Charges of treason were made against Somerset in England for years afterward, but he was never prosecuted for his utter dereliction of duty in Normandy. In fact, following the duke of Suffolk’s death in the following year, Somerset took his place as head of the royal government. For reasons I fail to understand, most modern histories of the Hundred Years’ War not only brush past these events but go on to treat the ensuing charges and outcry against Somerset as unjustified political maneuvering by the duke of York and others.
John Say—Sir John Say, as he became—of Broxbourne and his wife Elizabeth are real. In the anti-Suffolk polemics of the next year and so he figures as a villain by association and I had thought to use him as my villain in this book. Researching his overall career and life, however, I found him less a villain and more a highly competent man who seems to have served the crown of England rather than other men’s political ends. There is even evidence of the affection between him and his wife in the epitaph still to be seen on her grave: “Here lies ibame Elizabeth Sometime Wife to Sir John Say Knight daughter of Lawrence Cheyne Esquire of Cambridge Shire a Woman of Noble blood and most noble in good manners which deceased the xxv day of September The year of our Lord MCCClxxiii and interred in this church of Broxbourne awaiting The body of her said Husband whose Souls God Bring to Everlasting bliss amen.”
The manor of Baas remains, though nothing of the Says’ manor house itself. Gone, too, is St. Augustine’s church as it was in 1449 except for the ancient font. All else was built anew not long after this story, paid for by . . . John Say. He is buried there, his grave and damaged tomb brass still to be seen. Should you go there, you will likewise see that one Richard Goodhirst—Father Richard in the story—was priest at St. Augustine’s sometime in the mid-l400s. For a detailed study of John Say’s life and career, there is J.S. Roskell’s Parliament and Politics in Late Medieval England, vol. 2, The Hambledon Press, 1981.
All other non-noble characters in this story and the events around the Says and Broxbourne are fictional, save that King Henry VI did ride by way of Waltham and Ware to Cambridge and Ely in August 1449.
A minor point is my use of butlery in place of the more common term buttery. Butlery, the older form of the word, was still occasionally used in the 1400s and better conveys the room’s purpose.
A less minor point concerns the use of torture in late medieval England. Common enough as a legal device in earlier centuries, it was illegal by this time, except in such a situation as Frevisse cites in the story. Like police brutality in our own time, it surely occurred; but only later, with the rise of the Tudors and the Renaissance in England, did torture again become an established, accepted, and extensive part of the English legal system.
Again, my particular thanks go to Sarah J. Mason and Bill Welland. It was because I’ve been very happily a guest at their home in Broxbourne that “Sir John Say of Broxbourne” caught my attention and set me on the path taken by The Widow’s Tale. Because my health prevented another visit there during the first drafts of the story, they generously sent me information and pictures and maps of the area, Bill even venturing out to take photographs around
Baas so I could better envision the lay of the land, changed though it surely is after more than five-hundred years. When I did finally go there, I found I needed to change nothing, they had so well provided me with facts and details.
Certainly not least among their many kindnesses, they have phoned me so that I could hear the bells ringing at St. Augustine’s church across Broxbourne’s green from their home.
The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) Page 26
