Q & A with Lauren Johnson

Welcome back to On the Tudor Trail Lauren! Please tell us about your new book, ‘So Great a Prince: England and the Accession of Henry VIII’.

What makes 1509 such a fascinating year?

There were two things that drew me to this point in History: firstly, it’s the year when Henry VIII took the throne, a teenage king in a continent full of middle aged rulers and a very different character from the Holbein-esque strong man we’re familiar with.

Secondly, the wider world of 1509 is technically ‘Tudor’ but is almost unrecognisably different from our own, and from many of our mental images of the ‘Tudor age’. This was still a fundamentally medieval age, with Catholic ritual dominating. Henry VIII’s reign was to bring cataclysmic change to England – politically, socially, and especially religiously. By the time he died in 1547 much of that ritual, even the rhythms of the year itself, had been destroyed.

So it’s taking a world and a man we think we know, and putting a very different spin on them both.

Tell us a little about the Henry and Katherine you came to know from your research.

Henry VIII’s image has changed a lot in the last few years – there has been a move away from seeing him as the bloated tyrant of his last decade towards focusing on the virile renaissance prince of his youth. However, in 1509 he hadn’t even developed into that confident young man (à la The Tudors). He was only 17 when he took the throne – astonishingly young – and he had been kept cloistered ‘like a girl’ during his youth. His story in So Great a Prince is really the story of his development from this gauche figure surrounded, and led, by older politicians towards a more self-assured, opinionated ruler.

Catherine was a much more experienced political player in 1509 and she was a very good foil for Henry – she’d acted as ambassador for her father, she’d enjoyed the highs of marriage to the heir to the throne and then the lows of her long, uncertain widowhood. She and Henry went through an enormous amount together even just in that first year of marriage, losing a child and enduring a humiliating false pregnancy…

I really enjoyed exploring these well-known figures at the beginning of their journey together – you can already start to catch glimpses of the assured but flawed individuals that they would become.

What was life like for ordinary folk in the first decade of the sixteenth century?

In many ways, it was pretty good. A Spanish ambassador described the English as reacting to Henry VII’s death as if they’d been released from prison – there was a sense that his regime was oppressive, overly intrusive. His son’s accession seemed to offer hope of a better time – after decades of civil war, it was the first time in a century that an (almost) adult son had succeeded his father peacefully.

It was also an age of increased learning, greater access to books through cheap printed texts. Serfdom was almost gone. You could hope to improve your situation by moving to the city, by being apprenticed and learning a trade. Guilds offered some security in an age before the welfare state.

But there were still threats: in 1509 there was plague in England, and to a great extent people’s contentment was down to how aggressive or even-handed their local lord was. If he decided to extend his deer park into common land that you depended on for your livelihood, you would have to fight back through the courts, sometimes for years, with no guarantee of success. Lawlessness (rioting and house-breaking) was still happening across the country. And religious dissent was becoming more of a concern with ‘Lollardy’ on the rise.

Tell us about some of the ancient traditions prevalent in England at this time.

There were any number of peculiar rituals and rules knocking around in 1509, whether it was the practice of parading a ship or plough through villages after New Year to bring good luck, or forbidding certain types of clothing to certain classes of people (labourers could be imprisoned in the stocks for wearing expensive hose). There hardly seems to have been a saint’s day throughout the entire year that wasn’t celebrated by a parish or a guild, with parades and church services and paying for candles or pageants.

For me, what I really noticed were the odd relics that were in every church in the country. Henry VII was once given a relic of St George’s leg wrapped in silver gilt, and Canterbury Cathedral allegedly had the finger of St Urban, the tooth of St John the Baptist and the lip of a murdered holy innocent in its collection!

Share with us a little about the process you followed when researching your book.

Each chapter of the book takes a ritual highpoint of the year and uses it as a launching-off point to explore an aspect of daily life – for instance, May Day was associated with romance and entertainment, and coincidentally it was when Henry and Catherine got engaged. At All Souls (2 November) people contemplated death and prayed for their lost loved ones – so that chapter looks at Tudor medicine and attitudes towards mortality.

When I was researching I looked at three areas of 1509 at a time: the ritual and any celebrations surrounding it; what was happening at Court at that point in the year; and what everyone else in the country was up to. I hope that gives a 360-degree view of the world, as if you’ve stepped through a doorway and travelled back to those points in time.

I also really wanted to include as many women and lower status people as possible in this book, which is challenging because there simply isn’t the same level of documentary survival about their lives. So there was a lot of trawling through legal records and guild ordinances and looking at wills to get a sense of their activities and characters. One of my favourite characters is Thomasine Percyvale, a Cornish servant who by 1509 was a three-times-widowed tailor in London, with her own coterie of servants and apprentices. Her will reveals that she was also providing for the education of poor children, setting up a school and that she owned blue velvet saddles for her horses. Those little details give such an insight into a person’s identity.

What is the most interesting or peculiar fact you’ve learnt about the Tudors in your research?

One of the most interesting political facts is that Henry VII’s death was kept secret for two days – there was a coup immediately on his passing, to remove two of his most unpopular ministers and ensure the new king was surrounded by one clear faction. It’s very interesting, given Henry VIII’s infamously ruthless attitude towards his own chief ministers later on – Wolsey, Cromwell, More – that his reign began with such a calculated act. And even more interesting that the person behind the coup was not Henry himself – it was probably his grandma, Margaret Beaufort.

What does your writing space look like?

I work at a desk in the back room of my flat. I’m pretty much surrounded by books (my husband is even more of a biliophile than me) and I have a view out into my garden there. I’d love to say my desk was tidy but I’m incredibly messy so there are always piles of books and scribbled-on papers around me, as well as pot plants and postcards and half-burnt candles.

When I really needed to knuckle down during the writing-up stage of the book, I went back to my parents’ home in Bristol for a week at a time and worked in their conservatory. It’s the best writing retreat in the world, because it’s so calm and with the door open it feels like you’re writing in a beautiful garden.

Are you drawn to any other periods of history?

My last book, The Arrow of Sherwood, was an origin story of Robin Hood, set in the late twelfth century. Basically anything medieval (and 1509 is still, really, the Middle Ages) entices me. Every now and then my research takes me into more recent history and it’s intriguing, but the Middle Ages really have my heart.

Are you currently working on any new books?

I have just signed a deal with Head of Zeus to write a biography of Henry VI, the last Lancastrian king and the man whose reign saw – and arguably, whose personal failings caused – the loss of the Hundred Years War and the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. There hasn’t really been a readable, sympathetic biography of him and he’s an extremely intriguing character. The book has the benefit too of including another fascinating woman in Margaret of Anjou – you simply can’t tell one of their stories without the other, so I’m really excited to bury myself in that research.