The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clare Avery, by Emily Sarah Holt

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Clare Avery
A Story of the Spanish Armada

Author: Emily Sarah Holt

Release Date: October 11, 2007 [EBook #22942]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARE AVERY ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Clare Avery, by Emily Sarah Holt.
________________________________________________________________________
This book, one of Emily Holt's many historical novels, is set in the
reign of Elizabeth, around the time of the Armada, which has a chapter
to itself. The story revolves round a moderately well-off family, who
really did exist, many details of the family being given in the last
chapter, or Appendix. In order to make the story realistic there are a
number of fictitious persons, but there is always a note to that effect
when the person first appears. In general these fictitious persons are
no more than minor characters.

There is an interesting passage in which Jack, one of the youths of the
family, obtains a place at Court, but finds he needs to spend enormous
amounts on apparel to keep up with the other young men he meets. By no
means does the family have the resources to pay his trade-debts, and it
turns out that his gambling debts, known as "debts of honour" are even
greater. They had to tell him to go away and sort it out for himself.

But it must be said that a great deal of the book is taken up with
religious discussions, mostly centring on the perceived imperfections
of the Papist religion, as opposed to the Protestant. If you are not
interested in this it does tend to make the going a bit heavy at times.
But if you are interested, well then, it makes good reading.

As ever with this author there are many words and phrases used which
are now outdated. When they first appear a note of the current meaning
is given, for instance "popinjay [parrot]". On the whole this is not
confusing except where a word has changed or even reversed its meaning.
We do not recommend learning by heart from a sort of vocab list, the
words in use in Elizabethan times, unless you are studying that
period in dept