15th century scandal in the Imp of Eye

In 1541 Eleanor, the Duchess of Gloucester, was accused of witchcraft. Margery Jourdemayne, ‘the Witch of Eye next Westminster’, Thomas Southwell (Chaplain of Westminster Palace and a canon), and the scholars Roger Bolingbroke and John Home (Hume) were all accused of witchcraft too.  It seems impossible that a noblewoman and other powerful and learned people would be accused and tried for something like witchcraft at that time period. And that some of them would meet a terrible end, as a result. But there was more to it than meets the eye (excuse the pun).

The Imp of Eye, uses these events as the centrepiece for its plot.

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Duke Humphrey of Gloucester

15th century England was a time of great turmoil and power shifts. When Henry V died he left an infant son, Henry VI, who was under the care of his uncles. The Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Gloucester who were appointed the regents. As Henry matured, various powerful nobles maneuvered for position and control, including his uncle, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. When Humphrey’s older brother died it left Humphrey as the next in line to the throne and closest to the young king. For a while, he was able to influence the young king and encourage him to continue the war with France that had dragged on for almost a century. But other factions, especially the one headed by Cardinal Beaufort, a distant relation, vied for power.  A key plan was to discredit Humphrey and get him out of the way.

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Eleanor and Duke Humphrey

    His second wife, the lovely but volatile Eleanor Cobham, former lady in waiting to the Duke’s first wife, played into their hands. They used her desperate, frequent consultations with the known herbalist and witch, Margery Jourdemayne (the Witch of Eye), to try and bring about her downfall. 

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Moonyeen Blakey read about this trial and the witch, Margery Jourdemayne, in the course of her research for a previous book she’d started writing. She discussed the storyline with me several times and I followed its development. She sat down to write it and had a draft of it completed when she fell ill with a second bought of cancer. This time, unfortunately, she was unable to beat it and she died in March 2014.  Before she died, she asked me to take on the novel and do with it what I thought best.  I read it through and overhauled it, creating some new characters, changing some other characters, and eliminating characters entirely. All the time I worked on it I felt her looking over my shoulder discussing and debating as the story took shape.  Though there are missing faces, changed faces and new faces in the current story, one character above all remained as he was: Barnabas. I made him older, but his spirit is unchanged, as is the voice that she created for him.

This book is now the first in a series, The Renaissance Sojourner Series, that features Barnabas.

The book is published in ebook and print and can be purchased below or the print copies ordered in bookstores.  

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Amazon UK

Europe and non Amazon ebook

Amazon USA

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