Quarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War

Quarrel with the Kingtells the story of the first four earls of Pembroke, their wives, children, estates, tenants, and allies, following their high and glamorous trajectory from the 1520s through 1650—the most turbulent and dramatic years of English history—across three generations of change, ambition, resistance, and war. The Pembrokes were at the heart of it all: the richest family in England, with old blood and new drive, led as much by a succession of extraordinary women as by their husbands and sons.

It is also the story of a power struggle, over a long century, between the family and the growing strength of the English Crown. For decades, questions of loyalty simmered: Was government about agreement and respect, or authority and compulsion? What status did traditional rights have in a changing world? Did a national emergency mean those rights could be ignored or overturned? These were the issues that in 1642 would lead to a brutal civil war, the bloodiest conflict England has ever experienced, in which the earl of Pembroke—who had been loyal till then—had no choice but to rebel against a king who he felt had betrayed both him and his country.

At other times, the Pembrokes both threatened the Crown and acted as its bruisingly efficient and violent agents. They were ambivalent figures: flag bearers for an ancient England and time servers in some of the most corrupt courts England has ever known; fawning courtiers and indulgent landlords; puritanical aristocrats and rebel grandees. Nicolson's book amounts to a study in all the ambiguities involved in the exercise and maintenance of power and status.

"In his typically supple and elegant prose, Nicolson — author of the acclaimed God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible — traces the Pembroke family's 'arc of ambition, success, failure, and collapse' between the 1520s and the 1640s, when the fourth earl of Pembroke joined the Puritan rebellion. Along the way, Nicolson highlights the ambiguous nature of this most powerful of dynasties — 'one of the richest and most glamorous' of their time. Outwardly the servile courtiers of the king in London, in fact they presented a potent provincial counterweight to the monarchy's centralizing preferences with their vast Anglo-Welsh palatinate and a legion of loyal tenants. While fiercely protective of their rights, the Pembrokes were not 'liberal' by today's standards; if anything, it was the royal administration that represented the future modern state while the Pembrokes and their feudal values harked back to the Middle Ages. As Nicolson wistfully concedes, 'this story is about the end of an old world, not the making of a new one.' For fans of the Tudor and Stuart era, this will be a welcome treat. 16 pages of color photos." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

British author Nicolson follows the family of the earls of Pembroke from the time of the first Tudors to the English civil War. They were one of the grand dynasties of England, near the throne but not royal. Through marriage with other important families, notably the Talbots, they gained and retained wealth and influence. They also had to keep their feet in a world changing from one in which the nobility could coerce the ruler with the threat of withholding military aid to one in which the kings hired the armies. The Pembrokes both disliked the Tudors and danced attendance upon them. With the advent of James I, they became court favorites, only to lose that patronage under Charles I. Nicolson gives the story of the family intrigues, punctuated with quotations from the letters of the participants, in a novelistic style. But he also describes the slow disintegration of a way of life that, for all its abuses, still had as its ideal a strict code of personal responsibility to those under one's protection. This is an entertaining book, with a serious underlying message. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Adam Nicols on is the author of Seamanship, God's Secretaries, and Seize the Fire. He has won both the Somerset Maugham and William Heinemann awards, and he lives with his family at Sissinghurst Castle in England.