A Skinful of Shadows

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my editor, Rachel Petty, for showing superhuman patience and calm while I was half-witted with stress over my own delays, and for helping to lure Bear out of the shadows; Bea, Kat, Catherine and everyone else at Macmillan for being supportive, fun and perpetually on my side; Nancy for wisdom and common sense; Martin for putting up with my most frantic months of writing and editing, and for only mocking me gently when I worked until 4 or 5 a.m.; Plot on the Landscape; Rhiannon; Sandra for taking me to the exhibition on Sir Thomas Browne at the Royal College of Physicians; Amy Greenfield for introducing me to Chastleton and its wonderful secret room; Ham House; Boswell Castle; Old Wardour Castle; The English Civil War: A People’s History by Diane Purkiss; The King’s Smuggler: Jane Whorwood Secret Agent to Charles I by John Fox; The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England by Antonia Fraser; Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House by Miriam Slater; Women in early modern England, 1500–1700 by Jacqueline Eales; Her Own Life: Autobiographical writings by seventeenth-century Englishwomen edited by Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby & Helen Wilcox; 55 Days by Howard Brenton; The History of England Volume III: Civil War by Peter Ackroyd; and Lady Eleanor Davies, the abrasive, self-styled prophetess who managed to annoy virtually everybody, not least with her tendency to be right.

I would also like to apologize to King Charles I, for forcing a fictional version of him to sign a highly nefarious document. I hope he will forgive me, and refrain from sending spectral spaniels after me in revenge.