Henry Carter Hull

A history of the "bad girls" of England's medieval royal dynasties, this book covers the queens who earned themselves the reputation of being somehow notorious. Some of them are well known and have been the subject of biographies-Eleanor of Aquitaine, Emma of Normandy, Isabella of France, and Anne Boleyn, for example-while others have not been written about outside academic journals. The appeal of these notorious queens, apart from their shared taste...

Married at 17 to the grandson of a confirmed lunatic and widowed at 20, Catherine Parr chose a Yorkshire lord twice her age as her second husband. Caught up in the turbulent terrors of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, she was captured by northern rebels, held hostage, and suffered violence at their hands. Fleeing to the south shortly afterward, Catherine took refuge in the household of Princess Mary and in the arms of the king's brother-in-law, Sir...

The forty-four-year reign of Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and the last Tudor monarch, was considered a golden age. It saw the emergence of the great playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, while the exploits of Sir Francis Drake and other ‘sea-dogs’ helped establish England’s position among the great maritime powers. This book looks at Elizabeth’s life through some of the many artifacts, buildings, documents...