A Far Horizon
Page 29
The historical characters who captured my imagination in the two volumes of Broken Kingdom were Lucy Percy Hay, Queen Henrietta Maria, and to a lesser extent King Charles I and his chief adversary in Parliament, John Pym. A study in contrast and survival, Lucy’s character has been much speculated upon, including by the novelist Alexander Dumas. She is said to be the model for ‘Milady de Winter,’ the attractive and dangerous spy for Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers. Some historical sources argue that Lucy betrayed her King by warning John Pym of the impending arrest of five leading parliamentarians and that her affair with him was rumored. I found this more than plausible and used it as a plot point. Despite Lucy’s duplicity and reputation, I found her to be a sympathetic character in her instinct for survival and her intelligence. She is reputed to have had lovers on both sides of the divide. I also found Queen Henrietta Maria a sympathetic character, even though her determination to deliver Protestant England to the pope provided the catalyst for the brutal war. Both she and Lucy Hay were strong, determined women in an age when it was not easy to be a woman who could influence policy and affect outcomes – or even her own personal choices.
As the conflict wore on without resolution, Parliament split. Lucy and the Percy family aligned with the moderate faction in pursuit of a peaceful solution. After the King’s execution, the Puritan ‘Rump Parliament’ imprisoned Lucy Hay in the Tower and threatened her with the rack. While in prison – and upon her release – she worked for Charles II’s restoration to the throne, acting as an intermediary with the court in exile. It is said she pawned a pearl necklace to support Lord Holland’s troops in that cause. She died of apoplexy not long after the Restoration.
The last time Queen Henrietta saw her ‘dearest heart’ was when he said goodbye to her in Exeter after the birth of their last child. Henrietta’s fears regarding Jane Whorwood probably came true – according to historical speculation (based on that young woman’s tender ministrations to him while he was imprisoned). After her husband’s death, Henrietta wore mourning for the rest of her life and spent some time in a nunnery in France. During Cromwell’s Protectorate she worked tirelessly to return the throne to her oldest son, using the same tactics and resources she had used for his father. Until her death, Baron Henry Jermyn remained devoted to her and she to him. Under Charles II, Jermyn became Earl of St Albans. Some historical gossips maintain that he and Henrietta were secretly married and further suggest that the little Princess born in Exeter belonged to him. The Queen Mother returned to England at the Restoration but retired to Paris in 1665. She died in Paris in 1669 and was buried at the abbey church of St Denis.
All the Queen’s children joined their mother in France, except Princess Elizabeth, who died at the age of thirteen, two days before Parliament gave the children permission to leave. Young Henry, Duke of Gloucester, became a staunch Protestant and maintained a chilly relationship with his mother throughout her lifetime. The youngest child, baby ‘Minette’ Henrietta Anne, spent her girlhood in Paris with her mother and grew up Catholic. She was devoted to the Stuart Restoration and, as the Duchess d’Orléans, was a favorite at the court of Louis XIV. After his older brother Charles II died, James became King James II of England (James VII of Scotland) in 1685 to become the last Catholic monarch of England. He was deposed by his Protestant son-in-law William of Orange.
The biography of John Milton, the second greatest poet in the English language, also ignited my imagination. The tension between his literary genius and his unpleasant personality, raw ambition, and destructive self-interest I found intriguing. After the war, Mary Powell came back to John Milton, bringing her dispossessed Royalist family with her. A dutiful Puritan, he took them in. Mary died at the age of twenty-seven while giving birth to their fourth child, a son also named John. He did not thrive and died after a few weeks. Three daughters survived to serve Milton, begrudgingly, into his old age. Under Cromwell, Milton was appointed Secretary of Foreign Tongues and continued to write political tracts, one of which was a defense of the regicide of Charles I. After the Restoration of Charles II, he was briefly imprisoned, but influential literary friends with royal ties gained him a pardon. John Milton’s Areopagitica is now acknowledged as a seminal document for freedom of speech. After he lost his sight, Milton continued to write poetry and produced the brilliant epic poem Paradise Lost.
Other historical figures make cameo appearances, such as Joanna Cartwright, an Englishwoman living in Amsterdam who advocated for the return of the Jews to England. Her meeting with Henrietta is fictional, though it seems logical she would have made such an attempt while the Queen was in The Hague. The English Jews were finally allowed to return under Cromwell. Also, the literary figures with whom Milton – and Lucy Hay – interacted within the narrative are historical characters. The goldsmith, Thomas Simpson, is likewise a name from the period, though the account of Lucy’s meeting with him is fictional. The specific kind of enterprise mentioned in the description of his Cheapside vault emerged during the war and became the forerunner for the institution of the Bank of England established at the end of the century (see accounts of the Cheapside Hoard, discovered in 1913, reported by several contemporary sources).
The printer James Whittier and Caroline Pendleton are fictional characters, as are Ben Pendleton and Patience Trapford. They were inspired by accounts of the fractured families and hardships of the war and are emblematic of the burgeoning Fleet Street printing enterprises that still survive today. I did not discover the name of the ‘free’ printer for Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, or The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution by Roger Williams. James Whittier emerged in my imagination as the kind of risk-taker and free-thinker who would have accepted such a challenge and gone on to embrace the radical freedom experiment in Rhode Island.
HISTORICAL SOURCES
Kishlansky, Mark. A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603–1714. Penguin Books, 1996.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. Penguin Books, 2003.
Major, Philip. Writings of Exile in the English Revolution and Restoration. Ashgate Publishing, 1988.
Purkiss, Diane. The English Civil War. Basic Books, 2006.
Spencer, Charles. Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I. Bloomsbury Press, 2014.
Tombs, Robert. The English and Their History. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.
A general web search for any of the many historical characters and quotes referenced in the novel will produce a variety of sources. For facts, biography, themes and timelines I recommend the site run by the British Civil War Project: http://bcw-project.org.
For more about the history of Henrietta Maria go to: https://history.blog.gov.uk/2014/04/28/henrietta-maria-the-forgotten-queen/
For a summary understanding of Roger Williams and the American connection with the English Civil War, I recommend Smithsonian Magazine’s article on Williams: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/god-government-and-roger-williams-big-idea-6291280/