Mary Boleyn, former mistress to the King Lady Rochford, Howard, Duke of Norfolk, ferocious uncle of the executed Queen Henry VIII, and his courtiers, including his illegitimate son the Duke of Richmond, Francis Bryan and Nicholas Carew, of old and good familiesĮlizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn and the King Mary, daughter of Katherine of Aragon and the King The two highest peers in the land: If he had been called to a lower station in life, he could have been a travelling player, and leader of his troupe. Sometimes he seems an artist, in the way his eye ranges over his work sometimes his hand moves and he doesn’t seem to see it move. Sometimes he seems hapless, sometimes feckless, sometimes a child, sometimes master of his trade. Choose your prince: he admires Henry more and more. You could watch Henry every day for a decade and not see the same thing. The Signet: possibly a spy for Stephen Gardiner? Wriothesley, known as Call-Me-Risley, now Clerk of To as ‘cousin’ by the King for their shared Welsh blood Of King’s Jewel House and Vicegerent in Spirituals, serving as the king’s deputy in church matters Thomas Cromwell, later Lord Cromwell, whose titles include Secretary to the King, Master of the Rolls,

Nobody can out-talk him, if he wants to talk. He can converse with you about the Caesars or get you Venetian glassware at a very reasonable rate. With animals, women and timid litigants, his manner is gentle and easy but he makes your creditors weep. He is the man to cut through some legal entangle- ment that’s ensnared you for three generations, or talk your sniffling little daughter into the marriage she swears she will never make. Do you know he has the whole of the New Testament by heart?’ He is the very man if an argument about God breaks out he is the very man for telling your tenants twelve good reasons why their rents are fair.

The mirror and the light series