London - Edward Rutherfurd [325]
“’Tis a lie,” Susan would protest. “And I fear it will persist.” It would indeed. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was destined to be read in families, to give warning to children, and to shape English people’s perception of the Catholic Church for generations.
Yet, apart from this one outburst, the silence of Susan continued. She had had her fill of trouble; she was determined to live at peace. And peace she was granted, at least in this life, except for one minor disturbance.
After a long career at court, where he never really advanced, her brother Thomas took a wife late in life. She was a girl of good family and some fortune, but some small blemish on her character, Susan suspected, had prevented her getting married. She gave him a son, then died. And not long after that, Susan received a letter from her brother informing her that he, too, was not long for this world and intended sending his infant son and heir to Rochester, “where I know you and Jonathan will look after him.”
And so it was, in the last years of her life, that Susan found herself with a new charge, a handsome little fellow with auburn hair and, she had to confess, great charm. His name was Edmund.
Sometimes, though, she wondered if he was not just a little too wild.
THE GLOBE
The long years of Queen Elizabeth I were remembered as a golden age, but to Londoners living at the time they were more varied. Firstly, for the most part, there was peace. Elizabeth was naturally cautious, and thanks to her father’s extravagance, she could not really afford to go to war. There was also modest prosperity. All men’s lives, even those of the tiny minority in the towns, still depended on the harvest; and Elizabeth was usually lucky with her harvests. There was adventure, too. Though seventy years had passed since Columbus found America, it was not until Elizabeth’s reign that English adventurers like Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh set out on the voyages of exploration – in truth, a mixture of piracy, trade and settlement – that began England’s huge encounter with the New World.
But the defining event of the reign took place when Elizabeth, having avoided large-scale war for thirty years, was at last, unavoidably, forced into it. The cause was religion. If the Reformation had dealt the Catholic Church a mighty blow, Rome had risen to the challenge: with dedicated orders like the Jesuits, even with the dreaded Inquisition, the Church set out to win back what was lost; and high on the list was the schismatic kingdom of England. Nothing could disguise where Elizabeth’s true sympathies lay; and many of her subjects, led by the stern Puritans, were urging her even further into the Protestant camp. Exasperated at last, the Pope told England’s Catholics that they no longer owed loyalty to the heretic queen. Indeed he wished there were someone to depose her. One candidate was her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Cast out by the Protestant Scots and held in a northern English castle, this romantic, wayward lady was an obvious focus for any Catholic plots. Unwisely however, she was caught in one of these and Elizabeth had been forced to order her execution. But there was another candidate, mightier by far than foolish Mary.
King Philip of Spain had hoped to obtain the Crown of England for his Habsburg family when he married Mary Tudor. Now he might win it by conquest – a chance to perform a great service for the true faith. “This is nothing less,” he announced, “than a holy crusade.”
At the end of July 1588, there set out from Spain the greatest fleet that the world had ever seen. The Armada’s mission was to land on the shores of England a huge army against which Elizabeth’s modest militia would be helpless. Philip was sure that every