Fensmere Manor is the silent host and witness to most of the events in ARPc and some of those in ARPh. It was effectively the seat of the Earl and Countess of Warwick during that title’s creation for the Defalais family, which held the title between the creations for the Nevilles and the Dudleys. The second Earl, Robert Defalais, resided there partly out of deference for his first wife, Margaret; but probably more so, because by comparison, Warwick Castle was a joyless bunker that would require a fortune to upgrade.
Fensmere was located on the Gog Magog hills of Cambridgeshire, overlooking Cambridge, within a half-mile of the Babraham Road, around the area now occupied by Wandlebury Country Park. It was one of the earliest country houses in England, begun by Margaret’s father with money her maternal grandfather had acquired under circumstances that were not well-known, and consequently still remained a subject of gossip. While easily overshadowed by Cardinal Wolsey’s magnificent Hampton Court, construction at Fensmere Hall began about a decade earlier, in the final years of Henry VII’s reign or the earliest ones of Henry VIII. Fensmere Hall remained ahead of its time until the dissolution of the monasteries enriched the Tudor nobility and led to the building boom of the later Tudor and early Stuart periods. Although not fully one of the so-called “prodigy houses” of those later eras, like Hampton Court it was more than a precursor to them: a house designed to demonstrate the wealth and prestige of its builder, especially through the use of glass, extensive craftsmanship, and expansive amenities.
The new style of building was inspired by the Italian Renaissance, fueled by prosperity, and enabled by dramatic changes in Western Europe that allowed construction to focus on residential rather than defensive purposes for the first time since antiquity. While gunpowder and cannon were eroding the advantages of armor and residential fortresses, trade, commerce, and education were knitting together nations from isolated fiefdoms ruled by battling warlords. Where once the Royal Progress through the land had been as a heavily-armed military convoy traveling from loyal castle to loyal castle for protection, it was now beginning its evolution toward the Mardi Gras parade roving from one palace to the next, that it would become by Elizabeth I’s reign.
By the time of ARPc, Fensmere Hall was, for all intents and purposes, finished. Its design had changed over time, most notably after Margaret took over construction after her father’s death; but also incrementally as new construction materials and ideas filtered into England. As a result, it was a bit of a hodgepodge, but it contained most or all of the elements found in later prodigy houses. Margaret’s daughters loved the house and all it symbolized—partly because of their love for her and her untimely death; partly because the house was so advanced for its time; partly because it was ripped away from them prematurely and traumatically; but perhaps mainly because it had been such a labor of love for Margaret’s father that it became a matter of the family’s mythology and identity.