A Child Upon the Throne

As a Kingdom Trembles With Revolt, a Knight and His Lady Must Choose Between Duty and Love in the Medieval Historical, A Child Upon the Throne, by Mary Ellen Johnson. Medieval England following the death of Edward III in 1377 through the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. As a young knight, Matthew Hart had loved war. How could he not when England's warrior king, Edward III, and his son, the Black Prince, won battle after battle against the perfidious French? Even the kingdom's poorest yeomen returned home loaded with plunder from their enemy's ravaged castles and towns. And so England prospered. But Edward III and his son are dead, a boy king, Richard II, sits on the throne, and England's martial victories are a faded memory. A disillusioned Matthew wants only to reunite with his long-time leman, Margery Watson, and live out his days far away from the royal court. For Matthew understands the truth of that biblical phrase, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child." But Margery, who is the daughter of a peasant woman and a lord, is torn in her loyalties. To be with the knight she's loved since childhood or to side with the commons, including her stepbrother and the hedge-priest, John Ball? For while England's nobility still live high, the commoners, overburdened with taxes and chafing at their servile status, are ripe for revolt. When the spark ignites and thousands march on London vowing to overthrow all those in power save the boy king himself, Margery must choose between her knight and a cause she believes right and true.