by Ben Soton
Tombland, C J Sansome,
Macmillan 2018, pp.864, £20
Readers
in East Anglia may be familiar with Tombland as an area of central Norwich. But
it is also the title of the seventh novel featuring the hunchbacked Tudor
sleuth Matthew Shardlake. Shardlake, a lawyer,
is well connected and sees society from the top In previous novels he has met
Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, Catherine Parr and Henry VIII.
Despite this he has a sympathy for the oppressed
having used his legal skills in the Court of Requests to represent tenant
farmers in disputes with land owners.
Arguably
there was more contact between the rich and the poor in Tudor times than today.
Members of different social classes would rub shoulders whilst travelling as
well as in inns and alehouses; and wealthy landowners would often have direct
contact with their tenants. The
super-rich of today are more likely to travel by private jet and not even use
our overcrowded rail system which few of us can afford and I doubt that the CEO
of Amazon knows the names of any of his warehouse staff.
Through Matthew the author shows the many
sides of Tudor life. On the one hand we
are brought into the politics of the Tudor court; with its numerous factions
vying for influence. Whilst in his crime
solving adventures, in a period three hundred years before the police force, we
see the underside of Tudor England.
Sansome’s vivid descriptions bring the era to life, which is arcuately researched
and I would recommend his novels to anyone with an interest in the period. The Maids Head Inn, where Shardlake and his
party stay still stands in Norwich today.
I shall take this opportunity to inform readers that a double room costs
£145 per night.
Tombland is set in the
reign of boy king Edward VI; where England is effectively ruled by his uncle Edward
Seymour. The country is beset with problems of inflation, caused by the
devaluation of coinage, a problem that began in the reign of Henry VIII. Many landowners are enclosing common land and
using it for sheep grazing which resulted in many tenant farmers forced off the
land. This did not take place without protest. Those who drone on about the
so-called crimes of Stalinism should perhaps look closer to home if they are concerned
about past injustice. In the Soviet Union land was taken into public ownership
and mechanised; fewer farm workers were needed and could be released to work in
factories in the cities. In Tudor
England those forced off the land faced destitution.
In his legal work in Norwich Shardlake
finds himself in the middle of Kett’s Rebellion, named after Robert Kett of
Wymondham, a local landowner who led the revolt. Local tenant farmers set up a camp close to
the city in opposition to enclosure; they believed the Lord Protector Edward
Seymour would halt the process. Their hopes were tragically dashed.
These
protests, accompanied by similar events in the West Country, Essex and Kent
were the largest uprisings since the Peasants Revolt of 1381 and prior to the
English Civil War. The uprisings in Tudor England are often overlooked by some
historians who try to present the period as one of relative tranquillity
between the more violent Medieval Period and the seventeenth century. As a result,
the Tudor Period is often described as ‘Merry England’. Tombland,
with portrayal of rural class war, shows a very different side of the
period and it is anything other than merry.
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