Tag Archive: Queen Elizabeth I
By S. J. Parris
England, 1583. Twenty-five years into the protestant Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the kingdom remains dangerously divided between those still loyal to the old Catholic faith and those who accept the official religion. Rumors of invasion plans by the European Catholic powers fuel whispers of conspiracies to assassinate the queen in the name of Rome.
Into this web of tensions arrives one of the most enigmatic and compelling figures of the Renaissance: the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno. An ex-Dominican friar, on the run from the Inquisition for his heretical beliefs about an infinite universe, Bruno comes to England under the patronage of the French king and is invited to the University of Oxford to take part in a public debate about the new cosmology.
All this is historical record. But some believe that Bruno was working as a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster, while he was in England, and this theory has been the basis for my novel, Heresy. Oxford was a source of great anxiety to Elizabeth’s government; a hotbed of underground Catholic resistance, where the very young men who would go on to become pillars of the English establishment – politicians, lawyers, churchmen – were being converted to Rome right under the noses of the authorities.
My fictional Bruno uses his time in Oxford as a cover for investigating secret loyalties. But when the university Fellows start to be murdered around him, with apparently religious motives, Bruno realizes that there are those who are willing to kill for their faith as well as die for it.
S.J. Parris is the pseudonym of Stephanie Merritt, a contributing journalist for various newspapers and magazines, including the Observer and the Guardian. She is also the author of Heresy
. She lives in England.
IMAGE: Portrait of the real Giordano Bruno
Congratulations to the following giveaway winners:
Rachel, Kitty, Audra, librarypat, and John
A copy of Heresy is on it’s way!
“Anne Boleyn gave me life, but Kat Ashley gave me love,” said Elizabeth I.
Everyone knows who Anne Boleyn was, but who was Kat Ashley? In The Queen’s Governess by Karen Harper, we read Kat’s “memoir” of the four decades she spent in the royal courts of the Tudor monarchs. How does this strong and intelligent young woman, born the daughter of a poor country squire, manage to secure an education and a place in a noble household as a teenager, despite even a murderous stepmother?
In this portrait of the courts of Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I, Kat is eye-witness and victim to the fate of women in this historical era. There, women had no rights then without the protection of rich fathers or husbands. And this was even true of the King’s wives who did not produce male heirs or only had female children, or were barren – with legendary consequences.
We at Wonders & Marvels have five copies of The Queen’s Governess as our giveaway. To enter, simply comment in response to this question by 11:59 p.m. EST March 14, 2010:
Which wife of Henry VIII are you most sympathetic to?
Good luck! (Sorry, at this time, we can only mail books to U.S. winners.)
By Karen Harper
When I was in London in 2003 for the 400th anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I, I visited a display of her possessions. What caught my eye was a ring with a hidden lock which sprang open to reveal two tiny portraits, that of the queen herself and of her mother, Anne Boleyn. After Anne’s downfall and beheading in 1536 when Elizabeth was only three, she was forbidden by her father, Henry VIII, to speak of her mother. Yet here was proof Elizabeth had cherished the shamed and dispossessed woman. It was said that, whatever other opulent rings she wore, the Virgin Queen never removed this ring and it was only taken from her finger upon her death.
There is, of course, other proof that Elizabeth did not believe her mother had committed adultery or even, in the wildest of accusations which helped Henry rid himself of her, witchcraft. Elizabeth took for her own crest her mother’s white falcon and elevated many of her mother’s kin when she finally became queen in 1558.
That little ring gave me a great plot device for my latest historical novel, The Queen’s Governess
. In the book, Anne summons Elizabeth’s governess, Katherine Ashley to the Tower, where she is under arrest for treason and gives her the ring to keep for Elizabeth until she is of age. King Henry’s discovering the ring years later on the Princess Elizabeth’s person causes him to banish her from court—an actual happening. From such small wonders and marvels as a little ring are epic stories made.
A New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Karen Harper is a former college English instructor (The Ohio State University) and high school literature and writing teacher. To learn more about her book, The Queen’s Governess, click here.
IMAGE: The Ring
