Agnes Strickland

And that so much of that was overlooked for too long.

Well, what people think they know about the six wives of Henry VIII comes still to a very great extent from a Victorian historian called Agnes Strickland.

I've got a lot of time for Agnes Strickland.

She was a real archive hound.

She loved Tudor sources.

And that's absolutely the case with Matilda.

Because the Victorians, and I'm thinking particularly of Agnes Strickland, who was quite prolific as a female historian in the Victorian period, and she wrote of the lives of the Queens of England.

But she helped to kind of spread this myth that Matilda's really main role in the Norman conquest was to stitch the Bayeux Tapestry.

I just think it's infuriating when you look at how much Matilda did.

There's nothing before that at all.

Agnes Strickland, who hates Jane in the 19th century, actually says she doesn't know what religion Jane was.

She says Protestants claim her because she's Edward VI's mother.

And Catholics claim her because she's nice to Princess Mary and without any merit at all, she gets praise from both sides.

A Ghost Story by P.J. Bailey, author of Festus.

The Infant by Agnes Strickland, author of The Seven Ages of Women, etc.

An English Watering Place by J. Westland Marston, author of The Patrician's Daughter.

Palaces by Mary Howitt, author of Wood Layton, etc.

And morning met the youth all pale, and pacing to and fro; But ah! the goblet scull'd he touch'd never again, I trow.

End of A Ghost Story by P. J. Bailey.

The Infant by Agnes Strickland.

From The Athenaeum Souvenir of 1843.