Customer Reviews

Scapegoat for a Stuart

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the third novel in a trilogy set at the end of the Elizabethan era and the early years of the Stuart dynasty in which the lives of the main characters are set against the events of the rise of James the Sixth and First.

It follows on from Footsteps of a Stuart and Echo of a Stuart. All the books in the trilogy were published under the names Elizabeth Elgin and Kate Kirby. There are a number of sub-plots, including the story of a fictional family which has been followed through the trilogy. But whether or not this was the intention, for me the book was dominated by the story of the gunpowder plotters.

For hundreds of years Guy Fawkes was considered by the non-catholic majority in Britain to be an arch-villain, very much the way our generation thinks of Islamofascist suicide bombers. It's an extremely close parallel - if they were guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted and executed, the gunpowder plotters were trying to use force to impose their religion on a country which didn't want it, attempted to murder large numbers of people in the process, and succeeded only in stirring up hatred and fear against people of their own faith.

This book tries very hard, but in my opinion unsuccessfully, to give a different perspective.

Elizabeth Elgin tells the story from the viewpoint of someone sympathetic to Robert Catesby and the plotters. This book begins with Elizabeth the First dying, and catholics hoping that James the Sixth and First would give them more freedom of worship. The book continues by showing how those hopes were dashed, presenting King James as a cynical tyrant, and Cecil as a religious bigot who persecutes catholics.

I won't say too much more about how the story continues in order not to give away those parts of it which will not already be known to the reader. Let's just say that historical events such as the Mounteagle letter are presented in such a way as to make the main protestant protagonists in the story into evil geniuses and most of the catholics into holy fools who get outwitted all the way down the line.

If you like that view of history, or have different views but can put them aside, you may well enjoy this book. If you are looking for a well-argued and thought-provoking alternative view of this period of history, don't look here - the story grasps at every available straw to put a sympathetic gloss on the motives of those who plotted with Catesby to blow up parliament. It tries so hard to do this that some readers may find this book rather one-sided. However, as it takes no major liberties with history, there may be other readers who ask on what basis Guy Fawkes can possibly be considered a "scapegoat."

Indeed, some readers may find, as I certainly did, in the words which Elizabeth Elgin puts into the mouth of Fawkes, Catesby, and their confederates a chilling echo of the sort of religious fanaticism which in our own age we associate with Osama Bin Laden. I was actually mildly shocked by one scene in this book when Fawkes was supposedly interrogated by the King and in response "explained softly, as if he were reasoning with a small child" a sophistical justification for religious murder.

But then, people did believe such things in that age, Fawkes and Catesby among them. And sadly those who imagine that Jesus or Allah want their worshippers to kill those whose beliefs differ still do. Transpose a few words from the speech of self-justification which the author has Fawkes make to James the Sixth and First, and it could have come straight out of a suicide video left behind by one of the fanatics who flew hijacked passenger airliners into the Twin Towers.

Writing and character development is reasonably well done: the book flows smoothly.