Two troubling legal cases in Henry VIII's England

Cover image of "Heartstone," an historical novel featuring Matthew Shardlake

London reels from increasingly frantic reports that the French are assembling a massive invasion fleet across the Channel. Officers roam the streets in search of young men to press into service for the army. And, to pay for the impending war, the king has debased the currency again, causing havoc in the markets as merchants demand to be paid in the old coinage. It’s the summer of 1545, the 36th year of the reign of Henry VIII. But lawyer Matthew Shardlake, now forty-three, has other matters on his mind. Queen Catherine Parr, the King’s sixth and last wife, has prevailed on him to take up a case for an aged former maidservant that will take him and his assistant, Jack Barak, on a week’s ride south to Portsmouth—where the English armed forces are gathering to protect the country. So begins Heartstone, the fifth of C. J. Sansom’s extraordinary historical novels featuring Matthew Shardlake.

A “horrible wrong” to two wards

Down south, at the queen’s behest, Matthew and Jack must learn why the maidservant’s son, Michael Cahill, committed suicide. He’d done so shortly after lodging a complaint in court that a horrible wrong had been done to two children he’d tutored. Of course, a lawyer must wonder whether Michael had in fact killed himself. And a trip to the estate of a newly wealthy landowner, Edwin Hobbey, seemed in order. It was he who had taken charge of the two young people as his wards following the death of their parents. This is the principal reason why Matthew and Jack must ride so near Portsmouth as invasion looms.

But for Matthew the trip to the south also makes it possible to investigate another mystery that has been preying on him for years. Near Hobbey’s estate lies the village where Ellen Fettipace had been raped as a young woman. Ever since, she had been confined to the Bedlam as a lunatic. It was there that Matthew had become embroiled in her life when pursuing an earlier case. He knows that the circumstances surrounding her rape and her confinement were murky and demanded looking into. And he knows she suffers from agoraphobia and is no lunatic. So Matthew and Jack set out southward, competing on the roads for right-of-way with companies of soldiers on their way to war.

Heartstone (Matthew Shardlake #5 of 7) by C. J. Sansom (2010) 753 pages ★★★★★

Artist's image of English longbow-men training for battle like those who abound in this historical novel featuring Matthew Shardlake — *Images of the fearsome English longbow-men training, a familiar site in the run-up to the confrontation with the French off Portsmouth in 1545. Image: Quora*

Threats and surprises all along the way

These two engrossing cases once again push Matthew and Jack into peril. A pack of young men brutally attacks Matthew even before they leave London. And everywhere they turn, hard men menace them, demanding they end their investigation into the young wards’ circumstances. Ellen’s case, too, poses danger. Ugly truths lie under the surface in both cases. And murder is involved in both. But the path to their conclusion is strewn with surprises.

Sansom sets a deliberative pace as he follows Matthew and Jack along the road south and then as they dig into the increasingly complex circumstances involved in both cases. Heartstone is a story to be savored, as Sansom paints a detailed picture of life as it was lived in the time of Henry VIII, in the royal court, among the gentry, and in the mud-and-wattle homes of the poor. This is superior historical fiction, grounded in Sansom’s meticulous research into the era.

Engraving of French Armada massing across the Channel in 1545 before its attack on England in this historical novel featuring Matthew Shardlake — The French Armada in 1545, massing to invade England to put an end once and for all of Henry VIII’s incursions onto French soil. France’s 200 ships made the fleet considerably larger than the Spanish Armada forty-three years later, which consisted of 130 ships. Image: Historic UK

A vivid portrait of Henry VIII

Although King Henry has surfaced with a speaking part, and a cameo at that, in only one of the Matthew Shardlake novels I’ve read, he is nonetheless a palpable presence in every one. Henry was a towering personality as well as an all-powerful monarch. Nothing of real substance happened in England in isolation from the king and his courtiers. And C. J. Sansom demonstrates this truth again and again in the pages of his novels.

Two years before the King’s death

The picture of Henry VIII that emerges is a little different from that we find on the screen in television and film performances. As a young man, he frequently demonstrated his skill and strength on the jousting field and on the hunt. In fact, it was an accident on a joust in 1536 where he developed the painful and debilitating leg ulcers that increasingly soured his outlook and his behavior in later years. When we learn about him in Heartstone, two years before his death in 1547, he is obese and constantly in grievous pain. (Sansom tells us it took eight men to lift him onto the deck of a warship he visited in the Portsmouth Harbor.)

A picture of boundless greed

What also emerges in Sansom’s work is an account of Henry’s greed and his spendthrift ways. Again and again, he seized property belonging to others—most prominently in the dissolution of the monasteries—and proceeded to squander it on building palatial homes and waging wars of choice. In fact, the French invasion threat described in Heartstone arose because the king had insisted on attacking France the previous year. He left to his heirs a kingdom in sorry shape, the treasury bankrupt, the nation isolated internationally, and religious conflict rife in the land. A glorious reign and largely peaceful at home, yes—but overall, a sorry legacy for his daughter.

About the author

Photo of the late C. J. Sansom, author of this historical novel featuring Matthew Shardlake — *C. J. Sansom. Image: Andrew Hasson – New York Times*

C. J. Sansom (1952-2024) wrote nine novels before his untimely death at the age of seventy-one in 2024. Seven comprise the Matthew Shardlake series. Two, both standalone efforts, include Dominion, an alternate history of England under Nazi rule, and Winter in Madrid, a spy story set in post-Civil War Spain. Sansom, a former solicitor for the disadvantaged, turned to writing full-time, capitalizing on his doctorate in history from the University of Birmingham.

Previously I reviewed the first four books in this series as well as his superb alternate history: