I always thought Henry VIII’s sisters were fascinating - Margaret wreaked havoc all over Scotland, and Mary was made to marry the elderly and dying King of France, forced her brother to make good on his promise to allow her to marry for love the second time, and was grandmother to the ill-fated Jane Grey.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had Henry Stuart (James I’s eldest son had lived). The Civil War might have been avoided. I also find another Henry Stuart, this one the son of the Old Pretender, interesting. He ended up a Roman Catholic Cardinal, bringing to an end the Stuart claim to the throne.
And technically the King of England, though only technically. He was crowned such ‘in exile’ after the death of Bonnie Prince Charlie (aka King Charles III), but like his brother he never actually set foot in England and the only reason he had the title was a papal bitchslap at England.
His full title (in Rome) at the time of his death was
His Majesty Henry IX, King of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, Cardinal-Duke of York and , Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Velletri, Bishop of Frascati and Dean of the College of Cardinals
Not bad for a guy who was frequently penniless and in debt. His later years had some financial comfort however since the Pope gave him a Grace and Favor house in Rome and his ever growing list of offices includes homes and incomes in Italy, plus the English royal family paid him a large amount of money (several thousand pounds) that he saw as his rightful revenue but that they saw as the return of his grandmother’s dowry. Probably gay- very famous for surrounding himself with an ever changing retinue of attractive young male secretaries.
Southern (U.S.) genealogies contain some of the best fiction writing of a region known for great fiction writing, and Bonnie Prince Charlie figures in a disproportionate amount of them. He evidently fathered about 400 illegitimate children, all of whom came to America and each of whom had about 70 children of their own, often with Indian princesses.
Aemilia Lanyer’s life would make for an interesting biopic, except Hollywood tends not to do writers well. (I don’t think I could deal with “Becoming Aemilia.”)
Also, a movie about Barnabe Barnes would be hilarious.
He wasn’t English but he was contemporaneous with the reign of Henry VIII and gives an idea of how insane the religious conflicts on the continent were getting:
Jan Van Leiden was a Dutch tailor’s apprentice who followed dreams and visions (he claimed) to the city of Münster. Within two years he had been hailed as a prophet, taken over the city, raised a peasant army, taken at least 16 wives (one of whom he beheaded), and declared his destiny to be the prophet and king of all Europe.
He was proven right, if by being proclaimed prophet and king of all Europe he meant defeated, captured, tortured with glowing hot iron devices, and his rotting body suspended from a cage for the next 50 years.
“Papal bitch slap” for the win.
There was also Will Kemp, who was part of Shakespeare’s company (He was the one who originated Fallstaff, and Dogsberry in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and most of the comic roles generally). He’s most famous, other than that, for once morris dancing from London to Norwich. Then he fell into obscurity and died broke, but you can’t have everything…
Lettice (Leticia, Laeticia) Knollys is an interesting one, too; she was descended from Mary Boleyn, spawned Robert Devereaux (Earl of Essex), and married Robert Dudley.
IIRC, QEI often referred to her as the She-Wolf.
It is freaky that they still have the cages hanging there to this day! Not exactly what I’d want decorating my church, were I a Christian. 
They’re a conversation piece, and maybe they decorate them for Christmas to make them less grisly.
Sir Ralph Verney (1613 - 1696).
The Verney family were members of the middle-aristcracy of England, particularly notable for their obsessive record keeping - literally attics full of papers dated over decades and centuries were discovered during the Victorian era, and provide an extraordinarily detailed picture of the whole family.
Ralph was a member of parliament, along with his father Sir Edmund, at the time of the Civil War. Sir Edmund and almost the entire rest of the family supported the Royalist cause - Ralph stayed loyal to Parliament. However, due to his religious scruples, he was the only Parliamentarian to refuse to sign the Covenant to reform religion in England along Scottish Presbyterian lines - as a result he ended up having to flee for his life from his own side, to France.
At one point, when a bunch of dispensations against having all his property seized by parliament were about to run out, he had to send his wife Mary back to England to try to renew them. Failing in her endeavours, they resorted to forgery - a death penalty offence if they had been discovered (they weren’t). Mary was pregnant when she left on this trip, and gave birth to a son, Jack - he died one day at the age of only a few months, for no apparent reason, of a sudden fit. Within the hour, a family friend arrived with the news that her only daughter, still in France, had also died some weeks previously. The general family attrition rate was high - during the Verneys’ long French exile, Ralph’s father and brother, with whom he had remained close despite their conflicting allegiances, both died fighting in the Cavalier cause.
The Verneys ultimately managed to re-establish themselves in England, after the ultimate victory of Parliament. The story of the preservation of the family history is also intriguing. The original publication of a small part of the (vast) material was due to decades of work on the part of Parthenope Nightingale, wife of the then-baronet Sir Harry Verney, and elder sister of the more famous Florence (another intriguing character, whose work in the Crimean War owed more to iron will and determination than the sentimentalised ‘lady of the lamp’ picture popularised by the Victorians, and who pretty much burnt herself out by her thirties, spending the remaining four decades or so of her life in isolation as a recluse). Sir Harry had originally wanted to marry Florence, but turned to Parthe when it became obvious that this wasn’t going to happen - Florence and Parthe nonetheless remained close all their lives. Parthenope clearly had the family share of grit and obstinacy, spending long years at work on the family papers in an era where historians were still quite apologetic about any work that deviated from the important stuff of Kings,Battles and Dates, and recruiting younger relatives to carry on the work as she battled ill health.
I remember once reading a novel written from Lettice’s point of view (My Enemy, My Queen was the title, IIRC).
Great minds = that’s exactly what I had in mind when I thought of her! By one of Victoria Holt’s pen names.
The romance and marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas has been addressed surprisingly seldom in quality historical fiction considering how famous she was. (Also amazing how many people still think she wound up with John Smith.)
One thing that makes it interesting is that so much “common knowledge” American history is bogus: the Puritans weren’t horribly persecuted brave souls journeying strictly to find some peace and freedom of religion nor were they the latter day concept of sexless joyless pharisees and prudes, the natives here weren’t all noble savages or nature worshiping pacifists, slavery was neither happy darkies singing in the fields or the worst parts of Mandingo, John Smith probably lied his ass off about his adventures in-country (he’d told a story almost identical to the Pocahontas rescue before but set in Turkey), etc., that it’s odd when you find out some things really did have their light and fluffy sides. In this case, John Rolfe and Pocahontas, while their marriage had clear benefits in forging an alliance between the Powhatan and the colonists, does seem to have been a love match- at least from Rolfe’s own perspective.
The full story involves a shipwreck (Rolfe and his first wife being aboard) and ingenious self-rescue, Rolfe as grieving widower (Rolfe’s first wife died in childbirth), the treachery of Pocahontas (aka Matoaka, aka Rebecca) being captured by the colonists, the “meh” reaction of her father and brothers (possibly a false bravado as by most accounts he loved her dearly, though who knows- he was a very very weird man where women were concerned- liked to give away his pregnant wives which was NOT a custom of his tribe), and their romance. For her it may have been what we’d now call Stockholm syndrome or fury at her father/brothers for not rescuing her or attraction or politics or some combination, but his writings make it clear he was smitten with her when he sought dispensation to marry her.
Their sojourn in London, when she may or may not have met James I (second hand accounts vary and there are no first hand accounts of her being presented at court) was hell for her. They were kept in an inn near the docks where on the up side she probably got to see really fresh and authentic Shakespeare performed as it was near the theaters and there were still inn yard performers and on the downside she was exposed to every disease 17th century overcrowded English people could share with her and died as a direct result. Since Indian blood in general and descent from Pocahontas today is something genealogical social climbers would love to prove it’s interesting that her son, Thomas Rolfe, had to go through all kinds of red tape to marry a white woman due to his biracial heritage. There’s even speculation that he may have changed his identity after his wife died; there’s no clear record of his death, though it’s presumed to have been around the 1670s, and some biographers speculate he didn’t die then but moved. (Most believe he probably is dead by now.)
Anyway, while New World (which flopped at the box office- I’m not sure it ever had a major distribution even) was the best retelling of her story to date imo, the definitive novel of her seems yet to have been written. You have the incredibly rich and complex world of her tribe (her father was something like a Napoleon among the Indians of his era), you have Jamestown (lots of stories there- including the man who barbecued his wife), whatever happened (if anything) with John Smith (it’s known they were friends so they did know each other while he was captive at least), and then the real fish out of water voyage to England. One of my favorite stories is one of her father’s soldiers who accompanied her allegedly took a stick to carve a notch for every white person he saw in England and ended up tossing it overboard before ever getting off the ship after it docked.
For that matter, John Smith himself- even if he was a 17th century Herodotus in terms of reliability (among other things he claimed he was a penniless orphan- his parents were not only living but well off when he set out as a teenager) what IS known about him seems interesting if a bit Flashman-esque. He claims to have been a mercenary for the Countess Bathory and the Polish king, sold as a slave in Turkey (where he claimed he seduced a Sultan’s wife), and many other adventures before coming to America. It’d be interesting to have a Little Big Man style novel in which somebody is setting the record straight in his Falstaffian exaggerations.
Aww, Sampiro, your comments are so sweet! I hope you’ll stay tuned for the rest of my Komnenoi thread. It’s a rip-roaring good time with lots of Byzantine bad boys and bad girls.
And that sigil-rubbing – is that what’s been making my feet tingle?
(Btw, we should totally have a thread one day in which we try to out-‘Southern Gothic’ each other with family stories.)
Any interest I have in Lettice Knollys stems from that book, historically dubious as it is on some points (e.g., laying more deaths than Amy Robsart’s at Dudley’s feet–or at the foot of his staircase).
BTW, historian Allison Weir does commentary on the DVDs of the Glenda Jackson “Elizabeth R” miniseries, and talks a lot about Amy Robsart’s death in the episode that features it. She mentions one current theory that Robsart’s breast cancer could have made her bones so brittle, and her neck so especially fragile, that a tumble down the stairs could have easily killed her without anybody pushing. But then Weir also puts forth a more outre theory about Robert Cecil being responsible for it, so that Dudley would be suspected and have his chances of marrying Elizabeth spoiled.