CJ Sansom - Sovereign

The period of Henry VIII's rule in England has furnished plenty of material for authors of historical fiction. For CJ Sansom it is the perfect backdrop to his stories of mystery and detection - plenty of plots, murders and scheming. But the specific social changes taking place allow a remarkably varied set of stories. In the first book Sansom sets up a locked room mystery (well locked monastery mystery) in the context of the dissolution of the monasteries. In the second, Dark Fire, he skilfully weaves the story of Thomas Cromwell's fall around a hunt for a lost chemical weapon.

Sovereign is more ambitious. It is set during Henry VIII's Great Northern Progress in the aftermath of the two, linked, northern rebellions that took place from 1536 to 1537 (though Sansom only mentions the Pilgrimage of Grace neglecting the Lincolnshire Rising). The Progress was a mass display of power by Henry designed to cow the population and force supplication. In this it was an immense success, though as Sansom seems to understand, its importance today is mostly remembered for being the period when Catherine Howard's alleged infidelity was discovered.

Matthew Shardlake, the lawyer hero of Sansom's Tudor novels joins the Progress on the instructions of Thomas Cranmer who sets him the difficult task of bringing a rebel safely back to London. The rebel has evidence of a conspiracy against the King and Shardlake is thus risking his life to complete the mission. As always with these novels the level of detail is astounding and Sansom's knowledge of the political twists and turns of the Tudor court is excellent. I found the denouement of the novel somewhat of a let down, but Sansom certainly managed to tie all the threads together well.

One thing that I think Sansom does extremely well is to demonstrate how the King was the centre of the universe for Tudor society. Characters repeatedly ask each other if they have seen the King, or discuss being in his presence. Shardlake himself is terrified of meeting Henry when petitions are presented and, in a nicely comic passage, is terror is replicated among even more experienced court followers who have to rush to the toilet after the audience is over. Henry was the centre around which everything revolved, but he was also both human and horrible, and Shardlake experiences with a rather unpleasant awakening.

It's an excellent book, though my attention did wane after 500 pages and the last 100 or so felt like I was reading simply to get to the end. That said, it's entertaining and I'd second Sansom in his recommendations of books on the Northern Revolts - see below.

Related Reviews

Sansom - Dissolution
Sansom - Dark Fire
Hoyle - The Pilgrimage of Grace and the politics of the 1530s
Moorhouse - The Pilgrimage of Grace
Fletcher & MacCulloch - Tudor Rebellions
Fraser - The Six Wives of Henry VIII