Katherine Howard, maid of honour to Anna: Henry’s fifth wife.
Margaret Douglas, Henry’s niece: daughter of the king’s sister Margaret by her second husband, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus; brought up at Henry’s court.
William Butts, physician.
Walter Cromer, physician.
John Chambers, physician.
Hans Holbein, artist.
Sexton, known as ‘Patch’: a jester, formerly in Wolsey’s household.
The Seymour family
Edward Seymour, eldest son, married to Anne (Nan) Stanhope.
Lady Margery Seymour, his mother.
Thomas Seymour, his younger brother.
Elizabeth, his sister, widow of Sir Anthony Oughtred, later married to Gregory Cromwell.
Politicians and clergy
Thomas Wriothesley, known as Call-Me-Risley, Clerk of the Signet: former protégé of Gardiner, later attached to Cromwell.
Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, ambassador to France: formerly Cardinal Wolsey’s Secretary, later the Secretary to the king, displaced by Cromwell.
Richard Riche, Speaker of the House of Commons, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations.
Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Robert Barnes, a Lutheran cleric.
Hugh Latimer, reformist Bishop of Worcester.
Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester, a canon lawyer and conservative.
Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, formerly Bishop of London.
John Stokesley, conservative Bishop of London, associate of the executed Thomas More.
Edmund Bonner, ambassador to France after Gardiner, Bishop of London after Stokesley.
John Lambert, reformist priest, convicted of heresy and burned 1538.
Courtiers and aristocrats
Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
Henry Howard, his son, Earl of Surrey.
Mary Howard, his daughter, married to Fitzroy, the king’s illegitimate son.
Thomas Howard, his half-brother, known as Tom Truth.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, old friend of Henry, widower of Henry’s sister Mary.
Thomas Wyatt, friend of Cromwell: poet, diplomat, supposed lover of Anne Boleyn.
Henry Wyatt, his aged father, an early supporter of the Tudor regime.
Bess Darrell, Wyatt’s mistress, formerly a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon.
William Fitzwilliam, later Lord Admiral and Earl of Southampton: initially an ally of Cromwell.
Nicholas Carew, prominent courtier and supporter of Mary, the king’s daughter.
Eliza Carew, his wife, sister of Francis Bryan.
Francis Bryan, known as ‘the Vicar of Hell’, an inveterate gambler and undiplomatic diplomat: brother-in-law to Nicholas Carew.
Thomas Culpeper, gentleman attending the king.
Philip Hoby, gentleman attending the king.
Jane Rochford, lady-in-waiting, widow of the executed George Boleyn.
Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, father of Anne Boleyn and George Boleyn.
Mary Shelton, cousin of Anne Boleyn and former lady-in-waiting.
Mary Mounteagle, lady-in-waiting.
Nan Zouche, lady-in-waiting.
Katherine, Lady Latimer, born Katherine Parr.
Henry Bouchier, Earl of Essex.
The household of the king’s children
John Shelton, governor of the household of the king’s two daughters.
Anne Shelton, his wife, aunt of Anne Boleyn.
Lady Bryan, mother of Francis Bryan and Eliza Carew: brings up the king’s daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, and later the child Edward.
At the convent in Shaftesbury
Elizabeth Zouche, the abbess.
Dorothea Wolsey, known as Dorothea Clancey, illegitimate daughter of the cardinal.
Henry’s dynastic rivals
Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, descended from a daughter of Edward IV.
Gertrude, his wife.
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, niece of Edward IV.
Henry Lord Montague, her eldest son.
Reginald Pole, her son, abroad: proposed leader of a crusade to bring England back to papal control.
Geoffrey Pole, her son.
Constance, Geoffrey’s wife.
Diplomats
Eustache Chapuys, London ambassador of Emperor Charles V: a French-speaker from Savoy.
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, an envoy from the Emperor.
Jean de Dinteville, a French envoy.
Louis de Perreau, Sieur de Castillon, French ambassador.
Antoine de Castelnau, Bishop of Tarbes, French ambassador.
Charles de Marillac, French ambassador.
Hochsteden, envoy from Cleves.
Olisleger, envoy from Cleves.
Harst, envoy from Cleves.
In Calais
Lord Lisle, Lord Deputy, the governor, the king’s uncle.
Honor, his wife.
Anne Bassett, one of Honor’s daughters by her first marriage.
John Husee, member of the Calais garrison, the Lisles’ man of business.
At the Tower of London
Sir William Kingston, councillor to the king, Constable of the Tower.
Edmund Walsingham, Lieutenant of the Tower, Kingston’s deputy.
Martin, a gaoler. (Invented character)
Cromwell’s friends
Humphrey Monmouth, London merchant: formerly imprisoned for sheltering William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible into English.
Robert Packington, merchant and member of Parliament.
Stephen Vaughan, Antwerp-based merchant.
Margaret Vernon, an abbess, formerly Gregory’s tutor.
John Bale, a renegade monk and playwright.
Frères humains