THE SINKING of the Mary Rose as it sailed into battle on 19 July 1545 has attracted many different explanations. It seems certain that the gun ports on the starboard side were not closed when a sudden gust of wind, common in the Solent, caught the sails and caused the turning ship to heel over, allowing water to flood in through them. The ship may also have been seriously overloaded with cannon and soldiers, and top-heavy with men in the high castles. It is also possible she was hit a glancing blow by gunfire from the French galleys and may have been taking in water. Whatever the cause, or combination of causes, the Mary Rose sank in minutes, with the vast majority of those aboard trapped under the anti-boarding netting. Their screams were audible from the shore. Around thirty-five people survived out of, it is now estimated, 500.
Henry had dined the previous day on his flagship, the Great Harry, and left the ship suddenly when the French fleet was sighted off the eastern end of the Isle of Wight. I have invented his plan to visit the Mary Rose afterwards. It is not known where Henry stayed during his 1545 visit to Portsmouth, but the most likely candidates are Portchester Castle and the royal tents erected on Southsea Common. It is also not known where Catherine Parr was in the summer of 1545, but one piece of evidence leads me to think she travelled to Portsmouth with the King. In his dispatch reporting the battle of the Solent, Charles V’s ambassador Francis Van der Delft refers to being shown the ships by the Queen’s chancellor. Given the structure of the royal household, the only reason her chancellor would have been at Portsmouth is surely if Catherine were there too.
I have invented the presence at Portsmouth of Richard Rich. The records show that he was not among the members of the Privy Council who accompanied Henry there. But his role in the financial organization of the invasion of France in 1544 is accurate, as are his loss of the post and the suspicion that he had been lining his pockets a little too heavily. However he remained on the Privy Council and his career was not affected.
Robert Warner was Queen Catherine Parr’s solicitor, and was used by her to defend a relative of one of the Queen’s servants accused of heresy in 1544.
IN 1526 Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon did go on a summer Progress which took them to Petworth. Henry was by then in correspondence with Anne Boleyn; it was also probably in 1526 that he decided to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. However, the intercepted letter is fictional. It is true, though, that the Pope did later suggest that Catherine of Aragon resolve the problems raised by Henry’s desire for a divorce by going into a nunnery, and that she refused because she believed God’s wish was for her to stay married to Henry. If she had agreed, paradoxically, Henry’s split from Rome would probably never have happened.
THE ABUSE of the Court of Wards as a source of revenue, at great financial (to say nothing of emotional) cost to many of the children involved, was yet another scheme for extracting money from the populace devised by Henry VIII. The abuse of the court continued under Elizabeth I and James I and reached epic proportions under Charles I. Curbing its exploitation of minors was a major demand of Parliament in the years before the Civil War, and its abolition is one of the forgotten achievements of the English Republic of 1649–60. Such was public feeling that even the corrupt regime of the restored Charles II dared not bring it back.
WHILE THE STORY of Emma Curteys is entirely imaginary, there are numerous accounts stretching back through history of women who impersonated men and fought as soldiers, sometimes for years. For example there were several hundred documented cases on both sides in the American Civil War, where often the women were known as fighters of particular courage.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS