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Writing Mary I pp 191–216Cite as

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Mary I in The Ringed Castle

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Abstract

The popular historical novelist Dorothy Dunnett OBE set the fifth of her Lymond Chronicles novels at the court of Philip and Mary, where the young Philippa Sommerville, jilted spouse of the series’ protagonist, Francis Crawford, must navigate “the paranoid court of Queen Mary.” Their adventures bring to life the entrancing strangeness of the past, conjuring up a complex and nuanced vision of the Marian period, whose feminist vision went far beyond the academic consensus of the time. This chapter argues that historical fiction does serious historiographical work, populating what lies beyond the edges and limits of the archive and its material remains, imaginatively filling in the absences and gaps that haunt historians.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/oct/19/dorothy-dunnetts-lymond-chronicles-far-more-than-sex-and-swords [Accessed: 15 February 2021].

  2. 2.

    https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/21579/dorothy-dunnett.html?tab=penguin-biography [Accessed: 15 February 2021].

  3. 3.

    https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/poldark-producers-line-up-new-heroic-historical-drama-the-lymond-chronicles/ [Accessed: 15 February 2021].

  4. 4.

    Scott Richardson, Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: The Enigma of Frances Crawford (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2016).

  5. 5.

    Elspeth Morrison, The Dorothy Dunnett Companion (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), ix.

  6. 6.

    https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-76440?rskey=6GmUgC&result=1 [Accessed: 15 February 2021]. Article by Belinda Copson. There is of course an extensive literature on the relationship between history and fiction, with noteworthy contributions on the Tudors from Susan Doran and Thomas Freeman, eds, Tudors and Stuarts on Film: Historical Perspectives (New York: MacMillan, 2008), to Jerome de Groot (cited below); Hayden White, “Introduction: Historical Fiction, Fictional History, and Historical Reality,” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 9 (2005), 147–57; see also John Demos, “Afterword: Notes from, and About, the History/Fiction Borderland” in the same issue 329–35; and Jessica Hower, “‘All Good Stories’: Historical Fiction in Pedagogy, Theory and Scholarship,” Rethinking History 23 (2019), 78–125.

  7. 7.

    The British Library’s “Treasures in Full: Renaissance Festival Texts” provides over two hundred and fifty notable examples from their collections of this rich embodied world and its ritual and ceremonial importance: https://www.bl.uk/treasures/festivalbooks/homepage.html [Last Accessed: 19 May 2021]. On material culture at the Tudor court see Suzannah Lipscomb and Thomas Betteridge, eds, Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (London: Routledge, 2013), especially Part II: Material Culture: Rich Pickings, with essays by Maria Hayward, Glenn Richardson and Elizabeth Hurren.

  8. 8.

    Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle (London: Penguin Random House, 2017, 1st pub. 1971), 169–70, 177, 179.

  9. 9.

    Alexander Fiske Harrison, “Connected by Blood,” The Times Literary Supplement, no. 5080, 11 August 2000, 23.

  10. 10.

    Jean Richardson, “Dorothy Dunnett: An Historical Pageant,” Publishers Weekly, 11 May 1998, 46–7, 46.

  11. 11.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 54–5. The novelist refers to the presence of the Duchess in England for the marriage, see 132.

  12. 12.

    Jerome de Groot, The Historical Novel, the New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge, 2010), 2.

  13. 13.

    Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (London: Fourth Estate, 2012), 409–10 and Isabel Allende, Inés del alma mía (Barcelona: Mondadori, 2006), Advertencia necesaria (“narro los hechos tal como fueron documentados”), Agradecimientos (“me ayudaron en la investigación de la época”), and Apuntes Bibliográficos, 365–7.

  14. 14.

    de Groot, The Historical Novel, 3, 7 (on Author’s Notes) and 12–13 (on Cervantes).

  15. 15.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, Author’s Note. My attraction to writing this essay was precisely the rediscovery of scholarship by figures like Willan, whose solid archival research still provides the ground for work on Russia and its “discovery” in Western European travel writing. It reminds me of the invaluable Challis’ The Tudor Coinage and more recently Patrick Williams’ The Great Favourite.

  16. 16.

    T. S. Willan, The Muscovy Merchants of 1555 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953) and The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956). Willan’s work on economic history continues to be indispensable for maritime historians including for a recent doctorate on the Elizabethan coasting trade, drawing on his The English Coasting Trade, 1600–1750 (1938) and The Inland Trade (1976) both from Manchester. See: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professor-t-s-willan-1424285.html [Accessed: 7 January 2021].

  17. 17.

    Reproduced in John Gough Nichols, ed, The Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary and Especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Camden Society XLVIII (London: The Camden Society, 1850), Appendix X.

  18. 18.

    David Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion, 1553–1558 (London: Longman, 1st pub. 1979, 2nd ed, 1991); ibid., Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); and Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler, eds, The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 1540–1560 (London: Macmillan, 1980).

  19. 19.

    R. B. Wernham, “Review of Elizabeth, Queen of England, Milton Waldman; The Armada, by Lorna Rea; The Spanish Marriage, 1554, Helen Simpson,” History n.s. 19 (1934), 65–6, 66.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-39549?rskey=di6Xeg&result=1 [Accessed: 16 February 2021].

  22. 22.

    David Loades, “The Reign of Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research,” Albion 21 (1989), 547–58, 549.

  23. 23.

    Geoffrey Parker, Philip II (London: Hutchinson, 1979) and W. H. Prescott, The History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain (London: Routledge and Sons, 1855).

  24. 24.

    It does not seem that Helen Prescott’s Spanish Tudor (1940, rev. 1952) was an influence, although bringing biographical and historical traditions back together and remaining the standard life until David Loades’ in 1989.

  25. 25.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 53.

  26. 26.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 86–7.

  27. 27.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 93.

  28. 28.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 104.

  29. 29.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 107 and 121.

  30. 30.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 357.

  31. 31.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 430–1. At this audience Margaret Lennox wears the brooch, “showing the History of Our Saviour Healing the Man with the Palsy,” that Mary had given her twelve years before, ibid., 433.

  32. 32.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 421–2. See Thomas Freeman, “Inventing Bloody Mary: Perceptions of Mary from the Restoration to the Twentieth Century,” in Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas Freeman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 78–102. This petulant outburst sees her direct her anger against Titian’s portrait of Philip in wolfskin.

  33. 33.

    John Lingard, The History of England, from the First Invasion of the Romans (to the Revolution in 1688) (London: n.p., 1819–30), 8 vols. and Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland, The Lives of the Queens of England (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1840–48), 10 vols.

  34. 34.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 133 and 182.

  35. 35.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 431.

  36. 36.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 92 and 94.

  37. 37.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 108.

  38. 38.

    See Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) and John Edwards, Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

  39. 39.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 120. Pointed out by Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer, see my Mary and Philip: The Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 187.

  40. 40.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 431 and 451. John Elder’s The Copie of a Letter Sent in to Scotlande… (London: John Wayland, 1555) reprinted in The Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary…, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society XLVIII (London: The Camden Society, 1850).

  41. 41.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 96–7.

  42. 42.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 97.

  43. 43.

    Morrison, The Dorothy Dunnett Companion, 353. I would like to thank Deidre Serjeantson for sharing her unpublished essay on Dunnett, see below and footnote 55.

  44. 44.

    Deidre Serjeantson, “That Private Labyrinth: The Books That Made Lymond,” unpublished paper, kindly shared by the author, private communication. Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 253.

  45. 45.

    Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (Edinburgh: E & C Goldsmid, 1886), vol. 3—Northeastern Europe and Adjacent Countries, Part II—The Muscovy Company and the Northeastern Passage, 150.

  46. 46.

    Pedro de Medina, The Art of Navigation, trans. John Frampton (London: Thomas Dawson, 1581).

  47. 47.

    See the excellent introduction by Rima Greenhill, “Rebus Moscoviticarum Commentarii,” Reading East: Irish Sources and Resources, University College Dublin: https://www.ucd.ie/readingeast/essay7.html [Last accessed: 2 March 2021]. A delightful image of King Sigismund I of Poland was included in the first edition: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1848-1209-46 [Last accessed: 26 February 2021]. Medina is referred to on 264.

  48. 48.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 255.

  49. 49.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 332. See Richard Eden, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India… (London: William Powell for Edward Sutton, 1555) and Sigmund Herberstein, Rerum Moscovitarum commentarii. In his comentariis sparsim contenta habebis russie, et que nunc eius metropolis est, moscouie brevissimam descriptionem. De religione quoque varia inserta sunt corographiam denique totius imperii mosici quis denique modus excpiendi et tractandi oratores: dissertitur. Itineraria quoque duo, in moscouiam sunt aiuncta (Wien: heirs of Johann Singriener, 1549).

  50. 50.

    Carole Richardson, Russia: The Dorothy Dunnett Guide (Edinburgh: The Dorothy Dunnett Society, 2020).

  51. 51.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 158 and Richardson, Russia: The Dorothy Dunnett Guide, 58.

  52. 52.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 280 and 283.

  53. 53.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 87. There is another reference to Charles V’s clocks on 422.

  54. 54.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 429.

  55. 55.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 109. An extraordinary example of the depth of this knowledge is having Sir William Petre refer to the personal Papal Bull confirming him in his possession of monastic land, ibid., 441, see F. G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and at Home (London: Longmans, 1961), 185. Mary’s translation appeared in Erasmus Desiderius, The First Tome or Volume of the Paraphrase Upon the Newe Testamente (London: Edward Whitchurch, 1548).

  56. 56.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 398.

  57. 57.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 237.

  58. 58.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 103–4.

  59. 59.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 420.

  60. 60.

    On this question see the discussion of the marriage contract in my Mary and Philip: The Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), Chapter 2: Contracting Matrimony, 52–81.

  61. 61.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 146.

  62. 62.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 365. See my Mary and Philip, 56 and footnote 28.

  63. 63.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 366.

  64. 64.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 404–5.

  65. 65.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 450.

  66. 66.

    The historical figures who appear in the pages of the novel: Susan Clarencius “old mistress Clarenceux too simple” (94), Ruy Gomez de Silva (102), Pierre Gilles and André Thevet (256), Hans Eworth (316), John Cheke (327), Gerardus Mercator (327), Stephen Borough (335), Thomas Wharton (384), Edward Courtney (393), Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague (398), John Dee (402 ff.) referring to lectures on Euclid delivered in Rheims, Leonard Digges (408), Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York (429), William Paulet, Lord High Treasurer (429), Margaret Douglas (433), Henry Darnley (434), Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Ely (436) and Philip blocking his promotion to Lord Chancellor on Gardiner’s death (441), John Dimmock (438), Cardinal Pole (447), Sir Henry Sidney (452), the Count of Feria and Jane Dormer (457), Nicholas Udall and William Baldwin (466), Thomas Stafford (486), Henry Jerningham (514), the Earl of Arundel (515), Juan de Figueroa (529). This is by no means a definitive list and many appear multiple times of course.

  67. 67.

    Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, 401.

  68. 68.

    The depth of readerly curiosity about distinguishing historical and fictional is apparent from sites like the Fandom wiki: https://dunnett.fandom.com/wiki/Companion_entries_for_The_Ringed_Castle.

  69. 69.

    See my Mary and Philip: The Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 225.

  70. 70.

    Lisa Hopkins, “Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond and Niccolò Series: History Versus Experience,” Working Papers on the Web 9 (2006). https://extra.shu.ac.uk/wpw/historicising/HopkinsL.htm [Last accessed: 2 March 2021].

  71. 71.

    de Groot, The Historical Novel, 3.

  72. 72.

    Diana Wallace, “Five Historical Romances to Escape into During a Pandemic,” The Conversation, 28 October 2020: https://theconversation.com/five-historical-romances-to-escape-into-during-a-pandemic-148827 [Last accessed: May 21, 2021]. See her The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), esp. Chapter 7—“Selling Women’s History: Popular Historical Fiction in the 1970s,” 150–75. See also Jenna Barlow, “Women’s Historical Fiction ‘After’ Feminism: Discursive Reconstructions of the Tudors in Contemporary Literature,” Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Stellenbosch University, 2014.

  73. 73.

    Cleo McNelly Kearns, “Dubious Pleasure: Dorothy Dunnett and the Historical Novel,” Critical Review 32 (1990), 36–48, 47.

  74. 74.

    Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Archive fever, the death drive, consignation, impression in both senses of the word are all useful for thinking about historical fiction.

  75. 75.

    Hilary Mantel’s excellent reflections on these themes were set out in her Reith Lectures: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08vkm52/episodes/guide [Last accessed: 20 May 2021].

  76. 76.

    Jerome de Groot, Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fictions (London: Routledge, 2016), 7. There is a growing bibliography on this topic. See for example: Laure Finke and Martin Schichtman, “No Pain, No Gain: Violence as Symbolic Capital in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur,” Arthuriana 8 (1998), 115–34; Robert Toplin and Jason Eudy, “The Historian Encounters Film: A Historiography,” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 16 (2002), 7–12; Robert Rosenstone, “Inventing Historical Truth on the Silver Screen,” Cinéaste 29 (2004), 29–33; Alison Landsberg, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (New York: Columbia UP, 2015); Alan Munslow, A History of History (London: Routledge, 2012); and Beverley Southgate, History Meets Fiction (London: Routledge, 2014).

  77. 77.

    McNelly Kearns, “Dubious Pleasure: Dorothy Dunnett and the Historical Novel,” 46.

  78. 78.

    Richardson, “Dorothy Dunnett: An Historical Pageant,” 47.

  79. 79.

    McNelly Kearns, “Dubious Pleasure: Dorothy Dunnett and the Historical Novel,” 36.

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  1. University College London, London, UK

    Alexander Samson

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    Valerie Schutte

  2. Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA

    Jessica S. Hower

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Samson, A. (2022). Mary I in The Ringed Castle. In: Schutte, V., Hower, J.S. (eds) Writing Mary I. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95132-0_9

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