The Lydiard Chronicles
The Lady of the Tower
By Love Divided
Written in their Stars
by Elizabeth St.John
Duty, passion, and power collide in The Lydiard Chronicles, a gripping trilogy inspired by true events. Follow three courageous women—survivors, strategists, and storytellers—who defy the constraints of society to shape their family’s fate and England’s future. Their voices echo through time. Their legacy changed a nation.
The Lydiard Chronicles is an award-winning, best-selling historical family saga which brings to life the remarkable true stories of the St.John family. Spanning three compelling novels—The Lady of the Tower, By Love Divided, and Written in Their Stars—the series follows the legacy of resilient and intelligent women who lived as spies, courtiers, and diarists during England’s most turbulent century, navigating the quicksand of love and war, political upheaval, and personal sacrifice.
Bound by fierce family loyalty and unforgettable love, the women of The Lydiard Chronicles defy the limits of their time with passion, courage, and unshakable independence. They endure captivity in the Tower of London, exile in the Louvre Palace, and the heart-wrenching divisions of the English Civil War—fighting not just for survival, but for their beliefs, their families, and the right to choose their own fate. Meticulously researched and vividly told, this epic saga reveals how these women created history from the shadows, leaving a legacy of resilience, defiance, and enduring influence.
Rooted in original diaries, letters, and family papers, The Lydiard Chronicles offers an intimate, biographical portrait of women who moved behind the scenes of power. Serving as trusted secret agents, military wives, and confidantes of kings, they were deeply engaged in the political and religious conflicts of their time. Through tragedy and triumph, the women of The Lydiard Chronicles shape their destinies—and the fate of a nation—in this richly researched and vividly told historical epic.
Medicine in a Time of Turmoil: The Women Healers Behind The Lydiard Chronicles
In the 17th century, amidst civil war, plague, political upheaval, and personal loss, the responsibility of caregiving fell overwhelmingly to women. They were the unsung backbone of the household, not only managing domestic life but acting as healers, apothecaries, and nurses to their families, communities, and, at times, to those caught in the tides of history. Through the women of The Lydiard Chronicles—based on my ancestors—I wanted to explore the powerful, often overlooked, roles they played as medical practitioners in a world teetering between tradition and transformation, superstition and science.
Lucy St.John, the heroine of The Lady of the Tower, held an official position of duty and care as the wife of the Lieutenant of the Tower of London. Her responsibilities extended beyond managing the household; she was tasked with caring for the prisoners held within the Tower’s forbidding walls. These were not nameless criminals but political detainees, noblemen, and scholars—many of whom awaited execution. Lucy tended to them as best she could, both physically and emotionally, in deeply uncertain times.
She also cultivated a curative garden within the Tower itself—adjacent to the kitchens and near the Bloody Tower—which she shared with Sir Walter Raleigh during his years of imprisonment. That same garden, where herbs like comfrey, rosemary, and lavender once grew, has been replanted today as a living testament to her role as a caregiver within the nation’s most infamous fortress. In addition to her healing work, Lucy was known to experiment with alchemy and distillation, frequently visiting London’s apothecary shops to acquire ingredients, texts, and knowledge. Her life was steeped in both the practical and the mystical, reflecting the era’s curious blending of science, belief, and personal power.
But Lucy was far from alone. Her niece by marriage, Lady Johanna St.John, played an equally significant role in preserving and advancing domestic medical knowledge, and her skills came to the forefront in By Love Divided and Written in Their Stars. Johanna’s legacy survives in her remarkable recipe book, compiled in the late 17th century and preserved today by the Wellcome Library. It contains scores of medicinal remedies—some drawn from classical sources, others passed down through generations of women, and many reflecting the blending of herbal medicine with alchemy and early science. Her household at Lydiard Park functioned as a place of healing, not only for her extended family but for neighbours and estate workers who relied on her expertise. Johanna’s meticulous documentation reveals a woman at the centre of community care, balancing estate management, motherhood, and medicine with impressive skill.
Then there is Lucy St.John’s daughter Lucy (Luce in the novels)—scholar, writer, and fierce political thinker—whose life and letters offer a poignant view into the emotional and physical burdens borne by women during the English Civil War. The Lydiard Chronicles are based on her extensive eyewitness accounts of the war. When Nottingham Castle came under siege, Lucy stood beside her husband, Colonel John Hutchinson, helping defend the stronghold while also caring for the wounded and ill. Her memoirs, among the earliest political writings by an Englishwoman, also chronicle her life as a healer—nursing John through illness, managing her household under extraordinary stress, and ensuring the survival of her children in a war-torn land. Even after her husband’s death following the Restoration, Lucy continued to fight for his legacy and secure her family’s future, using both her intellect and indomitable spirit.
These women—Lucy St.John, Johanna St.John, and Lucy Hutchinson—each in their own way, stood at the intersection of domestic responsibility and public crisis. Their gardens, kitchens, and studies became spaces of care and resistance, where medical knowledge was passed down, refined, and practiced. Their stories, drawn from recipe books, letters, and memoirs, offer not only a fascinating look into early modern medicine but a powerful reminder of the ways women sustained their families and communities in times of political and personal upheaval.
In The Lydiard Chronicles, their legacies live on. Whether tending a medicinal garden within the Tower of London, recording elaborate cures in a manor house in Wiltshire, or holding firm under siege in a vitally strategic castle, these women remind us that healing is a form of strength—and that the quiet labour of caregiving is as vital to history as any battle or decree. Their stories deserve to be told not just as historical footnotes but as central narratives of courage, intelligence, and care in the face of adversity.
(Extract from Lucy Hutchinson’s notebook)
Her mother, Lucy St.John, nursing the prisoners in the Tower of London, 1617-1630.
“…Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthven being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make their rare experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of skill, which was very profitable to many all her life. She was not only to these, but to all the other prisoners that came into the Tower, as a mother. All the time she dwelt in the Tower, if any were sick she made them broths and restoratives with her own hands, visited and took care of them, and provided them all necessaries; if any were afflicted she comforted them, so that they felt not the inconvenience of a prison who were in that place.”
(Extract from Lady Johanna St.John’s Recipe Book)
The uses of Gilbert’s Water
“It is bad for nothing it cures wind and the colick restoreth decayed nature good for a consumption expels poison & all infection from the Hart helps digestion purifies the blood gives motion to the spirits drives out the smallpox for the grippes in young children weomen in labor bringeth the Afterbirth stops floods for sounding and faintings”
This series is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Elizabeth St. John
Elizabeth St.John’s critically acclaimed historical fiction novels tell the stories of her ancestors: extraordinary women whose intriguing kinship with England's kings and queens brings an intimately unique perspective to Medieval, Tudor, and Stuart times.
Inspired by family archives and residences from Lydiard Park to the Tower of London, Elizabeth spends much of her time exploring ancestral portraits, diaries, and lost gardens. And encountering the occasional ghost. But that’s another story.
Living between California, England, and the past, Elizabeth is the International Ambassador for The Friends of Lydiard Park, an English charity dedicated to conserving and enhancing this beautiful centuries-old country house and park. As a curator for The Lydiard Archives, she is constantly looking for an undiscovered treasure to inspire her next novel.
Elizabeth's works include The Lydiard Chronicles, a family saga set in 17th-century England during the Civil War, and The Godmother's Secret, which unravels the medieval mystery of the missing princes in the Tower of London. Her latest release, The King’s Intelligencer, follows Franny Apsley in the treacherous court of Charles II as she risks everything to uncover the dangerous truth behind the discovery of the princes’ bones.
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What a lovely surprise! Thank you so much for featuring The Lydiard Chronicles and sharing my family's stories. (And I'm thrilled that Written in Their Stars won the Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year for Tudor/Stuart Historical Fiction a couple of years ago!).
ReplyDeleteYou're most welcome, Elizabeth. The series makes for riveting reading, especially as the ladies' adventures are based on real events. How exciting to have them in your family tree! xx
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