Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII's one true love?

The more I learn about the Tudor period, the more I realise how little I really know. I am happy to report that “A Dangerous Destiny” is progressing satisfactorily. However, as a prequel to the other two Luke Ballard books, I must now go back to the year 1546 and do the requisite research. I am so pleased I chose librarianship as a profession. My training has enabled me to find so much information about the Tudor period in which the books are set. My only regret is that I didn’t think to find a job researching Tudor history when I was working.

I’ve made two interesting discoveries today about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The first is that when Henry’s inventory was finally done six months after his death in January 1547, there were eleven items, including large tapestries, that had belonged to Anne Boleyn – ‘The Late Quene’. Some people have wondered whether Henry simply forgot he had them or kept them for a reason. He had given instructions that Anne’s name was never to be mentioned. Many have thought that this is because he believed he was cuckolded and bewitched by her and there is plenty of evidence to back up that theory.

However, I wonder if, after Anne’s death, he might possibly have missed her vivid personality. Jane Seymour was everything that Anne was not. Pale, obedient, never arguing with her royal husband and, dare I say it, boring. It is tempting to speculate on how long she would have lasted had she not died in giving Henry his longed-for son.

Henry was a clever man with a hot temper who was quick to perceive slights where none were intended. Until a few weeks before Anne’s execution, the royal couple were described as being ‘merry together’. When Henry calmed down after the ‘investigation’ into Anne’s behaviour, did he perhaps conclude that Thomas Cromwell had sacrificed the Queen to save his own skin, because there was, in truth, nothing to find?

Being a pragmatic man, Henry might well have decided that there was no point in killing Cromwell, who was an extremely able administrator. So much so, that after Cromwell’s execution in 1540, Henry wished he had him back again. Besides, Henry needed a male child and it was clear to him that Anne was a failure in this field. Jane might – and did – do better. As we know, Anne’s only full-term child was Elizabeth and I like Alison Weir’s theory that Anne’s subsequent pregnancies might have been cut short because of Henry and Anne having blood antigen incompatibility.

The second discovery was that Henry and Anne used honeysuckles and acorns as their private motif. As with most things in the Tudor era, everything had significance. Honeysuckles have long been a symbol of love and devotion and acorns denote fertility, luck and prosperity. It is clear that for a very long time, Henry and Anne were happy together.

My personal opinion is that items such as tapestries are so large there is no way Henry could have ‘forgotten’ about them. I like to think that he kept Anne’s things to remind him of happier times before he became the much-married blood-soaked tyrant that history remembers.

My Next Big Thing

What is the working title of your book?

 A Dangerous Destiny: The first Luke Ballard mystery


  Where did the idea come from for your book?

I wanted to marry my love for history with crime and just a bit of magic. Luke Ballard is an apothecary in the Outer Green of Hampton Court Palace. He is also an elemancer – a magician who uses the elements to perform magic for the good of mankind. Elemancers are helped by special dogs called greysprings, with the sight sense of greyhounds and the scent abilities of springer spaniels, or, as they were called in the 16th century, springing spaniels. In my Tudor universe, Anne Boleyn is still alive with her son now on the throne and she is also an elemancer, which encompasses the rumours that Anne was a witch but puts a new slant on them. The first tenet of elemancy is the balance and order of the universe, so to keep the balance, the enemies of elemancers are sunderers, who latch on to the desires and ambitions of men and use that energy to create strife. Sunderers also have dogs, called umbrans.


  What genre does your book fall under?

 I wish I knew. The shortest description is “crime fantasy set in an alternate Tudor universe.”


  How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

 Normally, it takes a few weeks of thinking round the theme and doing the research, but once I get down to it, the writing takes about 4 months.


  What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

 I will say that I love the Hugh Corbett books by Paul Doherty for their evocation of the setting of the early 14th century, their historical accuracy and the diligent and logical way Hugh investigates each case, but there is no fantasy in them. I also enjoy James Oswald’s Inspector Maclean books because of the whiff of the paranormal, which is never permitted to get in the way of the investigation. I can’t compare the Luke Ballard books to anything I’ve read because of the marriage of genres.


  Who or What inspired you to write this book?

 I’ve always thought Anne Boleyn had a rough ride. My oft-uttered wish is that I could go back in time to tell Henry VIII that it is the man’s chromosomes that decide the sex of the baby. So I desperately wanted Anne Boleyn not to have been executed. The first thought for the series was the phrase “Henry’s black-eyed boy” which popped into my head sometime in 2007. From there I built a setting around the Tudor Hampton Court Palace. I decided that the child Anne miscarried in 1534 would, in my new universe, have been a son, called Henry after his father. The first book in the series, “A Duty of Evil” was written in 2009 and the second “A Taste for Treason” in 2011. At this point, I had them accepted by an agent who has worked her socks off trying to find an editor to take them. Since then, I have written and published 2 non-fiction books and a book of short stories. Then I thought that it would be interesting to discover the story of how Luke came to be an elemancer in the first place and that is the subject of “A Dangerous Destiny”. So, really, it is a prequel to the other books.


  What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

 I do my best to pull in true historical events that took place in the years in which the stories are set melding them with elemancy as part of the plot by "adjusting" current investigation techniques and making them part of the magic. However, nothing is easy for Luke. Not only does he struggle against those in the court who will stop at nothing to achieve their ambitions and squash anyone who gets in the way, he is also waging constant war against sunderers. His magic helps clarify things, but it doesn’t solve the mystery.


  Which five writers will take over from you next week and tell us about their Next Big Thing?

 Thanks to Robert, Alan, Harry, Betsy and James for carrying on the “chain”.

 Robert DeMers • http://www.robertgdemersbooks.com/blogs.html
Alan Petersen • http://fictiveuniverse.com/
 Harry "Hammer" Wigder • http://www.actionagainstviolence.com
Betsy A. Riley • http://brws.com/wordpress 
 James M. Copeland • http://www.jamesmcopelandbooks.com

Shadows in the Light

I've just uploaded a new e-book of short stories: Want an enjoyable way to fill a few spare minutes. Shadows in the Light. 15 Short Stories Each story takes as long to read as drinking your morning tea or coffee. I think shorts are widely seen as the poor relation of novels, but, in my view and certainly in my experience, fitting in characterisation, plot, setting and a complete story arc in so few words is quite an achievement. The other advantage of course, is that you can read a complete story on the bus or train, during your morning coffee or afternoon tea or while waiting in the doctor's or dentist's surgery. In this collection, you will find Rosemary who cannot forget her first love, Anna, trying to escape from a controlling bullying employer, Will, caught between two women, one of whom he loves with all his heart and the other who won't let him go. Then there is the unknown protagonist who will go to any lengths necessary to achieve vengeance, the spider-hating girl who has a shock when she searches the basement and Silas, whose assumptions lead to tragedy. So for those of you who don't normally read shorts, take a leap of faith and try these. You never know, you might enjoy them.

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Where did Luke originate?

When I wrote the first Luke Ballard novel, "Duty of Evil", I began in the middle of Luke's story. In researching the third novel, which has its origins in the Lincolnshire Uprising of October 1536, I began to explore Luke's background.

More recently, I've felt an overwhelming urge to give readers a chance to know him, too. So I am now working on a number of short stories. The first one will tell how Luke came to the knowledge that he was an elemancer and the effect that knowledge had on his character and disposition. Naturally, it will also be a mystery for him to solve.

Of course, this blogpost title has more than one interpretation. In the books and stories, Luke was born into a family who lived and worked on the Heneage estate at Hainton near Louth in Lincolnshire, England. The Heneage family had high connections at the court of Henry VIII. Thomas Heneage was attacked by the mob as he tried to suppress the abbey at Louth - one of the sparks which fired the Lincolnshire Uprising. He is often confused for Sir Thomas Heneage, who was Vice Chamberlain to Elizabeth I and who was our Thomas's nephew.

As readers of this blog will know, I have close connections to the Heneage estate. My father began his working life there in 1932 and I was born about 100 yards from the estate gates. The connection between the Lincolnshire Uprising, which not only began in the immediate vicinity of the estate, but which involved a member of the family and the link to my own family proved to be too much of a temptation.

Thus my fictional Luke, a child of the estate, came to court with an equally fictional Heneage son. Their friendship of many years was riven by a bitter quarrel over a woman and Luke was cast out to earn his living. He was lucky to find the apothecary in the Outer Green of Hampton Court Palace who took him on as an apprentice. And for the rest, you will have to wait until I've written the stories... Watch this space.

Running a Tudor household

Have you ever made butter with your hands? Or cheese? How about bread and beer? I expect there will be a few more takers for the last two.

The other day I visited an open air museum near Chichester. Buildings from all centuries have been moved and rebuilt as they were originally. As research for the Luke Ballard books, it was invaluable. I stood inside the type of house Luke would have lived in. The hall and kitchen were one room and the other side of the downstairs was the 'living room'. In the Luke books, that area is Luke's apothecary shop. What made it all so real was that this particular house had a herbal/physick garden attached. By royal permission, Luke uses the gardens at Hampton Court Palace for his herbs etc., although he does like to collect other plants in the early dawn on a summer's day with his faithful greyspring, Joss, at his side. Now I am determined that Luke shall have his own herbal garden and that idea is spawning some interesting plot points.

The other very interesting attraction at the museum was a working Tudor kitchen. And now I do know how to make butter and cheese. I also know the Tudor housewife had a strict rotation of tasks to ensure that nothing at all was wasted, even the ashes from the bread oven fire. The housewife in a big house or on a farm would probably have to feed 30+ people every day, day in day out. And the work the men did was extremely physical, so a diet of around 6000 calories a day would be needed to keep their energy levels up.

Of course, some foods had to be preserved and salt was used for this. The 'cook' on duty showed us a pot of cheese that had been covered with a salt crust and although it was a bit high, she assured us that one year on from being made, the cheese was still edible. The family pig would be killed and every part of it would be consumed. It, too, was preserved in salt, usually in a brine that was 5oz salt to every pint of water - the usual test was that if an egg floated on the surface, the salt concentration was right. The salt used would be Bay Salt, evaporated from seawater and full of impurities, but preferred by housewives to white salt because it was a better for preserving - and cost a lot less. Pity the poor housewife whose task it was to rub great quantities of salt into meat.

When we read the word 'dairymaid', most people have an image of a sweet-faced ladylike maiden, but in truth, proper dairying was extremely hard work. Even in Tudor times, the necessity for the dairy and all the items used in it to be scrupulously clean was recognised. Many hours would be spent scrubbing walls, scalding vessels etc, because the risk of any dirt tainting the dairy produce not only rendered it a waste of resources, but dirt would stop some of the processes from working.

Fish was plentiful and did not need to be preserved. Indeed in the middle-ages a law was passed prohibiting masters from feeding their apprentices more than three times a week with salmon. How times change!

Having learned all this, I can see why Luke needs a housekeeper.

The lessons of history?

In the Luke Ballard series, I’m always torn between the real and the imagined. The real history of the mid 16th century has enough drama, conflict and excitement to rival anything I can conjure up. And, because Luke is an elemancer, who performs good magic using the power of the elements, I use the word ‘conjure’ on purpose.

I cannot agree with those who maintain that history is useless. If we don’t know where we have been, how can we know where we are headed? A study of history should, in theory, prevent mistakes being repeated. I’ve never forgotten a scene in David Niven’s “The Moon’s a Balloon”, where during a walk with Winston Churchill in November 1941, he asked what the great man thought would happen next.
“Whatever it is,’ Churchill replied, ‘it will be momentous.”
‘How do you know?’
‘Because, young man, I study history.’

Two weeks later, the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbour and America entered the war.

When you look back over the centuries of British history, one of the things that always amazes me is the blindness of power. The other day, I went to hear the historian, Alison Weir, talking about two English queens who have moved her to write. Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II and Isabella of France, wife of Edward II.

Edward’s sexuality was questionable, to say the least. His first favourite, Piers Gaveston was so rapacious in gathering money and lands and so arrogant that he was eventually toppled by the nobles and executed. Fast forward a few years and Hugh le Despenser did exactly the same thing. He was hanged, drawn and quartered and castrated. Then Isabella began her notorious affair with Mortimer, fled to France with the future Edward III and the two lovers invaded England. Result, Edward II was deposed and Edward III who was about 13 at the time, was crowned king.

But in reality, Mortimer ruled England through Isabella and the boy king was merely a cipher. The lovers went on a vicious spree, accumulating lands and money by whatever means worked. How surprising then, that Edward III waited until he attained his majority and overthrew them. And yes, Mortimer was hanged. So why did none of them learn from the mistakes made by Gaveston? Would it have been perceived as a sign of weakness? Surely, getting all the nobles on their side would have strengthened their power, so why go down any other route?

Fast forward to 1989. Revolution is rife in Eastern Europe. Dictators are being challenged. Why could none of them see that their days were numbered and act accordingly? Why did they think they were invincible? Ceausescu could not believe that he no longer controlled the mob and when he did realize, it was too late.

A few months ago, Mubarak in Egypt thought exactly the same and Gaddafi is currently certain he will maintain his position in Libya. None of them can believe that their power days are over.

Perhaps they should have studied history.