination of one of the most fascinating periods of British art. Enriching previous percept...

The captivating new historical novel from Alison Weir, Sunday Times bestselling author of the Six Tudor Queens series . 'With Elizabeth of York, Alison Weir gives us her most compelling heroine yet... This is where the story of the Tudors begins and is historical fiction at its absolute best' TRACY BORMAN'One of the great women of history... History has the best stories and they should all be told like this' CONN IGGULDEN--- Mother. Survivor. Queen. ---AN ENGLISH PRINCESS, BORN INTO A WAR BETWEE...

The Sea Dogs were seafaring merchantmen who originally traded mainly with Holland and France. During Queen Elizabeth's reign, however, they began to spread their reach, sailing further and further afield exploring and plundering. The main source of wealth quickly became the Caribbean, which, until then, had been predominantly the domain of wealthy Catholic Spain. The first man to trade with the Spanish Main was John Hawkins, who travelled to West Africa, captured the natives and transported the...

This volume transcribes 266 probate inventories from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Devon which survived the destruction of the Exeter Probate Registry in 1942. They tell us much about the lives and wealth of a range of Devon's early modern inhabitants, including yeomen, tradesman, and a few gentry, clergy and labourers, and will interest scholars of early modern social and economic history.

Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England is an original collection of thirty stories of true crime during the period 1580-1700. Published in short books known as chapbooks, these stories proliferated in early modern popular literature. The chapbooks included in this collection describe serious, horrifying and often deeply personal stories of murder and attempted murder, infanticide, suicide, rape, arson, highway robbery, petty treason and witchcraft. These criminal cases reveal the fas...

Facing persecution in early modern England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. This book studies the relationship forged by English exiles and Philip II of Spain. It shows how these expatriates, known as the "Spanish Elizabethans," used the most powerful tools at their disposal-paper, pens, and presses-to incite war against England during the "messianic" phase of Philip's reig...

This volume presents editions of two fascinating anonymous and untitled manuscripts of magic produced in Elizabethan England: the Antiphoner Notebook and the Boxgrove Manual. Frank Klaassen uses these texts, which he argues are representative of the overwhelming majority of magical practitioners, to explain how magic changed during this period and why these developments were crucial to the formation of modern magic. The Boxgrove Manual is a work of learned ritual magic that synthesizes material...

This volume brings together a diverse group of Reformation scholars to examine the life, work, and enduring significance of John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury from 1560 to 1571. A theologian and scholar who worked with early reformers in England such as Peter Martyr Vermigli, Martin Bucer, and Thomas Cranmer, Jewel had a long-lasting influence over religious culture and identity. The essays included in this book shed light on often-neglected aspects of Jewel's work, as well as his standing in Eliz...

Securing the long-term survival and status of the family has always been the principal concern of the English aristocracy and gentry. Central to that ambition has been the successful management of their landed estates, whilst failure in this regard could spell ruination for an entire family. In the sixteenth century, the task became more difficult as price inflation reduced the value of rents; improved management skills were called for. In Norfolk, estates began to change hands rapidly as the un...

The Survey of Cornwall by Richard Carew, published in 1603, is the first and classic description of Cornwall, The first of two parts describes its landscape, mining, agriculture, fishing, communications, and government, anddiscusses the Cornish people, their speech, customs and recreations. The second part takes us on a tour through the nine hundreds of Cornwall, with particular attention to natural features and curiosities, towns, and gentlemen'sseats. The Survey gives us both a delightful pict...

In This New Sepulchre by Sunday Times bestselling historian Alison Weir is a companion piece to the captivating final novel in the Six Tudor Queens series, Katharine Parr: The Sixth Wife. 'How beautiful this place was. It was comforting to think that the Queen would lie here peacefully for eternity' 1549. Katharine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's queens, has been dead for some eight months. Her cousin, Mary Odell, comes to mourn her by the beautiful marble tomb Thomas Seymour has erected at the...

The forty-four-year reign of Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and the last Tudor monarch, was considered a golden age. It saw the emergence of the great playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, while the exploits of Sir Francis Drake and other �sea-dogs' helped establish England's position among the great maritime powers. This book looks at Elizabeth's life through some of the many artefacts, buildings, documents and institutions that survive to this day. From the exe...