Devil Water by Anya Seton

This is an old-fashioned family saga of a historical novel by an author whose gift for creating memorable characters was matched by her painstaking research on the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Rebellions and the families who clung to the dream of the Stuarts regaining the throne. The story begins in 1709, when Charles Radcliffe, barely 16, is getting into trouble with a girl below his station, while he waits for his brother, James, the young Earl of Derwentwater, to return from France.

The Radcliffes have royal blood - their mother was one of Charles II’s illegitimate daughters, and James has spent the last seven years in exile as the companion of his cousin, James Stuart, the rightful king of England. Charles is apprehensive about his brother’s return but James Radcliffe is both idealistic and kind. He is also a devoted Catholic and one of the leading landowners in the north of England. The Radcliffe estates were in Northumberland, near Hexham.

James Radcliffe

According to Seton, Charles was forced into marriage by an angry coal-mining family when their daughter, Meg Snowdon, became pregnant with his child. Charles is surprisingly entranced by his child but the marriage is only on paper; he goes home alone and spends several years in wild behavior. In 1715, there is a poorly planned and disastrous Jacobite uprising for James Stuart that James and Charles join. They are captured and taken to London where they are imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Later, the book focuses on Jenny, the child Charles barely knows but asks a beloved cousin to raise. She is young but very beautiful, and makes friends with an American, Evelyn Byrd, daughter of William Byrd (1674–1744), a prominent Virginia planter and politician who spent significant time overseas and later founded Richmond.

Evelyn Byrd

Like every book by Seton I have read, this is a vivid and often tragic story, full of compelling yet flawed characters.  I contemplate with pity the lives of those in exile, whether with Charles II or the Old and Young Pretenders.  If their estates are seized, they are dependent on whatever funds those at home can scrape together for them and send safely or the largesse of their prince, who is also impoverished.

Book Serendipity

James, Lord Derwentwater, who is depicted as a charming and devout young man, was the most prominent British nobleman captured after the Battle of Preston and accused of treason (as was Charles).  One of the other imprisoned leaders was William Maxwell, 5th Earl of Nithsdale, whose wife facilitates his daring escape from the Tower of London in Tapestry by Fiona McIntosh, which I just read. Seton does not find Lord Nithsdale as appealing as McIntosh did:

Nithsdale was a skinny dark man of forty, a hairy man with stubbly chin and bushy black eyebrows. A humorless man, yet perhaps more passionately dedicated to the Cause than any of the Scots, for he was a Roman Catholic, and had known King James at St. Germain. He did not look like an earl to Charles, who was used to his brother’s fastidious and polished dignity.

Lord Nithsdale, Escape from the Tower
Emily Mary Osborn

More Book Serendipity

Parts of this book (it is amazing all the traveling these characters do, including round trips to Virginia, although the passage must have been both dangerous and expensive) and all of The Ivy Tree, which I read last week, are set in Northumberland. Annabel is welcomed home with Singing Hinnies in The Ivy Tree and Jenny is given them in Devil Water when she accompanies her father to the north to visit her uncle’s grave:

“Sit down, my child. Have a singing-hinny. Mrs. Busby just made them.” He handed her a platterful of cakes, and Jenny took one, trying not to stare at the priest.

They seem to be a cross between pancakes and scones. The singing part of the name from when the cakes are cooked in a hot flat griddle pan, as they hit the pan, the butter and lard start to sizzle and "sing."

Singing Hinnies / Ingredients (US Measurements)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cream of tartar (or 1 tsp total baking powder instead of both)
1/2 tsp salt
4 oz cold unsalted butter (1 stick)
4 oz cold shortening (1 stick)
1 cup dried currants (or raisins/sultanas) (I would use chocolate chips)
4-6 tbsp milk (or buttermilk), added gradually
Extra butter/shortening for greasing the pan

Mix: dry ingredients, then add the cold butter and shortening. Stir in the fruit. Gradually mix in the milk, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together. It should be firm but manageable. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about ½ inch thickness. Cut into rounds using a round 2-3 inch cutter.

Cook: Heat a cast-iron skillet or griddle over low heat and lightly grease with shortening. Cook the scones for 5–8 minutes per side, until browned and they "sound hollow" when tapped.  Serve warm with jam and butter.

This was my sixth book for the Intrepid Reader’s 2026 Historical Fiction Challenge. I must have originally seen the wrong pub date for this book because I started reading it for the 1961 Club and was halfway done before I realized it was actually published in 1962! It was a great read, regardless.

Title: Devil Water
Author: Anya Seton
Publication: 1962
Genre: Historical Fiction
Source: Library