The Best Works of William Harrison Ainsworth. Book 5

The Best Works of William Harrison Ainsworth. Book 5: 1. Windsor Castle; 2. Chetwynd Calverley; 3. The Leaguer of Lathom.


1. Windsor Castle

Published: 1843

Windsor Castle is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth serially published in 1842. It is a historical romance with gothic elements that depicts Henry VIII's pursuit of Anne Boleyn. Intertwined with the story are the actions of Herne the Hunter, a legendary ghost that haunts Windsor woods.

The focus of the novels is on the events surrounding Henry VIII's replacing Catherine of Aragon with Anne Boleyn as his wife. During Henry's pursuit of Boleyn, the novel describes other couples, including the Earl of Surrey and Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a match Henry does not support. However, some of the individuals oppose Henry and his desires for Boleyn, including Thomas Wyat who wants her for himself and Cardinal Wolsey, who uses his own daughter, Mabel Lyndwood, to lure Henry away from Boleyn. Eventually, Wolsey turns to outting Wyat's desires for Boleyn to the Court, which almost results in Wyat's execution but is stopped before that point. Wolsey is then kicked out of the court and is executed himself.


2. Chetwynd Calverley   

Published: 1876

One summer evening, Mildred Calverley, accounted the prettiest girl in Cheshire, who had been seated in the drawing-room of her father's house, Ouselcroft, near Daresbury, vainly trying to read, passed out from the open French window, and made her way towards two magnificent cedars of Lebanon, at the farther end of the lawn.

She was still pacing the lawn with distracted steps, when a well-known voice called out to her, and a tall figure emerged from the shade of the cedars, and Mildred uttered a cry of mingled surprise and delight…


3. The Leaguer of Lathom

Published: 1876

«LATE one night, in the disastrous year 1642, soon after the commencement of the Civil War, as Lord Strange was alone in his closet at Knowsley Hall, reading a treatise by Cardan, blood fell suddenly upon the book. Being in a very melancholy frame of mind at the time, he was powerfully affected by the occurrence, and could not help regarding it as a presage of ill.

As soon as he had recovered his composure, he addressed a prayer to Heaven for the safety and welfare of the king, and his own preservation from sudden and violent death, and had not long risen from his knees, when a tap at the door was heard, and next moment, a grave-looking person-age, whose dress proclaimed him a divine, entered the closet….»