Inspiration for a new novel

The National Library of Australiahas recently opened a Treasures Gallery with some very interesting exhibits: a letter from Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra, the original Waltzing Matilda manuscript, Captain William Bligh’s list of the Bounty mutineers and the Endeavour journal of Captain Cook. Yet the item that interests me most is a 1790s playbill advertising the drama Jane Shore which was being performed in the fledgling colony of Botany Bay. This little handbill is one of the earliest known printed documents in Australian history and was presented as a gift to Australia by the Canadian Government.

For those of you who may never have heard of her before, feisty Mistress Shore was one of King Edward IV’s mistresses, which made her a member of the Yorkist glitterati and one of the most talked about women in the late fifteenth century. Her story has inspired poets and playwrights down the centuries and if she lived in today’s world, there would be photographs in the women’s magazines of her boating with King Edward, at film launches with Lord Hastings, night clubs with the Marquis of Dorset, or leaving prison on the arm of her lawyer.

However, for me, she is one of the most delightful people in British History, and I have just spent an enjoyable year or so researching and writing a novel centred on her.

The research was fun. It took me to Westminster and the City of London and it was amazing to discover how many of the streets from Mistress Shore’s era still retain their names and follow their original paths.

So, who was the real Mistress Shore?
She definitely wasn’t called ‘Jane’. That name was given to her long after her death by an unknown playwright in his 1599 drama: The First and Second Partes of King Edward the Fourth, Containing …his love to fayre Mistress Shoare.

Her true name was Elizabeth, and she was the daughter of John Lambard, a wealthy London mercer and alderman. In 1461 he served as a  sheriff of London – a very responsible position in an England divided by the war between the Houses of York and Lancaster.

Elizabeth was married ‘ere she was ripe’ to William Shore of Derby, a liveryman in the London Mercers’ Guild. He was probably in his mid-twenties at the time of his marriage but he cannot have been very exciting as a husband because in 1476 his much younger wife sued for divorce on the grounds of impotency and frigidity… and won!

Such a triumph would have been headlines in London. A dangerous precedent, too, that might have left many a London husband feeling vulnerable. Certainly the Mercer’s Guild would not have been impressed and William Shore, carrying a letter of protection signed by the king, stayed off-shore for the next nine years.

After King Edward IV’s death in 1483, Elizabeth was persecuted by his strait-laced brother. King Richard III. She was one of the people that Richard blamed for Edward’s deteriorating health and premature death. A proclamation from 1483 calls for the arrest of King Edward’s stepson, the Marquis of Dorset, 'who holds the unshameful and mischievous woman called Shore’s wife in adultery’. Elizabeth was imprisoned and charged with witchcraft and treason, her property was seized and she was ordered to do penance as a common harlot. Her other protector, Lord Hastings, was executed.

I won’t tell you any more. I hope you may read my novel. What I will add here is that Sir Thomas More, who would have met people who knew her, gave Elizabeth a wonderful write-up, speaking of her reputation for kindness. He says of King Edward’s affection for her:

‘Many he had, but her he loved.’

As a woman who survived in a man’s world with charm, wit and kindness, the real ‘Jane’ Shore would have been delighted to know that her story is still inspiring all these centuries later.

Happy reading!

Isolde Martyn