I am a particular fan of reading history. While events that occurred so long ago, in an age where records were kept only of the most important matters, historical accuracy is challenging, some records still exist. Wherever possible, I tried to balance historical accuracy to provide an interesting, immersive story. I hope I struck a correct balance.

The following individuals, listed in alphabetical order by their last names, are actual historical figures.

William Body

Body was a protégé of Thomas Cromwell, sent to remove Catholic service artifacts from several western churches in support of the conversion to the King’s new religion. Incensed by the changes of the new religion, an agitated crowd chased Body from a church and cornered him inside a house before dragging him out. He was murdered on the April 5, 1548.

The earlier dissolution of monasteries prompted the loss of leases and displacement of Catholic farmers by newer Protestant tenants. It took little effort to organize protesting mobs that were now facing the loss of comfortable services, rites, and traditions that were forced down from London.

The Crown promised a peaceful settlement to the rebellion. Approximately 25-30 people were executed, with several being drawn and quartered as examples. Their parts were sent to important market towns as deterrents. (One of the severed legs was taken to Tavistock).

Sir Thomas Cotton (English Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas)

Sir Thomas was a distinguished English sea captain since 1542. He served on land in Boulogne and was regarded as a serious mariner and soldier who maintained a library of “books, and maps of cosmography and marine causes”. He was a nephew of the Lord Howard (the Lord Admiral of England).

Edmund Drake

Edmund Drake is the father of Francis Drake, and was a shearsman and lay reader in Tavistock, England who fled from the parish with his family in 1548.

While Sir Francis later commented that his father fled Tavistock because of religious persecution immediately prior to the Western Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 for assaulting two men (Roger Langiford and John Harte, around Tavistock and Peter Tavy and stealing money and a horse in 1548).

Edmund was pardoned for both crimes in December of 1548, but has never returned to Tavistock, passing away a vicar in Upchurch, England in 1567.

While some of the history mentions that he was a sailor before he started working as a shearsman, there is no historical basis in my statement that he was part of the ship’s company on the Henry Grace à Dieu during the Battle of the Solent.

As yeoman farmers in Tavistock, the Drake family was not poor, at least in comparison. However, it seems that Edmund and his family were under financial strain when they fled from Tavistock.

Sir Francis Drake

We do not know the exact birth of Sir Francis, but various sources tend to place it at around 1540 or 1541. While early personality and development of young Francis was not documented (giving me a lot of sea room to invent), the subsequent, adult portions of his personae and achievements are well-documented in multiple biographies and other work.

The suicide plan aboard the Tiger was inspired by Drake’s penchant for bold, unexpected actions later in life—landing and attacking the Isthmus of Panama from the sea, or his attack against Cádiz.

John Drake (The Elder)

John Drake was the father of Edmund and John Drake (the Younger). To distinguish the two men, I refer to John the Elder as Grandfather in this book, while his son is simply John.

Marjorie Drake (Hawkins)

Marjorie was the wife of John Drake (the elder). They were the parents of John Drake (the younger) and Edmund Drake (Francis Drake’s father). Some references also have other children by them.

Marjorie was also sister to William Hawkins (the elder). Please see below.

Mary Drake (Mullwaye)

Some records refer to Anna Mullwaye in some documents), mother of Sir Francis Drake.

Not much known about Mary Mullwaye, the wife of Edmund Drake and the mother of Francis Drake. She appears to have died in 1557 in Upchurch.

Captain Richard Drake

Captain Richard Drake helped the Drakes by transporting them from Plymouth or from St. Nicolas Island (now called Drake’s Island) to Gillingham. Not much is known about Captain Richard Drake other than he served under Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Cotton and commanded the English Galley during an expedition to the Plymouth area, and there are some references that he may have also been born around the Tavistock area.

Please note that like people, ships were frequently named similarly. There are several references to the English Galley in royal inventories of the time and there is some evidence of the name actually referring to a ship that was not otherwise deemed important to catalog.

This is similar to the earlier use of the term “barque” or “bark,” which comes to us from the French, and the earlier Latin word barca, or boat, and which is attributed to the ship that Francis Drake apprenticed on.

Stephen Gardner

Stephen Bishop of Winchester and member of queen Mary I’s Privy council. He participated in the 1st Marian Parliament of October 5, 1553.

With the queen’s backing, Bishop Gardner led the charge to repeal all the religious legislation from the Act of Supremacy (1534) onward. While it took two more parliaments to complete the work, England was restored to Catholicism and obedience to the Roman See, though the queen could not reverse a lot of the land redistribution that her father, Henry VIII, confiscated.

Vicar William Lawnder

Vicar Lawnder, mentioned in the opening scene of the novel, was the vicar of St. Eustachius beginning in 1534 through 1554.

I created the scene where he gives a bent coin to Francis in St. Eustachius to highlight the tension that would have been present during this period in history. (The deliberate practice of bending a coin as an offering to an icon in a Catholic church was a common practice at the time and is an evolution of sacrifices to deities since the pre-Christian times).

Philip Habsburg (Philip II) (King of Spain)

Son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (who is also a nephew of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII and mother to Mary I of England).

John Harte

John Harte was one of the two men assaulted and robbed by Edmund Drake and another accomplice shortly before fleeing from Tavistock.

Local records list him as a “generosus” or gentleman, meaning that he was a landowner and farmer. The connection between Edmund Drake (as an employee of his mill) and Harte was my creation.

John Hawkins

(Historically spelled Hawkyns)

Sir John Hawkins, of the famed Plymouth mariner family, was a 2nd cousin to Sir Francis. His father, William Hawkins the elder, established the triangular trade, and was influential in the court of King Henry VIII, elected to Parliament, and an active member of the town of Plymouth, having served it as a mayor.

After the Drakes fled from the Tavistock area, the young Francis, being of kin, lived in the Hawkins household until his apprenticeship. The dates of this residence with the Hawkins family have not been recorded.

Sir John and his brother William (the younger) carried on the family business started by William Hawkins (the elder), and owned several ships used for a mixture of trading, privateering, and outright piracy, and there is some reason to believe that Francis’s apprenticeship was aboard a Hawkins vessel.

Sir John, elevated to a rank of admiral, becomes an important figure in Elizabethan history later in his life. Though relations between Sir Francis and Sir John were reputed to be chilly at times, both men died on the same naval mission, at sea, a few days apart, and their careers generally progressed together.

William Hawkins (the Elder)

Father to John and William Hawkins, the “well-beloved by the King” former Royal Navy Captain of the ship the English Galley.

He was brother to Marjorie Hawkins who married John Drake (the elder). William Hawkins had a storied career - he was a wealthy merchant in Plymouth, former MP, former mayor of Plymouth, and former Receiver of Plymouth. As a merchant, he is credited with starting the triangular trade routes to Guinea and Brazil in the 1520s.

While I was researching William Hawkins, I discovered that he was married Joan Trelawney of Brightorre. This gave me a convenient relationship to use in the book to show that family connections mattered and invent Sir Gregory Trelawney, the captain of the Tiger.

Roger Langiford

Roger Langiford was the second of the two men assaulted by Edmund Drake before fleeing from Tavistock.

Captain Sir John Malyn

Sir John served with distinction and later became the Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas.

Edward Tudor (Edward VI) (King of England)

Edward VI ascends to the throne of England at the age of 9 after his Father’s death in 1547. Edward dies in 1553.

He is a half-brother to Mary I and Elizabeth I, and was a Protestant ruler, though most of the influence likely came from his regent and council.

Edward’s name was used to orders the religious reforms the removal of Catholic artifacts from churches. (Refer to William Body, above.)

Edward (or rather his regent and council, in his name) introduced of the Book of Common Prayer to continue to convert England away from Catholicism. The combination of Henry VIII’s Monasteries Act and Edward’s Protestant Reformation ignites and fans the fury of the Western (or Prayer Book) Rebellion.

Mary Tudor (Mary I) (Queen of England)

Mary I is the first Queen of England in her own right, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and half-sister of Elizabeth Tudor (Elizabeth I). Ascends to the throne upon Edward’s death in 1553 in a popularly-backed uprising.

Mary, like her mother, is a devout Catholic who attempts to bring England back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church.

Mary married Philip II of Spain (see above) but dies childless a few years later in 1558.

The ascent proclamation that appears in Chapter 2 is sourced from historical record.

John Foxe creates the sobriquet “Bloody Mary” for her role in the English Inquisition’s pursuit of heresy.

Note the practiced use of “history being written by victors.“Elizabeth I, her successor and half-sister, also pursued heresy and burned people as capital punishment.

However, whereas Mary pursued Protestant heretics because they were not Catholic, Elizabeth punished the crime of treasonous acts against the realm. It just happened that Catholics swore allegiance to the Pope.

John Trelawney of Pool

John Trelawney of Pool was one of several men of that name, and was a sheriff of Cornwall. However, that he was an advisor to the Lord Treasurer was my invention for the story.

That he was the cousin of captain Gregory Trelawney is another invention.

Vicar Robert Wells

Robert Wells was a Cornish Catholic vicar at the time of the Western Rebellion. Vicar Wells appears in written history at the time of the siege of Exeter, and taunts the army besieging the castle.

His rhetoric was credited in preventing Lord Russell’s troops from setting Exeter ablaze.

As with almost all people directly identified with the uprising, Vicar Wells was gruesomely executed. He was hung in chains from a steeple of St. Thomas Church in his vestments, his corpse being left there for multiple years until the ascent of Mary I of England.

Agitating the crowd at Tavistock at the beginning of the book is my invention based on the story at Exeter.

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt led one of the four co-timed rebellions against the marriage of Mary I to Philip II of Spain for religious and nationalistic reasons. He was executed once the rebellion was suppressed.

Other characters are my inventions.

Locations, Buildings, and Other Settings

Siege of Montreuil / Siege of Boulogne

The town of Montreuil was besieged in the Italian War, waged by the alliance of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Henry the VIII against Francis I of France (There were other belligerents).

In the real conflict, Suffolk decided that a decisive strike against the fortress would be successful. He was injured during the assault only to be saved by his squire, Thomas Clere, who was killed when he was saving the Duke.

The heroic participation of Gregory Trelawney in the rescue, was my invention.

London

The London street names, boroughs, wharves, and locations of buildings and guilds (such as The Worshipful Company of Vinters) are from the Agas and Copperplate Maps of early modern London circa 1550s and other period references.

Tavistock

The St. Eustachius Church in Tavistock is a real church that dates back to 1265.

If you came to this page first, here is a link to the description of the scenes found in the the first chapter of the historical fiction novel Sic Parvis Magna.

Also if you missed the start of the sample chapter, read the first scene, Going on Delivery.