Hilary Mantel's version of The Exeter Conspiracy
a talk with Charlie Courtenay, the Earl of Devon at Powderham Castle, East Devon.
On a chilly April evening I received a warm welcome at Powderham Castle, the ancestral home of the Earl of Devon. Charlie, as he prefers to be addressed, kindly made the music room available for a talk I gave at the invitation of the local history groups, Kenton Past and Present, and the Starcross Historical Society.
The spectacular music room was designed by James Wyatt in 1788 and is complete with a secret door and ornate dome. In this setting I presented the re-telling of the events of the Plantagenet conspiracy by the Courtenay and Pole families to overthrow Henry VIII and replace him with his daughter Mary Tudor, whose mother was Henry's first wife Katherine of Aragon.
This treasonous plot reached a climax in 1538 when Reginald Pole, a one-time ally of King Henry, published a book in which he defamed the Tudor monarch and aligned himself with the Pope and the Emperor, encouraging them to invade England and restore a Catholic Monarch.
The conspiracy was named after Henry Courtenay, the 1st Marquis of Exeter and Earl of Devon. He was the grandson of Edward IV and despite being one of the king's closest childhood friends and member of his Privy Council became the figurehead of the proposed rebellion.
Hilary Mantel tells the story of Henry's reaction to Reginald's book and the unfolding consequences upon those accused of treason through the eyes of her protagonist Thomas Cromwell, in the last volume of her trilogy, The Mirror and The Light. She focuses on the king's paranoia, driven by his insecurity, and the threat that the Courtenay and Pole families posed to Cromwell's position of power. The result was…
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