Gainsborough Old Hall, in Lincolnshire, has been described by the renowned architectural historian, Anthony Emery, as the most complete courtier house of the period in England. It is a splendid monument to one man’s ambitions and accomplishment, across one of the most turbulent periods of English history. Furthermore, it became the home of Katherine Parr …
As the deepening chill of late autumn crept icily across the Yorkshire countryside, a cavalcade of men on horseback, headed by the twenty-eight-year-old, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, swept into the gates of Cawood Castle. Inside, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, one-time chief minister to Henry VIII, was at dinner, entirely unaware of the storm that was …