When The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction?

 

 

So many times I have heard the phrase ‘truth is often stranger than fiction’ but, as a writer of fiction, I have paid this old adage little notice. That is, until now.

 

When I first clapped eyes on Gainsborough Old hall I fell hopelessly in love with the building. I even applied for the post of ‘Keeper’ there but had to settle instead for a role as an active member of its ‘Friends ‘group and a voluntary guide. And as the building was in desperate need of more visitors, I fool hardily suggested that I might write my first ever novel about it!

 

In that first book, one of the central characters was the real life matriarch of the Hickman family who owned the Hall in the early 1600’s. Her name is Lady Rose and a very stern looking portrait of her still hangs in the Great Upper Chamber of the house. It was this painting that intrigued me into trying to bring this long dead woman back to life. There was something about her that I simply could not resist and yet I had no idea why. All I could find out about Puritan Lady Rose Hickman was that she and her late husband, Anthony, had been imprisoned during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary for helping Protestants escape the country. And  that she had later helped shelter the Pilgrim Fathers in the Old Hall during the time of their persecution by King James and that she had written an account of her life in her old age which I was told was now ‘presumed lost’. At any rate, up until the time of writing, no one connected with the Old hall, past or present, can tell me anything more about Lady Rose than this.

 

The Mayflower Maid sold extremely well and was voted amongst the best reads of 2005 by listeners of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book and so I quickly wrote the sequel, Jamestown Woman, and now finally the third novel in the set, Restoration Lady.

 

Up until Restoration Lady all of the action in both The Mayflower Maid and Jamestown Woman moved between Gainsborough and the New World colonies and my intention from the outset of writing was to stick with that. But then suddenly, as I neared the final chapters of Restoration Lady I had the irresistible urge to move the story on to the place where I grew up – Merton in south London. Do not ask me why. All I could say is that we writers are like that. We often follow where the muse leads us for no other reason than it ‘feels’ right.

 

Restoration Lady was launched on May 3^rd and out of courtesy I had dropped a line to the Parish Office of St. Mary the Virgin, Merton, to say that not only had I included a scene from my novel in the church but that in my ‘author notes’ at the back of the book I had explained to my readers why, on a personal note, that this church was so special to me.

 

When I was a girl of eleven, and during a time of great personal sadness I used to run off to this church to find sanctuary and a quiet place for prayer and reflection. My teenaged brother had died and I had a far from easy relationship with my mother who, unlike me, was devoutly atheist. I believed that my quiet times of reflection in that lovely parish church nurtured my life –long love of old buildings.

 

I got an email reply from the Parish office congratulating me on the new book. And then on May 8^th, just a few days after the book launch, I unexpectedly received something from them in the post that would rock my world and leave me utterly dumbfounded.

 

When I opened up the brown envelope a copy of the Parish’s guide book to St. Mary the Virgin’s church slid out. As I stood in my cosy country cottage kitchen, I was thrilled as I quickly thumbed through the booklet looking the beautiful pictures which brought childhood memories flooding back into my mind. You see, I have not been back to that church in over forty years Then I made a cup of tea and settled down to read the text. as there was no guide book back when I was young girl.

 

The guide spoke about Patrons of the Benefice. In the past, every church had one who held the advowson with a right to present an incumbent of their choice upon the church. This later reverted to the crown until the 14^th of March in 1553 when at Merton Edward the VI sold the Rectory and advowson to a Thomas and Mary Locke.

 

Thomas’ father had been Sir William Locke, a sheriff of London who was knighted by King Henry the VIII. When plague hit London in 1536, Sir William moved his family out of the city to the safety of Merton. Sadly his wife, Katheryne, died in childbirth on the 13^th October 1537 and was buried in St. Mary’s church. Amongst the family’s young grieving and motherless children  was eleven year old Rose Locke, who the church guide goes on to explain lived until 1613 and had left behind  a written record of her childhood reminiscences at Merton. And that was all it said about her.

 

It was then that I began to feel as if I had entered the ‘twilight zone’. I just could not believe that what I was reading could be true. I knew that Lady Rose Hickman had died in 1613 and had written an account of her life. Further more, I knew that just visible beneath the dark, cracked varnish of the painting at the Old Hall were the words ‘Daughter of Sir Wm Locke’.

 

I went onto a genealogy site I use for my own family research and trawled through all of the posted family trees that included ‘Rose Locke’. And Lo and behold! There she was, listed as having lived in Merton with her father and later marrying an Anthony Hickman.

 

This was the same ‘Rose’. She had lived in Merton, just as I had and had undoubtedly sat in St. Mary’s Church as young girl grieving for her mother as I had for my lost brother. And then, unwittingly, forty years later I had followed Lady Rose to her home in Lincolnshire and written her into my novels. I could not have made up a more curious coincidence if I had tried…that is if I believed in coincidence to begin with!