Tea at Trianon: 120th Anniversary of R.H. Benson's "The King's Achievement"

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, October 11, 2025

120th Anniversary of R.H. Benson's "The King's Achievement"

From Stephanie Mann:

The King's Achievement, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's historical novel about the Dissolution of the Monasteries, was published in 1905, 120 years ago. It was one of those books I read years before I started studying the English Reformation in depth before writing my book, so I've selected it for our next Son Rise Morning Show 2025 anniversary on Monday, October 13, Columbus Day! I'll be on the air at my usual time, 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to discuss this anniversary and its importance. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.
Like its sequel, By What Authority?, which was published in 1904, The King's Achievement is a family drama, as Benson shows the divisions caused in two families by the English Reformation during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. One link between the two novels, for example, is the former nun, Margaret Torridon, taken from her convent by her own brother in The King's Achievement, living years later in the Catholic household of her brother-in-law and sister Mary in By What Authority?

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson was a convert to Catholicism, the youngest son of Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883 to 1896, and his wife, Mary. Robert's older brothers, E.F. (Edward Frederick) and A.C. (Arthur Christopher) were also authors: E.F. wrote the "Mapp and Lucia" novels and A.C. contributed to Elgar's Coronation Ode written for Edward VII in 1902 and "Land of Hope and Glory"; he was also Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Their sister Margaret was an Egyptologist.

After his conversion to Catholicism in 1903, Robert Hugh Benson was ordained a priest the next year.

He wrote several novels, historical and contemporary, and consulted with Don Bede Camm, another Catholic convert, who studied the English Reformation martyrs, on his historical novels. He acknowledges Dom Bede Camm's assistance in both By What Authority? and The King's Achievement.

Dom Bede Camm was inspired by the stories of the English Catholic martyrs beatified by Pope Leo XIII and published a two-volume book about them in 1904, Lives of the English Martyrs. He also helped the Benedictine Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre who had established a convent near the former site of Tyburn Tree, where many martyrs suffered.

So Camm was a good resource for Benson, but the characters and the dramas Benson created are fictional--although Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, and other historical people appear in The King's Achievement. (Read more.)