by Jones, Nigel
For Richard I, King John and William Longchamp, see John Gillingham, Richard I (1999); W. L. Warren, King John (1991); Ralph V. Turner, King John, England’s Evil King? (2009); and Frank McLynn, Lionheart and Lackland (2006).
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and J. Stow’s Survey of London (both online) have also been useful.
Chapter Two: The Menagerie and the Mint
For Henry III, Hubert de Burgh and Simon de Montfort see David Carpenter’s The Minority of Henry III (1990) and The Reign of Henry III (1996); and Margaret Wade Labarge’s Simon de Montfort (1962).
For the Tower’s menagerie see E. T. Bennet’s The Tower Menagerie (1829); and Daniel Hahn’s more contemporary The Tower Menagerie (2003). For the impressions of a foreign visitor to the Elizabethan menagerie see The Diary of Baron Waldstein (trans. 1981). For Samuel Pepys’s account of his visit see his Diary.
For the Royal Mint see J. Craig, The Mint (1953); C. E. Challis (ed.), A New History of the Royal Mint (1992); and for Isaac Newton’s duel with Thomas Chaloner see Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson (2009).
Chapter Three: The Captives and the Kings
For Edward I, see Marc Morris’s superb biography, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (2008). For William Wallace see Graeme Morton, William Wallace (2004) and Chris Brown, William Wallace (2005).
For Edward III see Ian Mortimer’s The Perfect King (2006) – a near-perfect biography. For King Jean II of France see J. Devaisse, Jean le Bon (1985). For King James I of Scotland see Michael Brown’s James I (1994).
Chapter Four: Plague and Peasants
For the Black Death, see Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (1969); William Naphy and Andrew Spicer, The Black Death and the History of Plagues 1345–1730 (2000); John Kelly, The Great Mortality (2005); and Benedict Gummer, The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British Isles (2009).
For the Peasants’ Revolt (and other popular risings) see the racy, learned and informative The English Rebel (2009) by David Horspool. Summer of Blood: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 by Dan Jones (2009) supersedes all previous accounts. For the remainder of the reign of Richard II see Nigel Saul’s definitive biography, Richard II (1999). For an earlier view, see Richard II by Anthony Steel (1941).
For the mysterious death of Richard II (and other monarchs) see Dr Clifford Brewer’s fascinating The Death of Kings: A Medical History of the Kings and Queens of England (2000) and Michael Evans’s The Death of Kings: Royal Deaths in Medieval England (2003).
Chapter Five: Uneasy Heads
For Henry IV see Ian Mortimer’s The Fears of Henry IV (2008); and for his son Henry V see Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle by Juliet Barker (2005).
The best and fullest biography of the tragic Henry VI is by Bertram Wolffe (1981); and for his feisty queen see Jock Haswell’s The Ardent Queen: Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian Heritage (1976); or for a French perspective, Philippe Erlanger’s Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England (1970). The fate of their dynasty is ably told by R. L. Storey in The End of the House of Lancaster (1966, 1986).
A detailed and excellent account of the collapse of royal authority under Henry VI and the early years of the Wars of the Roses is Alison Weir’s Lancaster and York (1995). The wars themselves have generated a large and impressive recent literature. The following, all titled The Wars of the Roses, are warmly recommended: J. R. Lander (1965), Charles Ross (1976) and John Gillingham (1981) all set the wars in their political context; while Robin Neillands (1992), Anthony Goodman (2005) and Trevor Royle (2009) focus on the military aspects of the conflict. Desmond Seward (1995) concentrates colourfully and rivetingly on the leading personalities, bringing them to breathing life.
Chapter Six: Roses are Blood Red
Edward IV, the central and dominant figure of the wars, is dealt with in detail by Charles Ross in Edward IV (1976), the definitive life. His ally turned rival, Warwick the Kingmaker, has been equally fully and fairly treated by Michael Hicks (1998). Edward’s Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, that great survivor, has found a good biographer in David Baldwin (2002).
The villainous yet strangely appealing Richard III has attracted a larger literature than the wars themselves.
Highly recommended is the definitive life, Richard III by Michael Hicks (2000). While Desmond Seward’s Richard III: England’s Black Legend (1982) readably damns Richard with all this author’s customary gusto.
Accounts of battles include Barnet and Tewkesbury by P. W. Hammond (1990); The Battle of Bosworth by Michael Bennett (1985); and Bosworth 1485 by Michael K. Jones (2002). The biggest bloodbath of all is covered by A. W. Boardman in The Battle of Towton (1994) and by George Goodwin in Fatal Colours: Towton, 1461, England’s Most Brutal Battle (2011).
Chapter Seven: The Princes, the Protector and the Pretenders
The Tower’s most enduring mystery, the fate of the little princes, is considered at length by Elizabeth Jenkins in The Princes in the Tower (1978); and by A. J. Pollard in Richard III and the Princes in the Tower (1991); and is definitively solved with the finger of guilt pointing firmly at Richard by Alison Weir in her clear and concise indictment, also titled The Princes in the Tower (1992).
The unlikely accession of Henry Tudor to power as Henry VII is briskly narrated by Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas in The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (1985); while the two chief challenges to his rule, those of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, are covered respectively by Michael Bennett in Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke (1987) and Anne Wroe in Perkin (2003). The chief fomentor of Yorkist conspiracies against Henry, Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, has been given her considerable due by Christine Weightman in Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy 1446–1503 (1989), while Desmond Seward brings his usual brio to telling the story of the continuing Yorkist threat to the Tudors into the reign of Henry VIII in The Last White Rose (2010).
Chapter Eight: The King’s Great Matter
There are numerous biographies of Henry VIII, of which the following can be safely and strongly recommended: Henry VIII by Francis Hackett (1929, 1949); and Henry VIII by J. J. Scarisbrick (1968).
We eagerly await the concluding volume of David Starkey’s life which began with his study of the young Henry in Henry: Virtuous Prince ( 2008); meanwhile his The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics (2002) is a good short introduction to the period.
Alison Weir’s Henry VIII, King and Court and Derek Wilson’s In the Lion’s Court (both 2002) offer excellent accounts of the murderous and risky life at the top in Henry’s England. The best biographies of the major figures at Henry’s court are Cranmer by Diarmaid MacCulloch (1996), Thomas Cromwell by Robert Hutchinson (2007) and Thomas More by Richard Marius (1985).
Sharply contrasting views are offered of Anne Boleyn by her American biographers, Retha Warnicke whose The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) attributes her death to male fears of witchcraft and of an educated and outspoken woman, and Professor George Bernard whose Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (2010) suggests that Anne was, after all, guilty of the adultery for which she died. Professor Eric Ives, Boleyn’s major British biographer, in The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (1986, reworked in 2004), by contrast attributes her downfall to wider politics: the diplomatic duels between England, Spain and France, and the clash between reformers and conservatives in the Church. Alison Weir, in The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (2009), sensibly sifts the available evidence and comes to the conclusion that the traditional explanation for Anne’s fall – chiefly her inability to produce a male heir and Henry’s declining sexual interest – is broadly correct.
A fascinating speculative account of Anne’s friend – and possibly more – the poet Thomas Wyatt, who suffered in the Tower like his father before him and his son after, is Graven with Diamonds by Nicola Shulman (2011). Among other nuggets, Shulman reveals that the poet’s father, Henry Wyatt, who had been tortured at the Tower under Richard III with a horse’s barnacle – a device for
pinching and tearing the mouth – incorporated this instrument of torture into the family coat of arms.
Chapter Nine: The Henrician Terror
Geoffrey Moorhouse wrote the most accessible modern account of The Pilgrimage of Grace (2002); while for the clash between religious reformers and conservatives which marked the latter years of Henry’s reign see The Last Days of Henry VIII by Robert Hutchinson (2005).
For the histories of the two rival dynasties, riven by religious, political and personal feuds – and who, like the Wyatts, both suffered in the Tower over three generations – see Robert Hutchinson’s House of Treason (2009) on the Howards, and Derek Wilson’s The Uncrowned Kings of England (2005) on the Dudleys.
For the execution of Catherine Howard see The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1991) by Alison Weir and Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford by Julia Fox (2007). For the execution of the Earl of Surrey see Henry VIII’s Last Victim by Jessie Childs (2007).
Chapter Ten: Tudor Children
For Edward VI see Edward VI: The Lost King of England (2007) by Chris Skidmore. The Duke of Somerset still lacks his own biography, but for his rival John Dudley see John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland by David Loades (1996). For Lady Jane Grey see Lady Jane Grey: Nine Days Queen by Alison Plowden (2003) and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery by Eric Ives (2009). For Mary I see Carolly Erickson’s Bloody Mary (1978), Linda Porter’s Mary Tudor, First Tudor Queen (2007) and Anna Whitelock’s Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (2009).
For the Marian persecutions see Bloody Mary’s Martyrs: The Story of England’s Terror by Jasper Ridley (2001) and Eamon Duffy’s fine Fires of Faith (2009).
For Elizabeth I see Elizabeth I by J. E. Neale (1954), Elizabeth, Queen of England by Neville Williams (1967), Elizabeth: A Study in Power and Intellect by Paul Johnson (1974), Elizabeth I by Anne Somerset (1991), and Elizabeth the Queen by Alison Weir (1999).
Chapter Eleven: Fallen Favourites
For Elizabeth and Robert Dudley see Elizabeth and Leicester by Milton Waldman (1946); and studies under the same title by Elizabeth Jenkins (1961) and Sarah Grist Wood (2007). See also Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester 1553–1558 by Derek Wilson (1997) and Death and the Virgin by Chris Skidmore (2010) – an examination of the mysterious death of Dudley’s wife Amy Robsart.
For Sir Walter and Bess Ralegh see Sir Walter Ralegh by Eric Ecclestone (1941), That Great Lucifer by Margaret Irwin (1960), Sir Walter Ralegh by Robert Lacey (1973) and My Just Desire by Anna Beer (2003). See also Sir Walter Raleigh: Selected Prose and Poetry edited by Agnes M. C. Latham (1965) and The Creature in the Map: Sir Walter Ralegh’s Quest for El Dorado (1996) by the always excellent Charles Nicholl.
For the Earls of Essex and Southampton see Robert, Earl of Essex by Robert Lacey (1971) and Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton by G. P. V. Akrigg (1968). For James I – by my estimation England’s most despicable monarch – see The Cradle King by Alan Stewart (2003).
Chapter Twelve: Papists, Plots and Poisons
For Catholic plots against Elizabeth I and the state’s repressive response see Danger to Elizabeth by Alison Plowden (1971); Alice Hogge’s God’s Secret Agents (2005) gives a remarkably well-researched, detailed yet dispassionate account of the heroic and treasonous efforts of the undercover Jesuit missionary priests to keep the Catholic faith alive in Elizabethan England. Alan Haynes’ The Elizabethan Secret Services (1992) is a densely detailed and equally well-researched investigation into the embryonic Elizabethan secret state. Charles Nicholls’ engrossing and beautifully written The Reckoning (1992), though about the murder of the playwright Christopher Marlowe, opens out to present a convincing picture of the wilderness of mirrors in which Marlowe and other secret agents moved. For the austere manipulator of Marlowe and a myriad other players see Robert Hutchinson’s life of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s Spymaster (2006).
For the Gunpowder Plot see Antonia Fraser’s fast-paced The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (1996). Though herself a Catholic, Lady Antonia is remarkably objective. Alan Haynes’ The Gunpowder Plot (1994) deploys his expert knowledge of the subject; while James Travers’ Gunpowder: The Players Behind the Plot (2005) uses documents from the National Archives to reveal the plotters’ motivations.
For the Overbury case, see William McElwee’s The Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury (1952), Beatrice White’s Cast of Ravens (1965), Edward le Comte’s The Notorious Lady Essex (1970), A. L. Rowse’s Simon Forman (1974) and David Lindley’s The Trials of Frances Howard (1993). Anne Somerset’s Unnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James I (1997) is the best and most recent account of this quintessential case of Jacobean cruelty, conspiracy and corruption.
Chapter Thirteen: Great Escapes
For Ranulf Flambard see Frank Barlow’s William Rufus (1983).
For Roger Mortimer and Edward II see The Greatest Traitor by Ian Mortimer (2006).
For Sir John Oldcastle and the Lollards see Actes and Monuments – popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (online) by John Foxe, Sir John Oldcastle by W. T. Waugh (1905) and Sir John Fastolf by Stephen Cooper (2010).
For John Gerard see God’s Secret Agents by Alice Hogge (op. cit., 2005) and Gerard’s own Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman SJ (1956).
For Edmund Nevill, see G. Abbott’s Great Escapes from the Tower of London (op. cit., 1982).
For William Seymour and Arbella Stuart see Arbella Stuart: A Rival to the Queen by David N. Durant (1978), In the Shadow of the Throne: The Lady Arbella Stuart by Ruth Norrington (2002) and Arbella: England’s Lost Queen by Sarah Gristwood (2003).
For Lord Capel see Lord Capel, First Baron Capel of Hadham by Ronald Hutton (DNB, 2004).
For John Lambert, see Cromwell’s Generals by Maurice Ashley (1954) and John Lambert by David Farr (2003).
For Lord Grey de Warke see Sedgemoor 1685 (1985) by David Chandler and for Lord Nithsdale see The Jacobites by Daniel Szechi (1994).
Chapter Fourteen: Restoration Romps
The sparkling yet elusive and enigmatic personality and exciting and erotic life of Charles II has received more biographical attention than that of any other British king – with the possible exception of Henry VIII. Of the vast number of lives, these can be warmly recommended: Hesketh Pearson’s Charles II: His Life and Likeness (1960), Maurice Ashley’s Charles II: King and Statesman (1974), Charles II by Antonia Fraser (1979), Charles II: Portrait of an Age by Tony Palmer (1979), Charles the Second by Ronald Hutton (1989), Charles II by John Miller (1991) and Royal Survivor by Stephen Coote (1999).
For the Crown jewels see The Jewel House by George Younghusband (1921) and Crown, Orb and Sceptre by D. Hilliam (2003). For Thomas Blood see Colonel Blood: The Man who Stole the Crown Jewels by David C. Hanrahan (2003).
For Restoration politics and the radical underground see Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II (1994) and The Strange Death of Edmund Godfrey (1999) by the same author. See also The Popish Plot by John Kenyon (1971).
For George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, see Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham by David C. Hanrahan (2006).
For Samuel Pepys, naturally consult the incomparable Diary (op. cit) itself, and Pepys: A Biography by Richard Ollard (1999). Samuel Pepys: The Unqualified Self by Claire Tomalin (2002) is an indispensable life; and The Plot Against Pepys (2007) by James and Ben Long examines in minute detail the reasons behind his confinement in the Tower.
Chapter Fifteen: Civil Wars and Uncivil Peace
For Sir John Eliot see The Life of Sir J. Eliot by J. Forster (1864) and Sir John Eliot by Conrad Russell (DNB, 2004).
For Strafford see Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford 1593–1641: A Revaluation by C. V. Wedgwood (1961).
For Archbishop William Laud see William Laud by Anthony Milton (DNB, 2004).
For William Prynne see William Prynne by William Lamont (DNB, 2004).
For William Davenant, John Suckling, Edm
und Waller and the Royalist plot to take the Tower see Reprobates by John Stubbs (2011).
For John Lilburne and the Levellers see Freeborn John by Pauline Gregg (1961, 1986).
For General Monck see The Life of General George Monck: For King and Cromwell by Peter Reese (2008).
Of the many biographies of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, two are outstanding: Charles I by Pauline Gregg (1988) and Cromwell: Our Chief of Men (1973) by Antonia Fraser. Another woman historian C. V. Wedgwood’s masterly overview of the Civil War, The King’s War (1978), though dated, still repays reading. See also John Aubrey’s charming Brief Lives (17th c. 1949) for vignettes of many of the players.
Chapter Sixteen: Iron Dukes and Lunatic Lords
For the Duke of Monmouth, see B. Bevan, James, Duke of Monmouth (1973) and J. N. P. Watson, Captain-General and Rebel Chief (1979).
For Judge George Jeffreys and the Bloody Assize see William Humphrey, The Life of Judge Jeffreys (1852, reissued 2006) and The Bloody Assize by I. G. Muddiman (1929).
For the Duke of Marlborough see Winston Churchill’s monumental hagiography of his ancestor, Marlborough: His Life and Times (1929). For a more objective view see Richard Holmes, Marlborough: England’s Fragile Genuis (2008); or read Christopher Hibbert’s gossipy and entertaining The Marlboroughs (2001) which gives the irrepressible Sarah her due too. Richard Holmes has also written the best modern biography of Wellington: The Iron Duke (2002).
The villainous Lord Lovat deserves – but sadly lacks – a biography. But Bonnie Prince Charlie (2003) by Frank McLynn is a reliable account of the rising which cost the old man his head.
For Lord George Gordon and the riots that bear his name see Christopher Hibbert’s. King Mob (1958); and John Nicholson’s The Great Liberty Riot of 1780 (2008).
The Cato Street Conspiracy by John Stanhope (1962) is still the best and fullest account of the plot.
Chapter Seventeen: The Tower at War
