Editorial in the Independent: Tudor terror ... John Guy is on a mission to bring history to the masses
It is the summer of 1535, just weeks after the execution of Sir Thomas More. A small rowing boat makes its way along the Thames from Chelsea to London Bridge. The oarsman's passengers are a 29-year-old gentlewoman, Margaret Roper, and her maid, who carries a basket. A horrific sight meets their eyes as they approach the bridge: a dozen or more skulls on poles protruding from the parapet, which have been boiled and tarred to prevent them being fed upon by circling gulls. As new heads arrive, the old ones are moved along the row until they reach the end of the line, when they are thrown into the river.
At the door of the north tower of the bridge, the maid negotiates with the bridge-master, handing over the contents of her purse. In return she receives one of the skulls, carefully wrapping it in a linen cloth and placing it in a basket. This is all that remains of Thomas More. One day the skull will join Margaret Roper herself, when she is interred in the family tomb at Chelsea, a burial symbolic of the special attachment between father and daughter.
This is the gripping opening scene of John Guy's study of the relationship of Margaret Roper and her father, Thomas More. Such a grisly depiction of the past seems all of a piece with John Guy's historical method. As a writer Guy has sometimes been accorded the epithet "Chandleresque", a tribute to the forensic skills with which he sets about revisiting and reinvestigating the scene of a historical crime, and to the pacy, atmospheric narrative in which he places his discoveries.
Four years ago, Guy carried off the Whitbread Biography Prize for his thrilling dissection of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, My Heart is My Own. Had Mary really been complicit in the assassination of her second husband, Lord Darnley, at Kirk o'Field in 1567, he asked, or was she framed by agents of the Scottish Crown, the Confederate Lords, anxious to replace Mary's rule with a regency in the name of her young son James? By subjecting the Casket Letters, so long reputed to establish Mary's guilt, to rigorous analysis, Guy was able to reveal the letters as a clever forgery. In some instances, forged passages – designed to prove Mary's part in Darnley's murder – had been interpolated into genuine letters in Mary's handwriting.
Now Guy has turned his attention to another story from Tudor history, that of the opposition of Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor, to Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, his arrest for treason, and his martyrdom. As before, Guy's scholarship is irreproachable. He admits to being never happier than when he is scrutinising some vital document which will enable him to throw new light on a familiar version of events. "Sometimes this means that I have literally to get my hands dirty." He tells me that 16th-century documents in the National Archives are often covered with damp and the traces of vermin, and one doesn't always have the protection of gloves, though he adds that modern techniques, such as ultra-violet light, can yield unexpected dividends in the examination of papers that are simply too damaged to read with the naked eye.
From a host of unprepossessing legal documents, through which we can glimpse the small-scale workings of Tudor society, as well as from a series of more idiosyncratic sources, such as the interrogation records of More's servants while their master was under arrest in the Tower, Guy has produced a compelling portrait of a tyrant's court, in which the king's friends had far more to fear than his enemies. Guy's Henry is a Stalin-like figure, bullying and intimidating his closest associates, fixing juries and resorting to all sorts of chicanery to achieve his will...
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At the door of the north tower of the bridge, the maid negotiates with the bridge-master, handing over the contents of her purse. In return she receives one of the skulls, carefully wrapping it in a linen cloth and placing it in a basket. This is all that remains of Thomas More. One day the skull will join Margaret Roper herself, when she is interred in the family tomb at Chelsea, a burial symbolic of the special attachment between father and daughter.
This is the gripping opening scene of John Guy's study of the relationship of Margaret Roper and her father, Thomas More. Such a grisly depiction of the past seems all of a piece with John Guy's historical method. As a writer Guy has sometimes been accorded the epithet "Chandleresque", a tribute to the forensic skills with which he sets about revisiting and reinvestigating the scene of a historical crime, and to the pacy, atmospheric narrative in which he places his discoveries.
Four years ago, Guy carried off the Whitbread Biography Prize for his thrilling dissection of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, My Heart is My Own. Had Mary really been complicit in the assassination of her second husband, Lord Darnley, at Kirk o'Field in 1567, he asked, or was she framed by agents of the Scottish Crown, the Confederate Lords, anxious to replace Mary's rule with a regency in the name of her young son James? By subjecting the Casket Letters, so long reputed to establish Mary's guilt, to rigorous analysis, Guy was able to reveal the letters as a clever forgery. In some instances, forged passages – designed to prove Mary's part in Darnley's murder – had been interpolated into genuine letters in Mary's handwriting.
Now Guy has turned his attention to another story from Tudor history, that of the opposition of Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor, to Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, his arrest for treason, and his martyrdom. As before, Guy's scholarship is irreproachable. He admits to being never happier than when he is scrutinising some vital document which will enable him to throw new light on a familiar version of events. "Sometimes this means that I have literally to get my hands dirty." He tells me that 16th-century documents in the National Archives are often covered with damp and the traces of vermin, and one doesn't always have the protection of gloves, though he adds that modern techniques, such as ultra-violet light, can yield unexpected dividends in the examination of papers that are simply too damaged to read with the naked eye.
From a host of unprepossessing legal documents, through which we can glimpse the small-scale workings of Tudor society, as well as from a series of more idiosyncratic sources, such as the interrogation records of More's servants while their master was under arrest in the Tower, Guy has produced a compelling portrait of a tyrant's court, in which the king's friends had far more to fear than his enemies. Guy's Henry is a Stalin-like figure, bullying and intimidating his closest associates, fixing juries and resorting to all sorts of chicanery to achieve his will...