The Queen’s Tears
A Novel of Choices, Courage, and the Cost of Love
A stolen crown jewel and an enigmatic portrait force two women to confront the devastating choices they made for love—and summon the courage to live with the truth.
1619: Barbara, Lady Villiers, at the bidding of her brother-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham, has stolen the dying Queen Anna’s jewels—and kept the greatest prize for herself. The Queen’s Tears, a brooch of extraordinary value, torments her: too dangerous to sell, too priceless to discard, and possibly her only means of securing her children’s future. When the family fortunes are shattered, Barbara faces an impossible choice: remain loyal to Buckingham—or betray him by confessing the theft to King Charles.
Present Day: Julia Darke opens her Cotswolds bookshop to start life over peacefully. Instead, a Van Dyck portrait of Barbara’s daughter, with tantalising signs of the missing Queen’s Tears hidden in plain sight, brings her face-to-face with Oliver Villiers, the Oxford art conservator she once loved and walked away from.
Reluctantly drawn together to uncover Barbara’s secret, Julia and Oliver follow the trail of the Queen’s Tears—and the closer Julia comes to Barbara’s truth, the harder it becomes to hide from her own.
Inspired by the true stories of Queen Anna of Denmark’s stolen jewels and a missing Van Dyck painting, The Queen’s Tears weaves history, fiction, and family research across the centuries. Readers of The Lydiard Chronicles will find old favourites—and a new heroine following in their footsteps.
The Lydiard Chronicles
Welcome to The Lydiard Chronicles, my series of British historical fiction novels set in seventeenth-century England. The stories are true, discovered in a four-hundred-year-old diary written by my ancestress.
The Lady of the Tower
London, 1609. When Lucy St.John, a beautiful highborn orphan at the court of King James, is seduced by the Earl of Suffolk, she never imagines the powerful enemy she creates in his beloved sister, the Countess of Somerset. Or that her own sister Barbara would betray her and force Lucy to leave the court in disgrace. Spirited, educated, and skilled in medicinal remedies, Lucy fights her way back into society, and through an unexpected love match, becomes mistress of the Tower of London. Living inside the infamous prison, she defies plague, political intrigues and tragic executions to tend to aristocratic prisoners and criminals alike.
Now married into the immensely powerful Villiers family, Barbara unites with the king’s favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, to raise the fortunes of Lucy and her family to dizzying heights. But with great wealth comes treachery, leaving Lucy to fight for her survival—and her honor—in a world of deceit and debauchery.
Bookshop: The Lady of the Tower
By Love Divided
London, 1630. Widowed and penniless, Lucy St.John is fighting for her family’s survival and makes a terrible choice to secure a future for her children. Worse still, her daughter Luce rejects the royal court and wealthy marriage arranged by her aristocratic family and falls in love with a charismatic Parliamentarian. As England tumbles toward bloody civil war, Luce’s beloved brother Allen embraces the Royalist cause and chooses to fight for the king as a cavalier. Lucy is helpless to prevent her family being torn apart, and as war flares across England, Allen and Luce are swept up in bloody battles and brutal sieges as they fight for their opposing causes.
Along with thousands of others uprooted by the turmoil, Lucy, Allen, and Luce face a devastating challenge. Will war unite or divide them? And will they find love and a home to return to—if they survive the horror of civil war. In the dawn of England’s great rebellion, love is the final battleground.
Bookshop: By Love Divided
Written in their Stars
London, 1649. Horrified eyewitnesses to King Charles’s bloody execution, Royalists Nan Wilmot and Frances Apsley plot to return the king’s exiled son to England’s throne, while their radical cousin Luce, the wife of king-killer John Hutchinson, rejoices in the new republic’s triumph. Nan exploits her high-ranking position as Countess of Rochester to manipulate England’s great divide, flouting Cromwell and establishing a Royalist spy network; while Frances and her husband Allen join the destitute prince in Paris’s Louvre Palace to support his restoration.
As the women work from the shadows to topple Cromwell’s regime, their husbands fight openly for the throne on England’s bloody battlefields. But will the return of the king be a victory, or destroy them all? Separated by loyalty and bound by love, Luce, Nan and Frances hold the fate of England—and their family—in their hands.
Bookshop: Written in Their Stars
The Missing Princes Historical Mysteries
If you knew what happened to the Princes in the Tower, would you tell? Or forever keep the secret. Meet Elysabeth St.John Scrope, Godmother to Prince Edward, and Franny Apsley, her descendent charged with discovering the dangerous truth.
The Godmother’s Secret
Inspired by England’s most enduring historical mystery, I blend a fascinating discovery within my family history with known facts and centuries of speculation to create an intriguing story about what happened to the Princes in the Tower.
If you knew the fate of the Princes in the Tower would you tell? Or forever keep the secret?
November, 1470: Westminster Abbey. Lady Elysabeth Scrope faces a perilous royal duty when ordered into sanctuary with Elizabeth Woodville–witness the birth of Edward IV’s Yorkist son. Margaret Beaufort, Elysabeth’s sister, is desperately seeking a pardon for her exiled son Henry Tudor. Strategically, she coerces Lancastrian Elysabeth to be appointed godmother to Prince Edward, embedding her in the heart of the Plantagenets and uniting them in a destiny of impossible choices and heartbreaking conflict.
Bound by blood and torn by honour, when the king dies and Elysabeth delivers her young godson into the Tower of London to prepare for his coronation, she is engulfed in political turmoil. Within months, the prince and his brother have disappeared, Richard III is declared king, and Margaret conspires with Henry Tudor to invade England and claim the throne. Desperate to protect her godson, Elysabeth battles the intrigue, betrayal and power of the last medieval court, defying her husband and her sister under her godmother’s sacred oath to keep Prince Edward safe.
Were the princes murdered by their uncle, Richard III? Was the rebel Duke of Buckingham to blame? Or did Margaret Beaufort mastermind their disappearance to usher in the Tudor dynasty? Of anyone at the royal court, Elysabeth has the most to lose–and the most to gain–by keeping secret the fate of the Princes in the Tower. Bookshop: The Godmother’s Secret
The King’s Intelligencer
The Tower of London, 1674: Franny Apsley, confidante to Lady Mary Stuart, heir to King Charles’s throne, becomes embroiled in the royal court’s excitement over the discovery of children’s bones. Could they be the missing princes? As a devastating family secret emerges, Franny is recruited by her cousin Nan Wilmot to unearth the truth behind the bones. Her investigation, complicated by an attraction to the secretive court artist Nicholas Jameson and the influence of an enigmatic royal spy, reveals a startling plot threatening the throne and England’s stability.
In a glittering and treacherous society, Franny must risk everything—her country, her happiness, and her family’s safety—to expose the truth.
A captivating historical novel of conspiracy, passion, and courage, The King’s Intelligencer is one woman’s quest for a truth that could change the fate of a nation. A companion to the critically acclaimed best-selling novels The Godmother’s Secret and The Lydiard Chronicles, The King’s Intelligencer weaves together beloved characters and actual events to bring a suspenseful mystery to life.
Bookshop: The King’s Intelligencer
[…] then you are sure to enjoy the Lydiard Chronicles, a series of three historical novels by Elizabeth St. John – The Lady of the Tower, By Love Divided and Written in their Stars, with the companion […]
[…] Richard III? Nope, not especially 'into' him, though I do enjoy a good novel about him. (I can heartily recommend Elizabeth St John's The Godmother's Secret,) […]
I don’t believe Margaret Beaufort had anything to do with the prince’s disappeared. Everything dependent on that battle of Bosworth. She couldn’t be sure that her son was going to win. Even when her husband changed sides. History has taught us that the guilty needs motive, means and opportunities. So who do that point to ????
I love reading the Godmother’s Secret. It was brilliant read. Loved the main character in the novel.😊
Thank you so much! Elysabeth was challenging to find, but once we connected, she was a joy to write.
Just finished The Godmother’s Secret, and although it had to end, it was sad to say goodbye to Elysabeth and her family. Also, there’s a Scrope in my own ancestral line leading back to Edward I which I will now pursue .Thank you for a great read!
P.S. I also enjoed all the Lidiard Chronicles as another of my ancestors, William de Mandeville, was the first Constable of the Tower of London about 1100 AD.
Thank you Suzanne, what kind words. I’m so glad you enjoyed meeting the fam! And good luck with your own ancestor-hunting. It sounds as though you have some intriguing branches in your tree.
Absolutely love your books that I have read and didn’t want to leave the characters when I completed reading them. The Lydiard Chronicals and The Godmother’s Secret. Fabulous stories and so beautifully written. Thankyou.
Thank you so much Sue. I am thrilled you enjoyed the books. It was a joy to write them.
Liz, when and from what source will THE GODMOTHER’S SECRET audio book be available?
Janis, it just went on pre-sale today on Audible, and publishes June 27th. It’s available across all audio book outlets. Here’s the publisher’s website: https://tantor.com/the-godmothers-secret-elizabeth-st-john.html
Hi Elizabeth, I have just finished reading your piece in the collection focused on the theme of exile. Even in its shortness, it’s another winner. You have captured the religious struggle of the mid-17th century in England very well. And you have discovered another of your namesakes in your family line. Will you write a full length novel on her story? That would mean researching a new venue. The interchange between Puritans and capitalist merchants is expertly outlined by David Brown in his Enterprise and Empire book. Ireland would have been another option for this family, as many of the English Protestants there were of the Puritan persuasion. You can read something about that in my own No Mere Irish: The Kennedys of Mount Kennedy, a 17th c. Irish Protestant family.
Hi Therese, thanks for your kind words. I enjoyed spending time with Elizabeth, and it was fun to revisit that part of the family history and walk in her footsteps. I grew up not far from her home, and that part of England has always been close to my heart. Thanks for the further reading tips as I think about the potential of a novel…it is tempting, given her full story! Wishing you a very happy new year.
After listening to the first two Lydiard Chronicles books, I devoured the rest of the series. When will they be available in audio? It’s been fascinating to read/listen to books by other authors set in the same period.
Hi Cate
Thanks for your lovely comment. I don’t have plans for any audio books right now, but maybe later in the year. If you enjoy audio books, you might like to try my latest novel, The Godmother’s Secret, which I narrated. With all good wishes!