The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
I have other visitors. My stepgrandmother and her children come to me whenever they are in London, and I often dine with them and stay overnight. My brother-in-law, Ned, writes with news of my nephews, and I will visit them at Hanworth in the summer. The youngest, Thomas, is a scholar like my sister Jane, a poet like his father. I send him books that are recommended by the preachers who visit me to study and talk of the new theology that is demanding that Elizabeth’s half-papist Church goes further with reform and purity. I buy the new books and go to hear sermons and keep myself informed of the twist and turn of the debate.
Aunt Bess, that fair-weather friend of our family, visits me when she is in London. She cannot bring herself to speak of the division in her household, but everyone knows that “my husband, the earl” has wasted his huge fortune in entertaining and securing the safety of his royal guest, and still she drains his coffers as Elizabeth neither sends the queen back to Scotland in honor nor dumps her on France in shame. Bess lives apart from her husband as much as possible but she could not save the fortune and that is perhaps her greatest grief.
She speaks fondly of her children and of her great house-building projects. She hopes to rescue her fortune from the earl’s debts and keep enough money of her own to build a great new house beside her great old house Hardwick Hall, and found a dynasty. Her earl may have failed her; but her ambition will never fail. God Himself only knows who she will choose as a husband for her poor daughter.
“What d’you think of Charles Stuart for my Elizabeth?” she asks. “He is kinsman to the queen herself and brother to the late King of Scotland.”
I look at her, completely aghast. “You think you would get Elizabeth’s permission for such a marriage?”
She makes a little puffing sound, as if she were blowing out a candle and, for some reason, it makes me freeze. “Oh, no, so maybe nothing,” she says. “But tell me, how much do you pay your chief steward here? Are London men not terribly expensive?”
I let her move the conversation away and I let myself forget that she spoke of it. My aunt Bess was well represented when she had a rampant lion as her crest. Nobody knows where she and her family will end.
Before she leaves I show her all around my little house, from the servants’ bedrooms in the attics to my bedroom and privy chamber below. She admires my library of books, she prods my great four-poster bed. “Everything very good,” she speaks to me as one woman who has come up from nothing to another who lost everything and has won it back.
I show her my hall and my silverware in the cupboard. Twenty people can dine off silver at my table, and a hundred people can be seated below us in the hall. Sometimes I give grand dinners, I invite whomever I choose. Mr. Nozzle watches us quietly as we admire my treasures.
I take her through to the kitchens and show her the spit in the fireplace and the charcoal burning tray for the sauces, the bread ovens and behind them the storerooms, the flesh kitchen, the subtlety room, the dairy, the cellar, the brewhouse, and buttery.
“It is a proper house,” she says, as if she thought that a small person would need only a doll-sized house.
“It is,” I say. “It is my house, and I have been a long time coming to it.”
I have a stable behind the house, and I ride out when I please. I go as far and for as long as I like. Nobody will ever tell me again that I may walk only to the gate or only see the sky through a small square of glass. I think of my sister Katherine and her sweetness and her silliness, her faithful constant love for her husband and her courageous defense of him and her sons. I think of my husband, Thomas Keyes, and how they kept him, trapped like the bear at Bradgate, a huge beautiful beast cramped by the cruelty of his keepers. I think of Jane and her determination to speak for God when she could so easily have kept quiet for life, and I think that she chose her destiny, and I have chosen mine.
I am glad I did not choose a martyr’s death like Jane, and I am glad that I did not break my heart like Katherine. I am glad that I loved Thomas and that I know that I love him still. I am glad that Elizabeth did not destroy me, that I defied her and never regretted it, and that my little life, as a little person, has been a life of greatness to me.
I smooth down my black gown. I always wear black as an honorable rich widow. I remember people telling me that Mary Queen of Scots wore black, embroidered with silver and gold thread, for her wedding gown and I think—that is how it is to be a stylish widow! That is how it is to be a queen. Underneath my black brocade I wear a petticoat of scarlet, as she did, that shows in glorious flashes of color as I walk around my good house, or when I step outside in the street. Red is the color of defiance, red is the color of life, red is the color of love, and so it is my color. I shall wear my black embroidered gown and my red petticoat till the day that I die—and whenever that is, if that poor loveless thing Elizabeth is still on the throne, then I know at least that she will give me a magnificent funeral, fit for the last Tudor princess.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is called The Last Tudor and it may be the last novel about a Tudor woman that I write. I am starting a new series of novels and I do not know when I will return to this wonderful era that has been of such intense interest for me for so many years.
I started my work in the Tudor period with the story of an almost unknown woman, Mary Boleyn, sister to the more famous Anne, and the title posed the question as to which was the most important Boleyn and which was the other—The Other Boleyn Girl. This inspired an interrogation of their history, and indeed the history of women, the relatively unknown beside the celebrated and controversial.
This new novel also has a famous sister, one of the most famous Tudor women, Lady Jane Grey—condemned for her father’s persistent and unsuccessful treason against Mary I—who chose to die rather than recant her faith. Her sisters are hardly mentioned in the general histories of the period but they were unlucky, in that their elder sister defied the religion of the Catholic Tudor, without earning them the favor of her Protestant heir. Katherine Grey’s story is an account of a woman inside the Tudor family but outside Tudor favor. Her younger sister, Mary Grey, is almost unknown but I think she is of great interest—a Little Person, said to be under four feet high, she does not even appear in the specialist histories of little people. She was a woman of persistent courage, showing a powerful instinct to survive where her sisters did not; and while this novel narrates her life as a fiction, her marriage and the dates and places of her confinement are historically accurate, as is her survival and her defiant red petticoat!
The names given to reformers of religion vary throughout this period, and carry very different meanings now, so I have referred to them all with the later catch-all name of Protestants and Reformers, for the ease of the general reader—I hope theologians will forgive me. Quotations from original letters and poems are shown in italics.
The other element in this book that reminds me of The Other Boleyn Girl is the theme of sisters. I seem to have written about sisters in many of my books—the bond is a significant one for women who are born with few natural allies in a hard world, and it is a powerful concept for a feminist: we should all be sisters. So this is the book I dedicate to my own sister, with love.
A Touchstone Reading Group Guide
The Last Tudor
Philippa Gregory
This reading group guide for The Last Tudor includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Philippa Gregory. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Bestselling author Philippa Gregory tells the captivating story of Lady Jane Grey, who held the throne of England for nine days, and her lesser-known but equally fascinating sisters—the beautiful and romantic Katherine and Mary, small in stature but not in spirit—all of whom de
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. What role do faith and religion play during the time period represented in The Last Tudor? What is the relationship between religion and politics, and how does this relationship affect the cultural climate of England? Is the country mostly united in their faith or divided? What impact does this have on the royals of England?
2. What is “the true religion” according to Lady Jane Grey? Why does Jane believe that she and her family do not need to earn their place in heaven as others do? Does her faith ultimately serve her well? Discuss.
3. Consider the title of the book. Who are the members of the Tudor family? Which character or characters does the title of the book refer to?
4. Evaluate the roles and the treatment of women as represented in the novel. How are marriage and childbirth depicted? Is the education of women perceived as positive or negative? Would you say that the women of the novel are depicted as powerful or helpless? Do they garner much loyalty from the men in their lives? Discuss.
5. Katherine believes that “if you are a Tudor you don’t really have parents.” What does she mean? What does her statement reveal about family dynamics and the relationship between parent and child during this time?
6. Why does Elizabeth punish Katherine and Mary for their marriages? Why does she refuse to show the same mercy for the Grey sisters that she shows for some others? Do you believe that her actions are justified or were you surprised by her lack of mercy to her relatives?
7. What does Mary Grey believe is Elizabeth’s greatest fear? What does Mary say that she has come to believe is the greatest sin and what does this reveal about Elizabeth? Do you agree that this “sin” is Elizabeth’s greatest flaw? How does this same “sin” or characteristic affect the others in the novel?
8. How does each Grey sister respond to her incarceration? What is the outcome for each? What does Mary wear at the conclusion of the novel and what does she believe this clothing represents? Is her choice to do this surprising? Why or why not?
9. What advice does Jane leave for her sisters after she receives the news of her impending execution? Do Katherine and Mary follow her advice? How does each interpret their sister’s final words?
10. Consider the theme of loyalty. Which of the characters is loyal and to whom? What seems to be at the root of their allegiance? Conversely, who betrays another person and why? Does the novel ultimately suggest to what or whom one should be most loyal? Explain.
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Choose one of the major characters and compare Gregory’s treatment to the historical accounts. Discuss what stands out in common among the texts and, alternatively, consider what the fictionalized account of this character may be able to reveal that historical accounts cannot or do not.
2. Consider The Last Tudor alongside film or television adaptations about the Tudors, such as the 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl and the Showtime miniseries The Tudors. What common themes emerge and how do the representations compare?
3. Visit Philippa Gregory’s website at www.philippagregory.com to learn more about the author and her works including the other novels in her Plantagenet and Tudor Court series.
A Conversation with Philippa Gregory
Tell us about the origins of The Last Tudor. There are many stories about Lady Jane Grey, but why were you interested in telling the story of all three Grey sisters particularly?
I am always interested when I discover a woman who played an important role in history but whose story has been mostly ignored, or even forgotten. Jane’s story led me to her less famous sisters—which is a familiar route for me—and then I was fascinated by the two young women themselves. Katherine Grey was a major player at court, but, because she was successfully excluded from the succession by Elizabeth, imprisoned, and isolated, we have lost her from the historical record. Mary Grey is almost totally ignored.
Why did you choose to tell the story with three different narrators? Was there one voice that was easier for you to channel as you wrote?
I wanted to tell each sister’s life in her own voice, as they were separated so early, that no single narrator could have described the three lives. I find first-person present-tense narration very stimulating and effective in historical fiction, and I was relieved to find that moving from one character to another was quite smooth—as they were each so striking, and each had her own voice. The most difficult transition was from the famous Jane to the less known Katherine, and I was helped by Jane’s genuine letter to her sister which starts the Katherine section (in Jane’s voice) and then we realize that Katherine is reading the letter and responding to it. It’s a very powerful contrast for me between the famous letter and Katherine’s sense of outrage that it is so impersonal. In that one scene, I really felt the difference between the two sisters and a sense of their relationship.
Would you say that you felt more sympathetic to one of the Grey sisters than the others? If so, why? Is there one sister that you can relate to more than the others?
One of the experiences of writing in first person is that as the narrator’s point of view shifts, my interest and preference shifts too. I first felt this most strongly when, having written The White Queen from the point of view of Elizabeth Woodville, then I wrote The Red Queen from the point of view of her rival and enemy. I could not have completed the novel if I had not changed sides! In The Last Tudor, I felt the sisters succeed each other in my imagination, and I really welcomed each one as she “came” to me.
What did you think of Katherine’s and Mary’s decisions to marry their loves without the queen’s permission even after the tragic fate of their sister Jane?
As I make clear in the novel, they were legally free to marry without the queen’s permission, but they were definitely taking a risk. I don’t think Elizabeth would have ever given them permission to marry, so they had little choice but to defy her once they were committed to their husbands. Elizabeth’s cruelty to them is exceptional and borders on the irrational. I don’t think Katherine and Mary would have predicted that Elizabeth would have reacted to such an extreme. Their kinswoman Margaret Douglas did far worse and suffered far less.
Who are some of the novelists that you find most inspiring or compelling today and why?
I tend to read the classics of English literature for pleasure, so I love Henry James, Jane Austen, George Eliot, E. M. Forster.
How does the story of the Grey sisters correspond to your previous works? Are they much like the main characters of your other works? If so, what unites them?
They should be like other characters of their time period, if I have done a good job of capturing the mind-set of the Tudor woman. I think that Mary’s blunt realism and humor is rather like me, and that comes out in other novels. I think Katherine in her prettiness and silliness is rather like my portrait of Katherine Howard, and Jane’s mixture of piety and childish pomposity is rather like Margaret Beaufort—another spiritual girl who sought religion to compensate for the lack of a family life. But the main inspiration for them is the record of their lives and my drawing their characters from that.
Do you have a favorite television show, miniseries, or film adaption of the story of the Tudors? Why do you think that they are such a compelling family?
I think that people love the production that introduced them to the Tudors, so my favorite film is Anne of the Thousand Days which I completely loved when I first saw it as a teenager. Of course, the Tudors are great material for novels and dramas because their personal life is lived so very large, and as tyrants, their feelings are so important to everyone.
What books would you say had a strong influence on you when you were a child?
I am very glad that I was given the run of a public library at a very early age so I was reading a lot very young. I loved The Jungle Book and The Just So Stories, all E. Nesbit’s children’s novels, The Secret Garden, Peter Pan, all the Heidi books, The Wind in the Willows and all C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books.
How did The Last Tudor change the way you write? Was there anything that surprised you in the course of writing the book?
I was surprised how smoothly it went! The transition from one character to another went very well; the history around Jane is very full, so it was possible to do an almost day-by-day description of her usurpation of the throne. There is less on Katherine but she was a very inspiring character, and Mary was a joy to imagine. The challenge of the book was to find a way to end it which was satisfying and not hopelessly sad: since it is the story of two girls who die in captivity because of the cruelty of their times. There’s no way that there could be a happy ending, but by closing it with Mary’s freedom and pride in herself I was able to end it like a novel with a shape to it, and not like a history you expect to end in the death of the subject. It seems to me that one of the points of writing a novel rather than a history is that you can make artistic decisions about the meaning and route of the story, rather than telling everything—which is the conventional history approach.