August 27, 2024 • 41 mins
Join host Natalie Grueninger in this captivating episode of "Talking Tudors" as she welcomes back historian and author Tony Riches. Dive into the life of Frances Walsingham, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. Discover the trials and triumphs of Frances's life, from her upbringing in a politically charged household to her marriages with Philip Sidney and Robert Devereux.
Tony Riches shares his extensive research and insights into Frances's fascinating life, highlighting her intellectual prowess, her struggles with love, and her eventual move to Ireland. Learn about the impact of her father's espionage on her life and her surprising conversion to Catholicism. This episode offers a unique glimpse into the lesser-known stories of Tudor women and their enduring legacies.
Whether you're a Tudor history enthusiast or new to the era, this episode promises a deep and engaging exploration of Frances Walsingham's life and the intricate dynamics of the Tudor court.
Visit Tony Riches website
https://www.tonyriches.com/
Find out more about your host at https://www.nataliegrueninger.com
Buy Talking Tudors merchandise at https://talkingtudors.threadless.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome to Talking Tudors, a fortnightly podcast about the ever-fascinating Tudor dynasty.
My name is Natalie Gruniger and I'll be your host and guide on this journey
through 16th century England.
Are you ready to step through the veil of time into the dazzling and dangerous
world of the Tudor court?
Without further ado, it's time to talk Tudors.
(00:23):
Music.
Thanks for watching!
(00:46):
Thanks for watching! Hello, everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of Talking Tudors. I'm your host,
Natalie Groninger. Thank you so much for joining me today.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging and thanking the generous listeners who continue
(01:09):
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(01:32):
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Check out all the products at talkingtudors.threadless.com. Now on to today's episode.
I'm thrilled to welcome Tony Riches back to the show to talk about the fascinating
(01:54):
life of Frances Walsingham, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth's spymaster,
Sir Frances Walsingham.
Tony was born in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, and spent part of his childhood in Kenya.
He gained a BA degree in psychology and an MBA from Cardiff University.
After careers in the Royal Air Force, the NHS, and local government,
he became a full-time author of historical fiction.
(02:17):
Tony's Tudor Trilogy has become an international bestseller and is in regular
demand as a guest speaker about the lives of the early Tudors.
Tony has returned to Pembrokeshire, an area full of inspiration for his writing.
Let's dive straight into our conversation.
Welcome to Talking Tudors, Tony. How are you? I'm great. Thank you very much.
(02:37):
And hi from Tudor, Wales.
Wonderful. I love it. Here I am in my office in Sydney and there you are in
Wales. You know, how wonderful is the internet? it.
I'm about a quarter of an hour from Pembroke Castle where, of course,
Henry Tudor was born and where I was born.
I wasn't born in the castle, but I was born within sight.
Oh, that's wonderful. No wonder you love the Tudors. So we're actually here
(03:01):
today to talk about your new novel.
But before we introduce that, would you mind just introducing yourself to our
listeners and just telling us a little bit about you and your background?
Yeah, well, I've said I was born in Pembroke and that's what really got me going
because I wanted to learn about Henry Tudor.
And all the books I could find were really quite dry and made him to be a miserly,
(03:22):
miserable old character. And I was just intrigued.
And so I started gathering information for a possible book of my own.
I used to write for magazines and journals and stuff like that,
but I'd never actually written a book.
I wrote a book on project management, which did rather well.
And I decided to actually make it a factually accurate historical novel because
(03:45):
I completely understand people that do alternative reality and alternative history.
But I wanted mine to be something that people could actually learn from and
to try and get a flavor of the times.
And I ended up gathering enough material for three books.
So that's what I did, a trilogy, which became the Tudor trilogy,
where Henry's born in the first book, comes of age in the second on exile.
(04:08):
In Brittany, and then becomes king after Bosworth in the third book.
And I got so deep into it that in his last days, his little daughter,
Mary, nursed him on his deathbed, really.
And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to carry on her story? Because Mary Tudor
married the King of France, who was pretty much old enough to be her father.
(04:29):
And I thought, how did that work out?
And, you know, what's true and what's just myth?
And then, of course, she ends up with a chap called Charles as Brandon and I
decided to write the Brandon trilogy which took me into Catherine Willoughby as his 14 year old.
Last wife. And of course, Catherine Willoughby bridges the end of the Tudors
(04:49):
into the reign of Elizabeth.
And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to look at Elizabeth, not from Elizabeth's
point of view, but from the point of view of three of her favourite men and three of her ladies.
So I'm not even sure what you call it, a six book series, but it's two trilogies really.
And what I enjoy is having them all intertwined so that the same people like
(05:12):
William Cecil and Robert Cecil and the Queen herself pop up,
but always from the perspective, from the point of view of my lead character.
So the three men I chose were Drake, Essex and Raleigh, all with very different point of view.
You know, Drake worshipped the Queen literally, but had a massive chip on his shoulder.
(05:33):
Essex was the son she never had, is the way I like to think of it.
And then Raleigh was the captain of her guard. So that's three very different perspectives.
And then the ladies, I had so many to choose from. I spent a year actually researching
them all and trying to choose which ones.
I couldn't really do. I would have liked to have done another six,
(05:54):
actually, but three I chose. And so I chose Penelope Rich, who I knew nothing
about, by the way, but she was so ahead of her time.
And her mother was Lettice, of course, who was the Queen's great nemesis and
married the Queen's best favourite
of all. And then that kind of led on to thinking about who would be next.
(06:18):
And then that leads us to the book we're talking about today,
which is another very underrated, I think, little understood or poorly understood
Elizabethan lady, who is the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham.
In fact, the only surviving daughter, which we'll come on to.
And what was it like being the daughter of the Queen's spy master?
(06:40):
How did that work? And then...
When I started looking at her adventures, I couldn't believe it.
But the strange thing was that most of the book, without many books about her
at all, actually, most of the mentions of her in books kind of forget about
her third marriage and her later life at all.
So half of my book really, it's almost divided into thirds, but I made sure
(07:02):
that I did a proper job on the later part of her life because she was still relatively young.
It was a very important part And I'm now working on the sixth and final book.
And it's a strange thing after being immersed in the Tudors for 12 years.
I'm actually starting to take an interest in the Stuarts now because I'm edging
(07:23):
into the reign of King James.
That's something I know very little about. I'm going to be one of the world's
experts on it in three years' time because I am going to write a Stuart trilogy.
That's amazing news wow you are absolutely prolific
i don't know how you do it tony that's incredible so yes
time yes you are full time i've
(07:45):
got the luxury of doing it full time and you know i'm so grateful to all the
people that have supported me bought my books and audio books and everything
like that absolutely because it does mean that i can actually not have to worry
about doing anything else yeah and i got a great system because what i do is
i research in the summer,
and then I write through the autumn and winter, and then I edit in the spring.
(08:09):
So I do that one book a year every year for the last 12 years.
And I've been full-time all of that time.
So I did try writing two books in one year, but as you will know,
it catches up with you if you have to edit two books at the same time. That's a nightmare.
And listen to an audio book, which is nine and a half hours long.
(08:29):
Yeah, goodness, that's a long time. So what What about Frances's family and
her early life? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yes. Well, there's a lot that's been written about her father, Frances Walsingham.
But the thing that I'd never really latched onto was how much Elizabeth the
Queen took advantage of him.
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And as she did with everybody else, really, she made him meet the costs of his
own spy network, which bankrupted him.
And he was forever saying to her, excuse me, can I...
Have a bit of money to pay these people because they're giving you vital information
and there's going to be a Spanish Armada, blah, blah, blah.
And she'd say, yeah, yeah, no problem. Go and see William Cecil. He'll sort you out.
(09:11):
And then William Cecil would remember a subsequent engagement and not pay him.
So it was awful. And in fact, when Sir Francis Walsingham died, he was buried in St.
Paul's at midnight to avoid his creditors finding out.
That's how bad it was. So he died broke, basically, not through any fault of his own.
(09:32):
He was very astute, but because the queen owed him a fortune,
which they never got back either. You know, that's the sad thing.
And her mother was quite an interesting character because she was also ahead
of her time and believed that girls should be well-educated,
not just in how to run a household and how to be a good maid of honor for the
(09:53):
queen, But in multiple languages and the classics of the time,
and really far more insightful thing is about politics of court,
which most of those at court had to learn that the hard way, quite honestly.
Francis had the benefit of a better education than most men.
And I hadn't really latched onto that. Because if you look her up anywhere.
(10:17):
You'll find people are a bit dismissive about her, you know? I don't know why.
And I played with that idea and thought about what she might actually do with
that really quite good intelligence.
I also found a little snippet of information was that she had what these days
we would call a photographic memory.
So she could actually recall the whole of Philip Sidney's poems without having
(10:41):
to actually look them up or anything.
And I used that in the book because what a lovely thing to have.
I wish I had that. I know, how lucky.
I've got the opposite in that I recall some vital fact, but not where I read it.
And then I have to hunt through a mountain of books to think,
where on earth did I see that, you know, which is the opposite to a photographic memory, I think.
(11:05):
Wonderful. And so let's talk a little bit about when Frances actually first comes to court.
You've already said she's got this father that's prominent at court.
Do we know when she first makes her first kind of debut at court?
The relationship between Frances and the Queen Elizabeth is fascinating because
she actually quite dislikes her because of the way her father has been treated.
(11:26):
And the two people that her father confided in about this treatment were his
wife, of course, and his daughter. And so he was always...
Complaining really that yet again
he's gonna have to sell some land because the queen's gonna
come and visit on a progress and they really
can't afford a plague of locusts just now
(11:47):
so he'll have to sell more land and he'll have nothing to
show for it because he won't be any better off really you know
nothing's ever reimbursed and what would
have happened was that she would have decided fairly early
on that she did not want to be one of
the ladies in waiting just just spending all
of her time in the privy chamber laughing at the queen's jokes and flattering
(12:08):
her with banal platitudes you
know so she would she really would like a
career which was out of the question so there's a
a bit of a sort of tension right from the start she would have been introduced
to court when she came of age but her father was very aware of the issue so
he arranged her first marriage when she was 16 so if she hadn't have got married
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she was over a barrel really if she said a no, which I think he would have respected,
then she would have become a maid of honour, wearing white and eventually become
a gentlewoman of the privy chamber.
And she could have become an old maid of the privy chamber, which means that
she died a maiden at the age of 60 or something.
And that's not the life that she wanted. She wanted to have children and a family
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and a handsome husband that loved her, et cetera, et cetera.
So this marriage at 16, to her absolute.
Amazement was to one of the most eligible bachelors of court philip sydney who
was he was brilliant everything he turned his hand to because he was a poet
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and a champion jouster and he won the loyalty of his men and.
He was so noble. He was almost the last of the classic knights, I think.
He expected to inherit the Earl of Leicester's fortune.
And then, of course, the Earl of Leicester had a son, which,
as far as Sidney was aware, then that meant he inherited nothing and had to become a self-made man.
(13:41):
He wasn't to know that the son was to tragically die, but the way it worked
out in terms of Philip Sidney's life is he went off to make his reputation in
the wars in the Netherlands.
And the twist from the point of view of the book is that Francis,
being Francis, decided that she would go there with him.
(14:03):
It wasn't unheard of, wives accompanying their husbands to battle,
because they would stay safe back at the base, you know what I mean?
But it was quite an adventure for a girl that had never really left the country, you know?
You know, she had actually been, when she was five, she was caught up in the
Huguenot battles in Paris, the massacre, where Philip Sidney was a guest of
(14:26):
the Walsinghams, by the way, so that she had actually known him since she was a child.
And he'd been a very young ambassador at the time.
It shows the sort of man he was, because to be an ambassador of 18 is ridiculous, really.
They're normally old men with grey beards. Yeah, that is very young,
isn't it? Yeah, but anyway, the idea of going really to quite a dangerous country.
(14:50):
I'm amazed that her father allowed it, quite honestly, because all he had to say was no.
The thing I've played around with is, did he love her?
Because in my previous book, Penelope, he was Penelope's lover,
not very secret lover either.
And he wrote Astrophil and Stella, which Penelope was Stella.
And if you've ever had a chance to look at it, it's all about how wonderful
(15:12):
Penelope is, thinly veiled. and how it's unrequited love because she gets married
off to somebody else and so he cannot marry her.
So he doesn't marry Frances grudgingly, but she's sorting through some papers
in her father's study one day and she finds a letter from Philip's father thanking
him for settling Philip's debts of £6,000.
(15:36):
Hang on a minute. So this is all set up, you know, really. But they all were,
weren't they? That's how it was. Exactly.
And what did the Queen think of this match, Tony?
Well, traditionally, she wanted people like Frances to be around her,
(15:57):
young, attractive women surrounding her and looking at her adoringly.
So the idea that they'd find a get-out clause and get off and marry at 16, she wasn't up for that.
She thought she'd get at least two years out of her, so she refused. Right.
The marriage on the grounds that Philip Sidney had yet to inherit and was not
really of any substance.
But also, Frances wasn't a noble anyway, so her father was really a self-made man.
(16:23):
Although he was a knight, he was not from nobility.
And it was Sir Francis Walsingham who basically had to put his own career on
the line and almost threaten the Queen, if you want me to carry on doing this,
then you're going to agree to this marriage, because it's what I've already agreed.
And that's how it worked. That's the politics of the court. It was a lot of
(16:47):
negotiation and give and take.
And really, she wasn't that bothered because she had 12 other ladies to look after her.
Exactly. And talk to us a little bit about what happens to Frances's first husband,
Philip Sidney. Wow, tragic.
It's tragic. And it's classic Philip Sidney, where the story goes that they
were going to ambush the enemy at a town called Zutphen.
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And he was the commander of the cavalry, along with one Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex.
And then he noticed that his men were poorly equipped.
And the reason for that is that, as always, it's been his job to pay for their
equipment. It doesn't seem fair, does it?
You think the state would pay for their equipment, but they either stole it
(17:32):
off fallen enemies and fallen comrades, or they just did without armour, you know?
And they had arquebuses, so they had muskets, really.
We're moving on from when people were just fighting with swords to when they
were actually firing guns at each other and Philip Sidney decided to throw off
his armour in front of the men dramatically and say look, I'm going to go in.
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The same as you, take the same risks as you, follow me and I'll make sure you're okay.
And sadly, when they were about to do the ambush, somehow word had leaked out
and the enemy had doubled its strength and was like, they were seriously outnumbered.
And Philip's horse was shot out from under him, but he was shot in the thigh,
(18:17):
which even these days is a very serious injury.
If he'd been wearing his army, it might've glanced off the bullet because they
weren't that powerful, these old muskets, it shattered his thigh.
And Francis is at his bedside and basically the doctor comes in and says,
we'll put a poultice of mud and herbs on it and pray.
(18:40):
You can pray if you want, that might help.
And of course, very quickly, he gets septicemia because there was not a proper
understanding of hygiene or contamination or infection and things like that.
Sadly for them, I was thinking about this. Even these days, if you have a shattered
thigh bone and it's in battlefield conditions and it's not dealt with very quickly,
(19:02):
that could be something that probably would cut your leg off.
He's delirious and he wakes up and he says to Francis, please don't let them cut off my leg.
The idea, even now, but in those days, to be an invalid was worse.
He'd rather die, I think, and sadly he does, without even knowing that she's
(19:24):
carrying his second child.
Because they did have that, their first child is Elizabeth, and that's really where the book starts.
So you mentioned Robert Devereux there. So let's talk about Frances's second match that she makes.
How does that come about? And what is Elizabeth's response?
What an unlikely match that was. I think I've mentioned that Robert Devereux
(19:45):
was the second of the three Queen's favourites that I wrote about a couple of years ago.
So I knew I'd really been over this ground.
And I'd concluded these days, we would say that he completely lacked what we
we would call emotional intelligence, in that he was very bad at reading situations
of people and thinking through all of that. He would act quite impetuously.
(20:07):
And my theory is, he never actually says this to Francis, but I think that he
agreed Philip's death, but he was there, of course, in Netherlands.
And he agreed to see that Francis married well and that little Elizabeth was
properly cared for and also married well.
And then later on, he just had a string.
(20:30):
If you list all the ladies of court, you can cross out a couple of the older
ones, but most of the rest had had some kind of liaison with Robert Devereaux.
And I think he was intrigued by her because.
She was so different from the normal maids of honor that he was used to with
her several languages and her obvious intelligence and her insight and her political
(20:53):
skill and all these things.
So what a surprise that he asked her to marry him. The historians are divided.
Some think that it was just before her father died and that her father was furious
about the whole thing and thought it was most unsatisfactory.
Others think it was while she was still in a complete crisis of,
(21:15):
her own future after the loss of her father, who she was very close to.
It was a marriage that was never going to work out with a happy ending, I think.
I don't think he'd have. And even she promptly got pregnant with him.
And even when she was in her confinement, he was enjoying himself with several
different ladies at the same time, but not very discreetly being Robert Devereaux.
(21:40):
So that was very sad for her, I think.
And she She tried her best to be a good wife, and she never loved him, I'm sure of that.
But she tried her very best to make the marriage work to the extreme of actually
trying to understand his ill-fated rebellion, being actually at Essex House
with Penelope when it was all kicking off.
(22:01):
I think that she should have been more assertive with him because she should
have been strong for him where he was weak, and she could have changed his life.
So just touch on that rebellion a little bit, Tony, in case our listeners aren't sure which rebellion.
What happened was, you'll have to read the book is what they say, isn't it?
But no, the short version is that he was an expert at obsessing the Cecils.
(22:25):
And William Cecil was the Queen's treasurer and Robert Cecil was being groomed
as his successor and was really the hand at the tiller for the Queen as William Cecil got older.
William Cecil, by the way, goes right back to Catherine Willoughby and that
he wanted to marry Catherine Willoughby and they were extremely close.
(22:47):
And in Lamentation of a Sinner by Catherine Parr, the dedication page mentions them both.
But Robert Devereaux constantly
found ways to upset William Cecil deliberately
I think and then William Cecil decided he should be got rid of and there were
a thousand ways that he could get rid of him now but it was a bit like a certain
(23:11):
well-known former president of America is that even if you've got an infinite number of.
Things that you could accuse them of they they
are quite slippery customers and they always find ways
and his way was to go to the queen and either apologize
or whatever and it ended in
tears because he decided he would get rid
(23:32):
of the queen's evil advisors by force
and he got his welshman up from wales and there
were lots of soldiers unemployed kicking around in
the streets and he had he thought
the the people of london on his side when he
actually marched on the palace he didn't want to
kill the queen by the way that's a misconception that people
(23:54):
have got he wanted to save her from her self-serving advisors
he really got arrested and his his men a lot of them met a traitor's fate which
is an awful way to die and he got thrown in the tower and basically made a full
confession and was executed.
(24:14):
So that left Frances then with a very uncertain future because she had no money.
All her lands and properties would have been her husband's and then those would
have all because he was at a testation where they basically seized all of their
(24:35):
lands and everything for the crown.
So everything was at the queen's discretion then
including essex house in the strand even the
walsingham house which which francis had
inherited from her father and barn elms which
she'd inherited from her mother so she had lots of properties and
but it all looked very bad and she could end up
(24:57):
destitute and that's where penelope steps
in because penelope had married a millionaire you see
robert rich and then being very clever
in making sure that she's she had
lots of money from which she siphoned off into various secret bank
accounts and stuff that she was able to help francis tide over but it didn't
(25:18):
look great and a lot of people end the story there i say a lot of people if
you if like i say if you look up her story it doesn't really seem to go on much
from there generally but there's a whole nother third of a book after that.
I know because I had a little pile of books at the side of me and I was only
two thirds of the way through my book and they were all coming to an end.
(25:41):
So I could see some of them had given one page to the rest of her life,
which was quite interesting.
So tell us a little bit about what life's like then for Frances after Robert's
execution and about that final part of her life that not many people talk about.
Penelope's husband, Charles Blount, gets Robert Devereaux's job fighting the
(26:03):
rebels in Ireland and does a tremendous job of it.
Whereas Robert Devereaux left in disgrace, he caught the flux,
which is a battlefield form of dysentery and from drinking contaminated water.
So out of fairness to him, he was in no state to lead a battle against rebels
defending their own country.
They call them rebels, by the way. They were people defending their own country.
(26:26):
So they wouldn't see themselves really as quite that.
And Charles Blount came back to Essex House when he could, and he brought with
him the captain of his cavalry, a chap called Richard Burke,
and Francis is introduced to him and finds him rather charming. They're very similar.
(26:46):
He's five years younger than her, actually, and so this is another interesting
dynamic in that they couldn't be more different.
But he also couldn't be more different from Robert Devereux or even Philip Sidney.
He's got some of the qualities of Philip Sidney. He's very loyal,
very decent in terms of his values.
(27:08):
And she rather likes him. But then in a massive turn of events like happens
in Elizabethan Court, we think it was Robert Cecil.
He always had a thing for Frances, by the way, and he might have liked to marry
her, but she wasn't up for that for various reasons.
And I think it was a thing of timing. She didn't dislike him particularly,
(27:32):
but she'd been aware that he was working against her father with his own spy
network for much of the time. and the queen was very clever because she used to compare notes.
So she would get the Cecil spy network to find out what was happening in Spain
and then she would get Sir Francis Walsingham to let her know and she could
pair the two and see if they were consistent.
(27:53):
It's quite clever, isn't it? Very clever. Some people underestimate Elizabeth,
I think, because that was her own doing.
But what happens is that she decides that it wasn't really Francis' fault,
the Essex Rebellion, and that she should be allowed to keep Essex House,
Walsingham House, Barnhouse,
and as a sort of sweetener to be given an estate in Kent, which somebody had
(28:19):
died in testate or something, and it had gone to the Crown, and it was in Kent,
so Elizabeth couldn't be bothered to even visit it, you know.
And this Richard Burke, his army service is over,
really, so he's kind of a bit of a loose end so
he agrees to escort francis and her children to this place in kent to see what
(28:42):
it's like and whether it's someone she'd like to spend the rest of her days
and in the course of that it slowly
emerges that he's not only one of the wealthiest men in northern ireland.
He's actually an earl, the Earl of Clannery-le-Card.
He keeps all these close to his chest and reveals things.
But he's also the worst possible thing that a man could be, which is a Catholic.
(29:07):
This is from Francis's point of view, before I offend all the Catholics.
And her Protestant faith has been tested so often with all of the things in
her life. She decides that if it means becoming a Catholic, to be allowed to
marry this handsome young Irishman, then so be it. How bad can it be?
(29:28):
And she quite enjoys the whole process of converting to Catholicism,
and a whole new world is opened up to her.
She completely re-evaluates everything that she's held dear because her father
was a staunch Protestant and her mother as well.
So what a thing to do. That shows an insight into her character, doesn't it?
(29:50):
It's like people that suddenly convert to Islam that have been staunch Christians all their lives.
And what they find is that there is a whole other dimension to everything which
they'd previously been unaware of. When they get to the estate in Kent,
they find it's hundreds of acres of prime real estate.
And there's a dilapidated old mansion on the top of a hill.
(30:13):
There's a painting by Turner, which I found, which is of the house that they
built there, because they raised that to the ground. And using her husband Richard's
money, they actually rebuilt one of the finest houses in Kent,
which becomes Summerhill.
And everything looks, and that should be the end of the book.
And they all lived happily ever after, except the queen died,
(30:34):
which they kind of knew was going to happen.
But they thought, well, you know, we're happy here in Kent.
And you might remember that Frances got a daughter called Elizabeth,
and she lives with her husband at Beaver Castle. And King James,
on his way down to take the throne, stays at Beaver Castle because there's plague in London.
(30:54):
So he's in no hurry for the coronation. That can wait till the worst of the
plague is over, which is taking nearly a third of the population.
And through that, of course, there's privileged connection with the new king.
So they decide to introduce themselves to him. And he promptly appoints Francis'
(31:15):
husband, Richard Burke, as his right-hand man in Ireland.
So makes him kind of like on the Irish version of the Privy Council,
the advisor to the king, which gives him a power which is off the scale in terms of power and influence.
And when Francis realizes that this means he's going to be away indefinitely,
(31:37):
he won't just be away for a year.
He could be away for 10 years, you know, however long, how long does it take
to sort Ireland out, you know?
And he decides the only thing to do is to go to Ireland with him,
with our entire family and try and make a go of a life.
In Ireland for as long as he's got this post as governor of the region.
They end up in Athlone Castle.
(31:59):
I don't know if you've been to
anywhere like that? No, I haven't been to Ireland yet. That's on my list.
Yeah, well, it's easy for me because I can actually see it through binoculars
from the top of the Buscelli Hills on a clear day. I hasten to it.
I can see the Wicklow Mountains, just the tip of them on the horizon.
So I went across the Wicklow Mountains and spied across
to see if i could see pembrokeshire but i couldn't sadly but anyway
(32:21):
i have explored these areas so beautiful countryside and
uh athlone castle is pretty grim and bleak but
they decide to um set up home in his
country estates and francis being francis learns to speak some of the irish
language and becomes very integrated with it all so i thought that in itself
(32:43):
is a a fascinating sort of postscript to such an amazing life you know extraordinary what a story,
it's i really enjoyed researching it
but and i think i hope that comes through in the in the book because i think
you can tell when somebody's had a great time researching it there's not at
all any moment where i had to think how can i find another thousand words for
(33:08):
this chapter it was It was more a case of what on earth am I going to leave in?
So I wrote it. One of my great heroes is Hilary Mantel.
And although I wouldn't pretend to be anything like as good as her,
I took her cue from Wolf Hall where it's written in present tense.
(33:28):
And I've kind of got used to that style now. So readers don't seem to even notice it.
I really like that. I find it really immersive, actually. Yeah.
Yes, it's a bit of a skill, because if you're writing in past tense,
then it's just a little bit more pedestrian.
To write in present tense, you have to put yourself in the skin of the person,
(33:51):
which is why Henry did it, of course.
And, you know, when Cromwell's father kicks him while he's lying down.
How does that feel, you know?
How does it feel to be kicked in the head by your own father?
Is that the first page or something? I think it's the opening line, isn't it?
So luckily francis
never gets kicked in the head but she does go through
(34:13):
she does have a child a year pretty much and i
was almost running out of different ways to describe
the process without it becoming repetitive she sadly
she suffered some awful miscarriages and i
had to research that but to not include
it would not do justice to
her the sort of strength of character that she
(34:35):
had but also the the burden that she
then carried you know and what i did
my wife is my beta reader so she
actually kindly is the very first one to
go through all of this and tell me if i if from a woman's point of view whether
i've got it right or wrong because we've got two children she's been through
that twice and whether i've overdone it or underplayed it or whatever you know
(34:59):
so that was quite interesting amazing i can i can see why you were so fascinated
by her she sounds like an incredible woman.
And it's lovely that you've shed some light on her because really,
I hadn't heard very much about it, to be honest.
No, no, that was part of the fun is to find these really quite powerful and
influential women who have almost been dismissed until now.
(35:22):
And then, you know, like Penelope to help people.
I've had feedback from readers saying that they'd never heard of Penelope and
that now they feel they really understand her, you know, which is.
That's the best that you can hope for really isn't it absolutely so
tony do you think you're going to miss the tudors when you move into the
stewart realm well i i was at
(35:43):
a dilemma i'll be quite honest with you i was a bit of a what
do you do when you've done the chip i don't say done them
to death but you've done the tudors for over a decade and
that's what you're known for is the tudors and where on
earth do you go from there and i started researching another
person from history who i might still write about so
(36:03):
i i shan't say who but she was the wife of a famous english
artist who had a fascinating life and
because i've kind of my best-selling books are all
the ones about the ladies it is interesting isn't
it how that works is that the ladies out sell the men
two to one no question of it sometimes and
(36:23):
i didn't think that's how it would be but that's how
it is and so i'm actually going
to write about three stewart ladies and that's
going to be a trilogy my old trick i never wrote from henry
date's point of view i always wrote other people's perceptions
of henry the eighth and same with queen elizabeth and
i'm going to do the same with king james is that we're
(36:44):
going to see king james through the eyes of some
of the people around him and we have to make draw around.
Conclusions then about where they write and they misunderstood
him that's what i enjoy playing with i mean
my my first degree was in psychology and
i think some of that still that was a long
time ago but some of that still comes through in my writing and the psychology
(37:07):
of relationships it fascinates me and then when you add to that the layer of
history and authentic data and what i love to do is to look for those little tiny
details that make all the difference,
you know, and then think through how people might have felt about,
(37:27):
the consequences of things. Oh, wonderful. Well, I imagine that all your readers
are so excited that you're continuing your writing journey.
And so if people want to find out more about you, Tony, and your books,
because you do have many, where's the best place for them to go?
Oh, it's really easy because my website is TonyRiches.com. Fabulous.
And I'd like to say, if you go into Amazon and just type Tony Riches or into
(37:54):
Google now, Now, there is a new author called Anthony Riches who writes about
Romans. He's my evil twin.
And we've agreed that he'll never write about Tudors and I'll never write about the Romans.
But my sister once congratulated me about a big display of my books in Waterstones.
And I thought, I haven't got a big display of books. And when I looked into
(38:15):
it, it was him. He had a big display of books in Waterstones.
And I got all the credit for it. Isn't that nice?
That is lovely. We do him again, because he is actually the treasurer of the
Historical Writers Association.
So people quite often just Google Tony Richardson, get me.
So I've also got a very popular blog, which is called The Writing Desk.
(38:39):
Yes, you do. And what I do is I do constant book reviews now,
because what I find is that why read a book?
I love it when people find the time to review my books.
And so you know i'm very selective about
what books i choose to read because of
my time and generally i've got something positive to
say about them so i do that and i also support
(39:01):
book launches for other authors which is a real win-win because it drives traffic
to my blog they benefit because it's shared on goodreads and everything so i
enjoy all of that it's like a more it's more than a hobby now it's become a
way of life but like yourself really you know if anybody called what you do
a a hobby, I think you'd get a little bit.
Oh, yeah. And it started that way, but no, it's definitely a full-time,
(39:24):
maybe two full-time jobs by now.
Nobody knew really what a blog was when I started my blog. So there we are.
Oh, fabulous. Well, I'll add the links to the show notes to make it really easy
for people to find you and your work.
And I have to thank you again, Tony, for being so generous with your time and
for coming onto the podcast and talking Tudors with us.
Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoy it. And I look forward
(39:45):
to coming back with the last of the Tudor books, the last of my Elizabethan series, who is another.
Intriguing woman who was not well-educated and had to teach herself how to read and write.
So that's quite interesting. What a difference from Frances.
Well, that sounds fascinating and I look forward to that. And thank you again,
(40:05):
Tony. Thank you very much for having me.
Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Talking Tudors.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I absolutely love to hear from listeners. So if you have any comments or suggestions
or just want to say hi, please get in touch with me via my website,
www.onthetudortrail.com, where you'll also find show notes for today's episode.
(40:28):
If you've enjoyed the show, please share the podcast with friends and family.
And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. view.
I also invite you to join our Talking Tudors podcast group on Facebook,
where you can interact with other Tudor history lovers and hear all the behind-the-scenes news.
You'll also find me on Twitter. My handle is onthetudortrail and on Instagram as themosthappy78.
(40:50):
It's time now for us to re-enter the modern world. As always,
I look forward to talking Tudors with you again very soon.
Music.
Hello and welcome to Talking Tudors, a fortnightly podcast about the ever-fascinating Tudor dynasty.
My name is Natalie Gruniger and I'll be your host and guide on this journey
through 16th century England.
Are you ready to step through the veil of time into the dazzling and dangerous
world of the Tudor court?
Without further ado, it's time to talk Tudors.
(00:23):
Music.
Thanks for watching!
(00:46):
Thanks for watching! Hello, everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of Talking Tudors. I'm your host,
Natalie Groninger. Thank you so much for joining me today.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging and thanking the generous listeners who continue
(01:09):
to support Talking Tudors on Patreon and extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone
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As an independent podcaster, this means a lot to me. If you love the podcast,
please consider joining the Talking TalkingTutors Patreon community.
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(01:32):
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world by buying TalkingTutors merchandise.
Check out all the products at talkingtudors.threadless.com. Now on to today's episode.
I'm thrilled to welcome Tony Riches back to the show to talk about the fascinating
(01:54):
life of Frances Walsingham, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth's spymaster,
Sir Frances Walsingham.
Tony was born in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, and spent part of his childhood in Kenya.
He gained a BA degree in psychology and an MBA from Cardiff University.
After careers in the Royal Air Force, the NHS, and local government,
he became a full-time author of historical fiction.
(02:17):
Tony's Tudor Trilogy has become an international bestseller and is in regular
demand as a guest speaker about the lives of the early Tudors.
Tony has returned to Pembrokeshire, an area full of inspiration for his writing.
Let's dive straight into our conversation.
Welcome to Talking Tudors, Tony. How are you? I'm great. Thank you very much.
(02:37):
And hi from Tudor, Wales.
Wonderful. I love it. Here I am in my office in Sydney and there you are in
Wales. You know, how wonderful is the internet? it.
I'm about a quarter of an hour from Pembroke Castle where, of course,
Henry Tudor was born and where I was born.
I wasn't born in the castle, but I was born within sight.
Oh, that's wonderful. No wonder you love the Tudors. So we're actually here
(03:01):
today to talk about your new novel.
But before we introduce that, would you mind just introducing yourself to our
listeners and just telling us a little bit about you and your background?
Yeah, well, I've said I was born in Pembroke and that's what really got me going
because I wanted to learn about Henry Tudor.
And all the books I could find were really quite dry and made him to be a miserly,
(03:22):
miserable old character. And I was just intrigued.
And so I started gathering information for a possible book of my own.
I used to write for magazines and journals and stuff like that,
but I'd never actually written a book.
I wrote a book on project management, which did rather well.
And I decided to actually make it a factually accurate historical novel because
(03:45):
I completely understand people that do alternative reality and alternative history.
But I wanted mine to be something that people could actually learn from and
to try and get a flavor of the times.
And I ended up gathering enough material for three books.
So that's what I did, a trilogy, which became the Tudor trilogy,
where Henry's born in the first book, comes of age in the second on exile.
(04:08):
In Brittany, and then becomes king after Bosworth in the third book.
And I got so deep into it that in his last days, his little daughter,
Mary, nursed him on his deathbed, really.
And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to carry on her story? Because Mary Tudor
married the King of France, who was pretty much old enough to be her father.
(04:29):
And I thought, how did that work out?
And, you know, what's true and what's just myth?
And then, of course, she ends up with a chap called Charles as Brandon and I
decided to write the Brandon trilogy which took me into Catherine Willoughby as his 14 year old.
Last wife. And of course, Catherine Willoughby bridges the end of the Tudors
(04:49):
into the reign of Elizabeth.
And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to look at Elizabeth, not from Elizabeth's
point of view, but from the point of view of three of her favourite men and three of her ladies.
So I'm not even sure what you call it, a six book series, but it's two trilogies really.
And what I enjoy is having them all intertwined so that the same people like
(05:12):
William Cecil and Robert Cecil and the Queen herself pop up,
but always from the perspective, from the point of view of my lead character.
So the three men I chose were Drake, Essex and Raleigh, all with very different point of view.
You know, Drake worshipped the Queen literally, but had a massive chip on his shoulder.
(05:33):
Essex was the son she never had, is the way I like to think of it.
And then Raleigh was the captain of her guard. So that's three very different perspectives.
And then the ladies, I had so many to choose from. I spent a year actually researching
them all and trying to choose which ones.
I couldn't really do. I would have liked to have done another six,
(05:54):
actually, but three I chose. And so I chose Penelope Rich, who I knew nothing
about, by the way, but she was so ahead of her time.
And her mother was Lettice, of course, who was the Queen's great nemesis and
married the Queen's best favourite
of all. And then that kind of led on to thinking about who would be next.
(06:18):
And then that leads us to the book we're talking about today,
which is another very underrated, I think, little understood or poorly understood
Elizabethan lady, who is the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham.
In fact, the only surviving daughter, which we'll come on to.
And what was it like being the daughter of the Queen's spy master?
(06:40):
How did that work? And then...
When I started looking at her adventures, I couldn't believe it.
But the strange thing was that most of the book, without many books about her
at all, actually, most of the mentions of her in books kind of forget about
her third marriage and her later life at all.
So half of my book really, it's almost divided into thirds, but I made sure
(07:02):
that I did a proper job on the later part of her life because she was still relatively young.
It was a very important part And I'm now working on the sixth and final book.
And it's a strange thing after being immersed in the Tudors for 12 years.
I'm actually starting to take an interest in the Stuarts now because I'm edging
(07:23):
into the reign of King James.
That's something I know very little about. I'm going to be one of the world's
experts on it in three years' time because I am going to write a Stuart trilogy.
That's amazing news wow you are absolutely prolific
i don't know how you do it tony that's incredible so yes
time yes you are full time i've
(07:45):
got the luxury of doing it full time and you know i'm so grateful to all the
people that have supported me bought my books and audio books and everything
like that absolutely because it does mean that i can actually not have to worry
about doing anything else yeah and i got a great system because what i do is
i research in the summer,
and then I write through the autumn and winter, and then I edit in the spring.
(08:09):
So I do that one book a year every year for the last 12 years.
And I've been full-time all of that time.
So I did try writing two books in one year, but as you will know,
it catches up with you if you have to edit two books at the same time. That's a nightmare.
And listen to an audio book, which is nine and a half hours long.
(08:29):
Yeah, goodness, that's a long time. So what What about Frances's family and
her early life? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yes. Well, there's a lot that's been written about her father, Frances Walsingham.
But the thing that I'd never really latched onto was how much Elizabeth the
Queen took advantage of him.
(08:49):
And as she did with everybody else, really, she made him meet the costs of his
own spy network, which bankrupted him.
And he was forever saying to her, excuse me, can I...
Have a bit of money to pay these people because they're giving you vital information
and there's going to be a Spanish Armada, blah, blah, blah.
And she'd say, yeah, yeah, no problem. Go and see William Cecil. He'll sort you out.
(09:11):
And then William Cecil would remember a subsequent engagement and not pay him.
So it was awful. And in fact, when Sir Francis Walsingham died, he was buried in St.
Paul's at midnight to avoid his creditors finding out.
That's how bad it was. So he died broke, basically, not through any fault of his own.
(09:32):
He was very astute, but because the queen owed him a fortune,
which they never got back either. You know, that's the sad thing.
And her mother was quite an interesting character because she was also ahead
of her time and believed that girls should be well-educated,
not just in how to run a household and how to be a good maid of honor for the
(09:53):
queen, But in multiple languages and the classics of the time,
and really far more insightful thing is about politics of court,
which most of those at court had to learn that the hard way, quite honestly.
Francis had the benefit of a better education than most men.
And I hadn't really latched onto that. Because if you look her up anywhere.
(10:17):
You'll find people are a bit dismissive about her, you know? I don't know why.
And I played with that idea and thought about what she might actually do with
that really quite good intelligence.
I also found a little snippet of information was that she had what these days
we would call a photographic memory.
So she could actually recall the whole of Philip Sidney's poems without having
(10:41):
to actually look them up or anything.
And I used that in the book because what a lovely thing to have.
I wish I had that. I know, how lucky.
I've got the opposite in that I recall some vital fact, but not where I read it.
And then I have to hunt through a mountain of books to think,
where on earth did I see that, you know, which is the opposite to a photographic memory, I think.
(11:05):
Wonderful. And so let's talk a little bit about when Frances actually first comes to court.
You've already said she's got this father that's prominent at court.
Do we know when she first makes her first kind of debut at court?
The relationship between Frances and the Queen Elizabeth is fascinating because
she actually quite dislikes her because of the way her father has been treated.
(11:26):
And the two people that her father confided in about this treatment were his
wife, of course, and his daughter. And so he was always...
Complaining really that yet again
he's gonna have to sell some land because the queen's gonna
come and visit on a progress and they really
can't afford a plague of locusts just now
(11:47):
so he'll have to sell more land and he'll have nothing to
show for it because he won't be any better off really you know
nothing's ever reimbursed and what would
have happened was that she would have decided fairly early
on that she did not want to be one of
the ladies in waiting just just spending all
of her time in the privy chamber laughing at the queen's jokes and flattering
(12:08):
her with banal platitudes you
know so she would she really would like a
career which was out of the question so there's a
a bit of a sort of tension right from the start she would have been introduced
to court when she came of age but her father was very aware of the issue so
he arranged her first marriage when she was 16 so if she hadn't have got married
(12:31):
she was over a barrel really if she said a no, which I think he would have respected,
then she would have become a maid of honour, wearing white and eventually become
a gentlewoman of the privy chamber.
And she could have become an old maid of the privy chamber, which means that
she died a maiden at the age of 60 or something.
And that's not the life that she wanted. She wanted to have children and a family
(12:54):
and a handsome husband that loved her, et cetera, et cetera.
So this marriage at 16, to her absolute.
Amazement was to one of the most eligible bachelors of court philip sydney who
was he was brilliant everything he turned his hand to because he was a poet
(13:15):
and a champion jouster and he won the loyalty of his men and.
He was so noble. He was almost the last of the classic knights, I think.
He expected to inherit the Earl of Leicester's fortune.
And then, of course, the Earl of Leicester had a son, which,
as far as Sidney was aware, then that meant he inherited nothing and had to become a self-made man.
(13:41):
He wasn't to know that the son was to tragically die, but the way it worked
out in terms of Philip Sidney's life is he went off to make his reputation in
the wars in the Netherlands.
And the twist from the point of view of the book is that Francis,
being Francis, decided that she would go there with him.
(14:03):
It wasn't unheard of, wives accompanying their husbands to battle,
because they would stay safe back at the base, you know what I mean?
But it was quite an adventure for a girl that had never really left the country, you know?
You know, she had actually been, when she was five, she was caught up in the
Huguenot battles in Paris, the massacre, where Philip Sidney was a guest of
(14:26):
the Walsinghams, by the way, so that she had actually known him since she was a child.
And he'd been a very young ambassador at the time.
It shows the sort of man he was, because to be an ambassador of 18 is ridiculous, really.
They're normally old men with grey beards. Yeah, that is very young,
isn't it? Yeah, but anyway, the idea of going really to quite a dangerous country.
(14:50):
I'm amazed that her father allowed it, quite honestly, because all he had to say was no.
The thing I've played around with is, did he love her?
Because in my previous book, Penelope, he was Penelope's lover,
not very secret lover either.
And he wrote Astrophil and Stella, which Penelope was Stella.
And if you've ever had a chance to look at it, it's all about how wonderful
(15:12):
Penelope is, thinly veiled. and how it's unrequited love because she gets married
off to somebody else and so he cannot marry her.
So he doesn't marry Frances grudgingly, but she's sorting through some papers
in her father's study one day and she finds a letter from Philip's father thanking
him for settling Philip's debts of £6,000.
(15:36):
Hang on a minute. So this is all set up, you know, really. But they all were,
weren't they? That's how it was. Exactly.
And what did the Queen think of this match, Tony?
Well, traditionally, she wanted people like Frances to be around her,
(15:57):
young, attractive women surrounding her and looking at her adoringly.
So the idea that they'd find a get-out clause and get off and marry at 16, she wasn't up for that.
She thought she'd get at least two years out of her, so she refused. Right.
The marriage on the grounds that Philip Sidney had yet to inherit and was not
really of any substance.
But also, Frances wasn't a noble anyway, so her father was really a self-made man.
(16:23):
Although he was a knight, he was not from nobility.
And it was Sir Francis Walsingham who basically had to put his own career on
the line and almost threaten the Queen, if you want me to carry on doing this,
then you're going to agree to this marriage, because it's what I've already agreed.
And that's how it worked. That's the politics of the court. It was a lot of
(16:47):
negotiation and give and take.
And really, she wasn't that bothered because she had 12 other ladies to look after her.
Exactly. And talk to us a little bit about what happens to Frances's first husband,
Philip Sidney. Wow, tragic.
It's tragic. And it's classic Philip Sidney, where the story goes that they
were going to ambush the enemy at a town called Zutphen.
(17:09):
And he was the commander of the cavalry, along with one Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex.
And then he noticed that his men were poorly equipped.
And the reason for that is that, as always, it's been his job to pay for their
equipment. It doesn't seem fair, does it?
You think the state would pay for their equipment, but they either stole it
(17:32):
off fallen enemies and fallen comrades, or they just did without armour, you know?
And they had arquebuses, so they had muskets, really.
We're moving on from when people were just fighting with swords to when they
were actually firing guns at each other and Philip Sidney decided to throw off
his armour in front of the men dramatically and say look, I'm going to go in.
(17:57):
The same as you, take the same risks as you, follow me and I'll make sure you're okay.
And sadly, when they were about to do the ambush, somehow word had leaked out
and the enemy had doubled its strength and was like, they were seriously outnumbered.
And Philip's horse was shot out from under him, but he was shot in the thigh,
(18:17):
which even these days is a very serious injury.
If he'd been wearing his army, it might've glanced off the bullet because they
weren't that powerful, these old muskets, it shattered his thigh.
And Francis is at his bedside and basically the doctor comes in and says,
we'll put a poultice of mud and herbs on it and pray.
(18:40):
You can pray if you want, that might help.
And of course, very quickly, he gets septicemia because there was not a proper
understanding of hygiene or contamination or infection and things like that.
Sadly for them, I was thinking about this. Even these days, if you have a shattered
thigh bone and it's in battlefield conditions and it's not dealt with very quickly,
(19:02):
that could be something that probably would cut your leg off.
He's delirious and he wakes up and he says to Francis, please don't let them cut off my leg.
The idea, even now, but in those days, to be an invalid was worse.
He'd rather die, I think, and sadly he does, without even knowing that she's
(19:24):
carrying his second child.
Because they did have that, their first child is Elizabeth, and that's really where the book starts.
So you mentioned Robert Devereux there. So let's talk about Frances's second match that she makes.
How does that come about? And what is Elizabeth's response?
What an unlikely match that was. I think I've mentioned that Robert Devereux
(19:45):
was the second of the three Queen's favourites that I wrote about a couple of years ago.
So I knew I'd really been over this ground.
And I'd concluded these days, we would say that he completely lacked what we
we would call emotional intelligence, in that he was very bad at reading situations
of people and thinking through all of that. He would act quite impetuously.
(20:07):
And my theory is, he never actually says this to Francis, but I think that he
agreed Philip's death, but he was there, of course, in Netherlands.
And he agreed to see that Francis married well and that little Elizabeth was
properly cared for and also married well.
And then later on, he just had a string.
(20:30):
If you list all the ladies of court, you can cross out a couple of the older
ones, but most of the rest had had some kind of liaison with Robert Devereaux.
And I think he was intrigued by her because.
She was so different from the normal maids of honor that he was used to with
her several languages and her obvious intelligence and her insight and her political
(20:53):
skill and all these things.
So what a surprise that he asked her to marry him. The historians are divided.
Some think that it was just before her father died and that her father was furious
about the whole thing and thought it was most unsatisfactory.
Others think it was while she was still in a complete crisis of,
(21:15):
her own future after the loss of her father, who she was very close to.
It was a marriage that was never going to work out with a happy ending, I think.
I don't think he'd have. And even she promptly got pregnant with him.
And even when she was in her confinement, he was enjoying himself with several
different ladies at the same time, but not very discreetly being Robert Devereaux.
(21:40):
So that was very sad for her, I think.
And she She tried her best to be a good wife, and she never loved him, I'm sure of that.
But she tried her very best to make the marriage work to the extreme of actually
trying to understand his ill-fated rebellion, being actually at Essex House
with Penelope when it was all kicking off.
(22:01):
I think that she should have been more assertive with him because she should
have been strong for him where he was weak, and she could have changed his life.
So just touch on that rebellion a little bit, Tony, in case our listeners aren't sure which rebellion.
What happened was, you'll have to read the book is what they say, isn't it?
But no, the short version is that he was an expert at obsessing the Cecils.
(22:25):
And William Cecil was the Queen's treasurer and Robert Cecil was being groomed
as his successor and was really the hand at the tiller for the Queen as William Cecil got older.
William Cecil, by the way, goes right back to Catherine Willoughby and that
he wanted to marry Catherine Willoughby and they were extremely close.
(22:47):
And in Lamentation of a Sinner by Catherine Parr, the dedication page mentions them both.
But Robert Devereaux constantly
found ways to upset William Cecil deliberately
I think and then William Cecil decided he should be got rid of and there were
a thousand ways that he could get rid of him now but it was a bit like a certain
(23:11):
well-known former president of America is that even if you've got an infinite number of.
Things that you could accuse them of they they
are quite slippery customers and they always find ways
and his way was to go to the queen and either apologize
or whatever and it ended in
tears because he decided he would get rid
(23:32):
of the queen's evil advisors by force
and he got his welshman up from wales and there
were lots of soldiers unemployed kicking around in
the streets and he had he thought
the the people of london on his side when he
actually marched on the palace he didn't want to
kill the queen by the way that's a misconception that people
(23:54):
have got he wanted to save her from her self-serving advisors
he really got arrested and his his men a lot of them met a traitor's fate which
is an awful way to die and he got thrown in the tower and basically made a full
confession and was executed.
(24:14):
So that left Frances then with a very uncertain future because she had no money.
All her lands and properties would have been her husband's and then those would
have all because he was at a testation where they basically seized all of their
(24:35):
lands and everything for the crown.
So everything was at the queen's discretion then
including essex house in the strand even the
walsingham house which which francis had
inherited from her father and barn elms which
she'd inherited from her mother so she had lots of properties and
but it all looked very bad and she could end up
(24:57):
destitute and that's where penelope steps
in because penelope had married a millionaire you see
robert rich and then being very clever
in making sure that she's she had
lots of money from which she siphoned off into various secret bank
accounts and stuff that she was able to help francis tide over but it didn't
(25:18):
look great and a lot of people end the story there i say a lot of people if
you if like i say if you look up her story it doesn't really seem to go on much
from there generally but there's a whole nother third of a book after that.
I know because I had a little pile of books at the side of me and I was only
two thirds of the way through my book and they were all coming to an end.
(25:41):
So I could see some of them had given one page to the rest of her life,
which was quite interesting.
So tell us a little bit about what life's like then for Frances after Robert's
execution and about that final part of her life that not many people talk about.
Penelope's husband, Charles Blount, gets Robert Devereaux's job fighting the
(26:03):
rebels in Ireland and does a tremendous job of it.
Whereas Robert Devereaux left in disgrace, he caught the flux,
which is a battlefield form of dysentery and from drinking contaminated water.
So out of fairness to him, he was in no state to lead a battle against rebels
defending their own country.
They call them rebels, by the way. They were people defending their own country.
(26:26):
So they wouldn't see themselves really as quite that.
And Charles Blount came back to Essex House when he could, and he brought with
him the captain of his cavalry, a chap called Richard Burke,
and Francis is introduced to him and finds him rather charming. They're very similar.
(26:46):
He's five years younger than her, actually, and so this is another interesting
dynamic in that they couldn't be more different.
But he also couldn't be more different from Robert Devereux or even Philip Sidney.
He's got some of the qualities of Philip Sidney. He's very loyal,
very decent in terms of his values.
(27:08):
And she rather likes him. But then in a massive turn of events like happens
in Elizabethan Court, we think it was Robert Cecil.
He always had a thing for Frances, by the way, and he might have liked to marry
her, but she wasn't up for that for various reasons.
And I think it was a thing of timing. She didn't dislike him particularly,
(27:32):
but she'd been aware that he was working against her father with his own spy
network for much of the time. and the queen was very clever because she used to compare notes.
So she would get the Cecil spy network to find out what was happening in Spain
and then she would get Sir Francis Walsingham to let her know and she could
pair the two and see if they were consistent.
(27:53):
It's quite clever, isn't it? Very clever. Some people underestimate Elizabeth,
I think, because that was her own doing.
But what happens is that she decides that it wasn't really Francis' fault,
the Essex Rebellion, and that she should be allowed to keep Essex House,
Walsingham House, Barnhouse,
and as a sort of sweetener to be given an estate in Kent, which somebody had
(28:19):
died in testate or something, and it had gone to the Crown, and it was in Kent,
so Elizabeth couldn't be bothered to even visit it, you know.
And this Richard Burke, his army service is over,
really, so he's kind of a bit of a loose end so
he agrees to escort francis and her children to this place in kent to see what
(28:42):
it's like and whether it's someone she'd like to spend the rest of her days
and in the course of that it slowly
emerges that he's not only one of the wealthiest men in northern ireland.
He's actually an earl, the Earl of Clannery-le-Card.
He keeps all these close to his chest and reveals things.
But he's also the worst possible thing that a man could be, which is a Catholic.
(29:07):
This is from Francis's point of view, before I offend all the Catholics.
And her Protestant faith has been tested so often with all of the things in
her life. She decides that if it means becoming a Catholic, to be allowed to
marry this handsome young Irishman, then so be it. How bad can it be?
(29:28):
And she quite enjoys the whole process of converting to Catholicism,
and a whole new world is opened up to her.
She completely re-evaluates everything that she's held dear because her father
was a staunch Protestant and her mother as well.
So what a thing to do. That shows an insight into her character, doesn't it?
(29:50):
It's like people that suddenly convert to Islam that have been staunch Christians all their lives.
And what they find is that there is a whole other dimension to everything which
they'd previously been unaware of. When they get to the estate in Kent,
they find it's hundreds of acres of prime real estate.
And there's a dilapidated old mansion on the top of a hill.
(30:13):
There's a painting by Turner, which I found, which is of the house that they
built there, because they raised that to the ground. And using her husband Richard's
money, they actually rebuilt one of the finest houses in Kent,
which becomes Summerhill.
And everything looks, and that should be the end of the book.
And they all lived happily ever after, except the queen died,
(30:34):
which they kind of knew was going to happen.
But they thought, well, you know, we're happy here in Kent.
And you might remember that Frances got a daughter called Elizabeth,
and she lives with her husband at Beaver Castle. And King James,
on his way down to take the throne, stays at Beaver Castle because there's plague in London.
(30:54):
So he's in no hurry for the coronation. That can wait till the worst of the
plague is over, which is taking nearly a third of the population.
And through that, of course, there's privileged connection with the new king.
So they decide to introduce themselves to him. And he promptly appoints Francis'
(31:15):
husband, Richard Burke, as his right-hand man in Ireland.
So makes him kind of like on the Irish version of the Privy Council,
the advisor to the king, which gives him a power which is off the scale in terms of power and influence.
And when Francis realizes that this means he's going to be away indefinitely,
(31:37):
he won't just be away for a year.
He could be away for 10 years, you know, however long, how long does it take
to sort Ireland out, you know?
And he decides the only thing to do is to go to Ireland with him,
with our entire family and try and make a go of a life.
In Ireland for as long as he's got this post as governor of the region.
They end up in Athlone Castle.
(31:59):
I don't know if you've been to
anywhere like that? No, I haven't been to Ireland yet. That's on my list.
Yeah, well, it's easy for me because I can actually see it through binoculars
from the top of the Buscelli Hills on a clear day. I hasten to it.
I can see the Wicklow Mountains, just the tip of them on the horizon.
So I went across the Wicklow Mountains and spied across
to see if i could see pembrokeshire but i couldn't sadly but anyway
(32:21):
i have explored these areas so beautiful countryside and
uh athlone castle is pretty grim and bleak but
they decide to um set up home in his
country estates and francis being francis learns to speak some of the irish
language and becomes very integrated with it all so i thought that in itself
(32:43):
is a a fascinating sort of postscript to such an amazing life you know extraordinary what a story,
it's i really enjoyed researching it
but and i think i hope that comes through in the in the book because i think
you can tell when somebody's had a great time researching it there's not at
all any moment where i had to think how can i find another thousand words for
(33:08):
this chapter it was It was more a case of what on earth am I going to leave in?
So I wrote it. One of my great heroes is Hilary Mantel.
And although I wouldn't pretend to be anything like as good as her,
I took her cue from Wolf Hall where it's written in present tense.
(33:28):
And I've kind of got used to that style now. So readers don't seem to even notice it.
I really like that. I find it really immersive, actually. Yeah.
Yes, it's a bit of a skill, because if you're writing in past tense,
then it's just a little bit more pedestrian.
To write in present tense, you have to put yourself in the skin of the person,
(33:51):
which is why Henry did it, of course.
And, you know, when Cromwell's father kicks him while he's lying down.
How does that feel, you know?
How does it feel to be kicked in the head by your own father?
Is that the first page or something? I think it's the opening line, isn't it?
So luckily francis
never gets kicked in the head but she does go through
(34:13):
she does have a child a year pretty much and i
was almost running out of different ways to describe
the process without it becoming repetitive she sadly
she suffered some awful miscarriages and i
had to research that but to not include
it would not do justice to
her the sort of strength of character that she
(34:35):
had but also the the burden that she
then carried you know and what i did
my wife is my beta reader so she
actually kindly is the very first one to
go through all of this and tell me if i if from a woman's point of view whether
i've got it right or wrong because we've got two children she's been through
that twice and whether i've overdone it or underplayed it or whatever you know
(34:59):
so that was quite interesting amazing i can i can see why you were so fascinated
by her she sounds like an incredible woman.
And it's lovely that you've shed some light on her because really,
I hadn't heard very much about it, to be honest.
No, no, that was part of the fun is to find these really quite powerful and
influential women who have almost been dismissed until now.
(35:22):
And then, you know, like Penelope to help people.
I've had feedback from readers saying that they'd never heard of Penelope and
that now they feel they really understand her, you know, which is.
That's the best that you can hope for really isn't it absolutely so
tony do you think you're going to miss the tudors when you move into the
stewart realm well i i was at
(35:43):
a dilemma i'll be quite honest with you i was a bit of a what
do you do when you've done the chip i don't say done them
to death but you've done the tudors for over a decade and
that's what you're known for is the tudors and where on
earth do you go from there and i started researching another
person from history who i might still write about so
(36:03):
i i shan't say who but she was the wife of a famous english
artist who had a fascinating life and
because i've kind of my best-selling books are all
the ones about the ladies it is interesting isn't
it how that works is that the ladies out sell the men
two to one no question of it sometimes and
(36:23):
i didn't think that's how it would be but that's how
it is and so i'm actually going
to write about three stewart ladies and that's
going to be a trilogy my old trick i never wrote from henry
date's point of view i always wrote other people's perceptions
of henry the eighth and same with queen elizabeth and
i'm going to do the same with king james is that we're
(36:44):
going to see king james through the eyes of some
of the people around him and we have to make draw around.
Conclusions then about where they write and they misunderstood
him that's what i enjoy playing with i mean
my my first degree was in psychology and
i think some of that still that was a long
time ago but some of that still comes through in my writing and the psychology
(37:07):
of relationships it fascinates me and then when you add to that the layer of
history and authentic data and what i love to do is to look for those little tiny
details that make all the difference,
you know, and then think through how people might have felt about,
(37:27):
the consequences of things. Oh, wonderful. Well, I imagine that all your readers
are so excited that you're continuing your writing journey.
And so if people want to find out more about you, Tony, and your books,
because you do have many, where's the best place for them to go?
Oh, it's really easy because my website is TonyRiches.com. Fabulous.
And I'd like to say, if you go into Amazon and just type Tony Riches or into
(37:54):
Google now, Now, there is a new author called Anthony Riches who writes about
Romans. He's my evil twin.
And we've agreed that he'll never write about Tudors and I'll never write about the Romans.
But my sister once congratulated me about a big display of my books in Waterstones.
And I thought, I haven't got a big display of books. And when I looked into
(38:15):
it, it was him. He had a big display of books in Waterstones.
And I got all the credit for it. Isn't that nice?
That is lovely. We do him again, because he is actually the treasurer of the
Historical Writers Association.
So people quite often just Google Tony Richardson, get me.
So I've also got a very popular blog, which is called The Writing Desk.
(38:39):
Yes, you do. And what I do is I do constant book reviews now,
because what I find is that why read a book?
I love it when people find the time to review my books.
And so you know i'm very selective about
what books i choose to read because of
my time and generally i've got something positive to
say about them so i do that and i also support
(39:01):
book launches for other authors which is a real win-win because it drives traffic
to my blog they benefit because it's shared on goodreads and everything so i
enjoy all of that it's like a more it's more than a hobby now it's become a
way of life but like yourself really you know if anybody called what you do
a a hobby, I think you'd get a little bit.
Oh, yeah. And it started that way, but no, it's definitely a full-time,
(39:24):
maybe two full-time jobs by now.
Nobody knew really what a blog was when I started my blog. So there we are.
Oh, fabulous. Well, I'll add the links to the show notes to make it really easy
for people to find you and your work.
And I have to thank you again, Tony, for being so generous with your time and
for coming onto the podcast and talking Tudors with us.
Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoy it. And I look forward
(39:45):
to coming back with the last of the Tudor books, the last of my Elizabethan series, who is another.
Intriguing woman who was not well-educated and had to teach herself how to read and write.
So that's quite interesting. What a difference from Frances.
Well, that sounds fascinating and I look forward to that. And thank you again,
(40:05):
Tony. Thank you very much for having me.
Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Talking Tudors.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I absolutely love to hear from listeners. So if you have any comments or suggestions
or just want to say hi, please get in touch with me via my website,
www.onthetudortrail.com, where you'll also find show notes for today's episode.
(40:28):
If you've enjoyed the show, please share the podcast with friends and family.
And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. view.
I also invite you to join our Talking Tudors podcast group on Facebook,
where you can interact with other Tudor history lovers and hear all the behind-the-scenes news.
You'll also find me on Twitter. My handle is onthetudortrail and on Instagram as themosthappy78.
(40:50):
It's time now for us to re-enter the modern world. As always,
I look forward to talking Tudors with you again very soon.
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