I am swapping my ISP at the moment, and my access to Blogger here has been patchy. A scholar called Sue Ward sent me an interesting comment on a posting I did about William Lilly. I can’t get it out of my old inbox into ‘Blogger’ at the moment, I’d be grateful for the chance of another try now I have changed my primary email (and Blogger seems to know who I am again).
Amidst all this, a short post: an anecdote about John Foxe, the martyrologist, being tipped off by the Holy Spirit that his exile is over, Mary Tudor having died. It must be 1558, and (if this ever did take place), it might have happened in Basle. Foxe got home in 1559. Atwell says:
‘Whether is it possible or whether is it lawful for one to tell of one that died this very hour 100 miles off. This is not a foretelling, but an aftertelling, but such a one as exceeds the common apprehension of man. If you say it is impossible, I prove it thus, I teaching a School at Hitchin in Hartfordshere, about anno 1634 where amongst others, I teaching three of one Mr. Christopher Butlers children of Stapleford near Hartford, who inviting me to keep my Christmas with them, I being there discoursing with his wife, a godly Gentlewoman, she told me she was the famous Doctor Foxes grand-child, that wrote the Book of Martyrs, and withal told me this story of him, that he being beyond Sea at the time of the death of Queen Mary as he was preaching, about the midst of his Sermon he stood still a pretty while and paused, insomuch that the people marveled, by and by he stands up, and utters these words: My Brethren, I can do no less then impart unto you what the Spirit of God hath now revealed to me, that this very hour Queen Mary is dead in England, and so it proved.’
George Atwell, An apology, or, Defence of the divine art of natural astrologie (1652)
It’s like John Donne in Paris, knowing that his child has died. I suppose Foxe would have been kept apprised of the state of Bloody Mary’s health. Perhaps one day he did suddenly become convinced that the nightmare was all over.
The following rather spectacular anecdote of ball lightning occurs in An apology, or, Defence of the divine art of natural astrologie being an answer to a sermon preached in Cambridge, July 25, 1652. ... / written by the learned and ingenious mathematician, Mr. George Atwell; and now published by a friend (1660).
Atwell is answering the objection made to astrology to the effect that the stars were simply made by God as an ornament. He confutes this idea by telling the story of what he clearly believes to be a star – a fiery sphere – let loose for some inscrutable diving purpose in Bedfordshire, in the village of Shithlington (it used to be Shittington, and has become present-day Shillington):
“Or was that Star of fiery Foot-ball what to call it I know not, that came July the 25, 1628 to Shithington in Bedfordshire, the young men having appointed a Match at Foot-ball with Luton, and to meet in the midway to get together, they goe to ring, in the midst of their zeale comes this Star, first up a narrow lane to the Churchyard, where it overthrew a little Maid named Hester, but did her no harm: it comes unto the Churchporch where it overthrows on Mr. Malineux, and took the ring off his finger, it goes into the Church where Mr. Parrat the Minister was praying at the corner of the Mid-alley, it past him and did him no harm, it goes into the Belfree, layes dead every one of the Ringers, it strikes against the wall and breakes to pieces, whereon fell such thunder, rain, and lightning as I never heard before: the first that came to live again, was one Kitchiner a Shoemaker & kindsman of mine, all recovered save one Deare that made the Foot-ball, who never revived, was this Star an ornament either to heaven or earth. I think all the paper in the town will not hold what I can say for it, if time and meanes would serve.”
The event did not go without other notice:
“I heare of two barnes fired by lightning, and burned down, near wetherfield; as also a confirmation of ye miraculous lightning in Shithlington, in Bedfordshire, and ye consequents thereof, which you have ere this heard of.” This was the pro-astrology divine Robert Gell, writing from Christ’s College. August 9, 1628 to Sir Martyn Stuteville, in a letter preserved in The Autobiography and correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Bart. The editor, J. O. Halliwell, refers to a ballad about the event, which I haven’t myself seen: ‘In the Bodleian Library is a curious contemporary ballad, entitles ‘Strange and wonderful news from Bedfordshire, being a true relation of the wonderful judgement of God shown at Shithington, &c’
Ann Geneva, without quoting the whole passage, makes a joke about it in a footnote to her book on Lilly, along the lines of the star being sent by God to uphold ‘The Booke of Sports’. But there is nothing here to indicate that it was a Sunday, and
indicates that 25th July 1628 was a Friday. The ball lightning doesn’t harm the footballers, floats off towards the church, knocking over the little girl and Mr Malineux, leaving the minister unscathed as he prays, but then in the belfry, causes all the bell-ringers to fall down as if dead, and one of them apparently does not recover. That he was the man who made the football takes us back to the first sighting. But it hardly makes an argument for divine pleasure or displeasure at football. It was certainly more hazardous to be in church than in the ‘ring’ (interesting expression) for football.
As far as I can tell, that great bell-ringer and pious man of Bedfordshire, John Bunyan, does not mention this. It happened in the year of his birth, but the story might have cropped up locally, as Bunyan debated with his newly tender conscience whether bell-ringing was a vain activity (Grace Abounding, paragraphs 33 and 34).
Nor do any of the many sites about ball lightning discuss this early exam, though they do get the disaster in the church at Widecombe, discussed by me here at:
My image is of the overthrow of Professor Tarragon in the Tintin adventure, The Seven Crystal Balls. My resident authority points out to me that Hergé used this motif twice, here extensively, but as a wild deus ex machina in the earlier adventure, The Broken Ear (where one comes down the chimney and blasts a bound-up Tintin out of a window just as he is about to be shot).
I was reading Sir John Melton’s Astrologaster, or, The figure-caster (1620) – a very peculiar generic mash-up, an attack on astrology cast in the form of a semi-fictionalised narrative, with lengthy pro et contra orations. At one point, Melton’s narrative is suspended for ‘A Catalogue of many superstitious Ceremonies, especially old men and women hold, which were first found out and invented by Figure-Casters, Cunning Men and Women in former ages, yet to this day are held for certaine and true observations’ – a list of familiar superstitions, but including this one:
“That by a certaine tuft of haire gowing on the foremost part of a mans forehead, it may be knowne whether he shall bee a widower or no.”
~ A widow’s peak!My father had a very prominent one, and it always used to puzzle me as a child when my mother referred to it in such terms. Internet sources on ‘widow’s peaks’ do not go very far back beyond the 19th century for origins, but clearly the idea was around far earlier. Nor is the OED is not terribly helpful about when the expression came into use: under ‘widow’, they offer on ‘widow’s locks’:
“a1540 J. LONDON in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser. III. III. 132 Suche as..hadde any slottiche wydowes lockes, viz. here growen to gether in a tufte. 1896 G. F. NORTHALLWarw. Word-bk., Widow’s-lock, a small lock or fringe growing apart from the hair above the forehead. Credulous persons believe that a girl so distinguished will become a widow soon after marriage.”
The OED’s entry under ‘peak’ does give support for the notion that the expression for this particular type of hair line was based on the shape of widow’s hoods, worn in the Renaissance (as in my example above):
“Originally: the projecting front of a headdress, esp. of a widow’s hood. Later more generally: any more or less pointed projecting part of a garment or costume. 1530 J. PALSGRAVELesclarcissement 253/1 Peake of a ladyes mourning heed … 1706 J. ADDISONRosamondIII. iv, Widow Trusty, why so Fine? Why dost thou thus in Colours shine? Thou should’st thy husband’s death bewail In Sable vesture, Peak and Veil.”
I searched EEBO for other examples of the ‘widow’s peak’ as a recognizable shape for headgear or hair line, and was rewarded by two similes in Nehemiah Grew’s Musaeum regalis societatis, or, A catalogue and description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge made by Nehemiah Grew; whereunto is subjoyned The comparative anatomy of stomachs and guts by the same author (1685).
The first is in the description of what might be a form of nautilus (Grew is moving irregularly between species of sea creatures). He might be describing a suture line or the keel of the coiled shell:
‘The MAILED SAILER. Nauticlus Laminatus. I meet with it no where. Both within, and especially without, of the colour of the richest Pearl. It is composed of a considerable number of Plates, as if in Armor. Yet the Plates continuous; furrow’d along the middle, and produced with a blunt Angle, almost like a Widows-Peak. From under each of which, emergeth a kind of little Tongue, like that of a Shoo-Buckle.’
The second item in the Royal Society’s collection that reminded him in part of the headgear of widows was, rather charmingly, a Native American’s cache-sexe:
“An APRON for the Pudenda of a Woman. A ¼ of a yard deep, and shaped like aWidowsPeak. Hath two transverse Labels, with several small Tassel’d Strings, to tie it about her middle; and a great one hanging down before. Made of Rushes, and other Plants. The out-side of several colours, sc. white, yellow, red, tawny, and brown; as flexible as any Thread. Woven in several Squares, and ½ Squares in a most exact and geometrick Order. The inside of smaller Rushes, all of one colour, and the Weaving uniform: as some Silks are plain on one side, and flowered on the other. A piece of Work, which an European could hardly imitate with all her Art.”
(They also had the male equivalent: “An Indian PURSE or CASE for the Pudenda of a Man. 'Tis a foot long, and closed at the bottom. Made of small Reeds woven together after the manner of course Linnen.”)
I can shed no light at all on the entry in A new dictionary of the canting crew in its several tribes of gypsies, beggers [sic], thieves, cheats &c., with an addition of some proverbs, phrases, figurative speeches &c. : useful for all sorts of people (especially foreigners) to secure their money and preserve their lives ; besides very diverting and entertaining being wholly new / by B.E. (1699).
(and I add a few more entries just for the joy):
“Bill-of sale, a Bandore, or Widow’s Peak.
Bing awast, c. get you hence. Bing'd awast in
a Darkmans, c. stole away in the Night-time.
Bing we to Rume vile. c go we to London.
Bingo, c. Brandy.
Bingo-boy, c. a great Drinker or Lover thereof.”
I glanced into a few early books about phisiognomy, but did not come across any further references. Those I did look at seemed surprisingly uninterested in hair-lines as denoting character; they were anyway perhaps unlikely to retail a superstition like this.
The portrait bust of a widow in her peaked veil is by Alessandro Algardi, ‘Donna Olimpia Maidalchini’, carved in 1646-47.
My anecdote for the week comes from a newsletter, Thomas White’s Mercurius Heraclitus, or, The weeping philosopher, sadly bemoaning the distractions of the times 28th June 1652, pp. 4-5. I do not think it has come to the notice of the social historians, but is a salient example of an early modern marriage quickly going sour, and the misery of the ‘cuckold’ husband in that society. White is of course engaged in deploring the state of things, in a tattling kind of way.
We are in that insalubrious London suburb of ‘Pickt-Hatch’:
“at the signe of the Blue-Bottle a Pastry-Cooks, where James Jeanes, a Wine-Cooper, whose wife drew the Beer, desperately hang’d himself in the Cellar; the reason of it being the evil of his wife, who lov’d a Souldier that would upbraid him to his face, That he had as much use of his wife as he himself, which thing being known and reported abroad, made some scoffers to jear and point at him, which infamy he could not well bear, therefore he took upon him a deep melancholy, which for want of a true fear of God, brought him to desperation: The day before he did this ungodly deed, he walkt out all day, but could not find opportunity to do it (as being asham’d the light should behold so black a deed) till at night coming home late, he deferred his going to bed, and in the morning early was found hanging in the Cellar not then cold; his wife being called, and told that her husband had hanged himself, made answer, That he should hang long enough there before she would come to cut him downe, and lay still, but which was most observable; she passed by [] he hung in the Cellar all the day long to draw Beer without any the least sign of sorrow.
Not above seven or eight weeks before, she buried her husband, one Thomas Lee; he coming home one day sick, she would needs turn Doctor, and made him such a Potion as sent him the next day to his grave, and within a short time after she married this Jeanes which hath since hang’d himself for the reasons before mentioned.”
That’s a pretty high turnover of husbands – one more or less accidentally poisoned, and his successor treated with contempt after the suicide she has caused, and all within a couple of months.
Pickt Hatch is mentioned everywhere in early modern texts as a locale where brothels were situated. In Robert Davenport’s A new tricke to cheat the Divell, 1639, Slightall, a lecherous young man given to reciting chunks of Ovid lists the usual places to find a prostitute:
Slightall.Roger?
Roger. Sir.
Sightall. Provide me a good lusty Lasse to night,
I purpose to be merry.
Roger. Sir, not I.
Slightall. I care not of what humour, face, or feature,
So thou canst find one impudent enough;
Search all the Allyes, Spittle, or Pickt-hatch,
Turnball, the Banke side, or the Minories,
White Fryers, St. Peters Street, and Mutton Lane,
So thou canst find one to disgrace her sexe,
She best shall please my Pallat.
Returning to the callous Mistress Jeanes, my maternal grandmother, Jenny Mather, had relatives who lived at Spring Bank Row, Unstone, near Sheffield. The husband drank, and came to the point when he said that he was going to hang himself in the barn. His wife stood outside the barn with a shotgun, to prevent anyone interfering with this admirable endeavour on his part. But when she finally allowed entry, thinking the deed must have been done, he was merely dead drunk on the floor.
My image is a view of London rather unfamiliar to me, from Giles Godet, The city of London, as it was before the burning of St. Pauls ste[eple] 1565
I have been away on holiday, to Cyprus, an island which made one think that if Venus rose from the sea during August, she needed a high factor sun-block the moment she hit the beach.
I have put together a set of pictures of William Lilly. The dates (if the portrait is from an almanac) are the dates of the year the almanac was written for, the book itself would usually have been published late on in the year before. Lilly was a clever self-publicist (his house sign announced that the truth-telling Merlin lived within), and from about 1649 had his portrait in publications.
The most elaborate portrait is that from the 1659 edition of Christian Astrology, engraved by William Marshal.
Someone has tried their pen nib all over the 1650 face, where Lilly holds a ‘scheme’ of the heavens drawn up for a reading (the aspects of the planets, etc, at a ‘geniture’), and (I think) the astrological signs. 1651 sees Lilly looking splendid under all the signs of the zodiac against a balustrade. It is rather a surprise that this elaborate image was not apparently re-used once the block had been cut. By 1654 Lilly seems to have decided that his portraits were too saturnine, and his face is wreathed in smiles, like Malvolio. He now carries the motto ‘agunt, not cogunt’ on a piece of paper he holds: (they, i.e. the stars) act, but do not compel. It was increasingly important for the astrologers, under attack from clergymen of all kinds, to deny that they ‘maintained necessity’. Human free will had to have a place in their system. This facial type engraved by Robert Vaughan was closely copied by ‘Cross’ for the 1655 almanac, where Lilly looks even more like the clergyman he had really always wanted to be.
In the Restoration period Lilly suddenly bloats out, and looks like a debauchee. But by 1666, he has rapidly thinned back to what will be the set facial type for his last years. With small variations either due to different inkings or the state of the block (or maybe copied re-engravings), this lasts till the year of his death. The honorific triple portrait of 1683 places Lilly between Cardan and Bonatus, as a combination of the learning and skills of both.
‘Under part of this monument lyeth the body of Sir John Davis K who received ye hon. of Knighthood & Banneret at the taking of Cales in Spain in the reigne of Q. Eliz.’
A grey monument, carved in chalk quarried at Shooter’s Hill, rubbed by time. Sir John Davies (1560-1625) and his two wives: the first, a widow whose married name was Rowse, and Elizabeth White, his second wife (m.1609). The church is St James the Less, Pangbourne, where the River Pang flows into the Thames.
A sober monument to a remarkable and hazardous life – Davies is in the ODNB, and from there I get most of this information. Considered by William Camden ‘an excellent mathematician’, Davis apparently wrote much on mathematics and astrology, and compiled with John Dee and Matthew Gwinne a volume of letters ‘concernyng chymical and magical secrets’. In London, he picked up more about astrology from Simon Forman.
Finally arrived at court, he joined the entourage of the Earl of Essex, and served under him at the siege of Rouen, at the taking of Cadiz, and on the Azores voyage. As the monument boasts, at Cadiz, Essex knighted the man who had become his surveyor of ordnance – Davies had turned those mathematical skills into military ones. Perhaps he continued to do a quiet bit of astrology for the Earl. Lots of Renaissance nobility seem to have had a kind of occult advisor.
He was in Ireland with Essex, returned when the Earl made his precipitate departure from his Lord Lieutenantship. As Essex fell apart, it was Davis who drew up a serious set of plans that might have made Essex’s rebellion work as a coup: take the Tower of London at the onset, and then use its weaponry to capture the whole court, then the city: “the Tower was alleged, the giving a reputation to the Action, by getting into their hand the principal Fort of the Realm, with the stores and provisions thereunto appertaining, the bridling of the City by that piece, and commodity of entrance in and possessing it, by the means of Sir John Davis.”(Francis Bacon’s A declaration of the practises & treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his complices.)
When the conspirators opted to go through the city to the Court, again Davies was prompt with detailed planning: “Sir John Davis took Pen, Ink, and Paper, and set down, That some should keep the Hall, some the Court-Gates, some the Guard-Chamber, and some the Presence-Chamber; saying, many of the Guard had been the Earl of Essex his Servants, and were preferred to the Queen by him, and will be more indifferent to deal with than others, and so my Lord shall have a way through his own Guards to come to the Privie-Chamber, and the Presence of the Queen.” (The arraignment, tryal and condemnation of Robert Earl of Essex and Henry Earl of Southampton, at Westminster the 19th of February, 1600)
Essex did not heed any of this, believing too much in his own popularity. He then professed at his trial that Davies’ Catholicism was a complete surprise to him:
“Attorn. Gen. Well, my Lord, what can you devise to say for Sir John Davis, another of your Adherents? that Papist, for he hath confessed that he is a Papist and a Catholic, and drawn in by Sir Christopher Blunt, one of your chiefest Council, and that he called for a Seminary Priest upon his convertment to absolve him.
Essex. If Sir John Davis were such a man, it cannot be but strange to me to hear it; although I cannot search into the Secrets of his Heart to accuse him inwardly, yet I have seen him dutifully come to Prayers, and to the Service of God in my own House with me, and behaved himself very Godlily.”
This was Sir John Davies, then, a man capable of keeping a personal secret by continued dissembling, one of the chief conspirators in Essex’s rebellion. When he came to stand trial, all his doubtful past was remembered: Cecil referred to ‘that traitor knave Sir J. Davies, a conjuror and Catholic, who at Oxford occupied himself in the idle art of figure casting’, and the official ‘Directions for the preachers’ (who were to reduce Essex’s standing in the eyes of the citizens), Davis is described as ‘a traitor now in hold, brought up in Oxford, and by profession a setter of figures’.
Report of what he said under examination is brief:
Sir John Davis's Examination. He saith, that the Earl’s Purpose was, to possess himself of the Court, and to take the Tower of London; and that they had several Meetings of Consultation together with the Earl of Southampton, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Jo. Littleton, Sir Christopher Blunt, Sir Charles Danvers, and this Deponent. And these Matters (he confesseth) the Earl of Essex set down all with his own Hand, viz. Sir Christopher Blunt to keep the outward Gate of the Court himself, this Deponent the Hall and Water-gate, and Sir Charles Danvers the Presence and Guard-Chamber; then my Lord of Essex and his Forces would have come by Land, and so have possessed the presence of the Queen. The question was asked the Earl of Essex (as this Deponent saith) how he would deal with Offenders, and such as resisted him after he should be possessed of these things. He resolved them by way of Answer, that he meant to admit them all to an Honourable Trial.”
Davies has Essex writing down the plans, rather than making this his own initiative, but does, for what it was worth, try to absolve Essex of planning a bloody coup. By the standards of the time, he was quite rightly convicted and sentenced to death. But after six months imprisonment, he had (probably) ‘saved his life by telling first who was in the deepest’, as the historian R. Ashley puts it. But a covert Catholic and astrologer getting away with being a main instigator in a rebellion? Lucky indeed!
Davis must have continued to go through the motions of Anglican faith: he’s buried in an English parish church after all. He took the Oath of Allegiance. And he had, from somewhere, enough money to buy Bere Court near Pangbourne in 1613. From the quarrels he got into about the trust which was establishing Wadham College, it seems that Davies did profit personally when it was possible to do so, in the manner of his time.
Davies’s son (another Sir John) married Anne, one of the sisters of the poet Sir John Suckling. All three sisters are commemorated with a plaque on the south wall, and a large slab near the entrance to the vestry: ‘Martha was first Maryed unto Sir George Sowthcott of Shillingford in the County of Devon Knight & dyed the Wife of Wm. Clagett of Isleworth in the County of Midlesex Esq shee dyed at the Bath the 29 of June 1661. Anne was Maryed unto Sr. John Davis, sonne of Sr. John Davis both Lords of this Mannor, & dyed ye 24 of July 1659. Mary Suckling dyed a virgine the 17 of October 1658.’
One of the great deaths in Jacobean drama is that of Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois: impelled by his own maniacal courage, which obliges him to disregard all warnings (both human and supernatural), not to answer his lady's summons, Bussy is ambushed in the bedchamber of his mistress by the bravoes hired by his cuckold, the Count of Montsurry. He chases them all out, killing one, then summons the Count to appear in his own quarrel, overpowers him, spares his life at the request of Tamyra, but then is shot from off-stage. Bussy resolves to die like the Emperor Vespasian, standing up, though not held up by menials, but propped up only by his sword.
All this amid some splendid or murky blank verse – Chapman at his rather mixed best:
.. I am up
Here like a Roman Statue; I will stand
Till death hath made me marble: O my fame
Live in despite of murder; take thy wings
And haste thee where the gray-eyed morn perfumes,
Her Rosie chariot with Sabaean spices,
Fly, where the evening from th’Iberean vales,
Takes on her swarthy shoulders, Hecate
Crowned with a grove of oaks: fly where men feel
The burning axletree: and those that suffer
Beneath the chariot of the Snowy Bear:
And tell them all that D’Ambois now is hasting
To the eternal dwellers; that a thunder
Of all their sigh together (for their frailties
Beheld in me) may quit my worthless fall
With a fit volley for my funeral.
But here’s a different telling of the death, which I came across in A pleasant treatise of witches their imps, and meetings, persons bewitched, magicians, necromancers, incubus, and succubus's, familiar spirits, goblings, pharys, specters, phantasms, places haunted, and devillish impostures : with the difference between good and bad angels, and a true relation of a good genius (1673). I don’t quite know where the anonymous author got this from: it seems to be a mix of recollections of the play, and a historical source unknown to me. This was probably The Amours of Solon, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Cato of Utica, D'Andelot, Bussy D'Amboyse newly translated out of French (1673), but EEBO does not have any page images yet (but notice the coincidence of dates, which makes me think it will prove the source of the story).
“Henry the third King of France, had a brother called the Duke of Allenzon, who came to England formerly to be a suiter to Queen Elizabeth, in whose retinue was the Valiant Busidamboyes who took the Dukes part, between whom and the King was a perpetual feud. The King, therefore by nature timerous and suspicious, was always afraid of this valiant person, and after his return into France, devised several means to take him out of the way …
… there being a constant report at Court that Bussidamboyes was in favour with the Earl of Monsurrous wife, he sent for an Italian Negromancer, famous at that time, and called Triscalino. Of him he enquires if he could shew or declare to him, what Bussidamboyes was then doing, which the Magician after certain conjurations shewed him in a Glass, where was Bussidamboyes in bed with a Lady. Hereupon the King sent for his Courtiers, amongst whom was the Earl of Monsorrou at that time, and asked if they knew that Lady. The Earl much abased, replyed, it was his wife. Then said the King, I will have no Cuckolds to be my Courtiers. To which the Earl made answer, that to hinder what was done was not in his power, but that it was in the Kings, to give him leave to avenge himself, which he earnestly requested.
The King glad to be any ways rid of Bussidamboyes, gave his assent, and the Earl posted away immediately to his own house; and coming betimes in the morning to his wife, as she lay in bed, offered her the choice of three things, either a draught of Poyson, a Dagger to kill her self, or to write such a Letter as he would dictate to her. The miserable woman terrified with the thoughts of death, consented to the Latter; and, according to her husbands dictating, sent for Bussidamboyes, who suspected nothing, to come unto her. In the mean time the Earl concealed himself in the house, armed with six more, and behind the Curtains in her chamber. Bussidamboyes came not long after, and offering to go up stairs in his accustomed manner, was desired by a Page, set for that purpose, to leave his Spurs and his Sword below, because his Lady was ill, and the least noise disturbed her. This he did, not mistrusting what would follow; but as soon he entred the Chamber, the Lady gave a sign, and all rusht in upon him. Nevertheless, being of an undaunted courage, he took the first chair he found, and so behaved himself with that weapon, by reason of his great strength, that he kild two of them; and then being wounded in divers places, he leapt out of the window into the Garden. But fell by misfortune upon a pole that prop’t up a Vine, and there stuck fast by the Breeches, which the Conspirators perceiving, ran down and made an end of him there.”
Somehow, being caught by the trousers on a vine pole after jumping out of a window has a ring of truth to it – and of course Chapman reworked this ignominious end.
I got the purported portrait of Bussy from the French Wikipedia (it is a 19th century effort, but perhaps based on an earlier):
Chapman’s play was admired, and revived in the restoration period. I came across an allusion to it in James Blackwel’s splendidly malicious The Nativitie of Mr Will Lilly astrologically performed shewing how he hath lived, and what death he may probably die. For the satisfaction of astrologers and others (1660), where the writer congratulates himself:
“Let Mr Lilly tell me whether I have not dealt like a faithful friend by him, and as truly as Damboyse, and the Kings Brother did by each other in the Tragedy. Here are no Sycophantic tow’ring strains, nor have we flattered Lilly in hopes of reward, as he hath done so many to their ruine.”
This appears on the pages numbered 13-14 (it is a chaotically paginated pamphlet).
The allusion is to the scene at the end of Act 3 where Monsieur and Bussy tell one another exactly what they think – Monsieur denouncing Bussy as a slave to his own ‘cannibal valour’, Bussy telling his jealous patron that all the evil in the kingdom flows from his ‘political head’, and that he also has a breath that will ‘kill to that wall a spider’. It obviously struck people at the time, and rightly.
“About one a clock at night, the Lecturer personating the Virgin Mary … made another Visit to Jetzer…”
We are in William Waller’s The tragical history of Jetzer. Or, A faithful narrative of the feignedvisions, counterfeit revelations, and false miracles of the Dominican fathers of the covent of Berne in Switzerland, to propagate their superstitions, which seems to have been popular at its publication in 1679, with four early editions.
This old story to the discredit of Catholics had been dragged up by the obstreperous Sir William Waller, son of the parliamentary general. The Popish plot was the sensation of the day, and Waller seems to have published it because all this profligate son of a vehemently puritanical mother had left in the way of religious feeling was a rabid anti-Catholicism.
Ketzer’s story was also told in Gilbert Burnet’s Some letterscontaining an account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, some parts of Germany, &c. in the years 1685 and 1686 written by G. Burnet, D.D.. The tale was excerpted from Burnet in 1689, and alluded to by the (rather good) poet Thomas Heyrick in his The new Atlantis a poem, in three books: with some reflections upon The hind and the panther, 1687. Heyrick is talking about the state of the Catholic church, then so recently embraced by Dryden:, personifying the church as a credulous old woman:
Tir’d with old Age, bewayl’d her luckless Fate.
She doth no blessing of old Age retain,
The Inconveniencies alone remain.
Dotage, the Vice of ancient years, delights
In trifling Follies and in childish sights;
In outside Pomp and empty Pageantry,
In Paint and Varnish that attract the Eye.
Credulity each open Cheat doth own,
And greedily Impostures doth drink down …
Of Images that speak, lament and weep:
Of Wounds by Angels given to Saints asleep.
Of Prophesies and Works of th’ holy Maid,
And all the Tricks were e’re on Jetzer plaid.
The wildest Ravings are by her receiv’d,
And she'd have all she doth invent believ’d.
The story of Jetzer’s maltreatment by his fellow Dominicans began in their campaign against the Franciscan order, who upheld the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. A small party of Dominicans in Basle decided on the (perhaps odd) tactic of having the Virgin herself appear to a suitably gullible member of their order, to explain indignantly that to ascribe this to her detracted from her Son, etc.
They chose John Jetzer, described in Waller’s telling as ‘thick skulled’, admitting him to the order solely to be imposed upon. First, he was led to believe that he had seen a ghost, that of a former prior, now in purgatory, who asked for penances to redeem him, and this spirit re-appeared eight nights later to say that he was now in heaven, and that Mary, the Blessed Virgin, was about to pop along with her own personal reward for this kindness.
The planning was very good as far as stage machinery was concerned:
"Whilst the Sub-prior and the Receiver were fitting their Tools, Properties, and Engines for the Show: All things being ready, their pulleys, Wheels, Screws, Wires, and Devices for the management of their Puppets orderly placed in the Receiver’s Chamber, to give life and motion to the Opera
Five other Candles miraculously lighted at a clap … Jetzer now lying with his eyes wide open, to make observations, saw to his astonishment the Virgin hanging in the Aire, between two Angels directly over the Hoste."
However, the basic difficulty the Dominican fraudsters were faced with was of their sex: one of them had to assume the role of the B.V.M., as they were unable to deploy a young woman. They were prepared to treat Jetzer cruelly: 'Mary' seizes his hand, and tells him he will receive as a favour the first wound done to her son, nailing him with a three-cornered dagger blade to the bedpost. Jetzer was clearly easily imposed upon, but wasn’t completely stupid: he is handled with male force, and keeps hearing a male timbre in the voice speaking to him, or recognizing protruding bits of a male arm, or sees a familiar male shoe beneath the robes.
The Dominicans did nevertheless string him along, making him play a part in his own deception: they put him up to spitting three times in Mary’s face, on the reasoning that a devil would not stand for such an affront. When they were caught out by Jetzer, the Dominicans explained that these impostures were mixed in by them and intended to make him more alert to the possibility of fraud.
The Sub-prior and his associates make a pact with the devil, signed in blood, to enable the deception to go ahead. Jetzer, who has already penetrated one appearance as fraudulent, was either persuaded of the truth of the whole matter (this is as Waller’s account tells it) or drugged into insensibility by the potion provided by the devil as a result of the blood pact the Dominicans have made (this in Waller’s version). Either way, Jetzer is made to acquire the full set of stigmata. They didn’t manage to get a hole all the way through his feet, while the first one through his hand had been as big as a pea. When he challenges the virgin about this, ‘she’ quick-wittedly replies that he is not fit to stand on the holy mark, so it will just have to be a wound on the top of his feet.
In the end, the cruelty of their actions undid the plot: they kept the wounds from healing up, as proper stigmata, and when Jetzer, amid a growing storm of debate, was finally taken out of the abbey, he noticed that his wounds then began to heal. It went to a trial, and Jetzer was tortured: partly, he still believed what he had seen, but he said enough to cause the friars to be brought to trial themselves. They held out through initial sessions on the rack, but began to crack when a second round of interrogation under duress was started.
Waller gives a hideous account of them being burned alive (Burnet says this was in front of the gratified Franciscans): the pyres were set up for a quick death, but a wind suddenly blew up, and the wretched men had their lower limbs slowly roasted, crying out in such agony that the executioner (later dismissed for the incompetence he had shown) was reduced to throwing billets of wood at their heads through the flames in an attempt to end it all. The sub-prior, always the sharpest witted of the accomplices, tried to breathe in the smoke and suffocate himself to end the torment.
Waller's book was part of a whole set of re-tellings of this story. It reminded me very much of Samuel Harsnett on the 'Egregious Popish Impostures', through its continuous use of theatrical references as part of the scorn for the tricks being played.
My image is adapted from the enthusiastically mariolatrous book by the Jesuit Henry Hawkins, Partheneia sacra. Or The mysterious and delicious garden of the sacred Parthenes symbolically set forth and enriched with pious deuises and emblemes for the entertainement of deuout soules; contriued al to the honour of the incomparable Virgin Marie mother of God; for the pleasure and deuotion especially of the Parthenian sodalitie of her Immaculate Conception. 1633
Simon Sheppard is one of the few mid 17th century humourists who remain funny. Saturated in the media in which he worked (ephemeral print journals, prognostications and other pamphlets), Sheppard was an accurate parodist of others’ prose styles, inventive at producing his own absurdities, and adopted a winningly self-deprecating persona (he is usually poor and hung-over). His politics seem to be conservative, but he never seems to write with real animosity about contemporary issues or personalities.
In 1653, 54 and 55 he published (alongside his usual stream of newsletters) three parodic prognostications, Merlinus Anonymus.
My first image is of two of the absurd monthly charts from his prognostication for 1654. In place of the usual feasts and festival days, which would normally feature traditional names like Swithun, Valentine, ‘The 7 Sleepers’, Sheppard fills a column with wildly incongruous names, ‘martyrs quite forgotten by Fox’, as he puts it. Among them are the festivals of Macbeth, Othello (‘Moor of Venice’) and Venus and Adonis. He then, in the next column, gives a silly weather forecast, and finally a ‘micro chron[icle]’, which memorialises a sequence of completely trivial occurrences (‘Mr. E.R. wip’d of his nose with his handkerchief’) with the precise date of these striking non-events.
Sheppard was quite capable of writing well: in his mock prognostication for April 1653: “The JESUITS this month are like Apricoks, (formerly) here and there one succour’d in a great mans House, which cost him dear, now you may have them for nothing in every cottage…”
But Sheppard was probably filling paper at great speed, and his productions are full of unacknowledged quotations. The 1653 and 1654 mock prognostications are seamed throughout with large extracts from John Donne – satires, verse epistles, and the anniversaries, even the mock commendation in verse of Thomas Coryate. The lower part of my image is from his ‘General Prognostication for the year 1653’ in Merlinus Anonymus, where Donne’s 4th Satire, which he first quotes in verse, is turned into prose – Donne’s encounter with the libellous courtier is turned into a meeting with the astrologer Nicholas Culpepper.
It is hard to ascertain the status of these extracts. Sheppard acknowledges none of the lines as being by Donne. Whether readers were meant to recognise them as wittily chosen, or take them to be Sheppard’s own effusions is uncertain. By the 1654 prognostication, Sheppard is lifting quotations from other literary sources, and slotting them around his charts: bits of Thomas Lodge’s satires, Fanshawe’s translation of Il Pastor Fido: a set of verses about money ruling the world, and literary endeavour too, comes from Thomas Randolph’s play, Hey for Honesty!:
Did not Will Summers break his wind for thee,
And Shakespeare therfor writ his comedy:
All things acknowledge the vast power divine,
(Great God of money) whose most powerful shine
Gives motion life, day rises with thy sight
Thy setting though at noon, makes night.
Sole Catholick cause of what we feel, or see
All in this all, are but th’effects of thee.
Sheppard too was writing for money, and probably didn’t care what people thought.
My main image is the brass of Sir Christopher Lytcot, one of a set of fine 16th century brasses in the church at West Hanney, in West Berkshire.
The inscription reads: ‘Under this stone lyeth entered the corps of Sir Christopher Lytcot Knight, twice High Sherief of the County of Berk (husband of two wives both in the sayd countye, the former Jane Essex widdowe of Thomas Essex of Beckett House Esq. the later Catherine Younge Widowe of William Younge of Bastledon Esq.) Knighted in the camp before Roane the XVI of November 1591 by the hands of the French Kinge, Henry the Fourth of that name, & King of Navarre. Who after his travailes in Germany, Italye, and Fraunce & the execution of Justice to the glory of God & the good of his country, ended this pilgrimage, at Bastledon on the XXVthof April 1599.”
This mention of the siege of Rouen reminded me of Sir Thomas Coningsby’s eye-witness account of the first part of the siege. Queen Elizabeth had allowed an English force of 2,000 under Essex’s leadership to go and assist the Huguenots, in return for some trading rights. A full text can be found here:
Coningsby was one of the many gentlemen knighted by the Earl of Essex during the inconclusive campaign. He does not mention Lytcot in his account, who must have been campaigning closer to the king. I did not know that knightings by a foreign monarch were simply accepted, but Essex himself had dubbed so many that any controversy settled on his actions. Coningsby had attached himself very closely to Essex: the gentlemen volunteers had agreed that, from their number, six would always accompany Essex wherever he went. Coningsby was one of the men so pledged, but as he represents it, Essex’s tremendous vigour and activity made this an unsustainable commitment:
Nov. 17. The 17. my lord wente early to the kinges quarter, being only accompanyed with 4 of us, for such a body hath he made of yron, supporting travaile and passioned in all extremyties, that the following of him did tyre our bodies, that are made of flesh and boane.
On the date of that Lytcot was dubbed a knight, November 16th, Coningsby indeed mentions King Henry, in a context which was indubitably manly, if not quite so honourable:
Nov. 16. The 16. there hath bene a spech (ever since the king came) of his going to Deape [Dieppe], which is to hasten all provisions and necessaries for his busynes here; but some of his domestiques, out of a French lyberty to speake every thynge, say that his jorney is to meete a saincte, (for he oweth devotyon to more than Gabryell only,) which he hath bene devote unto longe, whose bodie is trans-ported from Caen thither, because his devotion and vowes may be performed with more ease: but how, or whatsoever, you or I will speake the best of our betters.
The allusion is to King Henry, notorious for womanizing, going to meet another mistress than his most famous lady, Gabielle D’Estrées (the one with her sister in the bath!)
Later that same day, Coningsby witnessed skirmishing between the defenders and the besieging forces. This was typical of the siege: Villiers, leading the forces in Rouen, had plenty of fighting men in the town, and had resolved upon an active defence, to disrupt all approaches of the siege works. Coningsby regarded this particular skirmish with disdain:
“Upon this we from our quarter mighte behold the most of this that passed; we might see many of their horse drove downe, and th’ennemye withdrawe within the covert of the towne; and there we mighte behold many a horse well spurred, and many a sword jollyly glystering in the sunn on both sydes: but all put up without any effusion of blood, one blowe stryken, or one pystoll shott; which is not the manner of our quarter, for we never goe to it but eyther horse or man remaynes behind, and sometimes both.”
‘Jolly’ to watch, but no blood spilled: not the way the English did it, apparently. And when Coningsby himself speaks to King Henry, it is with the same bumptious patriotism. Onto the very brave and, when required, very pragmatic King, Coningsby projects his own attitude, that of wanting there to be some ‘sport’: “Yt seemed the king was verie desirous we mighte have had some sporte, and particularly asked me (unto whom heretofore he hath doan favor of lyke nature), whether they would sally or noe; whereunto I aunswered, that if they weare honest men they should, but if they were Englishmen they would; whereunto he replyed, "By my faith, I believe it" When he perceived they sallyed not, he sente to drawe them out to skyrmysh…”
Coningsby was no doubt brave, but his preoccupation with personal honour makes his account of the fighting self-centered, there is little sense of planning, tactics, or logistics in his journal. He rather tends to make so much of the quest for gallantry that the fighting seems gratuitous, or undertaken for that purpose alone.
As such, Coningsby writes exactly as Shakespeare’s Bertram might have written about his role in the confused fighting in the military part of All’s Well that Ends Well (the French king there sends off his other young gentleman to fight for either side in a vague Italian conflict). Coningsby is concerned with individual deeds – he almost becomes Parolles when he speaks of scarves being taken as something worth noting. Casualties occur, and the protocols of rescuing bodies, or of removing valued tokens from dead men or their horses concern him: “There were ii. of their captens slain by us, the bodie of one whereof we recovered, being verie well apparelled. The said lieuetenant toke his scarfe, who afterward was slaine.”
These gentlemen volunteers with Essex seem to have had a reasonable chance of survival – their armour, as modelled by Lytcot, seems to make them fairly casual about walking within range of the harquebus fire of the enemy, except that every so often, someone is shot by a defender using a ‘steel bullet’.
When no skirmishing is in prospect, Coningsby and his kind get bored easily: “The 22. daie we passed with playinge at tennys in the forenoone, and at playinge at ballon in th’afternoone with the lieuetenant-gouvernor of Deape, and the victorie fell on our side”.
Tennis and football, then – but what of women? Coningsby has no chance for arrangements like those enjoyed by King Henry. Being a Protestant abroad, and a man living a life, for months, solely among men, on one occasion Coningsby takes time out to visit a nunnery. I will end this post with this anecdote, with all its undercurrents, as a set of (for the moment) voluntarily chaste young men visit a set of permanently chaste women:
This afternoone, to drive awaie idlenes, I wente to a monasterie of nonnes, about a league and a halfe from our quarter, where we so behaved our selves that we receyved very kynd wellcomes, and a banckett of xx tie severall dyshes of preserved fruits. The abbesse was of the house of Baskeville, a verie goodly gentlewoman, and wore her habyt very neate and properlye: she is a woman exceeding well-spoken, and of good behavior, but of yeeres meeter for God then for the world. But there was 2 or 3 younger noons, and all gentlewomen of good house, whom I know, if you had sene, you would have pyttyed their loss of tyme; and so, having spente 2 or 3 howres there, retorned home to our strawe bed.
My other image is the Montague House portrait of Coningsby (1551-1625) at 21. The pigeon at the top left is meant to be his hawk, the fan-shaped device is the lure. But Coningsby has turned his back on the bird, and the tether of the lure is short and falling slack: he is giving up, I think, on the follies of his youth. But if he was 40 at the siege of Rouen, his journal hardly testifies to his maturity.
