Future Projects

Ideas for Fruit of the Oak

Teenage audience

My aim is to carry out more extensive research for this historical novel based on the life of one of the most prominent men in England in the Court of King Charles II, who has been almost completely forgotten by the history books.

He was very close in age to the Young Pretender, fled with him after the Battle of Worcester, and rose to be an eminent statesman, but hardly a word has ever been written about him.

Even Sam Pepys, the most notorious gossip in the world at the time, kept his mouth shut; there is very scant reference to his name in the diaries.

It could be said that he may have been disliked, but evidently he was very well respected.  My theory is that he was protected from public scrutiny for a particular reason.  He may have been deliberately boring, but I think this could have been done to disguise the fact that he had been entrusted with an important mission close to the king’s heart.  The care of the king’s child.

Sir Stephen Fox was the son of a yeoman farmer from Farley near Salisbury in Wiltshire.  He managed the finances of the exiled court and was rewarded after the Restoration being appointed Paymaster-General.  He founded the Chelsea Hospital.  He was elected Member of Parliament for Salisbury and rose to become Commissioner of the Treasury, filling that office during three reigns.  He never forgot his roots, returning to the tiny village of Farley to build the church and the almshouses and was founder of the school.

Before the death of Charles II, Sir Stephen undertook the care of the king’s illegitimate daughter; if there were fifteen children, why not one more?  He arranged for her to be hidden during her childhood and eventually fell in love with her.