Book
Rebellious Grace
First published 2025
London, 1536. A royal servant is found with his throat cut, then his buried body is exhumed and mutilated two weeks later. Will Somers is asked to investigate just as Henry VIII’s court is preoccupied by the Pilgrimage of Grace, the great northern rebellion against religious change and the suppression of monasteries. The dead man’s connection with one of Queen Jane Seymour’s jewels draws the palace murder towards the rebellion, and Will must determine whether the crime is private vengeance, theft or part of a wider act of treason.
Robert Aske led the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, presenting the rising as a defence of traditional religion and good government rather than simple rebellion. Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell nevertheless faced it as a major threat to royal authority, while Jane Seymour’s new queenship followed only months after Anne Boleyn’s execution. Westerson places the historical Will Somers inside that volatile Christmas court, where access to the king allows him to hear arguments from both political and personal angles while his own relationships remain dangerous secrets.
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