Is Shardlake a true story? The real history behind the Disney+ Tudor murder mystery

Ostensibly he is there to a solve a killing, but his mission is larger than that. The dead man was looking for an excuse – corruption, theft, heresy, anything – to force the closure of the monastery on Cromwell’s behalf, and now that unenviable task has fallen to Shardlake.

Accompanied by Cromwell’s likely-lad stooge Jack Barak (played by Anthony Boyle, who is seemingly everywhere in historical drama at the moment, having recently starred as Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth in Manhunt and bomber boy Harry Crosby in Masters of the Air), Shardlake must edge around the lies and hostility from monks whose world is about to collapse, while dealing with his own struggles of faith in the midst of this religious turmoil.

Streaming on Disney+ from 1 May, Shardlake stands apart among Tudor dramas in the sense that Tudors themselves are nowhere to be seen. Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour are all mentioned but never appear; the courtly intrigues surrounding the six wives and Henry’s quest for a male heir don’t even get a look in.

The only notable figure linked to the Tudor dynasty whom we see in the flesh is Sean Bean’s Cromwell, one moment silk tongued and the next incandescent, every word he utters latent with threat – this Cromwell is very much the ‘thug in a doublet’ interpretation than the rather more humanised figure in Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light.

What we get, then, is a crime drama set in Tudor England, framed by the upheaval of the dissolution of the monasteries, but removed from the power politics that have dominated the like of The Tudors, The Spanish Princess and Wolf Hall.

Is Shardlake a true story? The real history of the dissolution

No, Shardlake is entirely a work of fiction – though its historical backdrop, the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, is a real event.

“The house must fall,” Cromwell tells Shardlake with a thinly veiled menace in episode one, referring to St Donatus. It’s a line that looms large in the series’ trailer, too. St Donatus is the first monastery facing closure, the test case for the entire enterprise.

The dissolution of the monasteries, enacted from 1536–40, saw monasteries, convents and religious houses across England forcibly closed and their assets seized by the Crown – a systemic dismantling deftly overseen by Cromwell (even though he was not its chief architect), resulting in the displacement of thousands of people in holy orders.

The initial intent of the dissolution was perhaps of reform rather than outright suppression. In 1536, it was only monasteries with an annual income of less than £200 that were faced with the closure, with the remainder earmarked for assessment by commissioners.

“Whether this was an exercise in smearing the monasteries’ reputation and justifying their closure has been hotly debated,” says historian Hugh Wilmott, discussing the legacy of the dissolution for BBC History Magazine.

“Crown commissioners often painted a bleak picture, but they did also report that many houses were well run.”

It is suggestive that of the 419 monasteries that fell below the £200 threshold, only 243 were closed. What hardened attitudes at court – and seemingly made obliteration preferable to reform – were the Lincolnshire Rising and the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536.

“Once these revolts had been put down, there seems to have been a rapid change in government policy,” says Wilmott. The closures were likewise accelerated: the last monastic house to be shuttered in the dissolution was at Waltham Abbey in 1540.

Was Shardlake a real historical figure? King’s commissioners explained

Though Tudor lawyer Matthew Shardlake is a fictional character, his position as King’s Commissioner under Thomas Cromwell was a real post – and a powerful one.

A commissioner was an individual appointed by the monarch or another high-ranking official to act on behalf of the Crown. They were visible agents of royal power.

The role of commissioner varied: it could be the administration of royal lands and revenues or collecting taxes and auditing accounts, for instance.

“King’s Commissioner is a helpful term because we're talking about a time before a civil service, and before a police force or anything like that,” says Peter Wagstaff, Shardlake’s historical consultant, on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast.

“A king's commissioner in this context really is just someone who has been charged with authority from the Crown to do the bidding of the Crown, and that authority has come from Henry via Cromwell.”

In the wake of the Reformation, commissioners were dispatched to oversee the closing of monasteries. And this is what Shardlake is appointed to do. It is not to solve the murder, but ensure the monastery closes for one reason or another.

Is St Donatus a real monastery in Scarnsea?

Not only is St Donatus not a real monastery, but Scarnsea is not a real port town on the southern coast of England – both were invented by CJ Sansom.

Had St Donatus existed, it would have been destroyed during the dissolution. Such is the lack of surviving monasteries in England, that filming for Shardlake took place across Austria, Hungary and Romania.

What disability does Shardlake have?

Shardlake is described by other characters in the Disney+ series by the derogatory terms ‘hunchback’ and ‘crookback’. He suffers from scoliosis, a curvature of the spine.

This is the same disability associated with Plantagenet king Richard III, whom Henry VIII’s father Henry VII defeated during the Wars of the Roses to establish the Tudor dynasty.

“We couldn't not use that language because that's the reality of it,” says Shardlake actor Arthur Hughes, who himself has radial dysplasia. “That is the reality of life for disabled people, even today. You probably get less people making the sign of the cross at you walking through Soho, but Shardlake does.”

And, says Shardlake’s historical consultant Peter Wagstaff, being on the receiving end of the sign of the cross is very much how someone with a physical disability would have been treated in Tudor times.

“People with visible disabilities [like scoliosis] would have been seen as unclean, as in sinful – either sinful themselves or perhaps manifesting the sins of their ancestors or parents,” he says.

“They were shunned and feared to a large degree because where a ‘hunchback’ walks, the devil is sure to follow.”

This, explained disability historian Philippa Vincent-Connelly on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, is in contrast to ‘natural fools’ – people with intellectual disabilities – who were seen as being ‘closer to God’ and often adopted as an act of charity.

“They'd have them within their households, like a member of the family. They'd educate them, dress them, look after them and feed them,” she explains.

• Read more | How did the Tudors view disability?

Why was Anne Boleyn executed – and was she guilty?

Central to the relationship between Cromwell and Shardlake – and looming over the plot of the Disney+ series – is the ghost of Anne Boleyn. She was put to death on 19 May 1536 for high treason, having been accused of adultery with a number of men – including court musician Mark Smeaton and her own brother George Boleyn, Lord Rochford.

In show lore, Shardlake was an official witness to Anne Boleyn’s execution, and he wholeheartedly believed in the evidence against her.

Was Anne Boleyn guilty? It is a thorny question open to interpretation.

What is certain is that it begins with Smeaton: “We know that he endured 20 hours of gruelling interrogation, which resulted in Smeaton confessing to having had intercourse with Anne on three occasions,” says historian Lauren Mackay.

“Smeaton never recanted his confession, even on the scaffold, which infuriated Anne,” she adds. “According to her gaoler, she seemed genuinely perplexed that he would make such statements.”

Shardlake is based on the historical fiction novels of the late CJ Sansom, of which there are seven books, with the most recent – Tombland – published in 2018. This Disney+ four-part series covers the entirety of the first book in the series, titled Dissolution and published in 2003, and is streaming from 1 May