The Playmaker
Authors: J.B. Cheaney
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OTHER YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY
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SAMMY KEYES AND THE HOTEL THIEF
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TROUBLE DON'T LAST,
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HOLES,
Louis Sachar
FOLLOWING FAKE MAN,
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COUNT KARLSTEIN,
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BUD, NOT BUDDY,
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MATILDA BONE,
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Paula Fox
With thanks to Mary Flower for her expert advice
To Mama, who always knew I could do it.
It has been said that the past is like a foreign country—“they do things differently there.” One of the most obvious differences between Elizabethan society and ours is the mixing of religion and politics. The 1500s was the century of the Protestant Reformation, which began in Germany and spread throughout the continent over the next fifty years. King Henry VIII made England a Protestant nation in 1534 simply by breaking away from Rome, confiscating papal lands and property, and establishing the Church of England with himself as the head. That did not quite settle the issue, however. A few years after Henry died, his oldest daughter, Mary, made a violent attempt to restore Catholicism by closing Protestant churches and executing Protestant leaders. But when Mary died and her half sister Elizabeth became Queen in 1558, England swung back to Protestantism.
There was no such thing as “separation of church and state” at this time. Every citizen belonged to the Church of England at birth and was expected to attend all worship services. To be a Catholic was to be a suspected traitor. At the time our story begins, Elizabeth is sixty-four (quite elderly, for that time) and has no children or close relatives. Nor has she chosen anyone to rule England after her death, and this is a matter of grave concern. Many Protestants fear that if the Queen dies before naming a successor, unscrupulous Catholics might maneuver some “closet papist” to the throne. That fear, in some circles, borders on paranoia.
HE
C
ITY
mithfield once blazed with burning martyrs. An English boy of any education whatever knows that. During the days of Bloody Queen Mary, who hoped to restore a Catholic kingdom on our island, Protestants were burned by the dozens on stakes erected in Smithfield market, just outside the walls of London. Of course, Mary had been dead these forty years and England was safely delivered from the Pope's clutches by our gracious Queen, Elizabeth. But Smithfield surprised me nonetheless. From childhood I had devoured Foxe's
Book of Martyrs,
with its bloody tales of the tortures inflicted on Protestants in this very place—I expected it to be grim or solemn. But when I topped the rise near the Red Bull tavern, a lively scene leapt into view—a clash of color and
sound that appeared to jump up and down and wave like a flag under the clear April sky. It took my breath away. For a moment I stared, my heart pounding in my ears. Then I shifted my pack from one weary shoulder to the other and pressed on, with the sensation of plunging into turbulent waves.
