The rebels mark, p.41
The Rebel‘s Mark, page 41
Acknowledgements
When I was growing up, no one in my family had ever known my paternal great-grandfather. His very identity was a mystery, though a proper Y-DNA search has now established beyond much doubt that he was a Donovan from County Cork, who must have come to the East End of London sometime in the late nineteenth century. Thus I can reliably claim possession of at least a modicum of Irish blood in my veins.
But I am undeniably English, and it would be foolish of me to profess great authority when writing about the millennia-old relationship between England and Ireland. There is no doubt that the Elizabethan enterprise in Ireland was at times brutal. Starvation and massacre were commonplace. The shockwaves caused by the Tudor plantation of Protestant landowners still reverberate to this day. But I am not a historian, and I have therefore set the story you have just read firmly in the experiences of Nicholas and Bianca. I must also confess to having taken a few minor liberties with the timescale of some events, purely in the interests of a fictional narrative.
For those interested in finding out more about this relatively unfamiliar period of English-Irish history, some fifty years before Oliver Cromwell ever set foot on Irish soil, I recommend the following: Tyrone’s Rebellion by Hiram Morgan and Elizabeth’s Irish Wars by Cyril Falls are fine accounts told from each side of the divide.
I am also indebted to Robert Lacey, having made much use of his superb Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus, and to Andrew Hadfield for his excellent Edmund Spenser: A Life.
Heartfelt thanks are due to Susannah Hamilton for her belief in the Jackdaw series. Likewise, to my agent Jane Judd, Emma Coode, and the great crew at Corvus. To Mandy Greenfield I owe an equal debt, for once again saving me from far too many self-induced embarrassments.
And finally I must express my boundless appreciation for the support and encouragement of Jane, my wife, who bears being married to a time traveller with extraordinary forbearance.
S. W. Perry
Worcestershire, September 2021
S.W.Perry, The Rebel‘s Mark
