Where Prince Phillip Moves In

Cardinal Pole: Or, The Days Of Philip And Mary. An Historical Romance; Volume 1 by William Harrison Ainsworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ainsworth writes historical romances rather like Sir Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas. Most often, like this novel, it concerns important figures in English history, and it always includes carefully described settings, primarily castles, churches, and landscapes, almost like he's taking the reader on a tour.

I like it. I almost would give it a 5, which it deserves in many ways, except that I generally score based on how fun it is to pick up and read, and it's not quite as fun to me as an exciting fantasy or clever mystery. Still fun, though, and it has other charms.

This one is set in Tudor times, starting just as Prince Phillip of Spain is arriving in England to marry Queen Mary. The most important characters are a young couple who fall in love just about that time, but whose lives are permanently disrupted by the Spanish prince seeing the young woman and deciding he wanted her. Ainsworth does a good job showing just how arbitrary and unjust rulers could be in those times, how common people are powerless before them. This is shown in an even starker way by the protestants that Phillip and Mary burn at the stake with very little notion of mercy.

The most positive Catholic character in the novel is certainly the one named in the title, Cardinal Pole. I don't know if he really was such a good guy, but here he is the voice of reason and moderation, trying to heal the religious rift in England through tolerance and compassion. He's mostly ignored. Still, that character shows how things might have gone, how our ancestors might have learned to live together, if they hadn't been such extremists. Ainsworth definitely celebrates the moderates, though I get that by inference; he's not super heavy-handed that way. (He's pretty fair. There are angry voices on both sides, and positive examples on both sides too.)

The author includes a few characters from other novels here, returning for the third or fourth time that I know of. There is a little person named Xit and three "giants"--Og, Gog, and Magog--who all live and work in the tower. They cross paths with other main characters in each of these books, but also have their own subplots that usually involve pranks and eating way too much. They also distinguish themselves in each book, though it always looks like they're about to do the wrong thing. They give the stories a bit of variation in tone that is interesting and maybe a little odd, but I kinda like it.

The writing is a little dated, but not difficult, and it reads pretty breezily, IMO, bouncing back and forth between dialogue and action on the one hand and fairly long descriptive passages on the other. Here's an example of the prose coming from one of those central scenes, when Prince Phillip is being led to meet Queen Mary for the first time:

Before the principal entrance of the keep stood a vast number of gentlemen, esquires, and pages, all splendidly apparelled, and as Philip's chariot drew up, Sir John Gage, grand chamberlain, with Sir Henry Jerningham, vice-chamberlain, bearing their wands of office, came forth to assist his highness to alight. The entrance hall was filled with noble personages, amongst whom were the lord chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Arundel and Derby, Sir Edward Hastings, master of the horse, the Earl of Bedford, lord privy seal, the lord Paget, and Sir William Petre, both secretaries of state, with many others. Bowing graciously as he passed through this splendid throng, the prince was conducted by Gardiner to the great hall, where he found...

I think Ainsworth wanted to teach his readers some history, and I feel like he did pretty well.

As always, recommended for those who like Scott or Dumas. Worth a try, anyway.

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Where There Are Almost no Good Guys

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Set in Tudor England, this is the story of Matthew Shardlake, a servant of Thomas Cromwell, who is sent to a monastery on the coast to investigate the murder of the commissioner. The bigger job is getting the monastery to "surrender," to force it to close and have the monks leave with a small pension. This occurred just after Anne Boleyn was put to death on the false, tortured testimony of her supposed lovers, when all the rich monasteries were being closed. (In real life, the story of false confessions is likely true; in the novel, it is absolutely true.) At this time, the Church of England was newly pre-eminent; "papists" were oppressed; and the monasteries were the enemies of the state, mainly because they had a lot of money that Cromwell and his cronies wanted for themselves.

Shardlake is an interesting but not entirely likable protagonist. I like him better by the end, but he's arrogant and moralistic, a bit of a hypocrite, and not as effective as I'd like him to be. But he's pretty sharp, and he's reasonably active despite being physically limited. Most of the minor characters, including those in London, all the monks and their servants in the monastery, and the locals, are varying degrees of obnoxious and unlikable, too, especially Cromwell. The doctor (spoiler? sorta; hardly) is a good guy, and he's the only one I can think of that isn't disappointing. But I guess that's all part of the theme. The dissolution of the monasteries, their destruction and selling off for parts, mirrors what Shardlake sees in the world at large. Everything falls apart. No one, no institution, is as good as it pretends to be. The world is darkness and deception; the church is self-serving; the court is evil.

He learns a lot in this story.

It's a good mystery, though it falters in the long middle section, which I wouldn't have minded being about 75 pages shorter, tbh. It is quite entertaining overall, though, and the threads are tied up enough to satisfy by the end. I want to see how Shardlake progresses after this, if he's less naive and less hypocritical, if he keeps his distance from Cromwell, so I'm gonna ago find the sequel. I expect to like it.

Recommended for historical mystery readers.

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