The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory is one of my 20 Books of Summer. It was first published in 2008. I had sworn that I wasn’t going to read any more books about Mary, Queen of Scots for quite a long time – if ever – or any more books by Philippa Gregory for that matter as I think she has some unusual theories on historical facts, but heigh-ho. It was the fact that this one features Bess of Hardwick which drew me in, she was surely one of the most fascinating women of the Tudor period.
The date is 1568 and Bess is on her fourth husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, she has worked her way up from nothing to the aristocracy, with her three previous husbands leaving everything to her, she’s a very wealthy woman, but obviously wanted status too.
Unfortunately Queen Elizabeth I is looking for a place to lodge Mary, Queen of Scots and she decides to use Bess and her husband as suitable jailors. Queen Mary has an enormous retinue which she refuses to whittle down and for her everything must be of the best. Queen Elizabeth is determined not to pay any money over to the Shrewsburys and the whole of the cost of keeping Mary and her many hangers-on and followers in the lap of luxury causes tension within the marriage. Bess sees her fortune diminish by the week and it looks like she’ll even lose her beloved Chatsworth to pay the debts, she has had to put the building of Chatsworth on hold over the years of Mary’s captivity but even worse than that, William Cecil, Elizabeth’s spymaster is trying to link Shrewsbury, and possibly even Bess, with Catholic plots to rescue Mary from captivity. They might end up being executed.
Bess realises that like many men her husband has been the target of one of Mary’s charm offensives, and the fool has completely fallen for Mary.
I enjoyed this one although I was somewhat puzzled when on page 9 Mary describes Elizabeth as ‘that red-haired bastard’. It’s unlikely that she would ever have done that considering that Mary had red hair too. However, according to Philippa Gregory she had lovely long black hair! That is just plain wrong and I can see no reason why Gregory would do that, particularly as their are numerous paintings of Mary and her red hair, and of course all the contemporary descriptions of Mary and her red or golden red hair.
This is the sort of thing which had put me off from reading more by this author, it seems she just likes to be different for the sake of it.
If you are interested you can click the link to my Hardwick Hall blogposts, it’s quite a few years since we visited, I hope we can go back there sometime in the future though as I loved it. Argh, that post was written in 2012.
Also if you are interested in Bess of Hardwick you might want to read the book by Mary S. Lovell
There are some more photos on that blogpost.
I agree that Bess is a fascinating person and so unfair to expect her to pay for Mary’s retinue!
Gorgeous pictures of Hardwick House and how nice that Mary Lovell commented. I have her book about Bess on my TBR and own the one about the Mitfords. My mother read another one called Devices and Desires, which she liked.
I boycott Gregory for her willful historical inaccuracies although I suppose I should be appreciative of her books making the Tudors interesting to many. I also hated her earliest books which were obsessed with incest. Authors who are careful with their research must despise her (and resent her success).
Constance,
I was really chuffed when Mary Lovell left a comment, I’m sure she emailed me too. I have her Mitford book too, I read it a few years ago, I must look out for Devices and Desires.
I’m definitely going to be eschewing Gregory in the future, although she recently popped up as a guest on a political programme here, I think it might have been Question Time – so you never know the minute! I have only read a few of her books, I suppose the incest thing was a deliberate ploy to get notice from a certain type of reader.