The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [128]
Are you currently working on another book? If so, what—or who—is your subject?
The Tudor Secret is the first in a series about the rise of Brendan Prescott as a secret spymaster for Elizabeth I. I’m currently working on the second book in the series, in which Brendan is drawn back to his guise as a spy, this time in the court of Mary I.
Do you have a Web site or blog where readers can find out more about you?
Readers can always visit me at www.cwgortner.com and at historicalboys.blogspot.com. I enjoy talking to book groups and can easily chat with groups via speaker phone or Skype; to schedule a time with me, just visit the Book Groups link on my Web site.
Historical Timeline
January 28, 1547
Henry VIII dies; his nine-year-old son succeeds him as Edward VI.
March 1547
Edward Seymour, Lord Protector, assumes power.
Summer 1548
Catherine Parr discovers Elizabeth’s dalliance with her husband, Thomas Seymour; Elizabeth is sent away to Hatfield.
March 20, 1549
Thomas Seymour is beheaded for treason.
January 1552
Edward Seymour is executed; John Dudley, later Duke of Northumberland, seizes power.
1552
Edward VI approves the Second Act of Uniformity; Princess Mary is harassed for her adherence to Catholicism by Dudley.
January 1553
Edward VI falls gravely ill; rumors sweep the court that he is dying.
February 1553
Princess Mary visits Edward; their reunion is antagonistic because of Mary’s resolve to remain Catholic.
May 1533
Guilford Dudley, youngest son of Northumberland, marries Jane Grey.
June 1553
Edward alters his succession, coerced by Northumberland.
July 1, 1553
Edward VI makes his final public appearance.
July 6, 1553
Edward dies in Greenwich Palace. Soon after, Northumberland issues an arrest order for Mary, who, informed by an anonymous informant of her brother’s demise, flees north to garner support.
July 10, 1553
Jane Grey is proclaimed queen of England.
July 19, 1553
Mary gathers an army of nearly twenty thousand and marches on London. She is proclaimed queen by popular acclaim; Jane Grey becomes a prisoner.
An Original Essay by the Author
Elizabeth I: An Endless Fascination
Elizabeth Tudor, known as Elizabeth I, has exerted an endless fascination over our imaginations, even in looking at her life before she took the throne in 1558. She was the only surviving child of the glamorous, ill-fated Anne Boleyn, whose passionate liaison with Henry VIII shattered his twenty-four year marriage to Catherine of Aragon and set off a cataclysmic upheaval that changed England forever. Elizabeth’s parents believed that the child Anne carried was the long-awaited prince Henry had been denied; Anne staked her claim, and her unborn child’s legitimacy, on the fact that Henry and Catherine’s marriage had been incestuous due to Catherine’s previous marriage to Henry’s deceased brother, Arthur—a marriage which Catherine steadfastly proclaimed had never been consummated. Yet the child Anne bore was not a boy but a girl—a child of controversy, destroyed hopes, and disappointment, of chaos and uncertainty. Elizabeth came into the world with what seemed to be a curse already writ into her fate. Within three years, Henry would send her mother to the sword and remarry four more times; she would gain a younger brother, Edward, as well as an older sister Mary, with whom she would engage in a near-lethal collision of wills; she would face a daunting fight for her life that would test her mettle to its core; and she would, if the legend is true, fall madly, impossibly in love with the one man she would never fully have.
Elizabeth’s struggle for survival in one of the most treacherous courts in history and the glorious, often turbulent forty-four year reign that ensued upon her accession have become fodder for our entertainment for centuries. In many ways, this brittle red-haired princess with the enigmatic eyes and spidery fingers—so reminiscent of her mother—personifies our loftiest ideals of emancipation: Elizabeth refused to marry and never bore