It is the fashion to call every story controversial that deals with times when controversy or a war of religion was raging; but it should be remembered that there are some which only attempt to portray human feelings as affected by the events that such warfare occasioned. 'Old Mortality' and 'Woodstock' are not controversial tales, and the 'Chaplet of Pearls' is so quite as little. It only aims at drawing certain scenes and certain characters as the convulsions of the sixteenth century may have affected them, and is, in fact, like all historical romance, the shaping of the conceptions that the imagination must necessarily form when dwelling upon the records of history.About the Author: Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) was an English novelist who wrote to the service of the church. Her books helped to spread the influence of the Oxford Movement. Her abundant work is mostly out of print.Yonge's devotion to her father was lifelong and her relationship with him seems to have been for her the standard for all other relationships, including marriage.His "approbation was throughout life my bliss; his anger my misery for the time.