24th September 2015
These are the hauntingly beautiful Tudor ruins of Cowdray House in Midhurst, West Sussex. I lived nearby for a time and set my first series, the Wideacre trilogy, in the gorgeous local countryside. The house has quite an illustrious past – visited by Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. I've written about it twice in recent books – Margaret Pole was imprisoned there from 1538 to 1539 before being taken to the Tower, and Kateryn Parr and Henry VIII stayed there after the Battle of the Solent and the sinking of the Mary Rose.
There's a legend that the owner William Fitzwilliam's family were cursed 'by fire and by water' after receiving the lands of a dissolved abbey. Cowdray managed to survive the Civil War, but did catch fire, today in 1793. Within weeks the owner, the 8th Viscount Montague, drowned (attempting to go over the Rhine Falls in a boat, despite the efforts of his servant and local magistrates to prevent him) – the title passed to a distant relative who died childless and it became extinct. The unfortunate 8th Viscount's sister inherited the ruin, and her sons also drowned, off Bognor in 1815. Her daughters couldn't agree how to divide the estates up and they were sold in 1843. Sounds like terrible bad fortune or tragically successful (though slow-acting) cursing. Here's an extract from The King's Curse during Margaret's imprisonment, after she is told that her son Baron Montague has been executed:
'God help you, William Fitzwilliam, for you are in the wrong. Interrogate me as you wish, though I am old enough to be your mother. You will find that I have done nothing wrong, as my own dear son Montague had done nothing wrong.’
It is a mistake to say his name. I can hear that my voice has grown thin and I am not sure that I can speak again. William swells in his pride at my weakness.
‘Be very sure that I will interrogate you again,’ he says.
Out of sight, behind my back, I pinch the skin of my palms. ‘Be very sure that you will find nothing,’ I say bitterly. ‘And at the end, this house will fall down around you, and this river will rise against you, and you will regret the day that you came against me in your pomp and stupidity and taunted me with the death of a better man, my son Montague.’
‘Do you curse me?’ he pants, all white and sweating, shaking with the knowledge that his house is already cursed for the putting down of Cowdray Priory, cursed by fire and water.
I shake my head. ‘Of course not. I don’t believe in such nonsense. You make your own destiny. But when you bear false witness against a good man like my son, when you put me to the question, when you know that I have done no wrong, you are on the side of the evil in the world and your friend and ally will draw you close.’
Image from Cowdray Heritage Trust