|
The year is 1527. The Santo Antonio, a Portuguese warship bearing the dowry of a Spanish princess, founders on the rocks near Land’s End. Village squire Thomas Seyntaubin hatches a daring plan to spirit away its fortune. He conspires with William Godolphin and Jack Millaton, his neighbours and fellow magistrates. But their scheme places them at the vortex of deadly intrigue involving the crowned heads of Europe.
Meanwhile, Thomas’ close relative, the dazzling Honor Basset, is married to Sir John, a man thirty years her senior. She welcomes the attentions of Lord Lisle, Admiral of the Fleet, Knight of the Garter and offspring of the Plantagenet kings. When Lisle is sent to Cornwall by Cardinal Wolsey, to investigate the puzzling disappearance of the ship’s treasure, the scene is set for a fateful conflict of loyalties in the mercurial world of Tudor England.
Custom of the County is based on real people and true events. Faithfully researched from State papers in the national archives and from his family’s own private records, Nicholas St Aubyn unravels a mystery which has puzzled historians for five hundred years.
|
