Spanning England's most turbulent and dramatic decades-from the 1520s to the 1640s-Quarrel with the King tells the story of four generations of one of the greatest families in English history, the Pembrokes, and follows their glamorous trajectory across 130 years of change, ambition, resistance, and war.
As he tells their story, Adam Nicolson reveals how a struggle for dominance began as the English crown slowly grew in strength and power, which evoked questions of loyalty that would simmer for decades. Was government about agreement and respect or authority and compulsion? What status did traditional rights have in a changing world? Did a national emergency mean those rights could be ignored or overturned? These were the questions that, in 1642, would lead to a brutal civil war, the bloodiest conflict England has ever suffered, in which the Earl of Pembroke-a devout subject-had no choice but to rebel against a king he believed had betrayed him and his country.
