The Lisle Letters: An Abridgement

I was afraid I was going to have to go through a course in pre-Elizabethan English, but this abridgement is very readable. What a steal!

This isn't for everyone. Arthur Plantagenet, Baron Lisle, Henry VIII's maternal uncle and the illegitimate son of Edward IV, became governor of Calais, the hotly contested final British stronghold on French soil, in his old age. It was a time of social unrest and the perilous birth of Protestantism. He was accused of treason, and his letters were subpoenaed. Thus, they survive to this day. Muriel St. Clare Byrne edited them into six volumes that tell a narrative tale and paint a genuine portrait of a highly placed Tudor family stuck in turbulent times. Fortunately, there is this one-book abridgement for those of us who don't quite have the stamina to read the whole six volumes. This can be a difficult read, as you would expect. Some of the legal and real estate squabbles are obscure. On the other hand they involve people like John Dudley, father of Robin, who also turns out to be Plantagenet-Lisle's stepson, and Edward Seymour, brother of Queen Jane. (Both these men, incidentally, become Lord Protector during Edward VI's reign.) And it's fascinating to read genuine letters written by the administrative power, Thomas Cromwell, who is probably the best writer of the lot, though clearly very calculating and political. We also watch as two of Arthur's stepdaughters, through his second marriage to Honor Basset, are forced to vie for positions as ladies-in-waiting to Queen Anne Boleyn, his stepson James Bassett vies to get into the college of Navarre so that he'll be hobnobbing with Princes, future Kings and Cardinals, and a perfectly ordinary courtship between his sister Mary and the son of a French business partner goes sour because of the Reformation. Meanwhile the daily routine of ordinary life shows through with everyone throwing gloves and lace and coats and animals, some as pets, some to eat, at each other, and describing the various states of lands--that they're fighting over, live on, or are absent from. Different readers will get different things out of the wealth of material here. Though everyone will learn a little bit more about why Cardinal Reginald Pole was so important to the machinations of Tudor times. There's even a nice picture of him.