The novel purports to be the Autobiography of Hildebrand de Brute, who is looking back in happily married old age in the peaceful times of Henry VII's reign to the unsettled period known as the Wars of the Roses. Born in 1438, on the borderland between England and Wales, he is descended from the Saxon rather than the Norman race. The family had settled at Birtsmereton, where Hildebrand's grandfather, Giles de Brute, had pulled down the Norman Keep and erected the present Manor House. The author knows his Borderland well - occasionally the pages read like a gazetteer - and has researched in detail the names and family trees of the local gentry. It feels as if he personally has ridden around all the places and scenes he refers to.
For most of the book, the story is concentrated on these Herefordshire-Shropshire borderlands and this is what gives it structure as well as its commendable 'tightness'. Above all, it shows how Civil War can destroy relationships, some of long-standing, even within families (as happened in the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century). Hovering over the political strife, is the added problem of Lollardy. Hildebrand's father was a Wyclifitte (the grandfather was the dearest friend and cousin of Sir John Oldcastle), as was Hildebrand's young lover Rosamond Berew. It is not long before the latter persuades her boyfriend to accept the 'new' faith. Hildebrand's father thought the teaching of Wycliffe in advance of the age...Liberty of opinion for Lollard as well as Catholic was his demand. What this does is to give enemies another stick with which to beat them.
The story concentrates on the years between 1458 and 1471. It includes details of Edward of March (then York) successfully hiding from his Lancastrian pursuers; his linking up with the Earl of Warwick; and his astonishment at the comfort and safety of the well-defended Manor Houses on the Borders. Hildebrand recalls I have charged on the battle-field amidst the startling surroundings of war, and have laid stricken myself, and thought I was a dying man; I have stood by the bedside of those I loved when the last flicker of the lamp of life was dying out, but never has memory impressed a sight deeper on my soul than that look of Lord Edward as I recounted the fate of his beloved father and brother after the battle of Wakefield.
The author has a unusual account of how Richard of Gloucester gained his deformed back: Edward tells Hildebrand's mother that my young brother Richard, not yet nine years old, was tall and as straight as a young poplar tree, when one day he happened to ride on his palfrey against an old crone. She cursed him by her demons and attendant fiends, and look at him now...Richard has crooked shoulders through that hag's sorcery, and I much doubt if he ever lives to be a man. Hildebrand eventually meets Gloucester: Lord Richard was dark and swarthy like his father, with an inclination to high shoulders; his face was handsome, but his form was then feeble, and I little thought that I should behold him leading the most terrific charges at the battles of Barnet and Theocsbury, or that he would become a knight renowned for feats of valour and of arms. Hildebrand also meets Anne Neville - I thought at the time how little this noble girl was fitted to battle with the stern ambitious men with whom her lot was cast. Of note is that Hildebrand (and the author?) do not believe the traditional story of Prince Edward being slain after Tewkesbury by Gloucester, Dorset and Hastings, but it was rather by servants. As for the Princes in the Tower, Hildebrand writes - the Prince of Wales and his young brother murdered, as was supposed, by their uncle's commands, but without trace of their lonely grave
Every good historical novel must have at least one 'baddie' or bête noire. Malvern Chase has two scoundrels: Sire Andrew Trollop, who is worse than the Vicar of Bray for changing from Lancastrian to Yorkist and vice versa. He rightly meets a dastardly end. There is also Sire John Carfax, of Castlemereton Keep, a near neighbour of the de Brutes. He, too, is a double-dyed villain who also meets a timely demise.
Symonds has clearly done his homework on the period, citing local documents, the Rous Roll, the Paston Letters and Holinshed. Mention is made of various battles - such as Mortimer's Cross, Hedgley Moor, Hexham and Edgecote- and compelling accounts are given of the examples of the lawless times affecting both manor and town. Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, the parlous witch and Friar Bungay, the great nigromancer, are referred to, which tally well with Bulwer Lytton's treatment of them. The author should be congratulated on a spirited tale, told with pace and accuracy. Yes, from the Yorkist viewpoint, but no harm in that.
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