Believe it or not, in the earliest draft of my book I wanted Joanna’s going to Smithfield to take up two or three pages, to be a prologue. But I spent a lot of time researching Margaret Bulmer and Smithfield and the Pilgrimage of Grace, and all the things that happened in 1537, and when it came time to send my main character, Joanna Stafford, to Smithfield, it just exploded in my imagination.
When writing the end of the book, I had so much faith in the intelligence and spirituality and innate kindness and humanity of both Joanna and Edmund, that I felt optimistic about their futures and their ability to navigate whatever challenges lay ahead.
In the course of your research, did you come across facts or details from this era that surprised you or that you wished you could have incorporated into the novel?
Oh, everything surprises and enthralls me about the Tudor period! The hardest thing for me is leaving things out that I think are interesting. There are contemporary comments about Margaret Bulmer’s execution—people who found it baffling or especially sinister—that I wish I could have included in the book, but there was no way to do it. A monk named Robert Johns said, “It is a pity she should suffer . . . but let us speak no more of the matter, for men may be blamed for speaking the truth.” That phrase has rolled around in my head for years: “for men may be blamed for speaking the truth.”
Joanna Stafford is a compelling protagonist who seems unwilling to think of herself in the terms her society dictates. Did you have any historical figures in mind when you created her?
No, Joanna is not based on anyone. She is her own person. She wouldn’t have it any other way. But of course I am always interested in reading biographies of strong women who have defied the challenges of their times.
What led you to leave Bishop Stephen Gardiner’s motives for possession of the crown unclear?
I know what Bishop Gardiner intended to do, but Joanna never did, and it is important that I honor the secret, as strange as that may sound. I don’t despise Stephen Gardiner as much as some readers might assume I do. In a way, I feel sorry for him. He was the architect of his own anguish. Gardiner was an eager young lawyer who helped Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry with their legal arguments for the King’s Great Matter. Gardiner watched the country split from Rome and progress toward Protestantism with dismay that must have bordered on panic. He attained great power, but he spent most of his adult life enmeshed in deadly factional struggles, such as when he nearly succeeded in destroying Henry’s sixth wife, Catherine Parr. During the reign of Henry VIII’s Protestant son, Gardiner was himself imprisoned in the Tower of London. He then came into his own under Mary Tudor, but of course that is when the fires of Smithfield burned the highest.
Gardiner is one of the biggest monsters in the influential writings of the Scottish Protestant leader John Knox. And yet I saw glimpses of a different man in my research. When Gardiner was in his twenties and studying at Cambridge he passionately loved music and theater—he acted in a play by Plautus. And he was a loyal friend. How do we reconcile this young man with the bishop who presided over the persecution and eventual burning of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and the Protestant martyrs?
Can you describe a bit of your research into Catholic religious institutions in England? How many monasteries and priories survived when England became an officially Protestant country under the Tudors?
There are many wonderful books about the Reformation. And the dissolution of the monasteries has been written about and depicted on-screen. But what was more challenging to research was the daily life in a priory or monastery in sixteenth-century England. At the time nuns did not keep diaries or write letters describing their everyday experiences. But I kept at it and found a few books and papers written by some very determined and resourceful scholars. There was one letter I read from Elizabeth I’s reign that was very moving. It described a monk who had been displaced and found a new life for himself suddenly seeing another ex-monk from the same monastery, out on the road, decades after the dissolution. And they were so joyful at seeing each other again that they wept while standing together in the road. I have to say, that brought tears to my eyes as well.
Henry VIII dissolved 825 religious communities, raising more than 1.4 million pounds, which has been calculated as worth 481 million pounds in today’s money. His treasury was nearly empty before this enormous transfer of wealth to the monarchy. Only a few monasteries escaped Cromwell’s attention to detail, such as St. Benet’s Abbey in Norfolk. Sir John Fastolf, reportedly the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Falstaff, was buried there.
What remains of Dartford Priory today?
Henry VIII demolished the priory so that he could build a royal manor house on the twelve acres of property. All that remains of England’s single order of Dominican nuns are the stone foundations of the wall that surrounded the priory.
Anne of Cleves lived in the manor house after her divorce. It remained a crown property and Elizabeth I slept there in 1572. In 1606 James I gave Dartford to Robert Cecil. It belonged to various families until the eighteenth century, when it was torn down. There is an engineering works on the property now, but the manor house’s impressive gatehouse still stands and is owned by the Dartford Borough Council. There is a museum in town and a strong sense of pride in the priory.
Several archaeological digs have yielded exciting finds, including window glass, coins, rings, part of a nun’s leather belt, and a silver pomander. I like to think the pomander dangled from the waist of a prioress.
If you could cast any actress as your heroine in a movie version of
The Crown,
who would it be and why?
I never thought of any particular actress while creating Joanna. There are some talented women who could portray her, though I don’t want to single anyone out in case a movie is made and that actress doesn’t get the part! Among the actresses of past generations, I think Vivien Leigh and Merle Oberon had the kind of dark fire a woman would need to play Joanna. And Deborah Kerr played a great nun in
Black Narcissus
!
Enhance Your Book Club
1. In
The Crown,
Joanna Stafford exhibits a kind of family loyalty that many readers may relate to. She sacrifices her spiritual calling to show support for her condemned cousin, takes many risks to save her father, and accepts her much-younger stepbrother as her flesh and blood while her father is on his deathbed. Who in your life has made sacrifices out of loyalty to you? How have you demonstrated your loyalty to others?
2. Are you interested in visiting or learning more about Dartford, England, where Dartford Priory was located? Visit
http://www.dartford.gov.uk/dartford/history.htm
to read about the history of the village of Dartford. This Web site features a tremendously detailed historical time line and useful information about the priory and its role in the town’s medieval history.
3. “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” Have you heard this famous mnemonic about the wives of Henry VIII? What possibilities were there for noblewomen in this era? How did members of your book club feel about the portrayal of women—whether it was Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Joanna Stafford, Princess Mary, Lady Kingston, or Bess? What did it mean to be a woman at this time in England? Of the many women featured in the novel, which did your book club most admire, and why?
Turn the page for a sneak peek at Nancy Bilyeau’s next novel featuring Joanna Stafford,
T
HE
C
HALICE
1
Canterbury, September 25, 1528
B
efore the lash of the wind drew blood, before I felt it first move through the air, our horses knew that something was coming.
When I was seventeen, I made the long journey down to Canterbury from my home, Stafford Castle. At the beginning of each autumn my father traveled to London to attend to family business, but he had not wanted me or my mother to accompany him. A bout of sweating sickness had struck the South that summer, and he feared we’d lose our lives to the lingering reach of that disease. My mother would not be dissuaded. She told him she feared for
my
life if I did not take the healing waters at a bath she knew of in Canterbury.
Once we reached London, my father remained in our house on the Strand, seeing to business, while we rode on with two servants to Canterbury. The day after we arrived, my mother, greatly excited, took me to the shore. But when we reached it, and I gazed for the first time at those churning gray waves, my mother’s temper changed. She had not seen the sea since coming to England from Spain at fourteen as a maid of honor to Katherine of Aragon. After a few moments of silence, she began to weep. Her tears deepened into wrenching sobs. I did not know what to say, so I touched her shoulder and a moment later she stopped.
• • •
The third day in Canterbury I was taken to be healed. Below a tall house on a fashionable street stretched an ancient grotto. We walked down a flight of stairs, and then two stout young women lowered me into the stone bath. It brimmed with pungent water bubbling up from a spring. I sat in it, motionless. Every so often, I could make out strange colors beneath the surging water: bright reddish brown and a deep blue gray. There were mosaics on the bottom of the pool, we were told.
“A Roman built this bath,” explained one of the women. “There was a forum in the city, temples, even theaters. Everything was leveled by the Saxons. But below ground it’s still here. A city below the city.”
“How do you feel, mistress? Stronger?” She so wanted to please us. Beyond London and the ranks of the nobility, it was not known how much our family had lost in the fall of my father’s oldest brother, the Duke of Buckingham. He was executed after being falsely accused of high treason, and nearly all Stafford land was seized by the crown. Here, in a Canterbury bath, we were mistaken for people of importance.
“I feel better,” I murmured. The woman smiled with pride. I glanced over at my mother. She folded her hands in her lap. I had not fooled her.
• • •
The next morning, I expected to begin the journey back to London. While I was in bed, my mother lay next to me and ran her fingers through my hair, as she used to when I was a child. “Juana, I’ve made arrangements to see a young nun,” she said.
There was nothing surprising about her making such a plan. In Spain my mother’s family spent as much time as possible with nuns, monks, and friars, visiting the abbeys that dotted the hills of Castile, to pray in the churches, bow to the holy relics, or meditate through the night in austere cells. One of my mother’s usual laments was how poorly England compared. The religious houses near Stafford Castle failed to impress her. “Not a single mystic within a day’s ride of here,” she’d moan.
As we rose and dressed my mother told me about Sister Elizabeth Barton. Two years earlier she had been a servant of the steward of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. She fell ill and for weeks lay senseless. She woke up healed—and her first question was about a child who lived nearby who had also sickened, but only after Elizabeth had lost consciousness. There was no way she could have known of it. From that day on, she was aware of things happening in other rooms, in other houses, even miles away. Archbishop Warham sent men to examine her, and they concluded her gifts were genuine. It was decided that this young woman should take holy vows and so be protected from the world. The Holy Maid of Kent resided in the Benedictine priory of Saint Sepulchre, but she sometimes granted audiences.
“Her prayers could be meaningful,” my mother said. There was a time when the prospect of meeting such a person would have intrigued me. But I felt no such anticipation now.
When I had first left the household of Queen Katherine more than a year ago, I would not speak to anyone. I wept or lay in bed, my arms wrapped around my body. My mother had to force food into me. Everyone attributed it to the shock of my having witnessed the king’s request for an annulment: the queen, devastated, wailed loudly; he stormed from the room. This happened on the first day I entered service as a maid of honor to the blessed queen. The divorce was a frightening scandal. But from the beginning my mother suspected something else had upset me. She must have pressed me for answers a hundred times. I never considered telling her or my father the truth. It was not just my intense shame. If my father knew that George Boleyn—a favored courtier and brother of Anne, the king’s beloved—had violently fondled me and would have raped me had he more time, there is no force on earth that could have prevented him from trying to kill George. As for my mother, of the blood of ancient Spanish nobility, she would be even more ferocious in her revenge. To protect my parents, I said nothing and blamed myself for what happened. I did not want to ruin my parents’ lives—and those of the rest of the Stafford family.
By the end of the summer of 1527, a dullness of spirit overtook me. I welcomed this reprieve from tumultuous emotion, but it worried my mother. She could not believe I’d lost interest in books and music, once my principal joys. I spent the following months—the longest winter of my life—drifting in a gray expanse. The apothecary summoned to Stafford Castle diagnosed melancholia; but the barber surgeon said no, my humors were not aligned and I was too phlegmatic. Each diagnosis called for conflicting remedy. My mother argued with them both. When spring came, she decided to trust her own instincts in nursing me. I did regain my health but never all of my spirits. My Stafford relatives approved of the quieter, docile Joanna—I’d always been a headstrong girl—but my mother fretted.
That morning in Canterbury, when we’d finished dressing, my mother declared we had no need of servants. The priory of Saint Sepulchre was not far outside the city walls.
Our maid was plainly glad to be free of us for a few hours. The manservant was a different matter. “Sir Richard said I was to stay by your side at all times,” he said.