The Fatal Fashione (22 page)

Read The Fatal Fashione Online

Authors: Karen Harper

Tags: #Fiction - Historical, #England/Great Britain, #16th Century, #Mystery, #Tudors

BOOK: The Fatal Fashione
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1533
Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn, January 25. Elizabeth born Greenwich Palace, September 7.
1536
Anne Boleyn executed in Tower of London, Elizabeth disinherited from crown. Henry marries Jane Seymour.
1537
Prince Edward born. Queen Jane dies of childbed fever.
1544
Act of Succession and Henry VIII’s will establish Mary and Elizabeth in line to throne.
1547
Henry VIII dies. Edward VI crowned.
1553
Queen Mary (Tudor) I crowned. Tries to force England back to Catholicism; gives Margaret Stewart, Tudor cousin, precedence over Elizabeth. Queen Mary weds Prince Philip of Spain by proxy.
1554
Protestant Wyatt Rebellion fails, but Elizabeth sent to Tower for two months, accompanied by Kat Ashley.
1558
Mary dies; Elizabeth succeeds to throne, November 17. Elizabeth appoints William Cecil secretary of state; Robert Dudley made master of the queen’s horse.
1558
Elizabeth crowned in Westminster Abbey, January 15. Parliament urges queen to marry, but she resists. Mary, Queen of Scots, becomes queen of France at accession of her young husband, Francis II. Elizabeth knights Thomas Gresham, who writes economic plan for her reign.
1560
Death of Francis II of France makes his young Catholic widow, Mary, Queen of Scots, a danger as Elizabeth’s unwanted heir. Thomas Gresham becomes queen’s unofficial financial advisor.
1561
The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, returns to Scotland.
1565
Mary of Scots weds Lord Darnley.
1566
Mary, Queen of Scots, bears son James. Elizabeth defies parliament about marriage.
 
 
 
 
THE POYSON GARDEN
THE TIDAL POOLE
THE TWYLIGHT TOWER
THE QUEENE’S CURE
THE THORNE MAZE
THE QUEENE’S CHRISTMAS
THE FYRE MIRROR
THE FATAL FASHIONE
 
ALTHOUGH WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WAS ONLY EIGHT YEARS OLD at the time this story ends, and this series may not stretch far enough to encompass his heyday in London, I am honoring his works in this book by including more than one set of twins, something he had great fun with in his plays. He also portrayed constables as bumblers and fools. I have studied Shakespeare for years and did my master’s thesis on his
All’s Well That Ends Well,
so he provides rich research for this mystery series even without appearing in it.
As for the concept of twins in my story, besides the von Hoven and the Hemmings sisters, Clifford and Dirck greatly resemble each other. Meg has for years (and in other books in the series) served as a double for the queen, and on it goes. But the real twinship in the story is the light and dark sides of everyone, the good and evil, like the pretty, glowing pollen that is also poison. That is the fatal fashion of mankind.
Among the things Thomas Gresham left behind at his death is a portrait of twin girls by a Flemish painter. This hangs at Titsey Place Manor House in Surrey, once the country home of Gresham’s uncle John. The two girls in the painting are not identified, so, taking into consideration that his mistress bore him a child, I have imagined who the twins might be.
The Royal Exchange that stands in London today is the third building with that name on that site. The Gresham building burned in 1666 during the Great Fire of London; its replacement went up in flames in 1838. It was rebuilt in 1844, during the reign of Queen Victoria. The Royal Exchange is still one of the traditional sites from which new kings and queens are announced and sits today in the heart of London’s commercial district.
Britain’s first public lavatories were built in the forecourt of the new Victorian Exchange in 1855. These were, no doubt, water closets that were a far cry from the jakes used on London Bridge or in tall castles over rivers in Tudor times. However, Queen Elizabeth would not have approved of the early Exchange privies, as they were exclusively for male use.
Like William Cecil, Sir Thomas Gresham was one of the men on whom Elizabeth relied heavily for good advice. She cried openly when she heard Gresham had died at age sixty in 1579.
His widow, Anne, twice tried to overturn his will to get more money. She also failed to make repairs on the Exchange until Elizabeth issued an order saying that “the queen will take great offense if so beautiful a monument is suffered to decay.”
Yet Anne Gresham remained a problem, petitioning Parliament to grant her more money from her husband’s will, which provided her with the generous annual income of £2388 and £751 from the Exchange itself, a goodly fortune in that day. Parliament rejected her demands, but she did manage to have a more expensive funeral than her husband had seventeen years before.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2006 by Karen Harper.
Excerpt from
The Hooded Hawke
© 2006 by Karen Harper.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Cover design by Royce M. Becker Design. Illustration of building © Guildhall Art Gallery, Corporation of London/Bridgeman Art Library, London. Queen’s cameo © Hatfield House. Gown with eyes © Rainbow Portrait, Hatfield House.
eISBN: 978-1429992367
First eBook Edition : January 2011
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005049770
ISBN: 0-312-94193-5
EAN: 9780312-94193-2
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / January 2006
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / December 2006
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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