(Drivebycuriosity) - England in the begin of the 16th century was a horrible place, ruled by a ruthless & sophomoric king - and lives were cheap. Hilary Mantel´s novel Wolf Hall - the first part of a trilogy - is set in these times and fictionalizes the rise of Thomas Cromwell ( amazon).
Cromwell, being the son of a blacksmith & brewer, was considered as a lowbirth in the world of aristocrats, but he was smart, eloquent, well read & traveled and he made himself useful for the mighty. Today we would call him a lawyer, economist, administrator & counselor. Mantel seems to like Cromwell´s character - and how he dealt with his family and those who depended on him - and casts some flashlights on his steep advance in the world of high born gentlemen and the reader gets an impression how Cromwell became the favorite of Henry VIII - against all odds. Mantel`s Cromwell even expressed solidarity with those who fell into disgrace, without regard to his own person.
Some chapters focus on Austin Friars, a former monastery, that Cromwell owned and had turned into flourishing enclave, almost a little paradise, where - under his custody - people got educated and learned gardening, growing fruit, cooking and many other basic skills, but also self-defense. Cromwell`s people there were protected from the random dangers of 16th century England and the place become a shelter for some to protect them from the fanatic hunters of heretics. "At Austin Friars, there is little chance to be alone, or alone with just one person. Every letter of the alphabet watches you. In the countinghouse there is young Thomas Avery, whom you are training up to take a gripe on your private finance............Down in the kitchen .., the garzoni are learning to make spiced wafers. The process involves a good eye, exaxct timing and a steady hand. There are so many points at which it can go wrong".
Large parts of the novel describe at length Henry`s juvenile treatment of his first wife Katherine - her alleged virginity moved into the center of European politics - and the rise of the wilful & scheming Anne Boleyn, her powerful family and her supporters.
The author imagines sheer endless dialogues between Cromwell, Henry, Katherine (Henry´s first wife), the Boleyn sisters, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More (the fanatic hunter of heretics), dukes, ambassadors and many other more or less important persons. These conversations are sharp, witty, entertaining and plausible. Maybe they are written for TV but they give an impression how politics might have worked on England´s court in the 16th century.
I learned a lot about the power plays between Henry, the almost almighty Pope, the Emperor (of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation) and the Kings of Spain & France. Mantel also elaborates the foaming violent conflicts between the ruling Roman Catholic Church and the followers of Martin Luther and other reformers and how Henry curtailed the Church in England.
I also learned about the economics of the Renaissance: "The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined, from Lisbon, from where the ships with sail of silk drift west and are burned in the sun. Not from the castle walls, but from counting houses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and the shot".
Mantel introduces the readers into the complexity of warfare: "The thing people don´t understand about an army is it great unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad capitaine says so, you are shifted abruptly in the middle of the night into some indefensible position, so you never sleep, so you never sleep, your equipment is defective, the gunners keep causing small unwanted explosions, the crossbowmen are either drunk or praying, the arrows are ordered up but not here yest, and your whole mind is occupied by a seething anxiety that things are going to go badly because il principe, or whatever little worshipfulness is in charge today is not very good at the basic of business of thinking".
She adds: "No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war.....You enter into one and is uses up all the money you´ve got, and then it breaks you and bankrupts you".
It is pleasure to read her atmospheric descriptions of London; Henry´s court and everyday life in England. "If you were born in Putney, you saw the river every day, and imagined it widening out to the sea. Even if you had never seen the ocean you had a picture of it in your head from what you had been told by foreign people who sometimes came upriver. You knew that one day you would go out into a world of marble pavements and peacocks, of hillsides buzzing with heat, the fragrance of crushed herbs rising around you as you walked. You planned for what your journeys would bring you: the touch of warm terra-cotta, the night sky of another climate, alien flowers, the stone-eyed gaze of other people`s saints".
But some parts of the book were very tough to read. Mantell describes painstakingly the burning of the alleged heretics; and how the mob indulged into the awful spectacle and celebrated the brutal killing. She also confronts the reader with the details of the torture and the bexecution of the unfortunate.
I am looking forward to the next book of this series.
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