“Court Lady and Country Wife: Two Noble Sisters in Seventeenth-Century England”, by Lita-Rose Betcherman

 

400 pages, William Morrow, ISBN-13: 978-0060762889

I have read other books on English history during the tumultuous 17^th Century, especially concerning the Civil Wars: The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold by Geoffrey Robertson (reviewed on February 18^th, 2012), Cromwell: The Lord Protector by Antonia Fraser (reviewed on May 7^th, 2014) and Cavaliers and Roundheads: The English Civil War, 1642-1649 by Christopher Hibbert (reviewed on January 15^th, 2015) – oh, and The King’s Peace, The King’s War and A Coffin for King Charles, all by C.V. Wedgwood – none of which I’ve reviewed yet. All in due time, Dear Reader, all in due time. As this listing shows, I believe it is good and necessary to see a portrait from different perspectives, and that is what Court Lady and Country Wife: Two Noble Sisters in Seventeenth-Century England by Lita-Rose Betcherman does, as it displays this time period from the viewpoint of a pair of aristocratic women who witnessed everything from the front row.

And who were these women? Well, they would be Dorothy and Lucy Percy, daughters of Henry Percy, the 9^th Earl of Northumberland (that would be the “Wizard Earl”, a sobriquet given him from his scientific and alchemical experiments, his passion for cartography and his large library – and, perhaps, his penchant for treason). Dorothy, the elder, became the Countess of Leicester upon her marriage to Robert Sidney, 2^nd Earl of Leicester, and gave him 12 children. From this time on she became the “country wife” who, in-between pregnancies, was her husband’s constant champion and promoter, even if they didn't always see eye-to-eye. Lucy, the younger, became the Countess of Carlisle upon her marriage to James Hay, 1^st Earl of Carlisle, though the couple remained childless. She was the “court lady” who meddled in business and political affairs as a hobby and took on a series of extramarital lovers, evidently with her husband’s approval or, more likely, his inability to stop her.

Both sisters were swept up into the maelstrom of the English Civil Wars when they each precariously balanced family, finances and loyalties in order just to survive. Canadian historian Betcherman dwells particularly on Lucy’s charms, as sources praising her are abundant, while she is rather less generous to Dorothy, trusting too much in the often bitter assessments of her husband (I mean, how could he not be hostile at times? The woman only ever loaned him money with high interest rates. You read that right: Dorothy never loaned her own husband money interest-free). Where Court Lady and Country Wife is really invaluable, I believe, is showing the familiar tale of these conflicts from the vantage point of these aristocratic siblings who were privy to insider knowledge, straddling, as they did, both the parliamentary and royalist camps. Thus, we start with the rule of King James I and onwards through decades of strife, civil wars, invasions, beheadings, imprisonments, affairs, deaths, accusations, betrayals and spousal fights, introducing an overwhelming number of historical figures.

Court Lady and Country Wife is written in a calm, methodical tone as one would expect from a Canadian. Betcherman provides an exceptional outline of 17^th Century England – the political, social, and economic situations of the time – as well as an interesting analysis of the sisters’ implicit connection with each other and to the power struggles of the times. But the lack of emotional connection to the central figures may leave the reader feeling somewhat disengaged. Still, this book is a good read for British history buffs, with just enough story to keep things intriguing, and just enough fact to aid in personal research.