Author’s Historical Note

Spoiler alert! I’m suggesting that readers not read this historical note until after they have finished reading A Noble Cunning. There are many spoilers in the following discussion of the relationship between the novel and the true story that inspired it.

When my husband and I visited Traquair House in Scotland in October 2014, we heard the story of the exploits of Winifred Herbert Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale. During the aftermath of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion, Winifred rescued her husband from the Tower of London the day before his scheduled execution by carrying out a complicated plan with the help of a group of devoted women friends. Her feat was unique in the history of the Tower.

Despite my lifelong fascination with the history of the UK, I had never heard this story before. I could not stop thinking about it. I thought that Winifred Maxwell was a true, unsung, feminist hero, and, what was even more remarkable, she had overcome all the limitations placed on women in the 18th century to accomplish this remarkable deed with the help of other courageous women.

The essential events of Winifred’s dramatic life, as set forth in this novel, are all based on fact. Her home in Scotland was raided by Covenanters, she did travel to London alone in the midst of one of the worst snowstorms in many years to try to save her husband, and she did visit the Court of St. James’s and was dragged across the floor by King George I when she tried to present her petition for mercy for her husband.

She also did, in fact, choreograph the visits of a series of women friends to the Tower and the disguising of her husband in women’s clothes so that he could be smuggled out and away. To fool the guards, Winifred even, like Bethan Glentaggart, the protagonist of my novel, went back to her husband’s cell after he was gone and pretended to talk to him before she made her own escape.

Most of the villains in my version of the story are fictional, other than King George I himself. Though the Covenanters who raided Winifred Maxwell’s home were certainly dangerous religious fanatics, there was no literal model for Minister MacGurk. The real Winifred had sisters, but none of them, as far as I know, resembled the troublemaker Aelwen. Sadly, Phineas and Amelia Thrupp are also fictional creations, though Winifred did have women friends living in London who took her in and helped her carry out her plot. Bethan’s children are fictional and not to be identified with Winifred’s actual children. On the other hand, the character of Lucy Dunstable in the novel is based very loosely on Winifred’s longtime companion Cecilia Evans.

Catholics were indeed persecuted and treated as second or third-class citizens in England for over 200 years as depicted in A Noble Cunning. The laws against them were Draconian but were more vigorously enforced during some periods than others. It was true, for instance, as illustrated in the novel, that Catholics in England were not allowed to possess physical items of worship identified with Catholicism, such as rosaries. The Roman Catholic mass was forbidden. Everyone was required to attend Church of England services or pay a fine. Catholics were also forbidden to hold public office or own land. Priests from the Continent risked their lives to come to England and perform religious rites for Catholics.

Catholics were accused of utterly absurd crimes, especially during the reign of Charles II. Roy Hattersley in his history The Catholics comments that the “Popish Plot,” dreamed up by Titus Oates, an anti-Catholic liar and all-round scoundrel, was “a concoction of such obvious nonsense that it could only have been believed by fools and accepted by rogues for whom truth was less important than power.”

During my research I came to have a somewhat jaundiced view of the so-called “Glorious Revolution” in 1688 in which William of Orange forced James II off the throne. I had read that the 1688 “Revolution” was “glorious” because William of Orange freed the English from a tyrannical Catholic king and restored their rights and liberties.

But it was James II, far ahead of his time, who proposed a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience that would have extended religious liberty not just to Catholics but to all—nonconformists, Jews, even non-believers. Of course, James undertook this Declaration primarily to improve conditions for Catholics, but, nevertheless, had it been accepted as drafted, it would have benefitted everyone. Imagine if such a law could have established religious freedom in England as early as 1688!

The Declaration, instigated perhaps by James’ friend, the famous Quaker William Penn, was generally rejected because the people did not trust a Catholic king and suspected that the Declaration was just one step towards restoring Catholics to dominance, and because Anglicans and the dominant political party, the Whigs, did not want to share power. The persecution of Catholics continued for more than sixty years beyond the time of this novel.

A law passed by Parliament in 1701 also forbade the accession of any future monarch who was Catholic or married to a Catholic. Thus, when Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, died in 1714, the lawmakers skipped over more than fifty closer claimants to the throne, bringing in as Britain’s next king a German ruler of a small principality in Central Europe who spoke no English, just because he was a Protestant.

The Jacobites (Jacobus means “James” in Latin) who supported James II’s son, James Francis Edward, the “Chevalier,” wanted to get rid of the foreign interloper George and put the true Stuart heir on the throne, thereby ending persecution of Catholics. They were joined in that effort by many non-Catholics who couldn’t stomach the notion of a greedy and uncouth foreigner on the British throne. Details of the feckless Jacobite campaign that ensued and its aftermath, as described in the novel, are historically accurate.

I also found a larger meaning in Winifred’s story. It reflects the cruelty and horror of religious persecution in any age, including our own. But Winifred Maxwell also represents the courage and daring of those who refuse to submit, who fight back and sometimes succeed, even against the most fearsome odds.