LADY KATE by Pamela Hill
Lady Katherine Gordon, daughter of the much-married earl of Huntly, starts life
with a handicap; she is uncertain which of her father’s wives had been her mother. Her courage and beauty overcome this uncertainty, and in course of a varied life she acquires the lasting devotion of
her own king, James IV, and of many other men, four of whom she marries. A
fifth is Henry VII, who surprisingly
– he killed her first husband for political reasons – is recorded as desiring no other comfort than her company. Kate is generous
enough to give it to him. She also greatly loves his queen.
Her story includes the tragedy of the stranger whose first bride she became, and
who may or may not have been the younger of the sons of Edward IV said to have
been murdered earlier in the Tower. This and the later marriages apart, the
story of European entanglements connected with the desired marriage of Henry
VII’s son Arthur and an infanta o
f Spain, who later married his brother Henry VIII,
make compelling reading. Through it all Kate continues wise, kindly and
beautiful even in old age. She is one of the few people to have looked down on
her own face in a tomb she did not occupy, leaving her third husband inside it
and
returning to where she had been happy with her second. She also, though differently, loved her young fourth husband, who was to carve out a future for
himself after Kate died in 1537, the year Henry VIII at last got himself a son.
All these people come alive in Kate’s recollections, which include her grief at news of the Scots defeat at Flodden.
Her brother, and ancestor of Lord Byron, was killed there with James IV, who
had married Henry VII’s daughter and in the end gave rise to the present royal family.
Pamela Hill
Full-time writer Pamela Hill was educated in Scotland and originally trained to
be a teacher. She has written around 91 books in various different categories
of fiction and non-fiction, but it is her historical work which now takes
precedence. From her home in Hertfordshire she is presently working on her
latest work of non-fiction, with recent published titles including
Prinny Remembers – the Private Reflections of His Majesty King George the Fourth and A Tale of Strawberries – Shakespeare’s Journeys in Scotland.
