Beginning on the bloody battlefield of Bosworth, when Henry Tudor seized the crown of England & ended the Wars of the Roses,
... Seventeen year old Sadie Linthorpe is the talk of Rhyope when she first arrives there alone.
But Sadie is keeping
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SPLENDOUR & SQUALOR Beginning with the arrival of Henry Tudor & his army, at Milford in 1485, & ending with the death of the great Queen Elizabeth I, in 1603, this is a vivid account of a hugely eventful & contradictory age. Here is a life in London & in the country, the costumes, travel, food & medicine, the sports & the pastimes, & the wonderful flowering of English drama, juxtaposed with the stultifying narrowness of peasant life, the harsh treatment of heretics & traitors, & the misery of the plague. An astonishing picture of England of great beauty & violence, achievements & despair.