I Am Your Queen, I Am Myself

Elizabeth and I

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/i-am-your-queen-i-am-myself

Introit: Coronation Banquet (part) by David Hirschfelder from Elizabeth soundtrack

Welcome to Between The Stools on 10^th September 2023, for a special and longer service. On 7^th September, one of England’s most esteemed queens was born – Elizabeth I, at Greenwich, in 1533. She died 70 years later – also in a 3 year, like this one, on 24^th March. Elizabeth has been spoken of throughout our History Year, and although this service isn’t the end of it – that’s January 2024 – there is a sense of culmination and zenith in this month. Not only was Elizabeth the last and perhaps greatest of the famous Tudor dynasty, and the last monarch of England alone; not only is her 45 year reign considered a, if not The Golden Age for this country, but the high point is for a personal reason.

As well as being the 490^th anniversary of Elizabeth’s birth, this time marks 50 years since my own. I’m away – being 50! – so this service is pre-recorded. My name, Elspeth, is Scots for Elizabeth – and I do use the R nodding to Regina as well as Rushbrook. I’ve long felt a link with our Fairest Queen…but as I’ve developed this year, I’ve begun to see her and her family differently.

Let us open in prayer and let me explore that with you, with some musical interludes.

Elizabeth original video cover

Elizabeth Tudor was the person who opened the door to my now passionate and defining love of history. I was already interested in historic buildings 25 years ago, when I myself was that age. But the persons who inhabited them were not yet of interest. The film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, came out here in October 1998. It was the period setting – and the interest of my companion – which led me to watch it at Norwich’s Odeon. It didn’t become special to me straight away, but I kept finding myself choosing it again on video; the illustrated script, tie-in novel and the wonderful soundtrack were purchased; and then I went back to university, and my masters dissertation focussed on it… I realised that this film, in a year when I went to the cinema every other week and had seen many memorable films (the Truman Show immediately comes to mind), had become my favourite of all time. Elizabeth stayed my favourite film, even though I saw up to fifty a year at the cinema and as many at home, for at least a decade. I was very excited when the sequel, The Golden Age, came out nine years later, and I made a special trip to watch it at a special cinema – London’s Electric, Portobello Road.

But now my experience was very different. In the autumn of 98, I was largely unaware of Elizabeth’s story. I was willing for Shekhar Kapur and Michael Hirst (the director and writer of the Elizabeth film) to shape that void, and I was impressed rather than offended by their approach. They shook off the starched ruffs and peeled away the alienating white facepaint that had hitherto made Elizabeth a recognisable historic icon, but I had never thought of those portraits as being of a real flesh and blood woman whom I could relate to or wished to know. These filmmakers began from within, with Elizabeth as a woman, my own age at the time of the first film, in love for the first time, finding her way in the world, sometimes unsure, vulnerable, learning to stand up and find her own voice. Deeply symbolic (with its red, black and gold theme, based on an unspoken poem by Wyatt) and with a surprising, groundbreaking aesthetic and tone then for a period piece, Elizabeth received many critical accolades as a film, but I was made aware that it was heavily critiqued and eschewed by historians. But my masters dissertation was in film; historical opinions did not yet weigh heavily.

By Nov 2007, I had researched Elizabeth and those round her for some years; I’d written a further dissertation on them. My research degree had involved watching and reading popular depictions of my royal ‘girls’ and analysing how they were portrayed. For me it wasn’t what was true, but how the truth about them was presented. Thus I looked on secondary sources as primary and at how the canon of knowledge – what passes to be true by the dominant group, and who is that group – is created. As academics admitted, popular culture helps shape that cannon as much as their own work; and their own work can be focussed on analysing popular cultural depictions.

So now, travelling to Notting Hill and its luxury Edwardian cinema with reclining leather sofas on a tiny income, I was feeling intrepid as I made my secular pilgrimage. For now, I had definite opinions on Elizabeth, as well as the precedent set by the first film being on my longterm pedestal; and I had also met and come to love Mary, Queen of Scots, who was sure to feature (she did) and I had my own ideas about how her story should go. I had seen another special screen version of Elizabeth’s life, The Virgin Queen with Anne-Marie Duff, made for the BBC in 2005. I thought that Cate Blanchett’s was the definitive performance of Good Queen Bess – and I had watched several by other veteran actors – but I enjoyed this innovative television miniseries and will share some of its distinctive music with you today and in November.

So thus, I was this a little nervous, but the experience was marred only by the many bobbing heads of those going to the toilet – throughout the Armada scene!

It was the following year – and thus two after my academic work was handed in – that I obtained the newly available Golden Edition DVD of Elizabeth. This allowed me to view featurettes – for I’d hitherto only gotten the screenwriter’s introduction – and to hear the director’s commentary.

I realised that I, and the academics whom I’d read, had not understood Shekhar Kapur’s work. With kindred sweeping hands, this Indian Hindu proclaimed that his take on England’s near sacred icon was not about history, but destiny and divinity. He used the real queen to make a story about these operatic themes. He wasn’t interested in matching the locations to historic ones – he was seeking an aesthetic which showed Elizabeth’s world and her journey. He filmed in the north of England, where the real Elizabeth never ventured, for its stony atmosphere. He chose Durham Cathedral to be her royal palace, which in no way resembles Westminster or Whitehall or Greenwich, because he wanted this vast, dark supposedly masculine space (I see it as feminine) to belittle this young woman. He said that Durham’s great church had stood for 500 years in her day and has stood another 500 since and will probably endure many more centuries, perhaps millennia. That cathedral, so incongruent and inaccurate from a historical point of view, made a powerful visual statement. His signature shots from near the ceiling, creating even mighty Elizabeth as tiny, were to reinforce the idea that destiny is bigger than all of us.

In the second film, Elizabeth has achieved her destiny and become an absolute power – rather sadly by cutting out her heart, following a betrayal. I will say that I never understood why Robert Dudley is that betrayer, for no other portrayal or source that I know of makes her great love (and here, controversially, her lover) part of the plot to dethrone Elizabeth with the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots. Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is usually shown as a special friend right up to his death, which undermined her recent Armada victory. Shekhar and Michael chose not to mention this, or Robert again, and instead focus on another similar man – the adventurer Walter Raleigh. Elizabeth’s love in The Golden Age is vicarious, through her lady in waiting Bess Throckmorton. This is the story of what Elizabeth does with her absolute power, and how she reacts to an opposing absolute power of equal force.

I see these films as being like Superman and Superman II (we will spend time with those next year). The first film of each is the classic setting up of the hero, their back story, how they received their powers – or power in Elizabeth’s case. Having assuredly got them and vanquished a major foe, they are free for sequels which test that power, often bringing back villains set up in the first story. In the Salkind’s Superman, it’s General Zod and his two accomplices. In Shekhar’s Elizabeth, it’s Mary Queen of Scots and Philip of Spain, both of whom had mentions and cameos in the first film. That Elizabeth is at the top of her game is shown by the very different sets in the second film. Again, Shekhar chose an English Norman cathedral for Elizabeth’s palace, but now she’s in the Lady Chapel at Ely – the great chamber inhabited by a statue of another venerated virgin. The lighting is light; the colours brighter; the costumes co-ordinated to be symbolic of her Blue Phase – Mary’s colour. Elizabeth is the sun of her court – the DVD extras explain all this, except my virgin observations. But, following the classic hero’s journey, Elizabeth loses her way. She has attained divinity and absolute power, but squanders them on unworthy behaviour. It is like the scenes in Superman III where he sits at a bar, unshaven and drunk, super-spitting peanuts and making holes in oil tankers. Elizabeth is jealous and petty and angry, and becomes weak. Her actions lead to the death of a fellow anointed queen and cousin (although this film states that Mary QS was guilty of treason), and then a huge sea battle that could threaten the independence of her land and the free lives of her people.

But Elizabeth rallies her troops at Tilbury, and – in the only actual screen staging of the Armada that I’m aware of – routs her enemies. Elizabeth stands on the globe, slipped out of her nightie and back into her most royal, if not divine robes, and twirls to powerful music. Her final words are a moving speech – I didn’t feel I could quote them, so I’ll let her:

I am called the Virgin Queen

Unmarried, I have no master

Childless, I am mother to my people

God give me the strength to bear this mighty freedom

I am your Queen; I am Myself

When Elizabeth says, ‘I am your Queen, I am Myself’, it is (I believe) a statement that her divinity is restored. It really is an I Am statement, such as heard in the Burning Bush and Book of John.

Thus these films depict Elizabeth as godlike, and perpetuate the myth that she started.

I’d like a little break – hearing that evocative Love Theme from the first film (by David Hirschfelder) – and then I will speak more of Divine – or Not – Elizabeth.

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I make no apology for the emphasis thus far on film, and one in particular. I’ve stated before my views of fiction vs documentary and academia. I remind that it was a film that opened the door – hitherto one whose knob I didn’t even try – to history for me, but also to two further degrees, and screenwriting: thus it was a seminal life catalyst for me. Perhaps film adaptations of a particular source material – history or literature – are most powerful when from our youth, but it was that film which drew me into Eliza in a way that I don’t think that any other historical drama would have, even though it’s now a favourite genre.

Shekhar and Michael’s film explicitly shows Elizabeth as choosing to emulate the Virgin that she’s taken from her people by perpetuating Protestant Christianity. Geoffrey Rush as spymaster Walsingham says to Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth as she cries by a Marian image in her private chapel (irony noted), “They have found nothing to replace her.” Elizabeth, in a storm and battle – like the denouement of the second film – transforms herself into a conscious image of that Virgin.

I think that this notion is accepted; I’ve picked it up from many other places. It’s continued in Shekhar’s second film by putting Elizabeth’s throne in another Lady Chapel in that Lady’s colours.

What is not accepted so widely is Elizabeth not being a virgin; it is her conscious choice, in this film, to become one. The notion of Eliza not being so physically was controversial as her virginity is held as sacred as her namesake Mary’s; but these filmmakers took a more liberal view, just as some Christians do. Whereas there’s a big theological point at stake about Mary, Elizabeth’s has no real importance, so why is it highly prized and why the double standards of those prizing it?

Elizabeth’s divinity is not just Shekhar Kapur’s idea. In a portrait at the end of her life, by Robert Peake, Elizabeth is in a procession, carried high above a sea of mostly male and darker ruffs, in a ridiculously large white jewel encrusted dress. (Interestingly one other woman is permitted such attire, but she is firmly on the ground and behind her Queen). The white could be for angelicism or divinity – or the wedding that she didn’t have. Michael Hirst has Elizabeth say to advisor Lord Burghley that she is married to England – in a public near-ceremony; her final words by that pen (with William Nicholson) of the next film reflect the same. There’s a hint that she is a holy bride, as much as the church she is head of.

In Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, there are two famous paintings of Elizabeth. Although neither show her in a pearly white dress, both symbolic works proclaim her purity in other ways, and that purity is next to not so much godliness but god-likeness. In the one in the Marble Hall, called The Ermine Portrait, it’s the titular creature with Elizabeth which wears the white, and is cruelly ensnared by a crown. In the one on the stairs, known as the Rainbow Portrait, she has ears and eyes all over her dress, to show Eliza as being all seeing and hearing; the serpent on the sleeve shows that she is all wise. (Aren’t they Illuminati symbols?) The rainbow she holds is about peace, above which is the most arrogant pronouncement in Latin that ‘there is no rainbow without the sun’. This is taken to mean that Elizabeth herself is that sun and that the rainbow’s existence is only due to her great, life giving light, the focus of our day and the source of all. It’s surprising that a Protestant queen didn’t see that as blasphemy and heresy, for Sun worship is Pagan/Heathen, and worshipping her as such breaks the first of the Ten Commandments.

If you visit this much filmed and famed Jacobean house, the myth of Elizabeth is continued by the tour. Elizabeth lived much of her early days in the older wing, now a banqueting hall, which was part of a mostly demolished archbishop’s house. Today’s Hatfield – which features in The Golden Age as well as Sally Potter’s rendering of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – is after Elizabeth’s lifetime. Yet she pervades it as much as movie crews. Laid out in the golden Long Gallery are her long stockings and gloves, showing her slenderness (which is supposed to be appealing); a scroll of her genealogy, going right back to Adam….this is a woman who intended to be seen as an incarnation of of the first order in all senses. I believe that she was behind the message of her contemporary depiction, but it’s interesting that this is perpetuated now, in historic homes as well as popular entertainment sources. At Bristol’s most celebrated parish church, where an effigy of her is kept, the oft used quote that she called St Mary Redcliffe ‘The Fairest, Goodliest and Most Famous in The Land’ underscores that if Elizabeth said it, then it’s true; the fairest goodliest Queen is giving this Gothic sacred structure – my personal favourite – the same praise that she received herself.

The song that Jimmy Somerville chants as the Eliza in Orlando (played by Quentin Crisp) arrives is still today’s sentiment: she’s our fairest queen. Although Blanchett’s Elizabeth is shown as bored by the sycophantic verses spouted at her, expected as part of the courtly love for one’s monarch, I think she enjoyed and encouraged these oblations that are normally for God alone…fount of all wisdom, all powerful… She didn’t dare call herself God, but continued the princely fashion of being seen as God’s anointed on Earth, making her pope-like (which was deliberate, since her father had eschewed the Pope) and even Christ-like. As a woman, there was an easier parallel, less controversial to Protestants who no longer venerated Mary as the fourth cloverleaf of the Trinity (or the emergency services.) I’ve only just found out that she practised the tradition of ‘touching for the king’s evil’ – healing their subjects via the laying on of hands like Charles II was well known for in the next century; but I’m not aware that she was Solomon, a public dispute resolver. Although I’m told that she kindly received the love of her people when she met them, we may wonder what made Elizabeth I stand out from our many monarchs. Even a modest history section in a bookshop or library will include her immediately recognisable image; her life has been filmed more than many other British royals – and we have at least a thousand year’s worth to choose from. She wasn’t even the most long-reigning. So, why is this queen seen as Gloriana?

Eliza was learned, we’re told. The Virgin Queen with Anne-Marie Duff, penned by Paula Milne, makes sure we know early on just how great her scholarly accolades were. She spoke many languages, yet foreign speakers all had to come to her, since Elizabeth (unlike her cousin and mother) never left the country, nor progressed round all of it; under her reign, England acquired others for an empire that lasted 500 years, but she sent others out to subjugate.

Elizabeth presided over great learning: Shakespeare flourished partly under her; a whole 12 volume work was written for her (Spenser’s Fairie Queen); world exploration (read, more of the above) happened at her encouragement, although, as The Golden Age admits, she also accepted the spoils of pirates. It did not admit the slavery. (Yes, Eliza would have known – she’s all eyes and ears, remember).

Under her – although she wasn’t actually on the battle field (or battle sea) – England scored a great victory over enemy superpower, Spain. I’ll say again, as I did at Easter, that burning people in their boats is not something to be proud of.

Elizabeth I, I’m told, was a great ruler. How, exactly? Her policies were wise; they unified; she made England great and prosperous. (How, and at the expense of whom? Irish people, Native Americans…) I’m aware that although I felt a special draw to Elizabeth since Cate’s portrayal, that she was not universally liked. Team Mary Queen of Scots – which is an international group – feel differently. I don’t think that there’s an Elizabeth society, but Mary has a passionate one. Scots may have another view of Eliza, as might Spanish people. If you’re Spanish, I’d love to hear your view of the last Tudor. I suspect it’s far from the opinion that I held for over 20 years. Whereas there’s a novel – and a one woman show – I, Elizabeth (again a divine sounding statement), I suspect you see her as Jane Austen did, in her youthful booklet on English history (‘destroyer of comfort, deceitful betrayer of trust reposed upon her, and Murderess of her cousin…a scandalous….everlasting blot…and died so miserable…’).

If you’re Catholic or Dissenting, you may see Elizabeth as other than Glorious.

In my last section, I want to look at Elizabeth in the context of religion

We’re having another musical interlude before that. It’s her contemporary William Byrd’s special year, but I decided that I’d like another Tudor composer to be our meditation today – Thomas Tallis. Allegedly composed for Elizabeth’s 40^th, I’m blatantly pinching this for my 50^th (thank you, Thomas). This is for 40 voices, in 5 choirs of 8 people. They weave in and out, come in and leave in a polyphonic masterpiece. I remember clearly the first time that I heard Spem in Alium, from the apocryphal Book of Judith. It made me want to paint as I heard it, a graphical response. I wondered if any of you might like to do so. So pause, get something to draw with, and just make marks as you feel led. I’ll show you mine. Or you can just enjoy the music and gather your thoughts, although I find this music so powerful that I can’t think about anything else. It’s about 9 minutes long and this is performed by the King’s School, Canterbury, with the images of those singing popping on and off a video call.

How much do the words relate to Elizabeth?

I’ll leave a brief silence after before leading you into our final section.

Spem in Octagon (based on Ely cathedral as it has a side for each choir). This is part of a family of painting I did which take the structure of Spem and create paintings round it; I’ve the 14 pillars of Norwich cathedral’s nave (the music is 140 bars long), an oval and a rectanglear graphic response based on the actual score… and Waltham abbey where Thomas was choir master (you can see it at the bottom here). What can you come up with? When they start singing ‘respice’, it’s near the end!

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Last month, we were again aware of the alleged Tudor propaganda machine – that’s significant in itself – creating people in the way of that dynasty as undesirable, including Elizabeth’s own mother. This month, our focus is someone who has been created as victorious and glorious and godlike. The Tudors’ opinions of themselves and their enemies have prevailed for four centuries, but they are not universal.

Reading a Catholic church guide, I was most interested to hear their deep questioning of the epithet Good Queen Bess, who killed so many of their forebears. As I dig into my Nonconformist roots, I again hear cries of cruelty against the monarch who ‘would not make windows into men’s souls’ (eg Robert Browne’s supporters who were killed publicly for reading his book that questioned secular authority). That there were many conventicles during her reign – that is, illegal religious gatherings – shows that her reformation was failing many non-Catholics. The fact they needed to meet secretly says something about her alleged tolerance and fairness.

I started to look differently at the Act of Uniformity, seen as an early act in all senses that established Elizabeth’s wisdom and reign of moderation. Cate Blanchett practices her speech to her mirror: “My people are my only care” she tells her black velvet parliament, but I wondered to what extent that she did care about her people, really.

She didn’t care or trust them enough to give them freedom of belief.

Obviously, her father and mother left the Catholic church, but as I’ve said already, Henry was only really interested in putting himself as head of the church and getting his way. That he made new acts after his great ecclesiastical exodus which supported catholic doctrine in all but the papacy shows that his convictions were about self governing and personal allegiance, not about theology and practice. It is his wives and advisors who were the true reformers of the new learning. His son, Edward VI, carried on Protestantism, although he was young and heavily steered, but his elder half sister had the courage to uphold a different faith. Thus Elizabeth had the choice too: of whether to continue the Protestant legacy, or re-introduce the Old Faith. She had supporters and detractors for either, although two key advisors, Walsingham and Burghley, were Protestant. Elizabeth’s life and certainly throne were risked by her Protestant allegiance, for her sister arrested her and held her in the Tower and had her interrogated. She is said to have answered that she would act according to her conscience and not renege the newer faith.

But I don’t think that Elizabeth’s faith was that of her mother’s. I’m learning that Protestant and Puritan are not the same; Nonconformity is different to Anglican protest.

Eliza effectively said: you can privately believe what you want, but publicly, you will do as I say. Preachers will be licensed, by me and mine, and without that license, you can’t perform a sermon and thus share your views on the Bible or more widely. This is how you’re doing services – no making them up, as I [Elspeth] do, to suit your own ideas and gifts, or the request of your congregants. Here is a single book issued for all which you must follow.

I admired her move away from Latin into English, although this also outlawed the Old Way.

I have read of fines for those that didn’t attend the only church available, and Catholics who refused were called recusants. But we’re aware that there were harsher penalties than fiscal and that having a priest on the premises could meant death for him – and you. This was also the law in Scotland at the time.

So what was so offensive about priests to Protestant rulers? And why was Mass so important?

Was it the allegiance to one other than themselves – namely, the Pope? Or that they practised a form of incantation?

Eliza didn’t like priests elevating the host during communion, I’m told, as if she wanted to distance herself from that magical rite, but she did many other things that were surprising, and also ironic.

No pictures of saints in churches; but your own royal arms instead. Elizabeth consulted with an astrologer and occultist, John Dee: he helped choose her coronation day, 15^th Jan 1559, as it was a propitious date. Elizabeth blasphemed when she cursed: God’s…something, even God’s death, which is surely the ultimate offence to a Christian?

The 2007 film extras said that they wanted to show Elizabeth as being tolerant in an age of intolerance, directly linking the Spanish with their inquisition to contemporary Muslim terror. I have a massive issue with that, for it helped equate Muslims with bombing, just as Catholics were linked with the IRA in previous decades. It was easy to use the Inquisition as justification to strike hard against Catholics, as well as looking back to her sister’s reign of horror. As I stated in March, Elizabeth apparently executed about as many as Mary did. The excuse that comes across to me, including in these films, from pro-Elizabethans is that she was striking at terrorists, who happened to be Catholic; her person and realm were in danger. so she must act. Others tell me differently: that this is spin and that Elizabeth was as cruel as she was capricious – and even her fans don’t argue with the latter.

Music: Tielman Susato Dansereye Rondo I

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Although Anne Boleyn begat Elizabeth, for me, Elizabeth begat Anne, for it was my interest in Elizabeth that made me go backwards a generation to learn about ‘the great whore’ whose maternity threatened Elizabeth’s reign, and I found there, I think, a greater queen.

Many Anne stories end with the little ginger girl, tottering away from the fatal blow to her mother, or the teenager at the deathbed of her lion of a father who she looks to for posthumous support and spirit. But I want to reverse that, for what Anne did best was not bear Elizabeth. She wasn’t the crowning glory on the Tudor sun – I query if those 118 years were solar at all.

Like The Virgin Queen, I’d like to end with Elizabeth looking to Anne. One of my favourite novels about this era is The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, where her daughter reads this tome (if one exists, it is not public knowledge) and reacts to the words of her Mum. On her death bed, the royal ring needed to crown the next monarch is found to have a secret compartment. Instead of a lover, as assumed, the lover’s place is held by a portrait of her Mum.

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This has been a personal journey and a work in progress.

I draw you back to my comments in February and earlier about the kind of reign that Elizabeth could have had, vs Mary QS – the divine feminine as opposed to warped masculine that I think that Elizabeth may have been, especially ultimately. And you’ll know which I’ll be looking to…

Lastly: our own destiny, sovereignty, I am… what kind of ruler would we like and be?

It is Mother Mary’s birthday too (8^th): how does she inspire a new kind of leadership?

Do introduce yourselves and share what’s going on for you and what’s important for you

My email is betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

Our closing music is a reprise of Cate Blanchett’s “I am your Queen” speech from The Golden Age with music by AR Rahman and Craig Armstrong

Outroit: The Virgin Queen opening theme by Martin Phipps with The Mediaeval Babes

Our next service is October 29th at 8pm “Some Gripes Nailed To A Church Door” – note we’ll change our clocks in Britain that day

A Morbid Taste For Bones

Welcome to Between The Stools on August 20^th 2023

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/a-morbid-taste-for-bones

Our history year takes to 2 medieval men today linked by this quote – which won’t be gory.

Let me open in prayer and I’ll introduce them to you.

I have proclaimed from now ‘til the end of 2024 a Year of Wonders (which will be succeeded by something else marvellous – the wonders will never cease). I’m having a theme in that year as I did in 2022 and 2023. As I’m planning for a film series to be our Easter lens next year (corresponding with its 25^th anniversary which falls on the same day) I am thinking of having film and television related subjects for at least half of our monthly services.

I always watch and read with a spiritual eye, and I’ve been guided to some interesting viewing. I’m impressed by how much of mainstream television does seem to have spiritual content.

Cadfael

Our first man of the day is a fictional medieval mystery solving monk, Brother Cadfael, created by novelist Edith Pargeter in the 1970s and 80s with a television show in the next decade. Edith (writing Cadfael as Ellis Peters) would’ve been 110 next month and Cadfael’s real life abbey at Shrewsbury is 940 this year.

Our service title today is taken from the first book in the Cadfael chronicles series (although it wasn’t filmed until the second series of the ITV drama). Some material will be saved until next year – I liked the thought of an August Augustinian (he’s actually Benedictine), so I will briefly overview and then focus on that title’s relevance.

When researching for my own mystery story, I gorged on several existing series. Cadfael seemed set apart from others, as much as he is by his cowl. Yes, the head boy/girl interference is still there and the title of the first book is true of the genre. Why do we make murder mysteries into something to consume as entertainment? There’s little to no emotion in these puzzles: it could as well be a word game or one of those escape room conundrums, and I disdain the clinicalness with which a lifeless person is dealt with – even by this monk. Prints come before grief, forensics before farewells – who says that crimesolving is more important than the needs of the bereaved? (Cadfael pushes off Anna Friel from her dead father saying “Evidence”.) Hence I am not usually drawn to whodunnits.

Cadfael, however, is somewhat different, because there is compassion and wisdom in his tales. He is a man of faith, and a healer, with social commentary. There is a difference here between justice and law, in rules and what’s right. Cadfael has integrity. There is genuine compunction and healing – not just of the herbal kind – in many stories. They are also based on real times and happenings. I could say much about the beautiful town of Shrewsbury on the English/Welsh border (I did here) and the divided reign of Stephen and cousin Matilda – perhaps I may next year. But what I did want to speak on was the aspect of the story in its title.

Although often not admitted to in abbey guidebooks and websites, bone stealing was common. A relic was recently recovered to Fecamp, Normandy. It seems that the era of Cadfael – the 12^th century – was especially busy for this trade – and yes, I read that there were people offering this professionally, such as the catacomb robber of Rome. Manuscripts support the notion that Durham cathedral took Bede’s body and that its being the resting place of all Northern famous saints is an ecclesiastical Monopoly sweep – for those supposed holy men weren’t initially buried in Durham. In terms of a crime mystery, there is a clear motive for these churches to acquire relics, since relics = pilgrims (read paying visitors) = income for the abbey. Not every great church had them – Norwich survived without a special buried person as a lure – but those that did reaped the benefits. Durham had Cuthbert (and Aidan, Oswald…), Ely had Ethel, as we thought of recently; nearby Chester had Werburgh; St Edmundsbury had St Edmund (who we thought of in November), and in the same county of Shropshire, Much Wenlock had St Milburga for people to visit for healing. And what did recently completed Shrewsbury yet have in 1138? Prior Robert, who is real, had been speaking of St Winifrid of Flintshire (NE Wales) for some time, creating a hubbub about this young miraculous late woman. It seems to me that he was determined to get her, claiming that her native Welsh village wasn’t looking after her remains properly and that so many more people could benefit from her in a bigger town in a mid sized abbey, like his own.

Note that Wales, a separate country at the time, is smaller and that it hung on to old customs that the Romanised urban institutions could consider ‘backward’. I would like to say that I’m sad that the English name for Wales means ‘foreigner’ and I would like to call them neighbours. Edith’s stories are sympathetic to Wales; Cadfael is Welsh, and she had Welsh forebears.

Thus the first penned Cadfael story is the tale of how those bones were brought across the border and how the Welsh village of Gwytherin (now called Holywell for the miraculous healing spring in her honour) gave her up. Saint-supporting accounts say that the bones were bought, but Edith as Ellis writes that at the time, Wales didn’t have money. That fascinated me. Hence the abbey’s offerings was more than just an attempted bribe, but a bewildering insult and meaningless to this Celtic culture. Edith’s story is a brilliant twist – it suggests that Wales wasn’t deprived of Winifrid after all (they now have half a thumb, as do Shrewsbury) and that she was able to do miracles from a distance…or (does Cadfael’s rendering imply) that something psychological is behind the miracles?

I do very much believe in miracles, including distance healing, but I am unsure about the power of relics. It is an anathema to my upbringing and I am aware of the misuse of this trade.

If you’ve thoughts on or positive experiences of a relic of a saint, let me know.

My top critique of this tale of Catholic vs Pagan, Wales vs England, town vs country, establishment vs local community, is the view of the monk whose swooning visions are used to mount an expedition to Wales to claim the bones. ‘God has told me’ is very convenient; if God’s will can be made plainer with acts of God, all the better. I’m glad that Cadfael critiques the practice of bloodletting, and it’s easy to see how a faint keen young man might have visions via lightheadedness as much as righteousness. But it forgets that some people are higher minded, unworldly – hence Columbanus may be rightly in a monastery. He may be what we may term highly sensitive, or even – alien to the Catholic chain he lived in – a star seed. Yes he may also be an annoyingly devout person which makes others feel inadequate. I didn’t like Cadfael’s statement (on TV) that Columbanus is ill; he is deeply misguided as it turns out – for I am clear that no true voice of God or any saint or heaven sent being would incite to anything violent and corrupt. (Is it ironic that the Holy Well is now a secular government site? Shrewsbury Abbey later pinched Winifrid’s Uncle, key to some versions of her story, though not Edith’s)

Watching the episode, I smiled at the likeness between what I was seeing in 12^th C Wales and what had happened ten years ago in Leicestershire. There was someone who’d long laid without proper respects, respects which could create new and lucrative fortunes for those who found and possessed it. Not, as at Shrewsbury, a virgin who had hung on to her chasteness despite violent pressure to the reverse (how like St Audrey) and whose head miraculously stuck back on whilst the person who struck it off and would have raped her (and taken her vows of chastity) melted like wax. What an interesting moral to that tale, which has become the key pilgrimage site in Wales. No, this second person was one who was not posthumously meant to have worked miracles; he was not sainted in the Celtic or Roman sense, nor even called holy. Yet there is a cult around this man, who died on Tuesday (22^nd) and whose brief reign began 540 years ago. He’s a well known, controversial figure of English history, born in Fotheringhay (where Mary, Queen of Scots died) in 1452 on the same day as Violet Jessop. And ten years ago, he hit international news. It’s that story that links Winifrid and the monks of Shrewsbury and…

Richard III

This is a service, so I’m seeking spiritual content not a historic assessment, but my interest in history is about mythmaking and what the sources say: I treat secondary sources (the popular materials in any media) as primary. I do have an academic background, not that (or its absence) makes one more or less capable of presenting intelligent research.

My first night in the beautiful, historic much visited city of York (remember that description) took me to two related places. During the day, I went to one of York’s many museums, this one being in one of its four medieval city gates – the Monk’s Bar. Within was a tableau of a courtroom, and one was invited to read the materials displayed sometimes as mock tabloids, about the mannequin in the dock – Richard of York, formerly Duke of Gloucester, and briefly king of England. It encouraged you to make up your own mind about the reputation of this infamous man. That night, the Shakespearean play, such a driving force behind the evil child murdering hunchback version, was at the cinema. Not the creepy 1950s Laurence Olivier film, but a contemporary retelling with Al Pacino, both as director and star. It was a commentary, a behind the scenes, and an adaptation. Al sat roundtabled with a back to front baseball cap in an American high rise office; he went to the basketball courts of African American ghettos and asked: What does this play, this line, mean to you – especially the famous opening one. It is the only time that I’ve seen standing ovation for a film, remarkable as it wasn’t a guest star screening or at a festival, but an honest response to a brilliant and unusual film. It is called Looking For Richard. Remember that title.

So that film and museum made an impression, but it didn’t make me seek out Richard III. It was about 20 years later that I realised that he may be a male Anne Boleyn. Both darkhaired, they were given ‘deformities’ which – appalled as I am to say – were supposed to match depraved character. How sickening such a tenet is, and how wrong!! Both were victims of Tudor propaganda, which had been largely successful for centuries. Both had 2-3 year reigns and died by the Tudor sword in their 30s. And both now have passionate proponents and are divisive, famous figures, and their graves unmarked and I argue, known.

So wasn’t Richard III going to be someone whom I would enjoy getting to know?

It was another visit to York where I learned – in the now rather different Richard III museum – that his remains had recently been found under the council’s social services car park and were reburied in pomp that year in the local cathedral. Not York – where he asked to be buried, and the shire of his family home, one of our two archbishop’s seats and one of our largest and most famed churches which has stood in for Westminster abbey in films. No, local to the carpark.

I visited Leicester in 2016, a vital time for the city and university. I’ve explained my initial reaction in my other blog. In a city and shire less known for tourism than many others, I diagnosed a case of arrowpinger envy for Leicester, which also has no beach, docks (tourism dressed as racism regret), national parks, famous painters, musicians, writers (Sue Townsend of course) – but not Bronte, Austen, Shakespeare, The Beatles…nor cathedral city like Lincoln. Or York. And no Mr Hood. I’m well travelled in Britain but Leicester was a city/region I was slow to visit although its centrality meant that I could have, if I’d wanted to. Even the football team was not enjoying the recognition and outcomes they might. Then…in spring 2016…. not only do the Foxes enter the premiere league, but the Richard III museum opens, yes on the site of the carpark. Now you don’t just come for orange or mouldy cheese, Fox’s glacier mints, or Walker’s crisps…or even the National Space Centre (an earlier attempt at drawing visitors.) The city (only so since 1927) had two sets of ubiquitous banners: Fox football, and Richard, Richard.

I even called the skeleton’s twisted spinal condition “twistonitus touristmagnus”!

But then The Lost King film came out last year and I started to recast my view.

There’s a clear parallel with Basil Brown and The Dig – the story of finding the Sutton Hoo boat burial treasure in World War II Suffolk. The film of the previous year based on a novel also championed the overlooked non-academic whose determination and skill had led to this incredible find, but who had been sidelined by institutions. I hear that the institutions involved didn’t like their portrayal – either set.

I was well open to believing that a university was capable of badly treating a clearly well informed person but without their accolades and community, and that it would react to that story coming to light. I believe that as individuals, we can be prime movers and achieve much alone, and we often need to be tenacious. I also believe in synchronicities and signs – as at Shrewsbury abbey, so possibly at Leicester Greyfriars. However, in analysing materials on both sides of the King In A Carpark story, I became aware of motives and spinning. For my mystery was not ‘did Richard kill the boys in the tower’ or ‘was he a good king or not’ or if he should have been king, but: how is he being presented at the moment, and what is this war – of Philippa Langley with Steve Coogan vs University of Leicester – really about?

Firstly, I’d like to continue to point out that documentaries are not truth…they are often patronising, repetitive, with doom music and people labelled as experts who often don’t explain their conclusions. Documentaries pick angles and shape material as much as fiction – which often does so more interestingly (to be rude about film/novel is to show ignorance of the craft yes I do write – see the ‘about’ tab).

Why are four about Richard on a popular platform focussed on death, burial and discovery, with lots of unquiet skulls in the screengrabs? There is little about who the king was in life and what he did right and why the tyrant image is untrue. Two documentaries are narrated by the same man: one focussed on Philippa Langley; the other more on Leicester University. Why that university, not de Montfort, also in the city? Academics from Leicester were labelled as such; others on one video were not named so we assumed that they were also at that university, but another film showed that Dundee and Loughborough (also in Leicestershire) were involved.

Philippa Langley is now part of the myth. Is her version (as told through The Lost King) fair? Is there only one truth? Note that her project used Al Pacino’s film title, and that she assumed the sobriquet Kingfinder, refracting that of the Earl of Warwick in Richard’s story (Kingmaker).

Before I go further, I must state that I’ve no wish for a personal attack, which would be entirely inappropriate in a service or for a spiritual community.

The typically British film is co-penned by co-star Steve Coogan, who wanted to champion Philippa’s story. The actor, Sally Hawkins, who plays her is very different – why the roundhead hairstyle? I felt that the film egged up; a brief glance at her own book showed that at least one ‘fact’ was misleading. I wondered if Leicester’s Greyfriars wasn’t already located. Friaries took up a major chunk in major towns and I’ve seen old maps of many British cities which show this, if it’s not already obvious with street names, plaques and ruins today. Apparently, yes the friary’s whereabouts was known, but not absolutely pinpointed, but it was not the complete mystery that the film shows it to be. That is also clear from Philippa’s own book, yet she claims that the film is her story, without artistic licence, and had taken years of research to back it up.

A former employee of Leicester University (who, like Philippa, doesn’t have an academic title) who is portrayed negatively publicly stated that he had thought of suing. I noted that all the detracting articles about the portrayal were by the establishment – the BBC, Guardian, historical journals and major museums. Philippa’s own website and that of the Richard III society she’s a leading part of goes through why all Leicester University’s statements are wrong, or at least, misleading.

I did note with surprise that Philippa was sharing in their work on all the documentaries. She was present as bones analysed, informed as test results came in, and at press conferences. It seemed to be filmed as things were discovered. So was she really sidelined?

There was a scene where Philippa cried (typical documentary emotion) but I agreed: this is a real person, not just bones on a table (and like Cadfael, the whitecoats were too clinical). If I asked myself, how would I feel if this were Anne Boleyn? I understood the tears, but not all that came next.

The deluge as the skeleton was found felt like the springs at St Winifrid’s – often sudden water is a show of divine power and approval. Was it here? (Was the rain to spoil the dig, sent by whom?)

Why a royal standard covering before any prayers? And before we knew whose skeleton.

I wondered about the supposed definitive proof and how it was presented.

I’d like to share some notes on my thoughts:

Can we trust their methods? Radiocarbon dating is unreliable – the staff doing them admitted that the Carbon 14 levels were messed up by the corpse’s fish diet. Creationists explained that the measurement it’s predicated on is not the constant rate that’s claim, so it’s often wrong. Creationists are controversial but are another example of people who are excluded and whose science is rejected by the mainstream. (I spoke of these in Sept 2021, which has several relevant points to this service: digging up bones, science and an overlooked discovering woman).

It is science, not historians, are running this – technological take over of past as well as present.

(Not future, if I can help it).

I also query the ethics of asking a real life person with Richard’s alleged affliction – scoliosis – to undertake battles to see if a person with a twisted spine can fight well as Richard did. Did they not put him at risk, emotionally and physically? The narrator said that Dominic Smee ‘put his personal feelings aside for science’. I didn’t like that at all. It had familiar echoes!

What of the mitochondrial DNA tests on the two living relatives? Is that fair to them, considering all the things that the whitecoats claimed they could find out about you from having a sample of it? Can you really be sure it matches a long buried person, 17 generations later? There’s too much on computer ‘data’ – forgetting that these are real humans!

Who’s the re-burial for? Leicester, England? Philippa Langley?

C’est combien? Is it necessary and good use of funds – whose? If Edmund’s body were found, I’d rather those millions were spend on abbey rebuilding, not all these tests and pomp.

No royalty were at the funeral, which began on battle site Bosworth field (private farmland).

The video of the funeral was Channel 4 coverage where Philippa (not Simon the narrator often with her) was invited to the Couch with Jon Snow and with a front row cathedral seat; she was explicitly identified as the finder and force behind the project.

Richard’s re-interment gives a back of book also-ran cathedral a reason for high visitation. (I’ve been going round these for 30 years and am writing 2 books; Leicester was ‘well, as I’m here’, not a special trip or highlight, as others were). When I went, St Martin’s cathedral showed nowt about its beliefs, activities, services in either sense – just RIII. Yes, the ceremony was a few months ago, but surely the cathedral is not simply defined by its modern secular shrine?

Richard was re-buried as ‘brother’, ‘servant’, ‘baptised Christian’, anointed king, to rise in glory (to quote from the service). No-one said he had a faith, although a Tony Robinson documentary said that he had complex theological books in his possession and another site called Richard ‘pious’ but that wasn’t explained. When I did a search under those keywords, it was difficult to find results: clearly his faith wasn’t what Richard was best known for.

No-one at the service argued he was especially good; in his (could I call that a sermon?) the bishop of Leicester carefully remained open to either the ‘Shakespearian or Ricardian’ view. (The Richard III website listed some good deeds to the poor, such as £115 today to a roadside beggar and a concession to a widow, but…am not convinced he was especially unusual or worthy)

Anglicans buried him but Richard lived in Catholic times (Archbishop of Westminster took part; other faiths present). Philippa wanted him buried by Catholic rites but wasn’t allowed.

I noted the ceremony of giving of the body from one institution to the other (each in stupidest outfits). Should the University of Leicester have had that body so long and carried him in plastic bags and cardboard boxes?

Is it significant that Leicester was heavily and additionally locked down during covid, so that much of the filming of The Lost King took place in Edinburgh, although Scotland had more severe restrictions on the whole than England?

To round up: the presentation of Richard’s body is very careful, from the uncanny luck in finding him, the tests all being positive (although a few tension-making sags in the middle… what if it’s a woman, or the wrong era?), the facial reconstruction that with a wig and hat would’ve looked like him any way, the use of Handel’s rousing Zadok The Priest (composed for George III 300 years later), the tears, the Channel 4 couch, the clashing red and purple clergy outfits, and use of military. We are being told who to name when we think of the conveniently named ‘king in a carpark’ story (other kings and queens are buried in parks; John Knox, revered by some, reviled by others (me), is under a law court).

It is good to be wary of what we’re told, to question, to be mindful of layers and constructs, to ask: who benefits. It is also good to champion the ordinary folk, not to privilege the privileged, to sideline those not of your ilk, not of the establishment. It is good to note the little things, to examine for truth, as historians and mystery solvers need, and yes to trust your gut – for I believe that feelings are important for guiding us and that intuition is very powerful. It is also important to have tenacity and patience – for both halves of tonight’s themes involved many years of dreams, plans, work and battling.

Do introduce yourselves, and if you want to stick up for Leicester – I know you’ve a broad architectural heritage – or Richard, or you’ve a view on St Winifrid and Cadfael, do write in; similarly, if you’d like prayer or to hear about the services direct.

We’ve been pre-Tudor this month and thought of the person whose defeat set up their reign; next, we go to the end of Tudors when Richard III was written – what propaganda have we believed about the Tudors these centuries? So we’re thinking of Elizabeth I. Next time is Sept 10^th, non live as I’ll be celebrating, but it will be a full service with music. Thank you for joining me and I hope to see you then

Do email me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

Mary Queen of Scots service: A Lady In A Tower

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/mary-queen-of-scots

Welcome to Between The Stools on 12^th February 2023, the true start of our history year. We’ll be mostly in the 16^th C but will go back in time at least once and forward at least once; and we’ll mostly be in Britain but will cross the sea once in both directions.

Tonight’s vague advertised title was because I couldn’t decide, until I began writing this, whether Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey would be the focus. This week saw the anniversaries of the deaths of both – Jane’s being today – as well as Lord Darnley, and Katherine Howard. Katherine will feature in Lent as I take a wife of Henry VIII’s each week, but not in order; and I may speak more of Jane in July, when she had her nine days as queen. Darnley comes into Mary’s story, and it’s a story I already know well and would like to share, although I see some parallels with Jane: teenagers who came to the throne, whose ig-nobles hoped to puppeteer; set against a rival related queen of the opposite Christian faith; there is a Catholic Mary in both stories. Yet neither young woman was as malleable as they anticipated. And all the lives I mentioned today were cut short – three of them literally, as was at least one other woman and queen we will spend time on over the spring.

Before I launch into history, I would like to have a time for healing. I don’t know how much to say publicly online, but this last month, I am deeply grateful for the prayers and healing that I have received, internationally, and from so many different beliefs. Catholics got out their rosaries, Evangelicals bound in in the name of Jesus, and Pagans stirred their cauldrons…. thank you all. I wish to attest to the power of energy healing and natural remedies as well as the power of prayer. I literally have experienced miracles.

So now, I would like to pray for all of you. I will not interfere with free will and your life path, but I can guarantee that on some level, healing will take place

but that outcomes are nothing to do with God’s desertion or our deserving

God is willing and able and you are worthy

Prayers for you, a loved one, the world…. crisis can be a time to especially experience love

bind, loose… set up a wave of prayer

Reach out to me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

I would love us to be a praying community and a healing one

or if you’d like it to be known (put as little as you’d like) pop in a comment

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My view on history

My way into history was film, and a controversial one – 25 years old this year. As I knew little of history then, ignorance was literally bliss, but the 1998 Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett was a turning point in my life, for a serious love of film and history and further degrees followed.

I was intrigued that the filmmakers seemed to deliberately explode the myth and begin from the woman inside, rather than fit a story around the established facts. They queried what those facts were, especially regarding intimate matters. This immediately resonated, for aren’t the most private but interesting things not committed to paper – or soon put into a fire if they are? Did royal courtiers explore their feelings, let alone express them? With so much whispered behind closed doors, what could we really know?

Elizabeth will feature in September, her birthday month, but I will say now that this film that was slated by some history buffs and confounded academics. On watching the DVD director’s commentary, I learned that this film wasn’t meant to be a portrayal of the historical Queen Elizabeth I, but a story about larger themes fitted around her. Shekhar Kapur, an Indian, Hindu and kindred spirit as he too likes to wave his arms, said of his film: “It is operatic! It is about destiny, divinity and absolute power.”

I teach a course on History In Film, and it begins with that one and looks at others which treat their real life subjects in unusual ways. An activity I do at the beginning is to ask participants which order they would place the following in terms of historical reliability: a nonfiction tome by a history professor; a documentary featuring one of the same; a historical novel; a historical movie.

It might be tempting to put them in that order – happily, some do not. I want to suggest that there is no right order and that the above sequence can be reversed.

Academics can pepper their writing with ‘no doubt, and ‘surely’, creating facts by sleight of hand. If they give a reference, it’s often an end note, since it’s not expected that you’ll turn to the back, and even less that you’ll look the complicated source up. As with many Bible quoters, often the citation doesn’t support the point being made.

Of course, I am not dissing all academics as worthless or charlatans, just pointing out that much rests on a perception of authority and reliability. There is a crafted hierarchy, and a belief that a senior university position makes one’s assertions more credible than those of creators of novels and drama. But why should fiction and film be the poor relation in terms of veracity?

Documentary is not about presenting truth more than a movie – it just presents its own truth. Angles in both senses are chosen; an interview can be edited to create a different impression than the speaker intended. Mood and music, especially in modern documentaries, tells us who the makers want us to see as good or villain. Documentary is often patronising and repetitive.

Much weight is put on sources from archives, but this is a particular method of doing history, rather like the hypothetico-deductive method has become for science. Whereas they are useful, archival documents are limited proof, because they are often formal sources and as angled as the writer’s nib. I can think of at least two British queens whose chief sources were written by their enemies by people born after their deaths. We’ll meet one in Holy Week.

All history tellers need to fill in the gaps, and writers with their imaginations and understanding of people and plot are well placed to do so, perhaps even more so than academics. Writers and filmmakers can be more modest and open about their inventions.

That’s not to say that I don’t groan and growl in theatres, and don’t care about sources.

I am aware of the canon of knowledge, the changing accepted consensus by the keepers of knowledge and how academics make their name from changing that from time to time. The relationship between popular culture and university is a complex one, as noted by Thomas Betteridge.

I believe there is truth beyond empirical evidence, and that like Shekhar Kapur’s film, that a person can have both lived, and have ‘operatic’ themes that are larger than their physical existence. I concluded that the greatest truths are not those that can be held in white gloves.

My last degree was spent analysing popular sources on three 16^th century British queens, and I hope to bring to you this year some of that material – the thesis that they wouldn’t let me write.

I could say much more on all that, and shall over the coming twelvemonth, but I would like to briefly explain Tudor England before popping north of the border for tonight’s main subject.

The Tudor dynasty began with Henry, grandson of a Welshman, who took the throne of England in battle in 1485. That House was perpetually aware that others had at least as good a claim, and that ensuring the smooth succession of a male line – for the crown is passed by birthright – would prevent the loss of that crown and chaos. Thus this ruling family, who are often portrayed as perhaps England’s most famous and most successful, lived in fear.

The theme of the male heir ran through their 118 years, in each generation. Yet it was an unprecedented era of queens, not seen again for over two centuries. Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, is known as the Red Queen (I love that line at the end of the Philippa Gregory adaptation when she says to her wayward husband on his knees: “Stay where you are! I am Margaret Regina!”). There is Elizabeth, Catherines x3, Janes x2, Annes x2, and Maries x3. Not since Empress Maude in 12^th Century had England had a woman rule alone. [Yes, I’m aware that Matilda is contentious]. But by the mid 1500s, they were doing so on both sides of the border.

All I will say about that border for now at that time is that whereas Wales no longer was self governing, Scotland was a separate kingdom with its own royal house, the Stewarts.

I shall play some brief music as we approach that border. It is the music that I listened to as I moved to Scotland, reading Reay Tannahill’s Fatal Majesty, seeing the cathedral cities of England pass and the hills begin; then the rocky coastline of the moving border, and then the mini mountain of Arthur’s Seat at the foot of one of Mary’s palaces in Edinburgh, before coming to rest by Castle Hill. I imagined Mary on her ship from France as an eighteen year old, away for over a dozen years, approaching the Firth of Forth and then embarking at the port of Leith, a little early. This is the music to the Visit Scotland adverts at the time.

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I shan’t attempt Mary’s story – it is feature length of itself. I don’t want to spoil it by condensing it. It is complex, both because of its large cast and many intrigues, but also because: what can I say for certain, without conjecture or preference?

What I do wish to do is cast a spiritual eye over her world.

Returning to Mary’s Scottish homecoming in 1561: I can empathise with someone who in quick succession loses several important people at once – Mary’s father in law, then husband, then mother died. She was the queen of France, but now wondered if she still had a role there, or should return to where she was born?

Perhaps you too can relate; maybe you have even fled your home or country. A special welcome to any who have, and my love and prayers to any to whom the experience or its affects is current.

Two Mays ago, I spoke of the Joan of Arc Wound, or JAW wound. (I have learned that wounds are not just physical lacerations; healing the non-physical is often key to the other kind).

What is the MQS wound?

Mary never knew her father, James V of Scotland; at hearing the news of her arrival on Dec 8^th 1542, he is said to have uttered, “It cam wi’ a lass and it’ll gang wi’ a lass.” His House, whose name is derived from the High Stewards, had begun with a female, and he expected that it would end with this new bairn. Heart broken over a recent lost battle – or was it the friend who led and fled? – James turned his face to the wall and died. Mary was six days old. She was in a different palace. Her Mum, Marie de Guise, wasn’t even told straight away that she had lost her husband.

So, a negative prediction from an absent father – but the lass who ended the Stewart line was 170 years away. The weak baby lived over 4 decades, and is perhaps Scotland’s best known and loved royal, and perhaps its best known historical character.

Immediately, Mary was coveted: around Europe, kingdoms who wished to annex small Scotland onto their own expansionist agendas eyed the newborn as marriage material for their princes. One such prince was their nearest neighbour: Henry VIII, the second Tudor monarch. He began attacks on Scotland, and it was feared that baby Mary might be taken by force. Thus she had an early Moses wound – being hidden from danger, often in island strongholds.

I wonder if Mary took on some of her mother’s wounds: a double widow who was separated from her son from a previous marriage, who had already lost three (two infants died suspiciously), far from the land of her birth – France – and now faced with hostile lords on the brink of a seachange, as well as blasts from below. Then Marie was separated from her 5 year old daughter, whom subsequently she visited once. Marie was betrayed by her advisors and this seemed to contribute to her death. Some of those wounds applied to Mary too.

For Mary, there was the lifelong notion that you were perceived as a threat, just because of who you are. A young, effectively foreign woman, Mary had a strong claim to the English throne and any Catholic uprising would focus on Mary, whether Mary wished for it or not.

Then there are the adult wounds of difference, persecution, of trust betrayed, and insincere love, as well as the losses of many important figures in her life. I suppose that’s enough wounds for most of us to have one in common. Mary’s faith was also a kind of wound, since she was now the outlawed minority.

I see two main themes come out of Mary’s story: religious tolerance, and ruling with the heart.

I will deal with the second first. Often Elizabeth and Mary are positioned as opposites, and depending on whose story is being primarily told – ie who the film or book is named after – will show one as hard, cold, capricious, and alone, or the cannier of the two, and Mary as either the foolish, too heart driven, ultimately plotting cousin, or the strong adorable victim. John Guy’s book, My Heart Is My Own, tries to avoid and correct those polarities, and his research underpinned the 2018 film with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. Or rather, the filmmakers optioned [ie bought the rights to adapt] his nonfiction work; involving a Cambridge professor was a way to gain historical kudos in the face of disbelief and controversy. But I too wish to avoid worn and untrue tropes, and instead posit what I saw in my first viewing of that film.

To me, the tragedy of Elizabeth and Mary is that they did not, and perhaps could not, genuinely connect as women and sisters. It’s often portrayed that Elizabeth became honorarily male in spirit; she cut out her heart and became untouchable in order to reign supreme. I understand that it was Elizabeth who changed her mind about meeting Mary, more than once. Mary reached out to Elizabeth – what stopped Eliza reaching back?

To me, there is no dichotomy between head and heart, and heart-ruling is not the shameful or poorer or too vulnerable way. I also believe in intuition. I believe that its value is being rediscovered in this new era, and it’s why two women who were also in a new era but ultimately chose to rule and relate in the old way is relevant. It is cautionary and instructive.

These women were roses surrounded by briars of ig-noble lords and advisors, forever changing and steering for their own ends. There is a divine masculine of course as much as feminine, but no-one in this story exemplified either – I would say that in Mary we see the closest depiction. The lords about her were ruthless, full of false flattery and game-playing. Friendship, love and marriage were all political terms; all rendered a commodity in mockery of their real meanings. I believe that whereas Mary was trapped by her lords, Elizabeth was also trapped into approving her cousin’s execution.

I wrote a short play on this at the time of Osama Bin Laden’s assassination, comparing the two; advisors circled the leader, pushing until they acquiesced. Was Elizabeth really tricked into signing Mary’s death warrant? I do lay much blame at Walsingham and Cecil’s doors, two of Elizabeth’s key advisors.

I see Mary Queen of Scots as a kind of Diana, Princess of Wales: tall, fair, beautiful, charming and who knew how to use clothes to make a statement. I see them both as attuned to reading people. She may also have been unwise at times, but I see Mary, like Diana, as pioneer of a different kind of leader that is very timely.

I have heard criticism of Mary’s need to be loved, as I have regarding Diana – both by their detractors. This should never be seen as a flaw or weakness. I see their capacity to love – if we can know this of Mary from the calendar of state papers and spies’ letters – as a gift and a strength.

The other aspect regarding Mary QS is Religious Tolerance. It was very pertinent to her mother, Marie, who had to navigate a changing and divided realm, when her own beliefs were the opposite of the new tide. From what I’ve read – and it’s so hard to truly know – both women seem to have acted moderately and wisely, refusing the extreme persecutions of other nations.

Marie de Guise recognised that the unrest against old heresy laws and exclusive preaching licenses was less about zeal for reformation style religion, and more about using it as an excuse for personal power. I am ever more conscious that the church I left publicly 3 years ago is very much a political power, and that its establishment was as much about creating a rival to Rome as speaking out against it.

This is where I may allow myself a little rant in pastiche of Maries’ chief detractor, John Knox.

I find him obnoxious. I also realise that my own faith, even my own faith heritage, is not with his ilk, the Protestant church. I am Nonconformist, and see a parallel with those Catholics who were persecuted and unable to worship freely and take public office for a couple of centuries. Even if Knox’s tirades against the Catholic church were true – and I am certainly anti its HQ – is it ever right to harm and threaten people for practising their faith, and which is so close to your own? Why did Knox thunder that a single mass was more terrible than 10,000 armies? What really scared him about the Catholic way of communion? Why did he take such exception to ‘idols’ – the images and colour?

Can you ever justly tear down a wicked tyrannical rule by becoming that yourself?

As novelist Nigel Tranter puts it, in ch10 of Marie and Mary p78 (better still on p86)

‘Was their Creator not the God of love?’ Are these not our brothers and sisters in the Lord?

To make Catholics fear for their lives if caught saying Mass… to rise up with such violence against the churches….can this be the behaviour of holy people?

My forebears are said to have said that they wished for the right to believe and practice faith for all – and explicitly said so for ‘papists’, and for nonChristians. They also are against state interfering with belief, as I am, and an official national religion, or Bible translation.

I cannot say, of course, who does and doesn’t really know God and speak for him, but I do wonder about Mr Knox, considered a hero to many. Having read as much as I could bear of his sermons and tracts, and seen him dramatised several times (Liz Lochhead’s play is most interesting), this is my conclusion.

John Knox was a bully. He thought that his many words, aggressively delivered, made him irrefutable; but hard to debate with and having a good argument are not the same. Reformed preachers of old can be referred to as divines, but I see nothing divine about him. He used insults, like ‘earwig’ and more colourful ones that border on profanity. He picked obscure Bible characters, likening his enemies unto them. I note that although the Bible did have chapters and verses in his day (thanks to his mates in Geneva, who I’ll take on in October), that Knox didn’t make that many biblical references to back up his thundering rhetoric. He seemed to use attrition both on his congregations, his detractors, and in public assemblies.

Forgive if I speak wrongly, but I can think of some Bible verses for him: that he be mindful that Matthew 5:22 and Luke 17:1-2 do not apply. Hatred and death threats sound a lot like inciting others to sin to me. And which commandment does that break? What of the warnings against false teachers?

Knox seems like an employed agitator, so incendiary that you’ll be galvanised one way or the other. I wonder who he worked for. I am not sure that it was for the Holy Spirit.

Did he really believe that he was serving God? If so, it was in an immature way. If he took one of those spiritual quizzes: Are you an old soul? his result would be: No, a very young one, for absolute intolerance sounds like someone – whether or not you accept other lifetimes – who is not very evolved. It seems that Knox hasn’t understood the true nature of God – not that I’m claiming myself to be expert or flawless either. But his is the god that I think is the usurping god of the Old Testament, which Knox seems to like to quote more. Where is Love?

I agree that we are not bound to obey our earthly rulers if they are unjust; and unlike Mary and Elizabeth, I do not believe in the divine right to rule. But I have deep disregard – nay, repugnance, for his tract, First Blast of The Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. I think this was how I met John Knox – in a book by an evangelical feminist not yet able to embrace gay people, but who was clear that Knox and the so-called Church Fathers before him were absolute misogynists. And that their words still harm women.

*I think that the real issue is: the other Mary (Mother). Knox and his pals were afraid of females in the godhead. The Trinity is a belief derived from rather than explicit in Scripture, and the Holy Spirit is female. I have come to believe that the Trinity is a four leafed clover, one with a split leaf between the Red and Blue Mary. Knox perhaps was actually afraid of women and the power we have, what Hindus see as Shakti, the feminine force. There is both desire for and fear over our bodies, which we have been made to feel ashamed of. Mary seemed to be full bodied, and I’m glad. Knox seemed to be happy to wed much younger women and for a ‘helpmeet’, but saw them as intrinsically inferior. Yet his protesting too much suggests that he fears the opposite, and that women in top positions threatens his own.

———

Last section: I want to be clear that Mary’s life was not prolonged as tragic victim of fate. We may look at such a story and be fearful for ourselves. Will we never escape this undesirable situation, and will it too be drawn out? In the 2018 film, Margot Robbie’s Elizabeth writes that she wishes she had killed Mary early on rather than make her wait and flounder all those years.

Yes, Mary Queen of Scots was captive for nearly 19 years, and allegedly aged considerably as this incarceration took its toll. But she not only kept her dignity as if she still were regnant in her own palaces…but I have a perspective on the purpose of those years in England.

On a purely factual, human level, Mary outlived all her Scottish detractors. She died in 1587:

listen to how and when these men met their ends:

-Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley Philandering and grasping husband blown up and strangled 1567

-Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, father of the above, post Mary regent, shot in a raid1571

-William Maitland of Lethington, secretary of state: gets the pillow (or suicide) in prison 1573

-James Douglas, the Earl of Morton dies on the guillotine he introduced – how Haman from the book of Esther (we’ll hear about Esther at Easter) for his part in killing Darnley 1581

-James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell dies in a Danish prison, insane (there’s two ways to see Bothwell, but if you see him as abducting, self serving rapist, it’s satisfying) 1578

-her half brother James, the Eel of Moray – takes a trip to Linlithgow; he doesnae return since he is assassinated cleverly in the high street 1570 [I wrongly said in the podcast that it was Annet House, which is no longer a museum]

–James Hamilton, Earl of Arran/ Duke of Châtellerault1575

Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll died suddenly in 1573 [Sept 12th]

George Gordon, Earl of Huntly 1562; his son collapsed whilst playing foorball1576

-John Knox, demagogue and hate spreader, respiratory disease 1572

-John Erskine Earl of Mar post Mary regent, James VI’s custodian, possibly poisoned 1572

-George Buchanan, who roused public opinion against her, 1582

There is also the matter of lifepath and spiritual maturity; we do not know even from the intimate letters, like Mary’s final one, which I have seen, what her faith journey was. I do not see her as a helpless victim of fate. Many see that it was Elizabeth who ‘lost’; certainly Eliza seems to have been distraught rather than triumphant at Mary’s death. Perhaps I might even say that martyrdom was part of her plan and raised her. She saw herself as a martyr, shocking those present with her red outfit. Shekhar Kapur, in his sequel to Elizabeth, directed Samantha Morton who played his Mary, that as she walked to the block – and there’ll be no details – that she was marrying God. I’m not sure I wish to support that, but to state that she was going to be with God and join Her, and that Mary consciously knew “En Ma Fin Git Ma Commencement”.

She has long outlived her earthly departure; not only did her supporters continue to rally for her during her life, but her death made her iconic in a way that her cousin did not achieve, because she died naturally. Mary Stuart is much loved still – there is an active, passionate society with international membership, and plays penned by Germans and operas by Italians.

I want to end with that thought again: that Mary was born on Mary’s day – the feast of the assumption, which gave her her name. I think that some of the divine mother’s qualities are seen in Mary Stuart, although she had to struggle against a country at a difficult time which was enmeshed in the opposite values, and that as a purer soul than some of those around her, she may have especially struggled with her environs. But she did engage in that struggle, and she endured, and has endured, and comes to us again now to offer a different way, with other pioneers of her ilk dotted through history to remind us

A brief closing prayer: heal the wounds of rejection, betrayal, hopelessness, and when we feel that we are not loved and cannot prevail. Thank you that we are in new times and can hope for new outcomes.

Our next service is on19^th March: Mary Tudor – the one who died in Suffolk (and maybe the other too?)

Lent begins on 22^nd Feb and there will be weekly reflections running up to Easter on 9^th April, and a service on May 7^th.

Anne Boleyn – champion of free thinking

Although Anne is the mother of Elizabeth, for me – Elizabeth begat Anne.

When Elizabeth (1998) became my favourite film, I wondered who “your mother the whore” was, and gradually took a step back in time to the previous generation – and there found an equally, if not even more remarkable woman.

The first time I read about Anne Boleyn was in 2002 and I came to her almost in ignorance. I dismissed people in my lunch hour, saying I was in 1533 and not available. As I read Philippa Gregory’s novel about Anne’s sister, I suddenly remembered the rhyme about Henry’s wives and what was going to happen.

By the time Gregory’s venomous pen had done depicting this conniving, hard, brutal woman, I was willing Anne to be executed; but by the time I picked up Vercor’s book, I wanted to put flowers on her grave.

Vercors is a photographer’s pen name, whose novelised biography says that the evil, grasping concubine did not make sense; and that underneath the deliberately etched layers was a heroine – for women, for  England – but most of all, free thinking believers. And strangely, it took a Frenchman trying to make sense of our independence from Hitler in the second world war to see it.

Just as Joan of Arc was resurrected at a time of resurgent nationalism in France, it seems Anne Boleyn is ripe for a similar rediscovery on many levels – yet she has not really been used.

The harsh view of Anne prevailed over four centuries, but there seemed to be a concurrent re-imagining in the 1980s. Professor Eric Ives, historic fiction writer Jean Plaidy, and Vercors all published in around the same year. Theirs was a different Anne to what had gone before – a maligned woman of sympathy, talent, though complex and potentially with a hard streak. And except for Philippa Gregory, books all have followed this portrayal since – whether they be fiction or academic – but not yet on the screen. Howard Brenton’s recent play is all about the debt that King James  and his Bible owed to the supposed strumpet a hundred years earlier.

Joanna Denny’s focus is summed up by her idea that Anne was a neo-Esther, something Anne herself propagated by having her chaplain preach on this in front of the royal court. Likening Anne to Esther recalls not wicked grasping Jezebel but another Old Testament queen, chosen by the king, which gave her an opportunity to save her minority group of endangered religious people. Denny emphasises Anne’s controversial new beliefs and her daring work to use her position to promote them when such beliefs were persecuted. Denny sees Anne as wooed against her wishes and morals, and argues that the portrait (quite literally) was deliberately obscured by her enemies. The dark features, mole and sixth finger are traits attributed in the 16^th C to diabolism which were invented to destroy the memory of this powerful woman.

Professor Ives and Joanna Denny write about her faith extensively, the latter making it Anne’s principle driving force.

I’ve read in fiction and academic sources of Anne’s forbidden religious book (The Obedience of a Christian Man by William Tyndale) being stolen by Wolsey and given to Henry. Anne uses this opportunity to discuss the book’s radical ‘New Learning’ contents with Henry, and so influence him with protestant beliefs.

Henry was not interested in reforming the church. After Luther pinned his 95 points on that church door, Henry wrote an impassioned, I think quite immature letter to defend the catholic church. It was his advisor Thomas Cromwell who is understood to have used Henry’s marriage and pope dilemma to allow divergence of belief to come openly and safely into England, and I believe that Anne and Cromwell initially worked together on this.

What Anne’s beliefs were and how to term them might need some clarification. She has been called evangelical. The term ‘Evangelical’ – not quite as we understand it –  was less radical than the Lollards, and not really heretical. It was not the same as being Protestant. The key features of evangelicalism, as today, were reading the Bible for oneself; accessing God direct and not through a priest; being against superstition; and one’s personal relationship with God. Anne is said to have exposed the fake miracle at Hailes abbey of Christ’s flowing blood (actually provided thought a duck’s blood dispensing machine). Anne has been spoken of as Lutheran, yet Karen Lindsey and Eric Ives claim that Anne’s faith was not wholly opposed to the established church, and that she had a confessor and took mass, and did not denounce transubstantiation – only its trappings.

It might occur to some that if Anne had a reformed faith, that scheming involving adultery, wealth and power are incompatible with it. Ives says that 16th C didn’t see God’s and personal glory as incompatible, just as some people today feel wealth is part of their spirituality.

Something which is not readily emphasised about Anne is her moral household –  and her generosity to the poor which went beyond the usual royal favour.  She expected her ladies to sew for the poor, and was likely to be behind a Poor Reform Bill of 1536. She was also a patron of schools and universities, and rallied for her patronees. Being a reluctant focus of passion and harassment is very different to pursuing Henry purposely – and she did refuse to be his mistress.

Belief is a choice, and is ultimately, I believe what appeals rather than on argument and proof alone (that subject is another article). So I choose to see Anne as an Esther, a renaissance woman of power, taste and intellect, and I take particular interest in her reformed faith. Anne’s faith was of intellect and heart with practical outworking. And it allowed divergence into non conformism.

I therefore with others think that it was not Henry, and not really William Tyndale that caused the English reformation – but Queen Anne Boleyn of England, the Moost Happy [sic], who was crowned (depending on which calendar you use) this week, 480 years ago.

Anne Boleyn at the Globe

I am having a summer of Tudors. I have had many such summers as I have studied these over a period of 11 years, but I even when I spent a year academically researching their popular depictions, I have never seen so many plays on Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn in a few months as in these past ones.

I have just seen the production at the neo-Elizabethan Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, on its opening weekend – a new play which sold out last year, as was the performance to which I went.

In his introduction to his script, playwright Howard Brenton quotes the views of historians David Starkey and Antonia Fraser, reflecting the likely opinion of the public. He does not mention Prof Eric Ives and Joanna Denny whose prominent books depict a very much more positive Anne. Joanna especially – as does Karen Lindsey – writes of the systematic demonisation of Anne’s character. All three remind that our few historical contemporary sources are chiefly Anne’s enemies, none of whom featured in Brenton’s play. Books – both novels and academic – have been ahead by 30 years in showing Anne as a national heroine, but stage and screen still cast Anne as the ambitious, hard siren. Philippa Gregory’s 2002 novel and ensuing film adaptations have done much to reverse this positive literary view, which has become in vogue again with most recent publications.

Brenton’s 2010 play promised a view closer to the one I adopted: the Reformist queen: ‘Esther not Jezebel’ – the title pf my 2006 dissertation. (I had attributed it to Joanna Denny, but I think it is my own). American author Robin Maxwell had Queen Elizabeth I reading her mother’s words in her novel The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn; Howard Brenton has King Authorised Bible James reading Anne’s annotated Christian book and realising his connection to the fallen queen of two generations ago who suffered the same fate as his mother. (I never use the phrase that the blurb does – his debt. As you’ll see from my Justice in Banking blog on this site, I have strong views against debt culture). Note too that being executed does not denote failure, but rather a brutal signal of mission accomplished.

I was interested that a play was picking up the religious theme, as often theology is seen as too heavy and dull for entertainment, particularly when we are a multi and often no faith society. But the themes of tolerance and violence and faith recur, and spirituality is again popular though not always in established, orthodox ways. And this 16/17th C period is a seminal one in our history in which the burgeoning of new beliefs is central.

I was drawn to the play because it was written by a man who evidently could see Anne’s merits – significant as I felt Anne appealed most to women. But it was Eric Ives in 1986 who said that Anne was an appropriate vehicle for feminism – though few have picked up that gauntlet – and it’s women who have written many of the works which fuel popular imagination that recast her as Jezebel.

It may seem obvious given its performance setting, but I didn’t expect Howard’s play to feel so Shakespearean, in the rowdy audience, bawdy and earthy kind of way. The experience of the Globe merits a few lines – booking fees, standing without umbrella or stick for £5 or, of if you pay £15-37 for a seat, there’s charges for cushions (and the wooden seats have lips which I think are designed to make you need one – but I managed without); and a foreign group behind me who whispered throughout (translating to a child who was too young to be there) and put their feet on the seats. The atmosphere was closer to comedy than serious theatre, though there were both elements in the play. King James romps in a dress with ‘interesting stains’ with a male courtier whom he kisses; it starts with the ghost of Anne bringing her severed head out in a bag; and it ends with an all cast jig.

James (Garnon/Stuart) perhaps was the most charismatic character on the stage, his strong Scots accent mixed with a tick, his camp manner helped by his shoes and beard. While we’re on accents: I am infuriated that the country folk once again got that generic West Country which is insulting and ignorant. There are many Eastern and southern counties accents, all quite distinct, and they sounded no more convincing than The Worzel’s Combine Harvester song, which was at least meant to be comedic. It’s like getting all North American or Celtic accents muddled. Actors and dialect coaches, take note!

I was not pleased at Anne’s physical appearance. She is famous for being dark, though Joanna Denny believes this is part of the demonisaton programme as ‘swarthy’ skin was seen as a sign of diabolism – appalling as that notion is. Denny believes that Anne was dark auburn, as per the most likely genuine contemporary portrait of Anne – but nowhere have I heard of her as blonde. Couldn’t Miranda Raison have dyed her hair or worn a wig? And couldn’t Henry be red haired? And why did Cardinal Wolsey have a beard?

I did not like the gore lust of the opening but I did like that Anne begins by assuming the knowledge of her death – which we never see – and by establishing a rapport with the audience. I liked the originality and pertinence of linking her and King James and the amount of material covered in an engaging way. Anthony Howell made a positive King Henry, kind instead of raging over the birth of a girl; but the man who had so many butchered in his name is relieved of too much of his violent, cruel and inhuman side. My favourite Henry remains Ray Winstone, whose complex depiction was the first to show me a man whom I could weep for as well as despise. Sometimes in Howard’s version, earthy comments – such as what Henry really wishes to say in his letters to Anne – mar the real point: the vulnerability of Henry’s enduring, consuming passion which must extend further than his tights to have raged so long and moved so much to be with her.

The audience was too quick to laugh at anything. The person who called out ‘ah’ in sympathy with broken Cardinal Wolsey was more correct that those who giggled, but either response turned this into a panto rather than the moment of pathos. When an important theological tenet dawns on Henry – that he could be king and head of the church without need of the pope and thus have his new wife – again, there was laughter. But it wasn’t essentially about being funny, it was the turning point of the play and British history. We spent too much of the play in Caliban mentality rather than the Prospero and Ferdinand.

My gripe had been til this weekend that no-one has explained Anne’s swift demise satisfactorily. Brenton shows something I have not found in my research or other books – I hope to discover where he found it. (I wrote and he told me: Eric Ives). But if it is true, it does account for the scheme to scaffold that in 3 weeks had the most powerful woman in the kingdom’s head in a basket. If Anne knew that Cromwell was embezzling ex monastic funds meant for charity, she had the key in which to bring about his downfall as Wolsey and More. (No temperate, cuddly Mr Northam here; this [absent] More is a torturer). Cromwell would take his advice to Anne earlier in the play, and strike before struck. The charges of multiple adultery and incest – treason in themselves – seem ridiculous, but perhaps an insecure king who could love and hate in equal measure could be persuaded in a very intense period to sign the death warrant.

But the frustration is that Brenton potentially closes one mystery but leaves something else unsatisfactory. The villain we focus on, particularly after Wolsey leaves, is Thomas Cromwell. The slippery faced multi officed politician always features heavily in Tudor plots, and he is usually credited as being the man who brought Anne’s death about. Here he is portrayed as a fellow in faith, aiding illicit Reformist texts and their author’s passage out of the country. Yet his secret Protestant beliefs clash with his vile practices of threats and spying. They also don’t prevent Cromwell’s clandestine bond with Anne turning sour very suddenly and without enough explanation. One moment, they are sharing a prayer; suddenly he’s arresting her, banning her from speaking to or seeing her husband, and making up charges against her. The play – as with many other stories – does not say that Cromwell is executed during Henry’s reign, rather less efficiently than Anne’s French swordsman.

The jaunty dance at the end ruined the power of the ending. It should have ended with the ghost of Anne taking James’ hand – a quiet, poignant gesture. Instead the 150 minutes is augmented by cheering stamping dances that aren’t even fitting, and those final moments are quickly forgotten in their wake.

Ultimately, I am a little disappointed, but that is because it didn’t show my Anne; but that is good, because it leaves the way open for me to do so myself.