J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Dutch in the Medway

The Devil Upon the Wave – Teaser Trailer

by

To mark the publication by Endeavour Press of the new Quinton title, The Devil Upon the Wave, I’m delighted to provide a treat for my loyal readers and followers of this blog – namely, the first few pages of the book.

***

Here, Painter, let thine art describe a story,

Shaming our warlike island’s ancient glory:

A scene which never on our seas appear’d,

Since our first ships were on the ocean steer’d.

Make the Dutch fleet, while we supinely sleep,

Without opposers, masters of the deep.

 

Anon., Fourth Advice to a Painter (1667)

 

*

‘By God,’ says he, ‘I think the Devil shits Dutchmen.’

 

Sir William Batten, Surveyor of the Navy; words reported by Samuel Pepys in his diary, 19 July 1667

 

 

PROLOGUE

The Gunfleet Anchorage

October 1671

 

‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’

Tom Butler, who uttered these words, did not look like a religious man. The pursed lips, formed into a permanent kiss, and the grey bags beneath his eyes gave him the look of a libertine; and, every now and again, if the fancy took him, that was what Tom Butler was, sometimes for months at a time. In faith, then, he was not really a religious man at all. But his pronouncement as we stood at the stern, watched the men on the yard unfurling the main course of the Elsinore Merchant to catch the strengthening south-westerly breeze, was as solemn as any by a bishop. It led me to wonder which lord he meant: the Lord on high, or the lord who stood before me. Religious he might not be, but a lord Tom most certainly was, despite the rough seaman’s shirt and breeches that he and I both wore as disguise. Indeed, one day, if God willed it, he would rule an entire kingdom. For Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, was son and heir to the Duke of Ormonde, the vice-king of Ireland.

Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, by Sir Peter Lely (National Portrait Gallery)

‘A fair wind for it, Matt. A fine breeze to carry us over to avenge England’s greatest shame. Just as they had a fine, fair breeze for it four years ago.’

‘Amen to that, My Lord Ossory.’

I looked out over the waist of our ship. To all but the very keenest observer, she would appear an innocent flyboat, a merchantman with her course set for Rotterdam. Yet that one solitary keenest observer might note that by the standards of innocent merchantmen, her crew were somewhat brisk. The course was sheeted home a little too efficiently, the ship’s head steered a little too precisely. The crew on deck was distinctly large by the standards of any such innocent merchantman, making a voyage to Rotterdam; and that was without counting the two hundred soldiers and seamen concealed in the hold. True, the Elsinore Merchant was as low in the water as a ship notionally carrying a cargo of salt from Maldon could be expected to be. But she carried no salt: instead, her commodious hold also contained enough weaponry and ammunition to sustain a small army, and a full set of canvas, enough to outfit one of the largest men-of-war in the world.

‘You still think it’s an insane scheme, Matt?’

My Lord of Ossory knew me too well. We had known each other for years, since the days when we were both penniless exiles in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. We had both married Dutch women; and, if anything, our wives were even better friends to each other than we were.

‘Then why am I here, Tom?’

‘Ah, well, Matt Quinton, there’s the rub. Why are you here? This was my insanity, God help me – mine alone. To bring her back to the haven from which she was taken. To bring her back in triumph. To avenge the humiliation. To redeem England. To exculpate our king. My idea. My folly. If God so wills it, my death. But why are you here, Matt?’

I looked out. To larboard, the low, featureless shores of Essex and Suffolk were beginning to recede behind us. To starboard, there was only the gently swelling sea, dotted with some small hoys, flyboats and ketches, under a grey spring sky. A sea that led to the mouth of the Maas, and the harbour of Rotterdam, where the Elsinore Merchant was notionally bound. But to reach Rotterdam, the ship would have to pass through the haven of Hellevoetsluis: or, as English seamen knew it, Hell-vote-slice. That harbour contained many ships, but only one of them mattered to Englishmen. Only one ship burned a word into English hearts, just as Calais was said to have been burned into the heart of Bloody Mary.

And that word was:

Chatham.

I smiled. ‘You know the reason, Tom. You were in Ireland, but I was there.’

Yes, I was there. I could still remember the heat on my face from our burning ships. I could recall the shame I felt at the sight of the Dutch flag flying proud from the ramparts of Sheerness fort. I remembered the brutal humiliation that our country had suffered. That I had suffered: the very personal crosses which I bore from that fateful summer of 1667. And that was why I sailed with Tom Butler now, on a scheme so insane, so suicidal, that any man of reason would have rightly decried it as the brainchild of lunatics.

Our collective madness began in high summer, some three months earlier, almost exactly four years after the catastrophe at Chatham, in a high room: a dark, stifling chamber in the round tower of Windsor Castle, atop its vast, overgrown mound, the Thames and Eton College just visible through smears in the grime caking the tiny windows. For some unaccountable reason, the king was thinking of making Windsor his permanent summer residence, rather than doing what any rational man would have done, namely, deciding it was better to stay in Whitehall after all and tearing down the entire rotting pile.

Windsor Castle in 1670

Tom Butler and I were standing over a table, looking down upon a chart of the mouth of the river the Dutch called the Maas. Across the table from us stood a tall, dark, ugly man wearing a simple shirt and a large black wig. If anything, Charles Stuart, King of England, was scrutinising the chart even more intently than we were.

‘There are almost no guards, Majesty,’ said Tom. ‘A few elderly marines. Some ship-keepers. No more. And of course, the Dutch will not be expecting such an assault.’

‘But they will still have men-of-war in the roadstead,’ I protested.

‘A thirty-gunner or two, perhaps,’ said Tom, confidently. And only one thirty–gunner will be more than sufficient to blow us out of the water, I thought. ‘That’s what our intelligencers suggest. Otherwise, their fleet will be laid up for the winter. What ships they’ll have in commission will be far to the north, at Texel and the Helder.’

I thought of objecting, but the king nodded vigorously, and I knew better than to challenge the royal nod. Yet this was strange. Indeed, it was strange beyond measure. Charles the Second, normally the most practical and sceptical of men, was not raising the objections that jostled within my head, each squabbling for precedence over the other. Objections that would usually have issued from his royal mouth, long before they reached mine.

Charles II by Mary Beale, 1670

‘You could rig her within an hour, while holding off the Rotterdam militia?’ said the king.

‘Jury rig only, Majesty, but enough to get her out into the roadstead. Then, a simple matter to take her out as far as our escorts. If you give us a brace of fourth rates, that is.’

‘But—’ I began.

‘The day will be chosen carefully,’ said Tom. ‘A spring tide. Sufficient for even her great draught.’

‘But the wind, Tom,’ I said. ‘All depends on an easterly, or a northerly, in that roadstead.’

And there, of course, was the great, terrible flaw in Tom Butler’s plan. It may be that the Dutch would be unsuspecting enough to believe that the King of England would not attempt such a thing. It may be that the defences were as weak as Tom believed them to be. It may be that we could erect jury rig in an hour. It may be that only a hundred or so men would be able to take to sea a ship usually crewed by eight hundred. It may be that the tide would be right. It may be that a million angels could dance on the head of a pin.

But nothing on this earth could determine the wind.

I looked at the king. I had known Charles Stuart for many years now, and knew him as most men did: the arch-cynic, the libertine, the fornicator. I also knew him as a consummate seaman, who could handle a helm as well as any pilot, and design a hull as well as any master shipwright. I knew the other Charles Stuart too, the one that fewer men saw, the brutal, vicious, amoral creature that would readily destroy hundreds of lives with the stroke of a pen. But I did not know the Charles Stuart who spoke now.

‘We shall trust in God,’ said the king, with the simple, unarguable finality of a martyr on the way to the stake.

That unsettling certainty, that uncharacteristic display of faith from the least religious monarch ever to occupy the throne of England, won over even me, Matthew Quinton, brother and heir of the Earl of Ravensden, scion of a family that, with only a very few exceptions, had never been noted for its piety. And that was how I came to be standing on the deck of the Elsinore Merchant with my old friend Tom Butler, Earl of Ossory, bound for the Dutch coast, there to board, seize, and bring back to England, one ship, thereby most certainly triggering immediate war between the two countries.

But this was not just any ship. It was one of the greatest ships of all, which was towed away from Chatham four years before, in the most abject defeat the English crown had ever suffered.

So although I did not quite know why, I knew that I would fight, and if necessary die, for this most impossible of causes: to bring back our king’s flagship, towed out of the Medway by the Dutch, to England’s eternal shame.

We would rescue the Royal Charles, and redeem our country.

 

So just what ‘very personal crosses’ does Matt Quinton bear from the summer of 1667? And what befalls the desperate mission to retrieve the Royal Charles? You’ll have to get hold of a copy of The Devil Upon the Wave to find out!

 

The Royal Charles at Hellevoetsluis in 1672, by Abraham Storck

Amsterdam Good Time, Part 1

by

And so it continued. Not content with fireworks, rowing contests, schoolchildren’s chain-making competitions, and exhibitions galore, it was finally time for the historians to have their four-penn’orth about the 350th anniversary of the Battle of Medway, which was why I spent last weekend in Amsterdam, attending a conference jointly organised by the Naval Dockyards Society and the Vrienden van de Witt.

Marginally too large to smuggle aboard the Eurostar

In truth, I don’t need much persuading if a trip to Amsterdam is in the offing. I’ve loved the place since I first went there, well over thirty years ago, when I was working on my doctorate. I knew I could hardly work on seventeenth century naval history without seeing things from the Dutch side, so I swiftly became well acquainted with the Rijksmuseum, the Scheepvaartmuseum (the Dutch national maritime museum), and the great churches, not to mention many rather less renowned landmarks. One of these was a little bar which floated my boat for some unfathomable reason, and to which I return every time I’m in Amsterdam, including this one. It’s nothing special – indeed, in some respects, it’s a bit insalubrious – and it hasn’t actually changed at all in the thirty plus years since I first went there (possibly one of the reasons why I like it), but it’s very central, never particularly full, and always seems to be playing exactly the music I like, i.e. almost nothing written since The End of Music, which, of course, took place in approximately 1990. And no, I’m not going to tell you what it’s called or where it is, in case you all start going there. But it provides a haven for a breather between my regular destinations, which on this trip, included the likes of the Rijksmuseum, the Oude and Nieuwe Kerks, and the Kok secondhand bookshop, plus a new discovery, the wonderful ‘secret’ Catholic church of Our Lord in the Attic.

Turner Prize? More like the Turnip Prize, IMHO

(The visit to the Oude Kerk was a bit frustrating, largely because it currently contains what has to be one of the daftest ‘modern art’ installations I’ve ever encountered – and there’s a lot of competition for that title, says Mr Grumpy Old Man. This one consists of what are essentially large rectangles of gold wrapping paper laid out over the floor, thus obscuring many of the fascinating grave slabs and forcing visitors to play a game of human chess, i.e. having to move to the right or left if someone else is approaching along the same vertical line.)

I’d not been to the Rijksmuseum since its huge refurbishment some five years ago, and was duly impressed by the new look. But like all great international museums, visiting it is still a slightly frenetic experience, thanks principally to the vast tour parties on their ‘see the Rijksmuseum in five minutes’ excursions – and invariably, that means setting up a colossal siege line in front of The Night Watch. However, that’s only marginally less hectic than the rest of the floor devoted to the Dutch ‘Golden Age’, the seventeenth century, which unfortunately includes the naval displays, my principal target. Still, most tourists are significantly smaller than me, and only relatively few needed to be hospitalised as I manoeuvred myself into poll position in front of the glorious works of art by the van de Veldes et al. However, I’m not sure that the Rijksmuseum refurbishment has been kind to the naval material. The sternpiece of the captured Royal Charles, for example, now hangs above a door, and it’s not possible to get as close to it as it was in the old incarnation, where it was alongside a mezzanine. But otherwise, it’s still possible to wander through huge swathes of the museum, including, for example, the ship models room, and encounter very few people, while of course, I’m not going to complain too much about any national museum that devotes an appropriate amount of space to naval history. (Are you listening, British Museum?)

‘Ninety-nine!’ (This caption is respectfully dedicated to all members of the 1974 British Lions touring party)

***

Tomorrow, I’ll blog about the conference programme itself. There was one massive timing glitch during it, though – but it most certainly wasn’t the fault of the organisers. When I sat down after giving my paper, I checked my emails, and came across a piece of information that I wish I’d known about earlier, so I could impart it to the audience. (OK, yes, that’s an euphemism for ‘indulging in shameless self-publicity’.) This was the news that the new Quinton novel, The Devil Upon the Wave, had become available on Amazon that very afternoon. Naturally, the book focuses heavily on the Dutch attack on the Medway, but it also places Matthew among the defenders of Landguard Fort as they try to beat off yet another Dutch onslaught, and also takes him to sea, albeit this time aboard the Dutch fleet, where he confronts a terrible dilemma and a huge personal tragedy. Several real historical characters make ‘cameo appearances’, among them King Charles II, Samuel Pepys, and Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, while fans of the broader Quinton family may welcome the return of the enigmatic Uncle Tris, Matt’s outspoken elder sister Elizabeth, his dour Dutch brother-in-law Cornelis, and, of course, his feisty wife Cornelia. As a special treat and ‘teaser trailer’, next Monday’s post on this site will provide a free preview of Chapter One – and for a book set against the backdrop of the events of 1667, it’s most definitely not what you’re going to expect!

Medway 350, Day 3

by

(With an affectionate nod toward Samuel Pepys, esquire, sometime Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, sometime Secretary to the Admiralty, sometime President of the Royal Society, sometime Master of Trinity House, sometime serial bonker)

 

Up betimes, and to ye dockyard at Chatham, where I enquired where I might find Pett.

‘No pets allowed,’ said ye churl manning ye incredibly sophisticated digital security system.

Thus discouraged, I moved on to discover ye dockyard full of ye Dutch, for some unfathomable reason. Many were adherents of ye fanatic religious sect, ye Yachties, and were thus best avoided. Hence to ye bookshoppe, to discover that there were no books about me – no Bryant, no Ollard, not even ye brazen wench Tomalin. But it had ye booke on de Ruyter, ye Dutch admiral, called (with ye ingenuity customary to ye publishing trade) De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral, which has a chapter on British perceptions of said valiant warrior by a gallant young Welchman of mine acquaintance; and ye new edition of ye esteemed and venerable book, Ye Dutch in Ye Medway, with a new introduction by ye same and definitely still young – well, relatively young – Welchman.

And so to ye quayside, to watch ye Dutch Marines row directly at ye chain! What a formidable obstacle! What an unbreachable barrier! Surely no impudent gaggle of Hollanders could break –

Oh.

And lo, I didst feel ye most powerful sense of what ye French call ‘ye deja vu‘.

Discouraged by this spectacle, I took to ye water on a boat full of yet more Netherlandish Yachties, intending to inspect ye defences of ye Medway. But ye mighty batteries intended for St Mary’s Island and thereabouts seem to have been supplanted by things called an ‘M&S factory outlet’ and an ‘Odeon multiplex’, the latter claiming to show plays featuring flat actors, and bearing such titles as ‘Wonder Woman’ (is there no limit to My Lady Castlemaine’s self-worth?) and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean Five’ (personally, methinks Master Depp is no match for Betteridge).

Yet further discouraged by this shameful neglect of our national defences, and by ye news of ye debacle at court involving ye ministry of Sir Terence May, his wife Philippa, his mistress Arlene, and his pug Brexit, I retreated forthwith to a tavern, being minded to accost serving wenches, but found instead only a multiply tattooed serving Romanian called Dumitru.

Even further discouraged, I took to this, the pages of my diary, encrypted to a level that not even North Frieslander hackers –  or, worse, my wife – can decipher.

And so to bed.

The Tailed Men are Coming! The Tailed Men are Coming!

by

Oliver Cromwell as a 'staartman' (Rijksmuseum)
Oliver Cromwell as a ‘staartman’ (Rijksmuseum)

Yes, a bonus post this week – and following on from the last one, ‘The Butterboxes are Coming! The Butterboxes are Coming!’, which used one of the principal insults seventeenth century Brits directed at the Dutch, I thought I’d even the score by using one of the worst Dutch insults for us. Goddeloze staartman, the godless tailed man, has obscure origins, but it’s certainly a level above butterboxes in terms of inventiveness – and contemporary Dutchmen may wish to revive it when British naval history’s finest hit Amsterdam in June! That’s the reason for this extra post: I’m now able to publicise details of the big international conference to mark the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway.

Jointly organised by the Vrienden van de Witt (NL) and the Naval Dockyards Society (UK), the conference will be held at the Marine Etablissement (naval barracks) in Amsterdam on 23-24 June 2017. Conference proceedings will be held in English. The keynote speakers are Dr David Onnekink (Utrecht University) and Professor Henk den Heijer, (Professor Emeritus, Leiden University); the summary and conclusions will be provided by Professor John Hattendorf (US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island).

The conference will address a wide range of themes, including the causes and course of the second Anglo-Dutch war, early modern naval warfare and ideologies, the Dutch and British navies, dockyards and other naval facilities in the two countries, Dutch amphibious tactics during the Chatham attack, British responses to that attack, and the legacies and commemoration of the Dutch raid. I’ll be talking about ‘Chatham and the Stuart Monarchy’, looking at how much damage – physical and psychological – the attack caused to Charles II’s state, at some of the myths which grew up around the action, and how it contributed to a change in the ‘naval ideology’ espoused by Charles and his brother. This is very much a part of the work I’m doing at the moment for my chapter in the forthcoming book on Western Naval Ideology, 1500-1815, which I’m co-editing with Alan James and Gijs Rommelse, to be published by Routledge.

Other speakers are: Dr Marc van Alphen (Netherlands Institute of Military History, The Hague), Dr Richard Blakemore (University of Reading), Dr Ann Coats (University of Portsmouth and the Naval Dockyards Society), Dr Remmelt Daalder (Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam), Dr Alan Lemmers (Netherlands Institute of Military History, The Hague), Dr Philip MacDougall (historian and author, NDS), Erik Odegard (Leiden University), Dr Gijs Rommelse (Utrecht University, Fellow of the Scheepvaartmuseum), Professor Louis Sicking (Leiden University/Free University), and Dr Chris Ware (University of Greenwich).

A booking form for potential UK delegates is available on the Naval Dockyards Society website; potential Dutch delegates, please sign up via the Vrienden van de Witt.

***

Some more announcements of forthcoming events, too…

First, the eminent Dutch naval historian Dr Gijs Rommelse will be speaking at King’s College London on 21 February, his topic being ‘Mirroring Seapower: A Cultural History of Dutch-British Naval Relations’. This is open to all, and you can register for it (and find out further details) here.

Second, I’m thrilled to announce that, as part of the Medway Festival taking place around the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack, I’ll be speaking at Gillingham Library at 7.30 on 8 June, my subject being ‘The Dutch are Coming! Writing Fact and Fiction about the Anglo-Dutch wars’. I’ll be signing my books, too!

 

The Butterboxes are Coming! The Butterboxes are Coming!

by

…butterboxes, of course, being one of the principal terms of neighbourly respect (umm…) that seventeenth century Brits used for the Dutch. They were certainly coming in 1667, culminating in the famous attack on the Medway in June, and they’re coming this year, too, for the 350th anniversary! So I thought I’d use this blog to highlight some of the events that are taking place this summer, and to flag up how I’m getting involved.

Naturally, most of the commemorative events are taking place in and around the River Medway, and the local council seems to be doing a good job of organising and publicising many of them. There’s a dedicated microsite, plus two Twitter hashtags, #BoM350 and #TnC350, the latter being the Dutch one – tocht naar Chatham, ‘the trip to Chatham’, is the delightfully jolly Dutch description of their attack! I’ll be using these hashtags throughout the spring and summer, as well as my own, #2ADW350, for the overall 350th anniversary of the second Anglo-Dutch war – tweets with that hashtag will resume in March, work permitting!

The gun battery at Upnor Castle. No passeran...but they did.
The gun battery at Upnor Castle. No passeran…but they did.

Among the events I’m particularly looking forward to are a new exhibition at the always wonderful Chatham Historic Dockyard, the presence of British and Dutch warships in the Medway (play nicely this time, please), a commemorative service at Rochester Cathedral, a river pageant, a rowing race between the two nations, and what should be a spectacular climax to the celebrations, a ‘Medway in Flames’ entertainment on the river. It’ll also be well worth getting over to Upnor Castle, then the principal source of resistance to the Dutch attack, which will have an exhibition (opening in April) and special events. There’s also meant to be an academic conference at the University of Kent, beginning on 30 June, but at the moment, details of this seem to be very sparse.

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot’s happening over in the Netherlands. There’ll be exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum and at the Dutch naval museum in Den Helder, a symposium at the former, and, no doubt, other events still to be announced. I’ll be going over for what’s shaping up to be a fantastic conference in Amsterdam on 23-24 June, jointly organised by the Vrienden van de Witt (NL) and the Naval Dockyards Society (UK); I hope to be able to provide full details of this on this website in a few weeks, but I can exclusively reveal that I’m going to be speaking at it! I’m also making sure that I factor in enough free time to take in the Rijksmuseum exhibition, too. More detail from the Dutch angle can be found on the website of the De Ruyter Foundation, run by Frits de Ruyter de Wildt, a direct descendant of the great admiral. Here you’ll find much more detailed information about the sailing and rowing events, plus the most comprehensive breakdown of event timings on both sides of the North Sea.

Willem Schellinks' drawings of 'the Dutch in the Medway' (top) and the capture of Sheerness fort
Willem Schellinks’ drawings of ‘the Dutch in the Medway’ (top) and the capture of Sheerness fort (Rijksmuseum)

As for what else I’m doing to mark the anniversary… Well, I’ve contributed a foreword to a new edition of P G Rogers’ The Dutch in the Medway, being published by Seaforth at the end of next month. Although Rogers isn’t error-free by any means, his account remains the fullest available in English, and is highly readable. I’ve also written an essay on some of the myths that grew up around the Chatham attack for a new book on Famous Battles and their Myths, forthcoming from Routledge. Above all, I’m currently writing The Devil Upon the Wave, the latest Matthew Quinton adventure, as previously flagged in this blog.  This is proving to be terrific fun to write, and it’s also very instructive – putting oneself into the position of the British defenders of Chatham, and trying to envisage what they would have seen, heard and felt, has already given me plenty of insights into the events of June 1667.

(And before any readers take me to task for referring to ‘British’ defenders, rather than ‘English’ – yes, good morning High Wycombe – I’d point out that about the only bright spot in the sorry saga of the generally supine defence against the Dutch was provided by the heroic sacrifice of Captain Archibald Douglas, who perished in the blazing wreck of the Royal Oak after a doomed attempt to defend her, so my Scottish friends have a perfect excuse to raise a wee dram or two in the general direction of Chatham on 13 June. As if you needed one.)

All in all, then, it promises to be a terrific few weeks in the summer, and a fitting commemoration of one of the most astonishing feats in the whole of naval history. Finally, though, a warning to my British readers: if you know any Dutch people, it might be worth avoiding them during June, as they could well be a bit smug.

A New Era

by

At long last, after having to keep things under wraps for some time, I’m finally able to reveal some really exciting news!

Firstly, great news for all Quinton fans – the series continues! Next year, the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway, will see the publication by Endeavour Press of the seventh book in the chronological Journals of Matthew Quinton, set against the backdrop of the astonishing national humiliation which many regard as the worst defeat in British history. And I can now reveal that the title of the new book will be…

Random picture to increase tension - the Dutch in the Medway, by William Schellinks
Random picture to increase tension – the Dutch in the Medway, by William Schellinks

…wait for it…

The Devil Upon the Wave.

(The title is derived from one of the most famous ‘one-liners’ in Pepys’s Diary, namely his colleague Sir William Batten’s scatological comment on 19 July 1667 – ‘By God, says he, I think the Devil shits Dutchmen’.)

It’s very early days in the process of writing the story, but Matthew will certainly be at the heart of the drama in the Medway, and also engaged in action in the open sea, albeit not quite in the way one might expect. There’ll also be an encounter with one of the most famous figures in the whole of naval history!

As an aside, this might be a good time to mention the fact that a lot of exciting events will be happening in the summer of next year to mark the anniversary of the Dutch attack, many of them, naturally, in the Medway area. I’m involved in a number of events, including a major conference in Amsterdam which I’m helping to organise, so expect many more updates on all of this in due course.

Returning to the Quinton series, though…

Long-time readers of this blog and fans of the series will know that I’ve also written a book set at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, with Matthew’s eponymous grandfather as its central character. I’ve not said anything about The Rage of Fortune for some time, because a number of editorial and contractual issues arose with it, and these have delayed publication far beyond its intended appearance in 2015. But I’m delighted to be able to announce that these issues have finally been resolved, and that Endeavour Press will be publishing The Rage of Fortune in both e-book and print-on-demand formats in the near future. I hope to provide a more detailed ‘taster’ of the book on this site soon!

Finally, Endeavour will also be publishing a second, shorter, Quinton ‘e-story’, following on from the series prequel Ensign Royal (which, as I indicated a couple of weeks ago, is now available again). Provisionally titled Quinton and the Princess, this, too, is set before Gentleman Captain, the first book in the main series. Which Princess, you ask? Well, fans of the recent TV series Versailles might have an idea! We’re hoping that this story will come out well before the end of next year, and regular updates will be provided on this website.

And even more good news…I know that readers have been struggling to get hold of copies of the fourth Quinton book, The Lion of Midnight, and that copies of this have been turning up on Amazon, etc, for absolutely ridiculous prices. (Rumours to the effect that all of these copies seem to be being sold by a shifty Welshman living in Bedfordshire are, of course, entirely unfounded.) Fortunately, Endeavour have just released the new e-book edition, while Old Street are reprinting the print version, so The Lion should be readily available again very soon.

So all in all, these are exciting times here at Quinton Towers, so it’s undoubtedly a good time to thank all those of you who’ve read the books. It’s great to receive feedback, and most of the comments I get from readers are hugely positive, giving me a very powerful incentive to carry on writing!