Privy Seal: His Last Venture

The Fifth Queen #2

by Ford Madox Ford

The tumultuous relationship between Katharine Howard and England’s King Henry VIII was inextricably entwined with the rise to power and eventual fall of Thomas Cromwell, who served as the Lord Privy Seal. In this fictionalized account from Ford Madox Ford, the once-innocent Katharine begins to be swept up in the machinations of Henry VIII’s court, causing many unforeseen alliances, betrayals, and complications.

Genres: Classics, Historical Fiction, Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were important in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.

Ford is now remembered for his novels The Good Soldier (1915), the Parade's End tetralogy (1924–1928) and The Fifth Queen trilogy (1906–1908). The Good Soldier is frequently included among the great literature of the 20th century, including the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, The Observer′s "100 Greatest Novels of All Time", and The Guardian′s "1000 novels everyone must read".

Reviews

[Henry Sturcke]

The second volume of Ford’s Fifth Queen trilogy continues with the author’s revisionist depiction of Katherine Howard as a teenage polymath, an avid student of classical literature. She seems to calmly accept that her exceptional beauty captivates all the men around her and hopes to use this, in combination with her learning and her piety, to restore the old faith in Henry VIII’s realm. That this is a naive quest, implicit in the first volume, is repeatedly made explicit in this, in the mouths of a variety of characters (“You are not made for this world,” one tells her, “you talk too much”). Her inevitable doom is foreshadowed by repeated references to her cousin, Anne Boleyn.
One of those who shakes his head at her guilelessness is Throckmorton, the intriguer, the survivor. He is in every way her antithesis (although he too is in love with her). His means of achieving his aims is the opposite of hers so that even when their goals align, there was no meeting of minds.
The privy seal of the title is Thomas Cromwell; the book ends with his downfall. Interestingly, given that the author’s portrayal of Kat Howard is so contrary to the consensus about her, Ford’s Cromwell corresponds closely to his depiction a century later by Hilary Mantel in her Wolf Hall trilogy.
A character Ford also seems to have had fun recreating is Tom Culpepper, Kat’s cousin and ruination. He is a combative roarer of Falstaffian proportions. One of the most entertaining scenes in the book is his hilarious encounter with a non-too-bright yeoman sent to Calais to prevent Culpepper’s return to England.
This scene is soon contrasted by one of the most affecting in the book, when Katherine insists on visiting the woman she will displace as queen, Anne of Cleves, before she consents to become Henry’s bride.
Overall, the impression I get is that of despairing acceptance of the world that is, a world in which the best are doomed to fall to those who are their intellectual and moral inferiors. By choosing to write a series of historical novels, the author achieves a certain distance, but one suspects he denies that the world has changed since then.

[Eva Kristin]

I don't know if Ford's writing is better in this second book, or if I'm just getting more used to his style. Anyway, I enjoyed this more than the first one, and I'm exited about starting the third. Again, the little glimpses of everyday life is what makes this story really come to life too me.

I can't figure out Katharine, though. Her personality seems to have changed a lot from the first book to the second. In the first she finds Throckmorton terrifying and repulsive and she literally begs king Henry not to make her queen, in this one "a feeling of langour steels over her, as it often does in his (Throckmorton's)presence", and she "itches to be queen".

Also, one of the things I found very interesting in the first book was the kings's relationship with his daughter Mary. I was disappointed Mary didn't make any appearance in this one. And where's Elizabeth? I understand she is still a little child and not important in Katharine Howard's story, but she'll be so important later I'm surprised Ford wasn't tempted to give her at least a guest appearance. He gave one to her brother Edward, who isn't going to be important at all!

[Derek Davis]

This second entry in Ford's "Fifth Queen" trilogy is marginally better than the first but still leaves his characters with half-developed and confusing motives and often wretched, overblown dialog, as though the characters had eaten too many dictionaries.

The immediacy of the scenes, with their oddly convincing physical detail and intense emotion, are gripping at times and make you wish that he could stick with it, as he does in his more famous works.

[Hayley Shaver]

I loved this book. This was fully as good as the first book I read by Ford Madox. Katherine Howard is a young girl tapped by King Henry the Eighth to be his fifth wife. Throckmorton wants her to succeed for various reasons, and Cromwell wants her to fail for just as many reasons. In turn, Katherine Howard hates Cromwell and wishes him gone. When an opening for a covert battle for power is found, the conflict between the three turns deadly.