A story of Elizabethan Cornwall

Who was it who once said that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover? Not so long ago, I came across a very tatty paperback (spine cracked, cover page rather faded and held on with Sellotape, original UK retail price 80p) by Winston Graham, best known as the author of the Poldark books. This, though, was one of his other ones, an historical novel called The Grove of Eagles which was first published in 1963. The blurb was very complimentary indeed, and despite having never previously read anything by Winston Graham (or even bothered with Poldark, for that matter) I decided to go for it.

The Grove of Eagles is about the Killigrews, an influential Cornish family who were governors of Pendennis Castle in Tudor times and who were later responsible for founding and developing the port and town of Falmouth (being a semi-regular visitor to Falmouth as part of my work, I already knew a little bit about this family, who as well as being the local landowners were also heavily involved in smuggling and piracy in that part of the world; their memorial, a granite pyramid erected by the last of them, stands in Falmouth today opposite Arwenack House, the old family home which was destroyed during the Civil War and rebuilt in the eighteenth century). In the historical notes at the end, Graham describes them as “a not unimportant Cornish family whose history appears and disappears tantalisingly among the records of the time”. Which, I suppose, makes them an ideal canvas for an historical novelist.

Several of the Killigrews of Arwenack House were called John (it seems to have been a family tradition that this was the name given to the eldest son) and there has been some confusion among historians not only about the various John Killigrews but also their wives; due to knighthoods, history records more than one Lady Killigrew and one such – a woman who was born Mary Wolverston – has been confused with both her mother-in-law and her grand-daughter-in-law, in addition to which we know neither the year in which she was born nor the year in which she died! What we do know is that this particular Lady K. often received stolen or smuggled goods at Arwenack House, and that furthermore she was charged with piracy in 1582 when the crew of a Spanish ship that had sheltered from a storm nearby were murdered and their cargo stolen; she was actually sentenced to death for this but was pardoned by Elizabeth I.

At the hands of Winston Graham, Lady Killigrew became one of the more influential characters in The Grove of Eagles, she being the formidable widowed mother of the master of Arwenack House, John Killigrew (who in real life was born in c.1557 and died in 1605). At the time in which the novel is set, the last years of the sixteenth century, this John Killigrew was in a key position. As well as being the local landowner, and a rather ruthless and unpopular one at that, he was also the governor of Pendennis Castle and as such responsible for the defence of the mouth of the river Fal, “a great natural anchorage, one of the finest in the world”, which could have been of great strategic importance in the event of a Spanish invasion. Alas, the defences as organised by John Killigrew were found wanting at the times of both the Spanish raid on Cornwall in 1595 and the invasion threat of 1597 (of which more later). Although his excuse was that he couldn’t afford to properly garrison the castle (something of which he had informed the government on several occasions), there were inevitably rumours about how loyal he actually was to Elizabeth I – was he, perhaps, secretly in cahoots with the Spanish via intermediaries such as the pirate captains with whom he associated? Although allegations of treason on his part were unproven, in 1598 he was nevertheless deprived of the governorship of Pendennis Castle, and he died in poverty seven years later.

In real life, he had a large family by his wife (herself a member of the Monck family); to this brood Winston Graham added an illegitimate son, a boy unaware of his mother’s identity but nevertheless acknowledged by John Killigrew as his son and brought up with that surname. It is this boy, Maugan Killigrew, who narrates The Grove of Eagles (which refers to the meaning of the name Killigrew, the family coat-of-arms being a double-headed eagle which of course hints at all sorts of duplicity on the grounds that it faces both ways), and what a tale his creator has him tell!

This story of Elizabethan Cornwall, told from the point of view of someone who is of gentry blood yet expected to have to make his own way in the world, is a very good one. Graham, who in the novel’s postscript makes much of having drawn on manuscripts from the time, shows a really good understanding for the period. Where it gets really interesting, though, is when you realise the extent to which The Grove of Eagles is not only populated by real people but based very much on real events, most notably events from the war between England and Spain which lasted from the mid-1580s until the 1604 Treaty of London. Maugan is caught up in the resistance to the 1595 Spanish raid on Cornwall in which troops from four galleys landed in Mount’s Bay and sacked Mousehole, Newlyn and Penzance, beating back a local militia under Sir Francis Goldolphin (whose first wife was a Killigrew; when not trying to defend England, he is shown to be warning his in-laws about how their reputation for lawlessness will lead them to ruin) before withdrawing. Later, Maugan is taken on as a secretary to no less a person than Sir Walter Raleigh – for some reason, Graham makes a point of spelling his surname ‘Ralegh’ – and as such he gets to participate in the English capture of Cadiz in 1596 which allows Graham to provide a fantastic description of this event.

Much is made in The Grove of Eagles of the Killigrews’ misfortune; what with the fate of one of the John Killigrews (see above) it is a running theme in the book, with the set-piece hearing before the Queen herself coming towards the novel’s end. Early on, Graham gives an explanation of this via Maugan. Having referred to the rebuilding of Arwenack House in the mid-sixteenth century on a grander scale than before by another John Killigrew (this one being the grandfather of Maugan’s father), it is noted that the Killigrew family, “for all its ancient lineage and good estate, lacked the solidity of great possessions such as could maintain without strain the extravagant way of life he set for it. From his time, therefore, there was a hint of the feverish and the insolvent in our lives. Each generation tried to re-establish itself; each generation failed in greater measure than the last.” It is this which becomes key to both the family’s apparent lack of regard for the law (any ship that uses the Fal estuary as a haven is fair game, it seems) and the question of John Killigrew’s supposed treachery.

Maugan seems to be particularly unlucky. Captured by the Spanish in a raid on Pendennis Castle, he’s assumed to be dead and as a result his love interest – a young lady whose family has been evicted from their house by the Killigrews for defaulting on the rent – marries someone else (a circumstance that Winston Graham also bestowed on his more famous creation, Ross Poldark; apparently he got this particular idea from hearing the story of a pilot who he met during the Second World War). Later on, our narrator (a bit of a rogue, but one with a conscience of sorts – no Flashman, he) manages to get captured by the Spanish again when returning from Cadiz – he gets put on a ship home by Raleigh after getting injured in a fight while attempting to loot a church, and after being imprisoned for several months he finds himself sailing on the ill-fated Spanish Armada of 1597, the plan being that he will liaise with his father once the invaders have landed in Cornwall. Fortunately for England but not for Maugan Killigrew, this little-known attempt to invade founders thanks to the weather, the result being that Maugan actually gets to go home by way of being shipwrecked off the Cornish coast (the failure of this invasion attempt, which happened in October 1597, really did owe much to a storm that wrecked and scattered the Spanish ships; England was at the time very poorly defended, not just because of John Killigrew but also because most of its ships were absent on the Earl of Essex’s ill-fated expedition to the Azores). For anyone wondering about who Maugan’s mother is, rest assured that this gets revealed at the end although you could probably make an educated guess before then.

Having finished The Grove of Eagles, I’m rather disappointed that Graham didn’t write a sequel; even after more than 500 pages I found myself wanting more. Towards the end, Maugan starts to work (against his better judgement) for Lord Henry Howard, a courtier who would in a few years play a key role in putting James VI of Scotland on the English throne after Elizabeth I’s death (for which he was ennobled as the Earl of Northampton) and turning said king against Raleigh, a man whom Maugan admires. It would have been fascinating to have Graham relate the story of how this played out. As it is, The Grove of Eagles ends with a pensive Maugan getting married, following which there’s a ‘postscript for purists’ which begins with Graham asserting that “bibliographies in the historical novel are pretentious” – this at a time (1963) before the likes of George MacDonald Fraser and Bernard Cornwell made historical notes a standard practice for the historical novelist.

After revealing where he got the ideas for some of the events of his novel from (for example: “the extent to which John Killigrew became committed to the Spanish cause is perhaps arguable, but the evidence which exists does seem to me conclusive … the conclusive testimony comes from the Spanish side … I have no evidence that Ralegh [sic] spoke up for John Killigrew when he was brought to London to answer for his behaviour, but it is not out of keeping with his character that he should have done so”), he explains what happened to some of the characters in the novel who were actually real people (“the mystery of Jane Fermor’s dowry has never been cleared up”, “Jack Arundell of Trerice became Sir John Arundell and was governor of Pendennis Castle in 1646”, etc) before mentioning that Maugan was inspired in part by one Robert Killigrew, a friend of Raleigh’s “who was later innocently involved in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury”. I found myself wanting to know more about this, and also wondering about what might have been had Winston Graham decided to give Maugan another outing; here, alas, a character whose slender luck sadly didn’t extend to a second novel.

But the first and only adventure of Maugan Killigrew, though, is definitely worth reading. I just hope that, should you decide to do so, you can find a copy that’s in better condition than the one I found!