While the prince survives, one heir is not enough to secure the kingdom, and Cromwell must again find Henry a wife. So it comes as a huge relief to him and to the whole kingdom when, after a long and anxious wait, Queen Jane falls pregnant and gives birth to a son. Cromwell, who promised Mary's mother Katherine that he would protect her daughter, is hard-pressed to keep Mary and the rebellious families quiet.

These noble families back Mary, Henry's fervently Catholic daughter by his first wife, and Mary seems to quietly agree. Cromwell also scents rebellion in the winds among the descendants of the Plantagenets, the royal house that preceded Henry's Tudor family. Once athletic and handsome, Henry now suffers from a gangrenous leg wound that won't heal his fear of his own mortality means he's falling into denial, allowing his passions and whims to drive him. Cromwell is the most competent man in the kingdom, but he's hampered by the people around him: the noblemen who work with him on Henry's privy council scorn his lowly background, and Henry himself is mercurial and dangerous. It is up to Cromwell to manage Henry's world and keep England afloat until a son arrives. There is also massive religious instability brewing: the Protestant Reformation is ripping Europe apart, as thinkers influenced by Martin Luther preach against the Catholic establishment and the Catholic establishment responds with Inquisitorial violence. He has angered the Pope in seeking a divorce from his first wife, and both the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France have an eye on conquest. Both the lack of an heir and those two previous marriages mean his kingdom is in a dangerous spot.

Because his past two marriages have been illegitimized (and his children from those marriages are both daughters anyway), he needs to have a son in order to secure the English throne for his dynasty. Now remarried, Henry is keen to father an heir and consolidate his power.

Cromwell is keen to hold on to the power he has gained, but begins to feel the price of that power as he watches Anne's weeping ladies-in-waiting carrying her tiny body away. Her former husband, King Henry VIII, marries his new bride Jane Seymour almost immediately.Īll this change has been engineered by Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son turned lawyer turned politician, now Henry's right-hand man and the second-most-powerful man in England. Henry Holt and Co, 2020.Įngland changes in an instant with the beheading of Anne Boleyn: once a queen, now condemned as an adulterous traitor. The following version of this book was used to create this guide: Mantel, Hilary.

Hilary mantel the mirror and the light