Privy Seal: His Last Venture

Privy Seal: His Last Venture (1907) is a novel by Ford Madox Ford. The second installment of Ford’s The Fifth Queen Trilogy is set during the reign of Henry VIII, a tumultuous time of political and religious oppression in a land at the mercy of a murderous King. Ford’s trilogy recreates Tudor England in a masterful story of court intrigue, romance, and betrayal. Focusing on the tragic figure of Katharine Howard, the fifth wife of the King, Ford investigates the interconnection of sex and power in a political atmosphere clouded by violence and espionage. Depicting some of the era’s most notorious figures, including Thomas Cromwell, Bloody Mary, and the King himself, Ford makes history both entertaining and undeniably human. Brought to the court of King Henry VIII by her cousin Thomas Culpeper, Katharine Howard, a noblewoman whose family’s fortunes had been in decline for some time, inadvertently catches the eye of his majesty. Given a position as a lady in waiting for Lady Mary, Howard—though opposed by the brutally efficient schemer Thomas Cromwell—soon distinguishes herself in the eyes of the King, who makes her his fifth Queen. Thrust into the spotlight at the age of seventeen, she finds herself forced into an impossible role as a public figure whose every move could enrage her notoriously violent husband. Howard has traditionally been seen as a minor figure in the history of Tudor England. For Ford, however, a master storyteller with an eye for tragedy and a skill for developing flawed, convincingly human characters, Howard is a woman whose life and death are not only worthy of literature, but instructive for the men and women of Edwardian England. In Privy Seal, he focuses on the figure of Thomas Cromwell, a powerful advisor to the King who comes to see Katharine as a rival whose good nature threatens his ambitious political agenda. This edition of Ford Madox Ford’s Privy Seal: His Last Venture is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.

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