I would like to thank my agent, Eugenie Furniss, whose advice and encouragement over the years of writing this book have been invaluable. My United Kingdom publishers, Bloomsbury, have improved and beautified it: a special thank-you to Alexandra Pringle and Allegra Le Fanu, and to Sarah Murphy at Flatiron Books in the US, who asked perceptive questions. David Lindley’s open-minded approach in his excellent book The Trials of Frances Howard (Routledge, 1996) set me off in search of Anne and Frankie and was a scholarly and entertaining foil to the vitriol and assumption slung at my protagonists in many other books on the subject. Steve Cook at the Royal Literary Fund gave me work, confidence and a writing community exactly when I needed it, and huge thanks also to Greg Klerx for telling me about the RLF and sharing the writing journey. Research has taken me to many archives, libraries, museums and old houses and to all those who keep these alive, available and polished, I offer thanks, but especially to the staff at the London Library, my second home for many years; to Nick Humphrey, Curator in the Furniture Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum; and Elaine Uttley at the Fashion Museum in Bath.

I have plundered too many books and articles, of and on the period, to list them all, but I found particularly helpful and interesting the work of historians Linda Levy Peck (Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart London, Routledge, 2003; The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, Cambridge University Press, 1991; Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I, Allen & Unwin, 1982; and Consuming Splendor, Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass (“‘Rugges of London and the Diuell’s Band’: Irish Mantles and Yellow Starch as Hybrid English Fashion” in Material London, ca. 1600, edited by Lena Cowen Orlin, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Alastair Bellany (The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660, Cambridge University Press, 2002); Neil Cuddy (“The Revival of the Entourage: The Bedchamber of James I, 1603–1625” in The English Court, edited by David Starkey, Longman, 1987), David Bergeron (King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire, University of Iowa Press, 1999); and Keith Thomas (The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press, 2010), and warmly recommend anyone interested in the period to seek out these publications.

Several writers of far greater skill and experience than my own have been generous enough to read the manuscript (or part thereof) and given very helpful feedback: Helen Cross, Andrew Miller, Catherine Temma Davidson, Lucy Ellmann, Gillian Slovo, Sarah Dunant and Susan Elderkin, and also Diana Carr, Gillian Stern, Edwina Bowen, Allen Samuels and special thanks to Shireen Jilla and Francesca Brill, whose wisdom and kindness lit every step of the way.