Resumo de The Black Pearl - Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

The fifth book in
the Morland Dynasty series which recounts the history of a Catholic family who own Morland Place just outside York. The year is 1659 and Cromwell?s
protectorate is coming to a close.
Charles the Martyr?s eldest son is about to be invited by General Monke
to take up his throne and the future is hopefully brighter for the Morland
family.

Part of the
family estate was confiscated for its Royalist activities during the Civil War
and the house itself was damaged. The
intervening years have been harsh, but a new age is dawning.

England is tired of the Commonwealth and the Protector's son, Richard has allowed the country to deteriorate into a lawless wasteland with roaming, unpaid soldiers taking what they want by force. The rich have private armies and grab common land which impoverishes the peasant class even more. General Monk, one of Oliver Cromwell's most loyal officers longs for order and he marches down from the North of England gathering supporters with the promise of a Free Parliament. Then he does a surprising but welcome thing, he asks the exiled Charless II to return to his throne - with conditions.The King comes back to a rapturous welcome, and the decadent, extravagant, fun loving Court begins a scandalous twenty five years.Ralph Morland?s
beautiful and ambitious cousin Annunciata is sent to London by her austere
mother Ruth to seek her own destiny.
The heiress of Shawes, an estate close to Morland Place, she
embroils herself in the intrigue and decadence of King Charles? court and
marries an Irish Earl, Lord Ballincrea, who lost his Irish estates when
Cromwell took Catholic lands and gave them to Protestants .

Lady Ballincrea
is the toast of the new Court and goes everywhere with the royal entourage. She is especially close to Charles? youngest
and favourite sister Henriette Anne, and is accepted as almost one of the family.
Her marriage
results in twins, a boy and a girl and during the labour, Annunciata almost
dies. However her husband is unfaithful
and her marriage fails so she begins an affair with Edward Morland, another
cousin. When her husband is killed in a
drunken brawl, she marries again quickly to conceal the fact she is carrying
her lover?s child.

As time passes,
Annunciata grows close to Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the King's popular cousin. She is on the point of beginning an affair with the prince, when her mother sends a messenger to make sure it does not happen. Annunciata is told that Prince Rupert is her father, conceived after the devastaing defeat at Marston Moor. This explains her remarkable resemblance to the Royal House and although she as lost a lover, Annunciata gains a loving parent.When plague comes
to London in 1665, Annunciata returns to Morland Place with her three children
and offers comfort to Ralph who has lost not only his wife Mary Moubray, but
three of his sons as well.

Annunciata and
her children spend a happy year in Yorkshire, getting to know her mother again
and one night in early September 1666, a messenger arrives to tell them that London
is burning.

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