Quarrel with the king : the story of an English family on the high road to civil war / Adam Nicolson

Includes bibliographical references (p. [283]-292) and index.

The long road to civil war, 1540-1650 -- The making of the Pembrokes, 1527-1546 -- A countrey of lands and mannours : the world the Pembrokes acquired -- The exercise of noble authority: the first Earl as power broker, 1549-1570 -- I'll be a park and thou shalt be my deer : the making of the Pembroke Arcadia, 1570-1586 -- Little earths kind of paradise : Mary Pembroke's Court at Wilton, 1586-1601 -- Two incomparable brethren : the careers of William, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, 1601-1630 -- So mutable are worldly things: ancient communities and the threat of modernity -- Elizian fields and ayery paradises : the perfecting of Wilton, 1630-1640 -- A sad and miserable condition we are fallen into: the catastrophe of civil war, 1640-1650 -- Hear this, o ye that swallow up the needy : the destruction of downland society, 1650-1830.

Quarrel with the King tells the story of the first four earls of Pembroke, their wives, children, estates, tenants, and allies, following their high and glamorous trajectory from the 1520s through 1650-the most turbulent and dramatic years of English history-across three generations of change, ambition, resistance, and war. The Pembrokes were at the heart of it all: the richest family in England, with old blood and new drive, led as much by a succession of extraordinary women as by their husbands and sons.