A Murder of Crows

The Historical Background for A Murder of Crows.

In his memoirs Sir Robert Carey speaks of his parents, Lord and Lady Hunsdon, with respect and affection, although he says very little about his mother who died in 1607. She was born Anne Morgan to a Hertfordshire knight called Sir Thomas Morgan and Anne Whitney. Her sister Sybilla married Sir Hugh Trevannion of Caerhays Castle in Cornwall and so was the mother of Elizabeth Widdrington nee Trevannion who ultimately became Carey's wife.

Since Caerhays is only a couple of days' travel by ship from Falmouth Bay, it's highly likely that Lady Hunsdon might have visited the deplorable and powerful Killigrew family whose privateering and other shady dealings in the English Channel, Atlantic Ocean, and Irish Sea occasionally errupted into public scandal.

In the book Lady Hunsdon's friend Kate Killigrew is a composite of various redoubtable ladies of that family. Given Lady Hunsdon's surname of Morgan, no self-respecting historical novelist could be exptected to resist the temptation to make her one of the extraordinary band of matriarchal pirates, including Mrs Grainne O'Malley, who conducted armed trade and profitable larceny all around the coasts of Cornwall, Ireland, and Wales. Queen Elizabeth seems not to have seen any need to take action about it, despite the protests of pillaged French, Spanish and Dutch sailors. Given the lock that the Killigrews had on the Cornish law courts and the general corruption of the county, it's possible that Elizabeth felt there was no action she could usefully take.

This is the background for P.F. Chisholm's extraordinary fifth mystery featuring Sir Robert Carey, who in 1589 walked for a wager from London to Berwick (342 miles) in twelve days, and then in 1603, upon the death of Queen Elizabeth, rode on horseback from London to Edinburgh in sixty hours to bring the news to King James VI of Scotland that he was now King Kames I of England.