Tag Archives: Susanna Horenbout

History Behind Dangerous Sanctuary

St. Paul’s Cathedral dominates London’s skyline today with its massive dome, but in 1525 it looked very different (see image here). Its spire was one of the highest in Europe.

Because much of the roof was made of wood, the cathedral burned down during the fire of London in 1666, after which plans were drawn up for the cathedral as we know it today.

When I was researching In a Treacherous Court — the first book in my series featuring Susanna Horenbout and John Parker — I learned about the ceremony Henry VIII arranged after the death of Richard de la Pole and the capture of King Francis I of France in battle at Pavia. The story of In a Treacherous Court ends before the ceremony, and the action starts again in Keeper of the King’s Secrets afterward. So choosing the St. Paul’s celebration was perfect for a short story that bridges the two books.

Geoffrey Pole is the sympathetic villain of the story, and I chose him because he seemed to be a man who was very emotional, even unstable. When his brother Reginald verbally attacked Henry VIII for seeking to divorce Katherine of Aragon, and Henry reacted by lashing out at the Pole family, it was Geoffrey who was questioned in the Tower of London, and asked to give information on his family that would help to convict them. During this time, in October and November 1538, Geoffrey seemed to teeter on the verge of mental collapse, and the testimony that was either forced or coerced from him convicted and led to the execution of most of his family. He was the only one released, and seems to have lived the rest of his life a broken man.

When thinking of someone who would be rash enough and hot-headed enough to want to strike out at the King over the celebration of Richard de la Pole’s death, Geoffrey Pole sprang readily to mind.

For those interested in hearing a version of the Te Deum, which is sung by the choir in this story (and was really sung at the Mass Henry attended in St. Paul’s Cathedral to celebrate the death of de la Pole and the capture of Francis I at Pavia) you can click on this link The recording is seven minutes long.

History Behind Keeper of the King’s Secrets

The second book in my Tudor-set series is KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS (1st Edition released on April 3rd, 2012 | 2nd Edition released 12 June 2023). In Keeper, Susanna Horenbout and her betrothed, John Parker, have to find the famous jewel known as the Mirror of Naples before anyone else, or England might just go to war with France. When I was researching the first book in the series, IN A TREACHEROUS COURT, I stumbled across mention of the Mirror of Naples, and was so intrigued by it I decided it just had to be part of KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS.

The jewel is described as being as large as a full-sized finger with a large pear-shaped pearl hanging from it. It was worth the equivalent of £4,500,000.

Henry VIII’s sister Mary was given the jewel as part of the French Crown Jewels when she became Queen of France.

When her husband Louis died, she was sequestered in a nunnery for a few months so everyone could be sure she was not pregnant with the king’s child. Henry sent his best friend, Charles Brandon, to fetch her back to England when it was clear she wasn’t expecting the next King of France. But here’s the twist. When she agreed to marry Louis, who was years older than her, she asked Henry to promise that once she was widowed, she could choose her own husband, that he wouldn’t use her as a political pawn again.

Henry promised.

Mary had always had her eye on Charles Brandon. She’d been in love with him for a long time. And she didn’t quite believe her brother would keep his word. So when Brandon arrived at the French nunnery to fetch her, she talked him into marrying her.

As she suspected, Henry had had other plans for his little sister, and they didn’t include his best friend, even though he loved Brandon as a brother. The nobles weren’t happy either. With Henry’s children not exactly thick on the ground, they felt Brandon had stolen a valuable State asset by marrying Mary, and they demanded he be beheaded for treason.

Mary hadn’t returned the Mirror of Naples to Francis I, the new king of France, and she handed it over to Henry instead, as a peace offering. Henry was mollified by the sparkly gift, made all the sweeter by being French property, which he knew would drive Francis I mad, and all was (mostly) forgiven.

I’ve always thought well of Mary for thumbing her nose at two of the most powerful men on the planet, both who saw her as a political pawn.

The history I’ve given above of how the Mirror of Naples came to be in Henry’s possession all happened a good few years before KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS is set. My angle on the story was I wondered what would the French do in a situation like this? What if someone powerful in Henry’s court had a good reason to work with the French to get the Mirror of Naples back to them, and what if someone else really powerful caught wind of the secret deal, and thought to use it to get rid of a rival?

The answers to those questions are in KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS 🙂 . I loved writing it, and especially loved my French bad boy, Jean, who is a nasty piece of work, but you can’t help remembering the Mirror of Naples is theirs. They’re just trying to get it back.

History Behind In a Treacherous Court

Throughout history there have been many women who have made an impact on the world around them, but unless you dig, quite often mainstream history does not mention them. When I came across a reference to a Flemish artist, Susanna Horenbout, daughter of one of the most eminent and talented illuminators and painters of his day, Gerard Horenbout, and how she was sent to the court of Henry VIII, most likely to work as a court painter, I was intrigued. The more I discovered, the more intrigued I became, and I ended up writing a historical fiction series with Susanna as the main character.

In order to learn about the training Susanna would have had, I read books on the art of illumination and painting in the Renaissance; how it was done, and what tools and paints were used. And one of the things I discovered was that the Ghent School of Illumination–the style of illumination Susanna would have learnt, was a very literal school. They tried to render images exactly as they would look in real life, with no creative license or artistic impressions. But not only were they painstakingly accurate in their images, they also liked to inject some whimsy into their work. Cats would walk across the writing on page, people would play jokes on each other in the painting.

I loved that. And I used it in shaping who Susanna was as a person. She is sharp-eyed and direct, just like the style she trained in, but there is a playfulness about her in her work and in herself. But of course, that isn’t all there is to it. Because Susanna is a woman, working in a field almost entirely dominated by men, and her employers are almost all men. There is no question things would have been hard for her, in making her way both professionally and socially.

I used that in how I shaped her character, too. She is used to being insulted, and she bears it well, but it wears her down. She also has no expectations for a normal life. She can’t live without her art, and she understands she will have to make personal sacrifices because of that, because she could never be a conventional wife.

As it happens, Susanna did find happiness, despite the various problems she faced, and I loved that I could write a strong love story through the series with her and Parker, one of Henry VIII’s courtiers, and still be completely true to events. Her marriage to John Parker is how art historians realised she came to England before the rest of her family, because it precedes their arrival.

IN A TREACHEROUS COURT is my fictional version of why Susanna was sent ahead of her brother, what happened to her, and how she met and became involved with John Parker. And while I may land her in extremely hot water, and plunge her deep in the pool of international intrigue, where I can, and far more often than even I thought possible, much of my plot is based on fact. For me, the saddest thing is that aside from a brass plaque found in All Saint’s Church in Fulham, London, which is most likely Susanna’s work, nothing else of what she worked on has survived. The tragedy is that although Albrecht Dürer praised her work highly when she was only eighteen, and on her death several Italian master painters eulogized her as an exceptional illuminator, none of her paintings and illuminations remain.

RULES OF BEHAVIOUR

I couldn’t use the language of the time in IN A TREACHEROUS COURT (it would be like reading a book in pre-Shakespearean English), but I wanted to set the scene, give readers a taste of the cadence and poetry of the speech of the time and some context to the rules and mores of behaviour under which my characters would have lived. My solution was to use quotes from THE COURTIER, an Italian book on courtly manners written by Count Baldessar Castillo around the time IN A TREACHEROUS COURT is set, which was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby a number of years later. The book is in four parts, and the first part is really the ‘quick guide’ or cheat sheet for the rest of the book, containing the main dos and don’ts on how to behave at court. It was great fun choosing a rule for a courtier and a rule for a lady in waiting for the start of each chapter.

As I mention above, Susanna Horenbout was trained as an artist and illuminator in her father’s studio in Ghent (in modern day Belgium), and art historians are sure she was sent over to Henry’s court ahead of her father and brother. John Parker, the other main protagonist, was one of Henry VIII’s ‘new men’, courtiers who were not noblemen, but in the meritocracy Henry was trying to establish, loyalty, and usefulness, could definitely overcome a lack of blue blood. They are both outsiders, but talented enough, and intelligent enough, to find a place for themselves in the world they find themselves in.

The Count Castillo’s advice on the fitting and proper behaviour for those who wanted to advance at court just worked so well. Where I could, I tried to match up the quotes (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) to what was happening in the scenes of that chapter. Some of my favourites include:

The Chiefe Conditions And Qualities In A Courtier: Not to be a babbler, brauler, or chatter, nor lavish of his tunge.

Of The Chief Conditions And Qualityes In A Waytyng Gentylwoman: To shape him that is oversaucie wyth her, or that hath small respecte in hys talke, suche an answere, that he maye well understande she is offended wyth hym. (LOVE this one! :))

The Chiefe Conditions And Qualities In A Courtier: To be handesome and clenly in his apparaile.

Of The Chief Conditions And Qualityes In A Waytyng Gentylwoman: To be heedefull and remembre that men may with lesse jeopardy show to be in love, then women.

The Chiefe Conditions And Qualities In A Courtier: His love towarde women, not to be sensuall or fleshlie, but honest and godly, and more ruled with reason, then appetyte: and to love better the beawtye of the minde, then of the bodie.

Of The Chief Conditions And Qualityes In A Waytyng Gentylwoman: Not to be lyghte of creditt that she is beloved, thoughe a man commune familierlye with her of love.

As you can tell, the Count Castillo had some great advice for the men and women of court.

Talking about Dangerous Sanctuary, a Susanna and Parker short story

I’m over at my group blog, Magical Musings, analyzing the opening scene of Dangerous Sanctuary, a short story set between IN A TREACHEROUS COURT and KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS, which is due to be published by Gallery Books in a couple of months in ebook format. Joining me is YA author Gabi Stevens, and we share the different ways we approached our opening scenes. There is a copy of one of Gabi’s books and one of mine up for grabs to two lucky commenters.