What do people think Cromwell means about the Proverbs quotation. He says, "'Do you know this woman who is mentioned here?' Her clothing is silk and purple, says the author. I could tell you much about her, from the verses this page cannot contain.'"
What does he mean by this? That there are some things you only know from experience? It feels very enigmatic. And Edward Seymour says, 'You should have been a bishop, Cromwell.'
I wondered about this too. Initially I thought it was about his talent for pricing people based on their clothes. But it may just be a more general statement about being able to read people well.
Proverbs 31: Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
I’m guessing it’s meant to be taken as guidance but I think the penultimate line is a good warning: Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
I took it literally, that the book is so small that it just contains a few choice quotations, but Cromwell has the whole thing memorised so can give more context.
Dark, O so Dark. I felt the darkness as I read up to here, but your torch has shown into every cobwebbed corner. I did like that Mantel gave Anne the line and awareness that it was about Woolsey. I know that Mantel's Cromwell (now my Cromwell) can love his wife, children, sister and family, Woolsey, Jesus and his Gospel, and he honors his promises (Wyatt) and doesn't make one that he can't keep. I think this is what is so illuminating to me--very good men can do brutal things with full justification in their heart and mind. I can see it so much clearer in More (the torturer), perhaps because for More it is about his ego/certainty. With Cromwell, it almost seems he is compelled to act, but it doesn't just seem like ego. He knows if he goes down, his whole household and so many others go down with him. He acts with dedication but with uncertainty. I was grateful he needed air after Weston.
I was very pleased with the position of the cut this week, we finished at the perfect moment. And of course he's in the Tower thinking about men with no future, thinking about his future, and the thought that he may end up here. We are in a dark dark place.
We don't talk enough about Cromwell's lingering pain and anger, he doesn't express them out loud very often, but you know they're compelling him much more than he'd like.
Yes! I can feel the compulsion, but couldn't identify the source. Emotion can do that and it is uncomfortable, especially with one so capable at 'fixing his face'. Thank you.
I agree completely Ellie. I highlighted the paragraph on grief and wondered about his words, “thriving in spite of yourself … God taking your heart of flesh and giving you a heart of stone .” How much a part does grief play in this?
You did it again Simon. I shared that I have finished the trilogy. I had to. I have picked it back up and started again. I’ve gone down many Tudor rabbit holes since. Your writings, gleanings and insights have helped so much and serves to pull so many threads together. Especially so on a reread. It’s a gift and a lot of work on your part which deserves all levels of support including financial. And no more for I’m off to upgrade my subscription. 😎
Bit of a side note, but one of my favourite things about this book is the further development of Jane Seymour's character. She's wry, funny, and shrewd - she does as she's told amiably enough, but as Cromwell remarks, she has no illusions.
Vapid? The woman who Cromwell said would have made a sharp lawyer? I think she's underestimated by those around her because she doesn't like to be the centre of attention & she sees the world differently from them (I adore her "Why would I want to do that?" when they advise her not to give in to Henry) but she is so clear-sighted, and seems to see that there's only one logical conclusion of Anne’s situation when the others haven't yet admitted it to themselves.
Every time Jane speaks it's funny and chilling, she's so calculated, she keeps her cards close to the chest. I love the parallels forming between her, Anne and Catherine: they hate each other, they play the game so shrewdly with the limited weapons they have, their bodies no longer belong to them (her family manhandling Jane into that hood!), they're ultimately at the mercy of a tyrannical king.
The four interviews in the Tower and this week’s final paragraph are a culmination of everything we’ve been reading since Jan. 1, as Simon points out in the section on revenge. What Cromwell dreamed “has enacted itself”; “the lambs have butchered and eaten themselves.” Yikes, Hilary, no pulling punches this week. Cromwell’s revenge is moving up one plateau at a time, jerking us (and perhaps Cromwell himself) up short, letting us catch our breath for a moment, and then climbing to the next level for the next reading. As Leslie Rasmussen summarized earlier, the story is dark, so dark.
Absolutely. I think Hilary said she didn't think of these has three books but just one very long book. Well we're now at its darkest centre, peering into the abyss.
I know Cromwell comes across as doing anything to get ahead in his career, but remember King Henry had the final say in all of this. He later authorized the beheading of Katherine Howard and I read someplace he wanted to have his own daughter Mary put to death. It was Crammer that talked him out of it. I’m sure Henry would be more than happy to have someone else take the blame. Even Chapys who was Anne’s enemy thought the charges were false. I can’t help thinking again and again if only Kathryn of A and Henry‘s son had lived, how different thing things would have turned out.
Oh of course, Henry must take ultimate responsibility for the deaths. We see everything through Cromwell's eyes though, so we see more than just ambition: we see survival and this week especially we see revenge. And the king is notoriously changeable and quick to regret his decisions, so Cromwell has to work him to make him stay the course. Especially because it could be lethal to Cromwell if Henry switches back at the last moment.
Imagine, possibly no Anne Boleyn, maybe even no Cromwell, at least not in his current form. I visited Mary, Queen of Scots house in Jedburgh this week (where I managed to crack my head on a lintel and give myself a concussion but that's another story) which is a place where Mary was very ill and almost died. I could only imagine how different the history of our country would be if she had died there instead of being beheaded by Elizabeth I in London. There are so many 'almosts' in history, so many turning points where so much could have been different.
Catching my breath after that section...I wonder if Hilary felt anything similar when she wrote that last paragraph. Crumb's conscience and his sense of revenge at war in his body. His victory over those men must have been hard to write, it was definitely hard to read. Crumb at his most awful.
That portrait of Jane really is wonderful - the details on the clothes are incredible. As someone with no artistic ability, I am impressed.
Recently, I read a work of literary fiction that I wanted to throw across the room. The author more or less said that, the world being what it is now, fiction as escapism is basically dead and that authors now have a duty to write what they know to be true by experience ('one should stay in one's lane'). It made me so angry and then it made me sad and a little afraid. Where can we go to rest if not in stories? How do we learn empathy if we're not allowed to imagine other ways of being? All of this to say, the more I read the Wolf Hall books, the more I think 'Did that actually happen?' Was Jane Seymour actually manhandled into a gable hood at Nicholas Carew's house? Did Henry really give her a book with Anne's initial on it? What's real? What isn't? (I really need to read that Cromwell biography) And does it matter? We've had some discussions here about belief and big magic. If I believe in Jane's kingfisher sleeves and Grace's peacock wings do I make them real? Do we collectively make Hilary's Cromwell real?
The 'actual' answer is that Mantel cut most things out of wholly imagined cloth. The 'true' answer is that she's such a master of character, dialogue, and motive, that the garment she constructs is (almost) entirely logical and believable. I'm pretty sure one of her motivations for writing these books was a desire to upend the accepted historical narrative of Thomas More as a (literal) saint and Cromwell as a villain. (Simon?)
"Where can we go to rest if not in stories? How do we learn empathy if we're not allowed to imagine other ways of being?" This is such an important pair of points, and one I think about a lot. I remember a talk I went to by a local historical fiction author. Because I live in Aotearoa New Zealand, colonial history is fresh and recent; also there is a tension between oral and written histories. All of that makes it quite charged to construct a historical narrative. I asked the author if she thinks that there is a danger in writing a historical narrative so seductive that people take it for reality. She said that is something she thinks about a lot.
Historical fiction is such a powerful tool that it can be hard for me to remember it's not 'real'. I get emotionally attached to the world the author has built. I still think, though, that it's better for people to be emotionally immersed in history, even if it's speculative. I think it would be a better world if more people knew history.
I strongly recommend Diarmaid MacCulloch's book. I disagree that Mantel cut most things from wholly imagined cloth. I don't think that does justice to the depth of research or the complexity of weaving together fact and fiction. The reality is Mantel writes incredibly close to the historical record. Her imagination fills in the gaps.
So we know Jane there was there, we know Henry sent her a gift, we know he warned her about the ballad, we know she modelled her wardrobe on Katherine. Mantel then imagined the spaces that link all this together.
Nicola, did it happen this way? Well, obviously we don't know and can't know. What is striking is how Diarmaid MacCulloch recognised in Mantel's Cromwell the same Cromwell he had met in the archive. But as you say, on one level it doesn't matter. Mantel says that we tell stories to get at the truth. And that truth is about understanding human nature, identity and experience. Mantel felt a duty to respect the memory of those she wrote about, but I think she also wanted to tell bigger stories through them that would speak to all of us.
Rosie, yes upending the More narrative was definitely a motivation. She also had a good sense for a compelling story. At the Wolf Hall Weekend we heard an email that she wrote when she was starting Wolf Hall. It was an incredible email. You could see her fascination and curiosity about this man, Thomas Cromwell, who had done so much but left so many unanswered questions.
Thank you Master Haisell! That is all very interesting. I will have to look up MacCulloch. My understanding was that some parts of the historical narrative are far richer / more well documented than others- and this part of the story concerning the trial of Anne Boleyn is the bit most shrouded in mystery. The Jane part of it must be less so, as you say. ('Good' queen, 'bad' queen?)
Ah I see! You were referring specifically to Anne's arrest and trial. Yes that's certainly true, we have much less. There's a good article online where Hilary Mantel says we can keep running this episode over and over from different angles and perspectives and get a different story. And its unknowability is one of its fascinations.
Yes. I had understood that this part of the books is the most speculative. But it is interesting to know which bits are a matter of historical record and which are conjecture. I know some history but not down to the level of what's known and what's constructed. It would have been more accurate to say 'half-imagined' than 'wholly imagined'. It's as you say- Mantel knows THIS and THIS and THIS, and stitches them together. I'm in awe of her inventiveness with regard to things like dialogue and scene-setting.
It is really remarkable. She said she did historical fiction because she was rubbish at plot. Don't know whether I agree with her there, but she had such a gift for bringing a scene to life.
Absolutely, and historical fiction offers a path towards what's objectively true while providing us with a subjective lens through which to view our own lives in relation to that truth.
Indeed. It might seem like a sideways leap, but I read this post a few days back that points to an opposite phenomenon- what the writer calls 'discourse fiction', in which the idea are entirely constrained by the modern moment:
Two things struck me this week. One was George Boleyn- as soon as he had the measure of the situation- coming right back at Cromwell with a prophecy: You think you will be exempt from this fate?
I suspect that it is not only revenge but satiety for the King that Cromwell seeks so that Wyatt can be saved.
One line that stood out to me: Richmond wants a word with Cromwell who asks if it's urgent. Richmond says no, but it's important. Cromwell wonders to himself what ti would be like to serve a master who understood the difference.
Everything is urgent to impatient Henry. This is Cromwell's tale and in his telling Henry's failings are Henry's; his successes are because of Cromwell and, before Cromwell, because of Wolsey.
Seeing, in this excerpt especially, how BUTB annd WH are so interwoven and connected, I wonder do we know if Mantle always planned to write three books? The two seem inseparable at this point!
Hey! I answered a similar question a few posts back. Hilary Mantel regarded the trilogy as one long book split into three volumes. She originally planned on one book. This turned into two (before and after 1536) and then she decided early 1536 needed its own book: this one! So it became a trilogy. But they are really just one book, interwoven and very closely linked.
I don’t think that I have read so fast as I did coming to the end of this section. Cromwell’s “interrogation” of each of the four men had me captivated. The one section that just resonated with me was when Norris spoke to grief and Cromwell thinks about his own grief after his wife and children - for any that have experienced grief and the thought of how they can go forward - this rang so true.
Thanks Simon for a great wrap up. You have made an amazing book even more perfect.
In that painting of Elizabeth, though, is it a girdle book, or just a book held at girdle-level? I'm fond of this painting- which is on the cover of David Starkey's good biography of Elizabeth's early years- it's so fresh and lively
It's a lovely painting. I think we can risk calling any book on a girdle a girdle book. In fact, none of these books seem to be "girdle books" in the medieval sense of a girdle book binding, which is a whole other rabbit hole explored in the second link I shared. Feels a bit like the question, when is a pocket book not a pocket book!
On the girdle book point, there’s a tiny Wayatt spoiler in the linked article on Fact-Checking Anne Boleyn’s girdle book from the British Library 😉 really interesting tho - always loved tiny books 🤓
Mention of ballads and I’m wondering if anyone else has sifted through their music collection for some Tudor music and composers?
I’ve been listening to John Sheppard sung by Stile Antico (Media Vita) and The Spy’s Choirbook, Petrus Alamire and the Court of Henry VIII. I’m sure there are more lurking in my shelves and out there too so I would welcome any suggestions.
I’m ahead with the reading but catching up here and am going to spend time today following your invaluable links Simon.
I’m intrigued because my family home was in Wallington right opposite Beddington Park so the Carew name and Manor very local as was my school …Nonsuch in nearby Cheam and built very near to the ruins of the Palace.
I've already shared my appreciation for Jane here, but the other thing that stood out for me in this section was how boldly Cromwell is taking control. Hardly any time has passed since Henry was shouting at him for treating him like the blacksmith's boy, but now "Henry seems inclined to obey him" and Cromwell is the one to decide that it would be acceptable for Cranmer to visit the king, but not Jane ("Not yet, sir"). He's getting cockier by the minute, even flippantly claiming he should have been Pope...
My favourite section this week was Cromwell's reflection on survival and its price:
"He once thought it himself, that he might die of grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone."
What do people think Cromwell means about the Proverbs quotation. He says, "'Do you know this woman who is mentioned here?' Her clothing is silk and purple, says the author. I could tell you much about her, from the verses this page cannot contain.'"
What does he mean by this? That there are some things you only know from experience? It feels very enigmatic. And Edward Seymour says, 'You should have been a bishop, Cromwell.'
'Edward,' he says, 'I should have been Pope.'
I wondered about this too. Initially I thought it was about his talent for pricing people based on their clothes. But it may just be a more general statement about being able to read people well.
Proverbs 31: Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
I’m guessing it’s meant to be taken as guidance but I think the penultimate line is a good warning: Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
I took it literally, that the book is so small that it just contains a few choice quotations, but Cromwell has the whole thing memorised so can give more context.
Dark, O so Dark. I felt the darkness as I read up to here, but your torch has shown into every cobwebbed corner. I did like that Mantel gave Anne the line and awareness that it was about Woolsey. I know that Mantel's Cromwell (now my Cromwell) can love his wife, children, sister and family, Woolsey, Jesus and his Gospel, and he honors his promises (Wyatt) and doesn't make one that he can't keep. I think this is what is so illuminating to me--very good men can do brutal things with full justification in their heart and mind. I can see it so much clearer in More (the torturer), perhaps because for More it is about his ego/certainty. With Cromwell, it almost seems he is compelled to act, but it doesn't just seem like ego. He knows if he goes down, his whole household and so many others go down with him. He acts with dedication but with uncertainty. I was grateful he needed air after Weston.
I was very pleased with the position of the cut this week, we finished at the perfect moment. And of course he's in the Tower thinking about men with no future, thinking about his future, and the thought that he may end up here. We are in a dark dark place.
More tears. This book...
We don't talk enough about Cromwell's lingering pain and anger, he doesn't express them out loud very often, but you know they're compelling him much more than he'd like.
Yes! I can feel the compulsion, but couldn't identify the source. Emotion can do that and it is uncomfortable, especially with one so capable at 'fixing his face'. Thank you.
I agree completely Ellie. I highlighted the paragraph on grief and wondered about his words, “thriving in spite of yourself … God taking your heart of flesh and giving you a heart of stone .” How much a part does grief play in this?
You did it again Simon. I shared that I have finished the trilogy. I had to. I have picked it back up and started again. I’ve gone down many Tudor rabbit holes since. Your writings, gleanings and insights have helped so much and serves to pull so many threads together. Especially so on a reread. It’s a gift and a lot of work on your part which deserves all levels of support including financial. And no more for I’m off to upgrade my subscription. 😎
Thank you Kathleen, you just made my day!
Bit of a side note, but one of my favourite things about this book is the further development of Jane Seymour's character. She's wry, funny, and shrewd - she does as she's told amiably enough, but as Cromwell remarks, she has no illusions.
Someone at the Wolf Hall Weekend said Mantel's Jane is vapid! I gasped internally. Not one bit of it!
Vapid? The woman who Cromwell said would have made a sharp lawyer? I think she's underestimated by those around her because she doesn't like to be the centre of attention & she sees the world differently from them (I adore her "Why would I want to do that?" when they advise her not to give in to Henry) but she is so clear-sighted, and seems to see that there's only one logical conclusion of Anne’s situation when the others haven't yet admitted it to themselves.
I would have gasped externally and shook my head at that person! Maybe bitten my thumb too.
She’s such a good character! She doesn’t talk much, but when she does, oh boy, she says it as it is! 👏😂
Every time Jane speaks it's funny and chilling, she's so calculated, she keeps her cards close to the chest. I love the parallels forming between her, Anne and Catherine: they hate each other, they play the game so shrewdly with the limited weapons they have, their bodies no longer belong to them (her family manhandling Jane into that hood!), they're ultimately at the mercy of a tyrannical king.
Jane is a fantastic character throughout. I love the contrast between Anne and Jane's interactions with Cromwell too.
The four interviews in the Tower and this week’s final paragraph are a culmination of everything we’ve been reading since Jan. 1, as Simon points out in the section on revenge. What Cromwell dreamed “has enacted itself”; “the lambs have butchered and eaten themselves.” Yikes, Hilary, no pulling punches this week. Cromwell’s revenge is moving up one plateau at a time, jerking us (and perhaps Cromwell himself) up short, letting us catch our breath for a moment, and then climbing to the next level for the next reading. As Leslie Rasmussen summarized earlier, the story is dark, so dark.
Absolutely. I think Hilary said she didn't think of these has three books but just one very long book. Well we're now at its darkest centre, peering into the abyss.
I know Cromwell comes across as doing anything to get ahead in his career, but remember King Henry had the final say in all of this. He later authorized the beheading of Katherine Howard and I read someplace he wanted to have his own daughter Mary put to death. It was Crammer that talked him out of it. I’m sure Henry would be more than happy to have someone else take the blame. Even Chapys who was Anne’s enemy thought the charges were false. I can’t help thinking again and again if only Kathryn of A and Henry‘s son had lived, how different thing things would have turned out.
Oh of course, Henry must take ultimate responsibility for the deaths. We see everything through Cromwell's eyes though, so we see more than just ambition: we see survival and this week especially we see revenge. And the king is notoriously changeable and quick to regret his decisions, so Cromwell has to work him to make him stay the course. Especially because it could be lethal to Cromwell if Henry switches back at the last moment.
Imagine, possibly no Anne Boleyn, maybe even no Cromwell, at least not in his current form. I visited Mary, Queen of Scots house in Jedburgh this week (where I managed to crack my head on a lintel and give myself a concussion but that's another story) which is a place where Mary was very ill and almost died. I could only imagine how different the history of our country would be if she had died there instead of being beheaded by Elizabeth I in London. There are so many 'almosts' in history, so many turning points where so much could have been different.
Catching my breath after that section...I wonder if Hilary felt anything similar when she wrote that last paragraph. Crumb's conscience and his sense of revenge at war in his body. His victory over those men must have been hard to write, it was definitely hard to read. Crumb at his most awful.
That portrait of Jane really is wonderful - the details on the clothes are incredible. As someone with no artistic ability, I am impressed.
Recently, I read a work of literary fiction that I wanted to throw across the room. The author more or less said that, the world being what it is now, fiction as escapism is basically dead and that authors now have a duty to write what they know to be true by experience ('one should stay in one's lane'). It made me so angry and then it made me sad and a little afraid. Where can we go to rest if not in stories? How do we learn empathy if we're not allowed to imagine other ways of being? All of this to say, the more I read the Wolf Hall books, the more I think 'Did that actually happen?' Was Jane Seymour actually manhandled into a gable hood at Nicholas Carew's house? Did Henry really give her a book with Anne's initial on it? What's real? What isn't? (I really need to read that Cromwell biography) And does it matter? We've had some discussions here about belief and big magic. If I believe in Jane's kingfisher sleeves and Grace's peacock wings do I make them real? Do we collectively make Hilary's Cromwell real?
The 'actual' answer is that Mantel cut most things out of wholly imagined cloth. The 'true' answer is that she's such a master of character, dialogue, and motive, that the garment she constructs is (almost) entirely logical and believable. I'm pretty sure one of her motivations for writing these books was a desire to upend the accepted historical narrative of Thomas More as a (literal) saint and Cromwell as a villain. (Simon?)
"Where can we go to rest if not in stories? How do we learn empathy if we're not allowed to imagine other ways of being?" This is such an important pair of points, and one I think about a lot. I remember a talk I went to by a local historical fiction author. Because I live in Aotearoa New Zealand, colonial history is fresh and recent; also there is a tension between oral and written histories. All of that makes it quite charged to construct a historical narrative. I asked the author if she thinks that there is a danger in writing a historical narrative so seductive that people take it for reality. She said that is something she thinks about a lot.
Historical fiction is such a powerful tool that it can be hard for me to remember it's not 'real'. I get emotionally attached to the world the author has built. I still think, though, that it's better for people to be emotionally immersed in history, even if it's speculative. I think it would be a better world if more people knew history.
Sorry Nicola, getting to this late. Thanks Rosie.
I strongly recommend Diarmaid MacCulloch's book. I disagree that Mantel cut most things from wholly imagined cloth. I don't think that does justice to the depth of research or the complexity of weaving together fact and fiction. The reality is Mantel writes incredibly close to the historical record. Her imagination fills in the gaps.
So we know Jane there was there, we know Henry sent her a gift, we know he warned her about the ballad, we know she modelled her wardrobe on Katherine. Mantel then imagined the spaces that link all this together.
Nicola, did it happen this way? Well, obviously we don't know and can't know. What is striking is how Diarmaid MacCulloch recognised in Mantel's Cromwell the same Cromwell he had met in the archive. But as you say, on one level it doesn't matter. Mantel says that we tell stories to get at the truth. And that truth is about understanding human nature, identity and experience. Mantel felt a duty to respect the memory of those she wrote about, but I think she also wanted to tell bigger stories through them that would speak to all of us.
Rosie, yes upending the More narrative was definitely a motivation. She also had a good sense for a compelling story. At the Wolf Hall Weekend we heard an email that she wrote when she was starting Wolf Hall. It was an incredible email. You could see her fascination and curiosity about this man, Thomas Cromwell, who had done so much but left so many unanswered questions.
Thank you Master Haisell! That is all very interesting. I will have to look up MacCulloch. My understanding was that some parts of the historical narrative are far richer / more well documented than others- and this part of the story concerning the trial of Anne Boleyn is the bit most shrouded in mystery. The Jane part of it must be less so, as you say. ('Good' queen, 'bad' queen?)
Ah I see! You were referring specifically to Anne's arrest and trial. Yes that's certainly true, we have much less. There's a good article online where Hilary Mantel says we can keep running this episode over and over from different angles and perspectives and get a different story. And its unknowability is one of its fascinations.
Yes. I had understood that this part of the books is the most speculative. But it is interesting to know which bits are a matter of historical record and which are conjecture. I know some history but not down to the level of what's known and what's constructed. It would have been more accurate to say 'half-imagined' than 'wholly imagined'. It's as you say- Mantel knows THIS and THIS and THIS, and stitches them together. I'm in awe of her inventiveness with regard to things like dialogue and scene-setting.
It is really remarkable. She said she did historical fiction because she was rubbish at plot. Don't know whether I agree with her there, but she had such a gift for bringing a scene to life.
Absolutely, and historical fiction offers a path towards what's objectively true while providing us with a subjective lens through which to view our own lives in relation to that truth.
Indeed. It might seem like a sideways leap, but I read this post a few days back that points to an opposite phenomenon- what the writer calls 'discourse fiction', in which the idea are entirely constrained by the modern moment:
https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/the-modern-discourse-novel
Two things struck me this week. One was George Boleyn- as soon as he had the measure of the situation- coming right back at Cromwell with a prophecy: You think you will be exempt from this fate?
Another was- man, Henry is such a dick! Wow
Bull's eye, George.
There are not enough invectives to fire at Henry. Narcissism at its worst.
I suspect that it is not only revenge but satiety for the King that Cromwell seeks so that Wyatt can be saved.
One line that stood out to me: Richmond wants a word with Cromwell who asks if it's urgent. Richmond says no, but it's important. Cromwell wonders to himself what ti would be like to serve a master who understood the difference.
Everything is urgent to impatient Henry. This is Cromwell's tale and in his telling Henry's failings are Henry's; his successes are because of Cromwell and, before Cromwell, because of Wolsey.
Well Wyatt is a friend and the son of a friend. We would be in a really dark place if he didn't want to save him.
Loved that quote about Richmond as well. And right now he must consider the small possibility that Fitzroy may one day be his master.
Ooo so close to the end of book two!
Seeing, in this excerpt especially, how BUTB annd WH are so interwoven and connected, I wonder do we know if Mantle always planned to write three books? The two seem inseparable at this point!
Hey! I answered a similar question a few posts back. Hilary Mantel regarded the trilogy as one long book split into three volumes. She originally planned on one book. This turned into two (before and after 1536) and then she decided early 1536 needed its own book: this one! So it became a trilogy. But they are really just one book, interwoven and very closely linked.
I don’t think that I have read so fast as I did coming to the end of this section. Cromwell’s “interrogation” of each of the four men had me captivated. The one section that just resonated with me was when Norris spoke to grief and Cromwell thinks about his own grief after his wife and children - for any that have experienced grief and the thought of how they can go forward - this rang so true.
Thanks Simon for a great wrap up. You have made an amazing book even more perfect.
Powerful words on grief this week. Thank you Rachel.
Could not agree more 👍🏼
In that painting of Elizabeth, though, is it a girdle book, or just a book held at girdle-level? I'm fond of this painting- which is on the cover of David Starkey's good biography of Elizabeth's early years- it's so fresh and lively
It's a lovely painting. I think we can risk calling any book on a girdle a girdle book. In fact, none of these books seem to be "girdle books" in the medieval sense of a girdle book binding, which is a whole other rabbit hole explored in the second link I shared. Feels a bit like the question, when is a pocket book not a pocket book!
On the girdle book point, there’s a tiny Wayatt spoiler in the linked article on Fact-Checking Anne Boleyn’s girdle book from the British Library 😉 really interesting tho - always loved tiny books 🤓
Oh yes, I wondered whether there might be Wyatt spoilers! Thanks for mentioning it.
Mention of ballads and I’m wondering if anyone else has sifted through their music collection for some Tudor music and composers?
I’ve been listening to John Sheppard sung by Stile Antico (Media Vita) and The Spy’s Choirbook, Petrus Alamire and the Court of Henry VIII. I’m sure there are more lurking in my shelves and out there too so I would welcome any suggestions.
We need a Wolf Hall playlist!
I’m ahead with the reading but catching up here and am going to spend time today following your invaluable links Simon.
I’m intrigued because my family home was in Wallington right opposite Beddington Park so the Carew name and Manor very local as was my school …Nonsuch in nearby Cheam and built very near to the ruins of the Palace.
Thank you as always for your incredible work 🙏
Oh great! And we will get to Nonsuch later.
The school badge was the Tudor Rose but I’m not sure we quite appreciated at the time the hallowed turf that was our hockey pitch!
Crikey!
I've already shared my appreciation for Jane here, but the other thing that stood out for me in this section was how boldly Cromwell is taking control. Hardly any time has passed since Henry was shouting at him for treating him like the blacksmith's boy, but now "Henry seems inclined to obey him" and Cromwell is the one to decide that it would be acceptable for Cranmer to visit the king, but not Jane ("Not yet, sir"). He's getting cockier by the minute, even flippantly claiming he should have been Pope...
My favourite section this week was Cromwell's reflection on survival and its price:
"He once thought it himself, that he might die of grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone."