by A D Swanston
The queen was known to be fond of Ambrose (although he lacked the looks and charm of his brother) and appointed him to the important post of Master of the Ordnance. He was also close to Robert, who said ‘Him I love as myself’.
In 1549, Warwick, Ambrose and Robert were active in putting down the popular uprisings, later known as Kett’s Rebellion, in East Anglia, and in 1562–3 Ambrose commanded an army sent by the queen to support the Huguenots in France, where he was severely wounded in the leg. In 1590 he was forced to have the leg amputated and died soon afterwards.
Had they been born 450 years later one feels that Robert would have been an enthusiastic user of social media to promote his cause, but Ambrose would not.
During the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, there were sporadic outbreaks of slogans written on walls in public places. The Hempe prophecy was one such. Mouldwarp also appeared, although not in the form in which Christopher sees it. The other slogans in the story were invented by Simon and Gabriel.
Counterfeiting, or ‘coining’, was a serious problem during Henry VIII’s reign because his debasements of the coinage, especially the ‘Great Debasement’ of 1542, not only caused widespread mistrust of the value of coins but also made coining easier. Silver was extracted from legal coins by ‘clipping’ bits off, ‘sweating’ them by shaking them up in a bag and collecting the resulting silver dust, and ‘culling’ better coins to melt them down and remix them with copper. Counterfeiters were often mint-workers or goldsmiths.
One of the slogans Christopher mentions is Beware the coin of reddish face, not silver pure but metal base. The slogan is fictional but its warning was not. The redness came from copper mixed with silver – the more copper, the redder the face. Queen Elizabeth did much to restore confidence in the coinage but the problems of counterfeiting persisted. In 1562 the coinage, by that time hopelessly unreliable as a result of debasement and counterfeiting, was revalued. As part of this process, the coins known as testons were divided into two groups. The value of a ‘better’ teston was set at 4¼d., and of a ‘worse’ teston at 2¼d.
The first stories of a teston with the Dudley marks of a bear and a ragged staff appeared in 1551, during the reign of the young Edward VI, for whom the Earl of Warwick, father of Ambrose and Robert, was regent. There was a rumour – never proved – that the testons had been produced in a secret mint at Warwick Castle. Using the iron dies known as ‘trussels’ and ‘piles’ it would not have been difficult to produce large quantities of ‘naughty’ coins. The difficulty would have been in keeping the activity secret.
Simon Lovelace and Gabriel Browne employed the Pryses to make the dies and to produce the ‘Dudley testons’, although their purpose was rather different to that of the coiners of twenty years earlier. They chose Guildford because it was safer than London and because of the glass-blowing which existed there at that time and which gave them a means of smuggling the coins into London hidden in consignments of glass.
The lute was an instrument which educated young people of the early modern period were expected to learn. At court, lutenists were commonly known as ‘royal lutes’. By the end of the sixteenth century it had evolved from the lutes of two thousand years earlier into a six-course instrument, five of the courses consisting of pairs of strings. Christopher did not sing but the lute was often played as an accompaniment to the human voice, as it was by Simon in the Great Chamber.
The body and neck of a lute were commonly made from a hard-wood, often edged with ebony, the strings from animal gut and the bridge from a softer fruitwood. The lute given to Christopher by the Earl of Leicester was very unusual in that the body was made of ivory. It was made in Venice and would have been very expensive. By 1574 the earl had built up a considerable collection of musical instruments.
The jolly galliard and the more restrained pavan will be familiar to many readers, at least in name. Less so, perhaps, the dompe and the almain, the latter being somewhat more sombre than the former. ‘My Lady Cary’s Dompe’ was a particularly popular tune in the late sixteenth century (and one of Christopher’s favourites).
The composer of ‘The Maiden’s Lamentation’, Simon’s choice of music to play before the queen, is unknown but the lyrics have survived. The queen describes his playing as ‘ravishing’. To us this may sound odd but it was an adjective used at the time to compliment a player.
The Ambassadors, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1533, now hangs in the National Gallery. It is a double portrait full of symbolism over which experts have argued for nearly five hundred years. The skull in the foreground actually reveals itself from either the left or the right but not from directly in front. I know of no evidence for a preliminary painting but it is not impossible that one existed.
Following the horrors of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in Chaos Christopher is suffering from what we would call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For those wondering about his hand, he also suffers from Dupuytren’s Contracture, a condition found among people of Nordic and Northern European descent, in which the fingers are pulled progressively down towards the palm. His height and fair hair suggest Scandinavian ancestry.
It is a condition which neither Joan’s salves nor anyone else’s would have helped; today it is treated surgically.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
One of the joys of being a historical novelist is the wonderful, interesting people one meets, either in person or through the ether. Without exception, the experts I have consulted on Chaos have gone out of their way to be helpful and constructive and I thank all of them. Of all the benefits the World Wide Web brings, making it easier to find an expert on almost anything is, for me, the most valuable.
In particular, I offer grateful thanks to Professor James Sharpe of York University who advised on the discovery, examination and prosecution of those accused of witchcraft and to Dr Katherine Butler, senior lecturer at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, and an expert on Tudor musical culture.
Chris Goodwin, Secretary of the English Lute Society, kindly allowed me to visit him at his house and answered with practised ease all the questions thrown at him by a most unmusical author. He also made suggestions, checked the passages in the story in which the lute plays a part and corrected my mistakes.
Without their expert and generous help, and that of others who prefer to remain unnamed, Christopher Radcliff could not have played the lute, Joan Willys could not have been accused of witchcraft and the bear and staff testons could not have reappeared.
The libraries at the Goldsmiths’ Hall and Royal Holloway, University of London, yielded much invaluable information and I thank the librarians at both for their help, as I do the librarians at the National Gallery.
Finally, to my brilliant agent David Headley of DHH Literary Agency and to Simon Taylor, my patient editor at Transworld Publishers, my gratitude for putting up with me and for nursing me through the writing process all the way from idea to finished book.
Any errors of fact in the story are of course my own.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © A. D. Swanston 2020
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A. D. Swanston has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
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ISBN 9781473526891
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