Giving voice to an influential lady of Elizabeth's court

The Lady Penelope: The Lost Tale of Love and Politics in the Court of Elizabeth I by Sally Varlow
Published April 28th 2008 by Andre Deutsch
Historical Biography
Hardcover, 296 pages
Personal copy
Burton Book Review Rating:4 stars



While reading the new release of Elizabeth Fremantle's Watch the Lady (review here) I was reminded of this book that I have owned for at least five years. The Lady Penelope serves very well as the non-fiction counterpart to Fremantle's novel, as it seems to closely run along the same thought process. Fremantle acknowledges Sally Varlow's biography of Penelope in her author's note along with a few other sources.

The Lady Penelope: The Lost Tale of Love and Politics in the Court of Elizabeth I by Sally Varlow reads very well and gives an excellent view of Penelope's life as it may have been. Having just read the novel featuring Penelope Devereux Rich, I could see the strong correlation of both of the works but also could see how the novel was given its own flair. This biography shifted a lot towards the general politics of the Elizabethan era and there were a few times where I wondered when the last time Penelope was mentioned as we learned more about her eccentric family members, mainly Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. It didn't go too much into Lettice Knollys, Penelope and Robert's mother, which I was a little disappointed in. I had first heard of Lettice Knollys in Jean Plaidy/Victoria Holt's novel My Enemy The Queen which set off a bit of a fascination of the members of the immediate family of the Knollys/Devereux.

As mentioned, the biography goes into a lot of detail as a whole to give a taste of the unrest that was occurring later on in Elizabeth's rule. The different factions of important families were described, and all the major players that Penelope had come across such as the Bacon brothers, the Walsinghams and the Cecils. The most intriguing part for me personally was where the biography went beyond what Fremantle's novel had covered, which was Lady Penelope's later life. Her dealings with Cecil and King James were crucial for her survival amongst the court, and I found the story very well told how Penelope's star rose and fell over the period of her life.

It must be said that Penelope Devereux was not just another courtier of the era, but a very influential woman who inspired poetry and songs, and had a hand in many of the important political events of the era. Even after being named as a co-conspirator in Essex's rebellion, she was able to escape the wrath of the Queen, who normally would not be so kind to traitors among her ladies. And when King James came to the throne, she was allowed to get a divorce - unheard of in the day - and still retain her dignity. The one thing that caused her downfall was the fact she wanted to marry her one true love, Charles Blount, who was eventually given the title of Earl of Devonshire. He was the father of five of her children and she simply wanted to legitimize them by marrying her lover. And that was her mistake. Once a favorite among both Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anna, she was now banished as an adulterer and shunned by peers due to the disgrace.

The biographer goes on to show how Penelope inspired work from Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, John Ford, and artist Nicholas Hilliard for her wit, charm and beauty. She explains reasons behind some of Penelope's actions and paints her in a much more favorable light than what Robert Cecil had intended. It is believed that Cecil and the Protestant regime fully intended to delete Penelope's influence and erase her from history, but she is given the attention she deserves in Sally Varlow's well researched biography. Penelope was well ahead of her time, and she must have been a true pleasure to converse with and know.

There are genealogy tables and sources at the end of the book, along with notes, quotes and sources. I enjoyed the book very much and recommend it to anyone interested in the family, but be aware you'll get a lot on Essex and more on the wars of Elizabeth's time and her moods, but given that the work is not a tome it is an intriguing 296 pages reflecting on Penelope's life and those that she touched.

Other books of the era that I can recommend:
After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England by Leanda De Lisle
Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey
Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen by Tracy Borman

Fictional:
Elizabeth I: A Novel by Margaret George (About Elizabeth chiefly, but acquaints Penelope's mother, Lettice)
The Murder in the Tower by Jean Plaidy (this involves Frances Howard who was associated with Penelope's nephew, a deliciously wicked read)
My Enemy, The Queen by Victoria Holt (involved Penelope's mother, Lettice, and her desire to best Elizabeth)

Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen by Anna Whitelock
Random House, September 7, 2010 USA
Pages: 416
Hardcover 978-1-4000-6609 $28.00
(UK: Bloomsbury May 4, 2009)
Review copy provided by the publisher, thank you!
The Burton Review Rating: 3.5 stars, bordering towards 4

She was the first woman to inherit the throne of England, a key player in one of Britain’s stormiest eras, and a leader whose unwavering faith and swift retribution earned her the nickname “Bloody Mary.” Now, in this impassioned and absorbing debut, historian Anna Whitelock offers a modern perspective on Mary Tudor and sets the record straight once and for all on one of history’s most compelling and maligned rulers.


Though often overshadowed by her long-reigning sister, Elizabeth I, Mary lived a life full of defiance, despair, and triumph. Born the daughter of the notorious King Henry VIII and the Spanish Katherine of Aragon, young Mary was a princess in every sense of the word—schooled in regal customs, educated by the best scholars, coveted by European royalty, and betrothed before she had reached the age of three. Yet in a decade’s time, in the wake of King Henry’s break with the pope, she was declared a bastard, disinherited, and demoted from “princess” to “lady.” Ever her deeply devout mother’s daughter, Mary refused to accept her new status or to recognize Henry’s new wife, Anne Boleyn, as queen. The fallout with her father and his counselors nearly destroyed the teenage Mary, who faced imprisonment and even death.

It would be an outright battle for Mary to work herself back into the king’s favor, claim her rightful place in the Tudor line, and ultimately become queen of England, but her coronation would not end her struggles. She flouted the opposition and married Philip of Spain, sought to restore Catholicism to the nation, and fiercely punished the resistance. But beneath her brave and regal exterior was a dependent woman prone to anxiety, whose private traumas of phantom pregnancies, debilitating illnesses, and unrequited love played out in the public glare of the fickle court.

Anna Whitelock, an acclaimed young British historian, chronicles this unique woman’s life from her beginnings as a heralded princess to her rivalry with her sister to her ascent as ruler. In brilliant detail, Whitelock reveals that Mary Tudor was not the weak-willed failure as so often rendered by traditional narratives but a complex figure of immense courage, determination, and humanity.

You must forgive the length of this review. It is indicative of a thought process of my views on Mary and my struggle to find the inner persona of Bloody Mary. Mary Tudor, daughter of King Henry VIII is well known as Bloody Mary due to the many burnings of the heretics during her reign as queen. Daughter of the pious Katherine of Aragon, Mary was strictly Catholic and refused to acknowledge anything other that Catholicism just as she refused to acknowledge her half-sister Elizabeth I as anything other than the whore's daughter. Queen Elizabeth seems to be the one who is remembered more fondly than Queen Mary, even though it was Queen Mary who was the first female anointed queen. Why is Elizabeth the more exalted? Is it the fact that Elizabeth reigned for a longer amount of time and therefore was privy to more successful events such as the defeat of the Spanish Armada? Was it because of the reign of James I after Elizabeth I that everyone started to realize what they were missing once Elizabeth was gone? The reign of Mary was a difficult one with a strained marriage to King Philip of Spain, which the Englishmen did not appreciate a Spaniard and his consorts infringing on their territory. But Mary was always her mother's daughter, and embraced her Spanish blood along with her uncle Charles V as well as the Catholic religion. The stubbornness and defiance of Mary has always intrigued me, and I am always eager for more light to be shed on the figure of Queen Mary I, who is often overshadowed by her terrorizing father and later the successful reign of her sister.

The purpose of reading biographies for me is to gain further insight into the actual character of the person, and to find some sort of hidden truth that I had previously missed. The persona of "Bloody" Mary is one that has been debated for many years and I wanted to form my own opinion about her. I have read several novels on Mary, but nothing non-fiction that specifically focused on Mary. Those novels would also slant one way or the other in regards to Mary's character: she was either a religious zealot or a victim of her father's tyranny. Perhaps she was a little of both. I wanted to discover something tangible that would help me to form a better opinion of her; perhaps something that I had not grasped previously.

With this Tudor biography we are thrusted quickly into the Anne-Boleyn-hater world. Anna Whitelock, author of Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen presents Bloody Mary's biography in such a way as to martyr Katherine of Aragon and Mary Tudor while throwing the whole mess of blame on to Anne Boleyn's doorstep. What I wanted out of this book was another look at Mary along with some little known tidbits and facts, yet I had not expected the extreme slant against Anne Boleyn. Even I realize that Katherine was treated unfairly when Henry's devotion turned to Anne, but was it all Anne's fault for the events that occurred that lead to Katherine and Mary's fall from their father's grace? Anna Whitelock believes it so. She heavily relies on Chapuys, the imperial ambassador for Charles V, cousin to Katherine, and later Simon Renard. Can we expect an unbiased view from Chapuys?

Whitelock writes: "When Anne went to visit her daughter {Elizabeth} at Hatfield in March, she wasted no time in humiliating her {Mary}. She 'urgently solicited' Mary to visit her and 'honour her as Queen' saying that it 'would be a means of reconciliation with the King, and she would intercede with him for her'. Mary replied that 'she knew no other Queen in England except her mother' but that if Anne would do her that favor with her father she would be much obliged."

Why does Whitelock see this as only being humiliating to Mary?  Why can't she see it as Anne extending an olive branch to her step-daughter to try and keep the peace, with which Mary spurned and shoved away? This point of view and the authors tone turned me off, but once we got past the Anne Boleyn period the author was more pragmatic in her telling of Mary's story. And since Mary's story is reflective of the times themselves, the author then went into the main events of England with more detail than I needed, especially where the rest of Henry's wives were concerned. I am annoyed with the fact that with each Tudor-themed read they must then go into the monotonous stories of the succession of Henry's six wives. The issue at hand was Mary Tudor, and I didn't get any information about Mary as the author told the seemingly obligatory six wives story. The relationships of the wives with Mary were not expounded upon either.

The six wives period is heavily laced with Mary's father instructing her to abandon her mother's wishes and to obey Henry as Supreme Head of the Church. This was the main storyline for several chapters. Finally, Henry dies, Mary's young brother Edward is King, and then Edward takes up the task of harassing Mary about her religion. To Mary's credit, she never disavowed her Catholicism and always stood firm in regards to hearing mass. Even when I had thought it would just be so much easier to live in peace with the kingdom and to go with the flow of the reformation, I was empathetic towards Mary during this time. She was resolute in the manner even after she realized that many of her staunch supporters were punished or killed because of their loyalty to Mary. I would have been interested to read about how Mary reacted to these punishments towards her supporters, but all the author lets through is the fact that Mary moans that she is losing her friends. Is this a selfish motive or was she truly bemoaning their fate? Mary even had the notion to flee England when the pressure for her to convert became too much, but she stood her ground and realized her place was in England and that her destiny was to be its Queen.

When Edward took the throne, the will of Henry was disregarded when Edward Seymour became the Lord Protector. Henry wanted the council of sixteen to help advise Edward but "it was agreed" that Edward Seymour was the best choice as a Lord Protector. Eventually he steps on too many toes and is done away with. Nearing his death and fearing the work he has done is about to be thwarted by the Catholic Mary, Edward declares both of his sisters as illegitimate which means that the Duke of Northumberland's plans to gain the throne for his own son Guildford could actually work if he married Lady Jane Grey, the next relative in line. Once Edward VI dies, Mary rightfully seizes the chance to rise up and grab the throne herself. This is where I hoped the biography would take off, which was a little more than halfway through the book. She seemingly was the opposite of her brother in beliefs; the author writes that Edward changed his father's will and the succession that Henry had laid out which had recognized Mary and Elizabeth. Again, there was a lot of back story that could have been told here, but we merely get the fact that John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland was an upstart and he was dealt with summarily after his plan for Lady Jane to become Queen had backfired.

What was heartening was the support for Mary at her accession. I had never read such a swift but thorough account of the rising for Mary to win back the throne. The people loved her, she was their once revered Queen's daughter, and they were ready for the reform against the papistry to end and the destruction of the monasteries to be over. The people were beginning to show signs of their hatred of a currupted government and Mary was a beacon for Catholicism and to restore a sense of righteousness back to the royal crown. An interesting point that was made by the author was the fact that after years of relying on the Imperial ambassador and Charles V to help Mary's cause, they decided to not help her win her crown back, as he didn't think she would be the victor. Whitelock portrays the procession and coronation with an eye for detail unlike I have previously seen. I was amazed at how much the English were ready to welcome Mary as their Queen, regardless that she was a woman. It seems the government under the Lord Protector of Edward VI and then the Dudleys along with the Edwardian Reformation was a bit too much for the common people. Another interesting note was that the everlasting 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, held Mary's crown for her during the coronation festivities.

Mary's relationship with her husband Philip seemed to cause the most discontent to her people, and the fact that she failed in providing an heir. Mary was willing to ignore her people's wishes when she chose to marry Philip, stating that it was for the good of the realm and to secure the Catholic religion for England's future. Yet, the false pregnancies seemed to turn the people against her, as she lost their favor when she could not secure the Catholic succession, just as her mother could not provide her husband with the longed-for male heir. All eyes turned towards Elizabeth, the next obvious successor, who was Protestant, but the daughter of the hated Anne Boleyn. Which religion to choose? Did some choose Catholicism only to survive Mary's reign, knowing that soon Elizabeth would pick up the task of the late King Edward's reformation?

I would have enjoyed seeing more of Mary's sister, Elizabeth I and how their relationship grew or faltered, but there was not much that included Elizabeth during the bulk of the biography except that Mary did not trust her and supposed her to be her mother's daughter and a heretic. Elizabeth was implicated in the several plots that occurred during Mary's reign, but nothing was proven. Edward and Mary seemed cordial enough until Edward became the Protestant leader and Mary skirted around Edward the issues as much as possible.

To move onwards to the writing itself, the sixty-six chapters were extremely short, which makes for an easy look-back type process if you wanted to look into a specific aspect of Mary's life. The writing was clear and concise and full of details in regards to Mary, but was lacking that a-ha moment of insight for me. The tempo was even and undramatic which made the getting through the book a longer process. I have now gained a new-found respect for Alison Weir, whom others tend to criticize when her sentences contain words such as "could have" "would have" and "perhaps", but I missed that train of thought in this biography. In contrast, Whitelock stays true to the well known story and the repeating of 'letters and papers' even though she tends to rely on not so reliable sources. There were more issues discussed in this biography than are typically addressed in novels, such as those that concerned the many plots that rose against Mary, which helped to illustrate the amount of unrest that Mary's reign carried. Since I was looking for more insight into the character of Mary, I would have appreciated further intuition which Weir would typically provide with her pondering style of commentary.

There is not an extreme wealth of new information for the Tudor buff with this biography, but plenty of facts that may help to form your own opinion on Mary Tudor, a much misunderstood figure. The author did well when exuding the nuances and the religious beliefs of the times.With the quick chapters and the look at some issues that have not been overly written of before, this would be an excellent read for those who are looking for a look at the Tudor times that Mary lived in and ultimately reigned over. Overall, I came away with the feeling that Mary was not as much a "misaligned" figure as some like to claim. She was stubborn and adamant with her religion which is admirable, yet the amount of intolerance she expressed is still something that I cannot condone. She relied on her husband Philip for affairs of state, as Whitelock stated that she wrote to him imploring him to come back to England to help to control her government. Bringing a foreigner like Philip, who also brought England to war with France, was not something that England was ready for. The acts of Mary should not be reflected on the writer, though, and I would recommend this biography for those who would like to glean more information regarding the beliefs of Mary and to gain an accurate portrayal of England during Mary's reign. I am still on the hunt for something that would make me more empathetic towards Mary, I really want to like her, but no matter how hard Whitelock tried to show Mary as a misunderstood woman I could not garner that full realization with this telling, though I do agree with the characterization of "the complex figure of immense courage, determination and humanity".

I found this interesting quote regarding this book, which I agree with in all ways except the great verve part:
'This rollercoaster of a story is told by Whitelock with great verve and pace...It is good to find this book saluted as 'an impressive and powerful debut' by David Starkey: he has recently been quoted denouncing the feminisation of history by women biographers. Clearly he is able to lay aside such sentiments when faced with a proper historical work. Quite right too.' (Antonia Fraser, Mail on Sunday)

Betsy Ross and the Making of America by Marla R. Miller
April 27, 2010
Henry Holt, 467 pp., $30
Review copy from publisher, thank you!
The Burton Review Rating:

Betsy Ross and the Making of America is the first comprehensively researched and elegantly written biography of one of America's most captivating figures of the Revolutionary War. Drawing on new sources and bringing a fresh, keen eye to the fabled creation of "the first flag," Marla R. Miller thoroughly reconstructs the life behind the legend. This authoritative work provides a close look at the famous seamstress while shedding new light on the lives of the artisan families who peopled the young nation and crafted its tools, ships, and homes.


Betsy Ross occupies a sacred place in the American consciousness, and Miller's winning narrative finally does her justice. This history of the ordinary craftspeople of the Revolutionary War and their most famous representative will be the definitive volume for years to come.

This is one tough book to crack. Instead of being focused on Betsy Ross, it is a portrait of Philadelphia and how the colonies reacted to British authority before and during the American Revolution of 1770's. For the first twenty years of Betsy's life, the book comprises of about 100 pages of the aforementioned history of America with accounts of the extended ancestry of Betsy Ross. It is very wordy, but once a chapter winds down, we get a small morsel of what could have been with an entertaining foreshadowing tidbit of how something horrid is going to happen that will change Betsy's life forever. That happened several times, I turned the page excitedly, and we were back to the history lesson that was an automatic sleeping pill.

Betsy Ross whose given name was Elizabeth Griscom at her birth in 1752, is known as the legendary patriotic woman who met with George Washington in her parlour and sewed America's first official flag. As it is the stuff of legend and most probably not very true, the author Marla Miller sets out to establish the facts surrounding Betsy, her work, and other flag maker's work. In this all encompassing account of Colonial America, the author explains the political views of Betsy's immediate family and those that she came across or married into, which was a mixture of radicals, loyalists, patriots and conservatives. We do read about how Betsy gets her start in the seamstress business as she works as a young lady in an upholstery shop. The vision of Betsy simply sewing flags is shattered as we learn that Betsy was much more skilled than that as she was a part of the decorator business with chair coverings and the rare window coverings and many other household items.

Betsy's heritage and her great grandfather the talented builder Andrew Griscom are a strong focus in the book. The Boston Tea Party and the events that lead up to the Americans rebelling against the British rule who kept on taxing the Americans comprises the first half of the book. This brings us to the sad event of Betsy's first husband, John Ross, when he died mysteriously. No one really knows for sure what happened to him; he could have been injured while working with military weapons, or he could have been afflicted with a mental sickness that had also plagued his mother.

Interestingly enough, the author recounts how many citizens of America wanted to simply not be be subject to the taxes of the British, but were not expecting to actually go to war. It was the radicals who were loud enough to be heard that seemingly forced the rest of the citizens to go along with whatever was going to happen. Independence was not something that was on the colonies' minds as they opposed the Stamp Act or took part of the Boston Tea Party. The author also explains how Philadelphia was very much a capital of the the colonies, while others looked to Philadelphia for guidance. Bostonians thought they were doing Philadelphia a favor as they destroyed the tea, but Philadelphia was actually a bit chagrined.

The author writes the book with the promise that this is a story of stories, as she mentions several times that it was the grandchildren and heirs to the legend of Ross that have perpetuated certain stories that could be myths; and as such, there is indeed little proof of anything. So in order to bulk up the book, the author turned this would-be biography of Ross into something that could have sufficed as a semester of American History as well as upholstery.

This is a well-researched history of families in colonial America, but I was disappointed that it did not jump right into Betsy Ross' own life. It meanders around it and mentions Betsy or her many family members at certain intervals, but not enough to keep me entertained or ..awake through its entirety. I was once a little girl who cherished a toy bank that portrayed Betsy Ross on her yellow rocking chair as she stitched the American Flag, and even though I learned more about the times of Betsy Ross, this book did not satisfy the desire to know more about that whimsically magical person in the rocking chair. This was a book that would be better served with the title "Evolution of Colonial American Upholstery and Government, featuring Betsy Ross's Family".