I received an email from the author of this book, which looks really interesting! Sometimes the Tudor period being concurrent with the Age of Discovery, and the fact that Henry VII was a sponsor of the Cabots, gets lost in the shuffle of wives, heirs and other salacious bits. 🙂
Amazon links:
If readers are interested in this book and its subject, they might consider purchasing with it Alan Fisk’s “Forty Testoons,” also available from Amazon. It’s a well-written historical novel based on an actual incident — in 1504, Henry VII’s Exchequer paid 40 shillings (“testoons,” from the French testons, meaning the king’s head was on the coins) to a priest to accompany the fishing fleet to the “new isle.”
The young priest who takes the fee finds himself marooned on the icy shores of Newfoundland through a brutal winter, discovering slowly that the political obsessions of the Old World are dangerously active in the New. Rather gripping, and full of interesting information about the mundane activities of an English priest prior to the Reformation.
Thank you for the mention, and for your kind comments!
Alan Fisk