The glove or pocket beagle is a real breed and King Henry is known to have kept a pack of them for hunting.

Audrey’s mother is said to have been a laundress at Windsor Castle. I didn’t want to include an information dump in the novel, but for those who are interested in what the life of a laundress was like, what follows is a description of how you’d get your linens clean in the sixteenth century. The process would start on a Saturday by soaking the laundry in a thick green mixture of water and summer sheep’s dung. This took three days. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, each item had to be dipped repeatedly in the river. After the last rinsing, it was beaten out and left to soak until Thursday morning, when it was finally allowed to dry. On Friday the laundress put everything into a buck tub. This sat up on a stool with an underbuck beneath it for the lye to drain into. A laundress would spread a buck sheet over the linen and then spread a thin paste of dog’s mercury, mallow, and wormwood over the sheet. Finally, she’d pour strong, boiling lye over the whole thing, cover it up, and leave it to stand overnight. In the morning, she’d take the linens out and spread them on the grass and water them all morning. This business with the buck sheet and the lye and the watering would be repeated twice more before the laundry was dropped into a vat of lye and urine and soaked to bleach it. Then, on Monday morning, each piece would be laid out and watered. This process was repeated daily until the laundry was considered to be white enough. Sometimes that required another week or more.

As for Princess Elizabeth’s incarceration in the Tower of London, my account contradicts some popular beliefs about her stay there. I’ve relied for details on the information in David Starkey’s 2001 biography, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, which points out several factual errors in earlier accounts.












WHO WAS WHO AT THE ENGLISH COURT

1532–56



ANTHONY DENNY

Anthony Denny was one of King Henry VIII’s most trusted servants throughout the period of this novel. He was a yeoman of the wardrobe by 1536, as well as a groom of the privy chamber. In 1539 he became chief gentleman of the privy chamber and deputy groom of the stool. He was knighted in 1544. In October 1546 he was named groom of the stool and was also keeper of the “dry stamp” with the king’s signature. In other words, he could authorize documents in the king’s name. This made him a very powerful figure at court, despite the fact that he was not a nobleman. His wife was a lady-in-waiting to all six of Henry VIII’s queens. He died in 1549.

JOANNA DINGLEY

Nothing is known about Joanna Dingley or Dyngley other than that she was said to have been a royal laundress. Her natural or “base” daughter, Audrey Malte, was raised as the child of John Malte, Henry VIII’s tailor, but was later said to have been the king’s child. Joanna was married to a Mr. Dobson by the time Malte made his will on September 10, 1546. It refers to her as “Joane Dingley, now wife of one Dobson” and as “Joane Dyngley, otherwise Joane Dobson.” He left her twenty pounds. Joanna does not seem to have played any part in her daughter’s life and the identity of Mr. Dobson remains elusive.

EDWARD VI

Not yet ten years old when he became king, he was a devout follower of the New Religion and favored his Protestant half sister Elizabeth over his Catholic half sister Mary. Modern scholars seem to agree that it was Edward’s own idea to pass over both Elizabeth and Mary in favor of making his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, his heir. He died in 1553.

PRINCESS ELIZABETH

Elizabeth was at Ashridge in August 1543 with her half siblings, father, and new stepmother. She went with the royal progress to Ampthill but was abruptly sent back to Ashridge. The supposition is that she asked the wrong question, probably about her mother. Speaking the name Anne Boleyn in the presence of King Henry was not permitted. In 1554, when she was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London, one of her attendants was John Harington’s wife, Audrey. Elizabeth did consider fleeing to France in 1556–57, but decided against it, remaining in England until she succeeded Queen Mary, peacefully, in 1558. She reigned until her death in 1603.

HESTER HARINGTON

Hester was the only child of Audrey Malte and John Harington. The date of her birth is uncertain, but could have been no earlier than 1548. At one time there was a portrait of her, described as showing a child holding a book. She was still living in 1568 but after that disappears from history.

JOHN HARINGTON

A gentleman of the Chapel Royal early in his career at court, Harington later entered the service of Sir Thomas Seymour, most often serving as a messenger. He helped arrange for Lady Jane Grey to join the household at Seymour Place. When Seymour was arrested for treason, Harington spent more than eleven months as a prisoner in the Tower of London. He was there once again in 1554, suspected of conspiring with the Duke of Suffolk during the uprising known as Wyatt’s Rebellion. It is not known how he met Audrey Malte, but they were married by 1548 and through her he became a considerable landowner. They had one child. By 1549, he is believed to have fallen in love with Isabella Markham, one of Princess Elizabeth’s ladies, to whom he wrote poetry. She later became his second wife. Harington died in 1582.

HENRY VIII

King of England, known for having six wives and numerous mistresses. In fact, the only two women who were certainly his mistresses were Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn. Did he have a child with a laundress? We’ll never know for certain. He died in 1547 and was succeeded by Edward VI.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY

Known as the poet earl, Surrey was a loose cannon. He did go rioting through the streets with his friends. He did suggest, in public, that his sister would do better to become the king’s mistress than Sir Thomas Seymour’s wife. Was he guilty of treason? Probably not, but there was just enough doubt about his intentions to send him to his death in 1547.

MARY HOWARD, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND

Mary Howard was the daughter of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. She was a maid of honor to her cousin Anne Boleyn, and was married to King Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, at Hampton Court on November 26, 1533. They never consummated the marriage. Following her husband’s death in 1536, Mary lived primarily at Kenninghall when she was not at court. She was at the center of a literary circle that included her brother, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Lady Margaret Douglas. She was a lady-in-waiting to Catherine Howard but was sent back to Kenninghall in November 1541 when the queen’s household was disbanded. There was talk of a marriage with Thomas Seymour, Queen Jane’s brother, as early as 1538 and the idea was broached again in 1546, but Surrey was violently opposed and Mary does not seem to have liked the plan much herself. In December 1546, when Mary’s father and brother were arrested on charges of treason, she was forced to give evidence against them but managed to say very little of use. After Surrey was executed, Mary was given charge of his daughters. She established a household at Reigate and employed John Foxe to educate them. Unlike most of the rest of the Howards, Mary adopted the New Religion, which meant she fell out of favor when Queen Mary came to the throne. She remained close to her father and when he died in 1554 he left her five hundred pounds. Mary died in 1557.

ANNE MALTE (MAIDEN NAME UNKNOWN)

Anne Malte was the second wife of John Malte, the king’s tailor. On October 16, 1548, Anne Malte purchased the manor of Hickmans in the Hamlet of Haggerston and about one hundred acres in the northeast part of the parish of Shoreditch. Anne left this property to her daughter Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s husband, Thomas Hilton, who were also named executors of her 1549 will.

AUDREY MALTE

Audrey Malte, also called Ethelreda and Esther in various documents, was officially the illegitimate daughter of John Malte, Henry VIII’s tailor, by Joanna Dingley or Dyngley. The late-sixteenth-century book Nugae Antiquae, written by John Harington’s son by his second wife, is the earliest source for the claim that she was the natural daughter of the king and this may be a complete fiction. What seems to support it is the fact that the king gave a large grant of land jointly to John Malte and Ethelreda Malte. This document is very specific in identifying Ethelreda as Malte’s bastard daughter. John Malte’s will, dated September 10, 1546, and proved June 7, 1547, is also clear on this point, leaving a generous bequest to “Awdrey Malte, my bastard daughter, begotten on the body of Joane Dingley, now wife of one Dobson.” She was to inherit most of his property in Berkshire, Hertfordshire, and Somerset. One wonders why both documents were so careful to point out both her illegitimacy and the fact that she was Malte’s child. How old she was at the time Malte died is unclear, but there were already negotiations under way for her betrothal to an illegitimate son of Sir Richard Southwell. At some point between September 10, 1546, and November 11, 1547, however, she married John Harington of Stepney instead. There is no indication of when or where they first met. They had one child, a daughter they named Hester. In 1554, Audrey was one of Elizabeth Tudor’s attendants during the princess’s incarceration in the Tower of London. She was still living in early 1556 but had died by 1559.