In November 1649, William Lilly published his Merlini Anglici ephemeris for the year ahead, 1650. In it, he came to the effects of an eclipse of the moon, 360 years ago today, on the 5th May 1650. He admits that things will be touch-and-go:
“Such will be the general carriage of Affairs amongst our selves and with our Neighbour Nations, so ambiguous and doubtful the chance and fate of England, and we so terribly threatened, as very many, and they no vulgar fools, will be upon terms of revolting from, or under-hand practicing against, the now established Government, which appears not in their capricious judgments so pleasing as they could desire…”
Well, tough, Lilly (in effect) said: “the State is necessitated yet a while to keep an Army on foot for the preservation of the present Body Politique of this Nation; and to speak more nearly to the matter, even to preserve from ruine those Vipers who would most wretchedly destroy both this Parliament, Councel of State, and themselves, to set up they know not what.” (Sig B4)
So the astrologer embarked on predicting much, much better times ahead: a little bit more patience, he asserted, and then will come the days when we all stand to inherit fortunes or find buried treasure:
“When Jupiter, in a Revolution, is in the fourth house, many men increase their fortunes by inheritances falling unto them, and estates are left unto them from dead men; men increase their fortunes by taking of Farms, by discovering Treasure his under ground, and its recovery, or moneys unexpectedly happening unto them, and by things and matters of great antiquity: Mens sorrows are taken quite away, and such things will be offered them as produce great joy and comfort…” (Sig B6)
Lilly had already given some account of the Land of Cockaigne London citizens will soon be inhabiting: you will be able to give up your jobs, and live on rents from your land:
“A time is coming when they shall live upon the Rents of those Lands, and not upon their Trades, and then they will have cause to rejoice; for treasure may fail them, it being subject to fire, and the casualties of War, but land cannot be moved…” Sig B
Not only all this, but you won’t even have to worry about women (I like the way that in this part of the prediction, he revises the initial ‘generally prove chaste’ to something more reassuring, which he re-iterates, in a ‘Did I mention chaste?’ kind of way):
“Women will generally prove chaste, shall have very good success in their own womanly affairs, all manner of Jewels will be at high rates; all over the whole Nation fertile year may be expected, women will be harmless, truth-speakers, and loyal to their Husbands, chaste, and enjoy quiet lives.” (Sig B5v)
And so William Lilly argued for keeping what you have got, and so live to see an England where “The condition of the people begins to amend, and their minds inclinable to a more familiar obedience to the Edicts of the Parliament than formerly.”
To fill in an explanatory footnote to all this, Lilly was writing at a time when people were concerned about whether it was worth putting money into the purchase of lands sequestered from Bishops, Deans, and Chapters. The obvious fear was that a reversion to an episcopal church would see such purchases declared illegal, and the lands restored without compensation. Go ahead, Lilly says, it will all be lastingly valid and legal – he rather mischievously commends Dr Cornelius Burgess, the City preacher, for his purchase of the Dean of London’s house.
Thomas Sheafe’s Vindiciae senectutis, or, A plea for old-age which is senis cujusdam Cygnea cantio (1639) is in some ways a charming work. The very distinguished William Gouge explains in his generous address to the “Courteous Reader, Young or old, Here is presented to thee by an Old-Man past his great climactericall yeare, a Treatise of OLD AGE, indited and penned by one who hath attained to those yeares whereunto hee who attaineth is accounted Wondrous old, and dedicated to him that hath almost attained to those yeares beyond which there is no ordinary reckoning.”
Gouge has entered into the foot-notey spirit of the whole work, and his notes on the passage just cited explain that he is himself past 63 (he was 64), that Sheafe the author was prebendary of Windsor and rector of Welford, and 80 years old, while his dedicatee, Dr Laurence Chaderton was a centenarian (his dates in his ODNB entry are given as 1536?–1640).
Gouge commends Sheafe’s choice of dedicatee as highly appropriate: “most wisely hath he made choice of a very fit Patron, who notwithstanding his exceeding great Old-Age, and the small characters in which this Treatise was written, read it without spectacles, and with no lesse perspicacie of judgement then of sight, gave his approbation thereof.” And he adds a graceful note of his own: “I heartily thanke the Author (my Ancient good Tutor, to whom for all the good I received in Kings College Cambridge, under God, I owe all the praise) this Author I heartily thanke for vouchsafing to communicate to his unworthy Pupill these his labours.”
Gouge is aware that his old tutor had a particularly hard act to follow: “There is a Treatise of OLD-AGE of old time written by the purest Latinist that ever spake, or wrote: for the elegancy of stile, for the solid matter of that Treatise, and for many other ornaments wherewith it is decked, it hath ever beene highly accounted of, and learned in most Grammar schooles.” He refers to Cicero’s de senectute, but he makes the point that Sheafe has at least the advantage of being a Christian minister: “yet as farre as divine learning excells humane, as farre as a judicious Divine may goe before a learned Philosopher, so farre is this Treatise here tendred to thee, to be preferred before that”.
Gouge treats Sheafe gently: it was apparently his former tutor’s only publication. But it’s not a very remarkable book, in truth. There’s the odd striking citation: “Socrates was wont to say, that to Old-men death stands before them continually in their sight; but to young- men hee lurks behind, that unawares he may come upon them, as an enemy that lies in ambush.”
Sheafe deals with the main downside to old age, proximity to death, by referring that proximity to prior intemperance:
“The third part of my answer remaines: which retorts the fault (if it be one) of Old-ages being so neere to death, upon the true cause of it: viz. mens intemperance, and disorder in the former part of their life.”
Here’s presbyopia moralised:
“An Old-man sees better a farre off then a younger. So by the inward eyes of his minde, he reaches further then the other, both backward through experience, and forward by providence and forecast.”
Largely, it’s written in a vein of unexceptionable piety:
“Againe, touching our apprehension of Gods promises, which concerne our salvation, is it not most eager and ardent, most hungring and thirsting in elder yeares, when the good fight is fought, and the race neere runne? yes certainely. Wee may have an eye before to the promised inheritance, and to the recompence of reward with Moses: but then, in Old-age, obuijs ulvis, with reached forth armes we embrace it. Then, Come Lord Jesu: then our hand is on it, as it were: then we say with aged St. Paul, Now hence forth is layed up for mee, &c. Then we earnestly endeavour to that which is before us, and more neere us, pressing hard towards the marke: then with old Simeon, we resigne our selves to God, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart, &c.”
But the thing which I just knew was going to happen in this little work duly did: here’s an extract from the index:
Great things done by Old-men, p 13.
Old-men must thinke of their former failings, p. 208.
Old-mens abilities in the graces of the mind, p. 19.
Old men of best use in peace, p. 29.
Old-men best Generalls in warre, page 31.
Old-men best counsellors for warre, p. 32.
Old men not so fit for the Pulpit as young, page 37.
Old men worthy Governors of families, p 45
Old-men best furnished for writing, p 41.
Old-men fittest to cast up their accounts, p 48
Old-men best apprehend Gods promises, p. 49
Old mens motion to heaven the strongest, p. 50
Old-mens care for others good, p. 106.
Old-men best use wealth, p. 108.
Old-men not covetous, p. 110.
The ground of Old-mens parsimony, p. 111.
Old-men warre, p. 112.
Old-men long for better times, p. 112.
Old-men why hard to please. p. 113.
Old-men praisers of former times, p. 113.
Old-men just reprovers, p. 113.
Old-men most think of their former failings, page 208.
Old men see how former yeares might have beene better imployed, p. 203.
Old-men must looke backe to their former passages, p. 206.
And entries for ‘old women’? None, of course none. This game, well-meaning, and devout little book completely ignores their existence. Completely: old age can be commended in men, it seems, but not in women.
Younger women do feature, and again, to predictable effect in our old moralist:
“The most delightfull object of the eye, to a voluptuous man, is the favour and beauty of a woeman, a peece of well fashioned and coloured clay. Yet is favour deceitfull and beauty vanity. which caused Job to make a covenant with his eyes, to bind him not to thinke of a maide. And David prayes, Psal. 119. 37. That his eyes may be turned away from beholding vanity. The eye to many is a very Pandor.”
Though he so resoundingly ignores women, Sheafe does at one point digress onto the topic of breast-feeding:
“I cannot but blame the indiscreet peremptorinesse of some, who doubt not to make this a generall rule or Maxim, that God never makes the wombe fruitfull, and the brest barren: and thereupon stick not to conclude, that no woman may put forth her childe to nurse …
… Yet it cannot be denied, that there are many cases in which the mother not onely may refuse this office (which in it selfe is most naturall, I confesse, and lies neerely upon her) but is a cruell mother to her child (to say nothing of her selfe) if shee doe otherwise: for what weaknesse, and how many deseases may bee derived from a mother (in some cases, I say, and of some constitutions) to the child, to its utter overthrow, and undoing? and besides, it is not true that the mothers breasts are never dry: nor that there can be no other thing, that may justly excuse her refusing to be a nurse. But I leave the digression, having but occasionally and by the way fallen upon it.”
But actually, the old dear is taking a pop at the writer of that letter of commendation in his own work, William Gouge, and his Of domestical duties (1622-27-34). Gouge weighed up the evidence, and was quite firm in his decision:
“God hath giuen to women two breasts fit to containe and hold milke: and nipples unto them fit to haue milke drawne from them. Why are these thus giuen? to lay them forrth for ostentation?”
But this was not a matter two senior Presbyterians could fall out about (for I assume that Sheafe would have shared a view of the church with Chaderton and Gouge).
Gouge was a far, far superior writer and moral thinker about human life. In his introduction here, Gouge does rather adroitly note that God, after all, is old, and white-haired:
“For God himselfe is stiled (Dan. 7. 9.) the Ancient of daies, and the haire of his head is said to be like pure wooll, that is white, not spotted, not stained, not soiled: such as the haire of Old-men useth to be. In allusion hereunto, S. Hierom saith, that the haire of the Ancient of daies is described to bee white, that length of daies may be declared thereby.”
Gouge is known these days to the social historians. Here’s his prime argument in relation to whether husbands may beat their wives:
“ Quest. May not then an husband beat his wife?
Answ. With submission to better judgements, I thinke he may not: my reasons are these.
1. There is no warrant thorowout the whole Scripture.”
And here’s Gouge on abusive parenting, speaking first to the prejudices of his own age, but then bravely saying the unsayable:
“When parents bring vp their children in vnwarrantable and vnlawfull callings, as to be of popish and idolatrous orders; to attend vpon papists; to be stage-plaiers, keepers of dice-houses, &c. Some (which is horrible to thinke of) traine vp their daughters to be common strumpets: and some (which is yet more horrible) traine vp their children to be sorcerers and witches …
… But what may be said of those that are so hellishly enamoured with their children as to commit incest or buggery with them?”
No, not Updike's novel, but yesterday I went in search, very locally, of the Loddon Lilly or, more commonly, 'Summer Snowflake'. Flora Britannica describes the quest exactly: "South of Sandford Mill, the river-edge (i.e., of the Loddon) grows wilder. There are bigger, taller stands of snowflake growing among marsh marigolds under the trees. Follow their trail through the dark alders and nettles, and you enter a quite different habitat, a shifting, humid swamp, caked with a flood wrack of willow branches and leaf litter. And amongst this debris are sheaves upon sheaves of snowflakes, in patches sometimes hundreds of yards square. It is an astonishing sight, but an inhospitable place, and not one likely to tempt an early botanist (Richard Mabey means here, 'one of the early botanists') in a wet April".
This in the context of a dispute as to how such a eye-catching flower escaped all notice until the late 18th century, when it seems to have been described by William Curtis: is it native, or a garden escape? Mabey thinks that the plant is native, and highly particular in its natural habitat (though it is now a common garden plant able to put up with more or less anything).
All I can say is that these stands of the Loddon Lily are protected by outerworks of fast growing stinging nettles, full of spring potency. In a few days from now, I would not have been able to see them in number, unless I had Wellington boots on against the mud and nettles.
Some work by one of my postgraduate students led me to read Nathaneal Richards’s The tragedy of Messallina the Roman emperesse, 1640. The passage in the page image above is the most rewarding moment. Our author ushers his text to the press with an array of dedicatory poems complimenting him on successfully writing such a chaste and inoffensive play about such an unchaste woman. Throughout his text, the author supplies footnote quotations, often for the naughtier moments of his play, deploying pieces of choice Latinity as a fig-leaf for his own inevitable sensationalism. So, the empress’s context with a prostitute as to who can take on most men in a night features in the play (Messalina winning her bet with a total of 25, to the disgust of the bawd Veneria, whose contestant Calphurnia has lost her 10,000 sesterces), and it gets its substantiating quotation from Pliny.
But here Richards manages in a single opening to quote Tacitus (bottom right), and yet have his Roman empress enter with a pistol to threaten Silius (top left). The situation is that Silius opened the play as a virtuous-minded man (he was even reading a book, not itself an entirely Roman moment ). However, as soon as he sees Messalina, he succumbs. She is forcing him to kill his wife:
Silius kneels.
Desist faire beauties abstract, I implore;
Spur me not on to murders horrid act
Which I shall ever rue; let it suffice,
I’m only yours, never Syllana’s more;
Sworn a perpetual exile from her bed. Exit Messalina.
Vanished so soon, how wondrous strange seems this?
Enter Messallina with a Pistol.
Messalina.
Death and destruction satisfy my will
Or take’t in thy bosom, I’m intemperate
Briefly resolve. Silius.
But I protract delay, there’s danger in’t; Video meliora, proboque, deteriora Sequor.
Never was man so infinitely
Bewitcht; charm’d, and inchanted as is Caius Silius, to leave a constant wife; farewell,
We must part…
The Latin tag is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Richards has his pistol-toting Romans occasionally given to using a bit of Latin. The effect is disconcerting:
What saies our Roman phrase, Si non letaris vivens laetabere nanquam?
Of course, hunting out anachronisms in a 16th-17th century play is always easy (Richard’s Romans also play tennis). These dramatists did not worry about such things. But a pistol is so egregious an error, in an age which considered the printing press and gunpowder to be two great inventions that distinguished their time from the past, that I wondered what led Richards so far.
My first thought was that he was being deliberately anachronistic, to trigger the audience into seeing his play in contemporary terms. I thought of Richard Brathwait’s verse attack on Frances Howard, Countess of Essex:
‘Upon our Ages Messalina, insatiat Madona, the matchless English Corombona’
Here lies Lust,
Revenge, Defame.
Woe to man, to woman shame;
Faire and false, as great as ill,
Weake in Grace, but strong in Will.
Honours blemish, Hymens stayne,
Virtues poyson, Beauties baine, Albions -Siren, tyrant-woman,
Faith-infringer, true to no man;
Femall-Divell, plots-contriver,
Worths-tormenter, lifes depriver;
Tragick actor, blood effuser,
Times corrupter, States-abuser;
Brothel-Turner, virgin-Trader,
Husband-hater, Lusts-perswader;
Ages-monster, youths-deflourer …
- there’s plenty more of this outpouring; it appeared in his The honest ghost (1658). Was a Messalina play always going to be a Frances Howard play in Roman dress? The play forcing the audience, at pistol-point, to see the depravity of the present in that of the past?
But reading the play shows what the form is: Richards was a highly derivative writer. His work contains many moments of plagiary; half-quotation, half-imitation:
‘The thanks 'mong Princes of ignoble brain / That shines like rotten wood…’ uses a famous line from Ralegh’s anti-court poem, ‘The Lie’.
An asseveration about having your ‘eye-balls to drop out’ rather than see something unwelcome is Tourneur’s Damville: “Drop out mine eye-balls, and let envious Fortune play at tennis with’em”. “A drab, / Of state, a cloth of Silver slut” is a direct lift from The Revenger’s Tragedy, where Vindice gets indignant about Castiza his sister might become ‘The duke’s son’s great Concubine: / A drab of State, a cloth a’silver slut, / To have her train borne up, and her soul trail i'th dirt.”
Richards’ Messalina threatens Silius with a pistol because Richards was thinking only of the scene in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi when Julia enters to court Bosola at pistol-point. Julia charges Bosola with having put a love-potion in her drink: it is almost as if Richards wants us to be as attuned as him to Webster, as he barely explains that Silius is also dosed with a love potion, and so loses his head.
The ‘drab of state’ phrase also appears in Richards’ commendatory verse to Women beware Women:
‘UPON The Tragedy of My Familiar Acquaintance, THO. MIDDLETON.’
“Women beware Women”! 'tis a true Text
Never to be forgot: Drabs of State vext,
Have Plots, Poisons, Mischeifs that seldom miss,
To murther Virtue with a venom kiss.
Witness this worthy Tragedy, exprest
By him that well deserv’d among the best
Of Poets in his time: He knew the rage,
Madness of Women crossed; and for the Stage
Fitted their humors, Hell-bred Malice, Strife
Acted in State, presented to the life.
I that have seen’t, can say, having just cause,
Never came Tragedy off with more applause.
Richards commends Middleton for having written such a rattling good anti-feminist play, accurately capturing the immorality of great women. His own play follows the model, and incorporates the same sentiment:
Weake mindes of men they are, fit to be fool’d,
Slighted, add scorn’d, whose dull ignorance
Knowes not that women in their height of ill,
Who barres them their delight, delight to kill.
A cycle ride down to Alton, and a visit to the church there, which like the churches at Burford and Painswick, was the scene of fighting during the Civil War. My picture is of the church door. If you click to see it at full size, the old scars of its history can be seen: musket ball holes are evident, what is thought to be a loophole like a vertical slot for defenders in the church to fire out, and a ragged cross-shaped hole perhaps made by a pike.
The door has been patched with old metal surrounds for key-holes; one of the rings is a medieval sanctuary ring. But sanctuary counted for little in 1643, when the established, tithe-supported church would have been just another building held by the enemy for the parliamentary soldiers.
The desperate struggle at this church is partly told in the brief pamphlet published in London three days after the fighting, A narration of the great victory, (through Gods providence) obtained by the Parliaments forces under Sir William Waller, at Alton in Surrey the 13. of this instant December, 1643. Against the cavaliers: where were taken neer a thousand prisoners, a thousand arms, two hundred horse, with divers officers of great quality. As it was delivered by a messenger sent by Sir William Waller, to the committee for safety of the kingdom, and divers of the house of Commons, and approved by them appointed to be forthwith printed and published. Printed for Edw. Husbands, Dec. 16 1643.
What happened at Alton was that Sir William Waller led one of his speciality night-time troop movements, from Farnham to the east, setting off at seven in the evening (this was on December 13th). I think the idea was to give the impression to any potential informants that he was heading towards the siege at Basing House, but on the way west, turned abruptly south towards Alton, where a substantial royalist force had been billeted since the start of December, and by detaining everybody the force met with, getting within half a mile of the town without being spotted, or having their approach revealed.
Ludovic Lindsay, the 16th Earl of Crawford, was in command of the royalist cavalry forces in the town. Learning that a substantial force was almost upon him, this former mercenary first tried to escape eastwards with most of his cavalry, but ran into parliamentary cavalry deployed on the road towards Winchester, retreated back into the town, then fled south. Waller’s forces were determined to prevent more escapes, closing in on the town from all sides:
“The horse were immediately appointed to make good all passages, so that the enemy could not have the benefit of their accustomed running away, but were taken by our horse, our foot in the meantime behaving themselves like men, with great expedition, beat the enemies out of their workes of the North-west, and East parts of the Towne, and possest themselves thereof, where they displayed their colours in the sight of their Enemies, then our men advanced speedily into the Market-place, and the Enemy being all Musquetiers drew themselves into the works neere the Church, where they had double trenches and a Halfe-Moone, and made the Church and a Barne there their chiefest refuge, here grew then a very hot fight, which was continued neer two houres, by reason of a Malignant, who willingly fired his own Barne, and other houses, thereby to offend our men with the smoake; by reason of which smoake, we lost about three men: the fire and smoak abating, our men fell close to their worke againe, and forced the Enemy to retreat into the said Church, and Barne, where they were all taken prisoners. The Towne thus being taken on all sides, the Enemy desired and obtained quarter…
In this fight were taken prisoners 700 in the Church, neere 100 in the Barne; above 100 in the field, with divers Irish men and women: also neer 200 Horse, 1000 Arms, one Colonell, one Major, one Lieuetenant Colonell, thirteen Captaines, three Coronets, one of which with the Princes Armes, another the Earl of Straffords, with divers other Colours hid in the Church; there were slaine of the Enemie neere 40 amongst which was Colonell Richard Bolles: the Enemies word was (Charls) Ours (Truth and Victory).
The mighty providence of God was seene in this, and as in many other mercies towards us: for in this Fight for a certaine truth, there were not above five of our men slaine, and about six wounded, and about six scorched with powder, by reason of their owne negligence: This done, our worthy Major Generall caused the people of the said Towne to slight the Workes: tooke the Prisoners, and tied them two by two with Match, and are now in Farnham Church and Castle, where they heare better Doctrine then they have heard at Oxford, or amongst the Irish Rebels.”
About what you would expect of propaganda: minimum casualties for the reporting side, disaster for their enemy. In the present-day Church itself, the report is that Colonel Bolles killed seven or eight men himself, before finally being killed in the church pulpit. This too, is too good to be true. Did he have 700 men with him, and do all the fighting himself? The parliamentarian pamphlet claims no more than 40 of the royalists killed in all the fighting. Perhaps it was a pattern of minimal resistance, and successive withdrawal, followed by surrender. I imagine the colonel fighting on at one side of the church, while elsewhere his men were busy laying down their weapons.
The church’s own pamphlet about this fighting supplies a local detail, that the corpses of dead horses were piled in the church porch by the retreating defenders to impede the attackers. That scene of horror around this door gets us close to the reality.
A small defeat for the King’s cause, but dismaying in its totality. Charles, hearing of the death of his Colonel Bolles, apparently said: “Bring me my mourning scarf; I have lost one of the best commanders in this kingdom”. His imprisoned fighters were marched off in cords improvised from musketeers’ slow-matches, for re-indoctrination at Farnham.
I am not overjoyed to discover that the latest version of Firefox and Blogger do not seem to get on: I have swapped templates, but none of them make post-titles visible except when you click through to the individual post rather than the blog as a whole; settings to alter type-colours are all defunct. All seems to be well for Internet Explorer, though.
Anyway, on my way to give a talk at the Merchant Taylors’ School this last week, I got lucky and coincided at Hatfield Church with a local historical society, who had one of the churchwardens opening up what would otherwise have been a locked building.
The church features in Simon Jenkins’ indispensable guide to the thousand best churches for its array of family monuments: largely from the Newdigate family, but at the right of the altar is this flamboyant tomb of Milton’s ‘rural queen’, Alice Spencer, Countess of Derby.
This lady’s long, and socially eminent life (1559-1637) had so many literary connections that you could shape an M.A. course or a doctorate about her. Her first husband was Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, patron of Nashe and of the Lord Strange’s Men: there’s your Shakespeare connection. Through her second husband, Lord Chancellor Egerton, and her middle and youngest daughters, Frances Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater (1583–1636) and Lady Elizabeth Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (bap. 1587, d. 1633), there were links to John Donne.
But her strongest connections were of course with Milton: she was the focus of compliment in ‘Arcades’ (‘kiss her sacred vesture’s hem’, the masquers are enjoined), and her second daughter, Frances, as Countess of Bridgewater, presided in 1634 over the first performance of ‘Comus’, watching three of her children in the main roles.
But ‘Comus’ brings us to the thought of Anne, the eldest daughter (1580–1647). The tomb of her mother mentions that Anne first married the splendidly named Grey Bridges, Earl of Chandos, and so was Anne Bridges, Lady Chandos, but after his death in 1621 she then in 1624 she made what the ODNB tends to understate as “a disastrous marriage” with Mervin Touchet, second Earl of Castlehaven (1593–1631).
We all know why the tomb does not advertise this second marriage: from the very start of the marriage Lord Castlehaven set about her sexual corruption, and then that of her daughter by her first marriage, the thirteen year old Elizabeth (1614/15–1679), who was married to Castlehaven’s son James in 1628. Castlehaven’s insane hostility to his own heir saw him contrive to have Elizabeth debauched by his servants, so that his son’s heir might be fathered by another man (and so be ‘the spurious seed of a varlet’).
(Anne, Frances and Elizabeth, left to right, beneath their mother's bier)
Louis A. Knafla sums up Alice Spencer’s life rather mildly as that of “an independent woman who dedicated her life to bringing up her children and grandchildren, often in tragic circumstances, the countess pursued the cultural life with zest, striving to attain the highest standards of an Elizabethan woman in an age of declining moral values.” On the other hand, writing the ODNB life of Egerton, J. H. Baker writes that his marriage to “the beautiful and wealthy dowager countess of Derby must have seemed a good match …However, she was haughty, profligate, greedy, and ill-tempered, and added greatly to her husband's burdens for the last seventeen years of his life. ‘I thank God I never desired long life’, wrote Egerton in 1610, ‘nor ever had less cause to desire it than since this, my last marriage, for before I was never acquainted with such tempests and storms.’ ”
Leaving aside this disagreement about the Countess’s personality and spending habits, in Hatfield Church, you look at the (yes, rather lavish) final resting place of a very cultured woman whose daughter and grand-daughter were subjected to appalling sexual abuse. I wondered what could be read in the monument, if anything.
The first obvious thing is that Alice is alone. Of her unhappy second marriage there is a mention on a back wall, possible added later by one of the locally swarming Newdigates, for it emphasises Egerton’s connection to that family. But she had long survived him, and there is no side-by-side fiction of their union. In ‘Arcades’, she is more or less represented as a still-surviving version of Queen Elizabeth (‘Mark what radiant state she spreads, / In circle round her shining throne’), and her image here takes the 75 year old female aristocrat back to her prime. I think that her costuming is also ‘historical’: that farthingale cart wheel is very 16th century. Her hair is worn undressed, copious in length and waves (Milton would have approved). I understand this as the style allowed to the unmarried woman, to the virgin. Queen Elizabeth apparently would appear with her hair down, even in her later years, as an intermittent reminder of her very special status. On the side of the tomb, Elizabeth, Frances, and, poignantly perhaps only to our eyes, Anne, share their mother’s style, each in their arched alcove with streaming hair.
None of this explains the real mystery about the monument: that the baldachin, with its splendid tied-back drapery, looks to have been designed as a canopy for a kneeling effigy. But the Countess lies at full length, her feet projecting out towards the altar, with the arcaded catafalque beneath. I could not see any evidence of two parties to the design having failed to communicate: it rather seems just to have been a design compromise prompted by the proximity of the altar.
The unresolved problem with the design imparts a kind of tension to the structure as a whole, a grand design not quite achieved, the medieval colliding with the baroque. The main source of tension, though, is that regular feature of these composite monuments: the presence of lots of stone that is just that, stone, used architecturally, and stone which has been carved to represent soft and yielding things: skin, hair, cushions, drapery, clothes, ermine. The yielding, represented by the (or as) unyielding. The elderly woman, and her married daughters, either those dynastically triumphant or blighted by a man’s corruption, all as virgins. A devout prone posture which lingers on in a design which really invites the Countess to raise herself at least part way up. The catafalque, with its black drapes and canopy, is like a state bed, with the Countess’s feet jutting towards the altar. I know I am over-reading this, but mutely, it looks as though the lower body seeks its blessing.
The guide does not specify when the monument was so exuberantly re-painted and gilded.
‘Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd
In secret, riding through the Air she comes
Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland Witches, while the labouring Moon
Eclipses at thir charms…’
‘Then to work,
To work, my pretty Laplands: pinch, here scratch,
Do that within, without we’ll keep the watch…’
From high literature, and from a popular theatre entertainment, two examples of the many references to ‘Lapland witches’ in early modern English literature. These are from Paradise Lost, and The Late Lancashire Witches. I have finally got round to looking at the 1658 translation of Olaus Magnus, and the later, and far more sober account in Johannes Scheffer’s TheHistory of Lapland in its 1674 translation, so as to see what those Lapland ‘witches’ were up to.
My two images, as Scheffer expounds, are actually of the same basic scene. In the 1555 woodcut (the whole splendid array of cuts in the original edition are web-posted here
the shaman (‘magician’, or ‘witch’) lies on his back on the floor. Behind him, a metalworker’s hammer and anvil can be discerned. It has a serpent wrapped round it, or just struck by the hammer, against it is what is meant to be a frog. A woman who is probably meant to be the shaman’s wife presides: Schaffer explains that once a magician has gone into his trance, those accompanying him will not let even a fly or gnat land upon him. The shaman can be understood to be travelling in spirit to another country, and his trance will go on correspondingly longer, according to the distance from which news is sought. He will bring back some small items that validate his having genuinely been elsewhere.
At some point, the shaman, assisted by those chanting around him, entered a trance state. No hallucinogens are mentioned in the text. He then arranged himself face down, with his drum drawn up near his head, while assistants kept up their chant, and looked after his physical body. The early woodcut gets the posture for trance wrong, and literalised the variety of animal names which were apparently given to the moving quobdas: serpent, frog, toad, etc, for it was symbolic of one of a set of animals thought auspicious for divination.
The divinatory instrument and its ancillary equipment was very carefully made and looked after. For the hollowed wood, the root stem of a tree with a right to left spiral up its bark was chosen. The finished item was, when not in use, kept wrapped up in the skin of a loon, and was never to be approached or touched by (particularly) any unmarried woman. To let such a thing happen risked the operator’s health. It would even be carried along paths such women were meant never to take, unless they appeased the rune drum with a gift. Scheffer is frustrated that he has not been able to discover the particular designs and ceremonies for malignant magic: “Impairing mens health, or depriving them of their lives; which is frequently enough practised among them, tho not so publicly as heretofore”. He says that contemporary shamans now considered this the only unlawful use of their magical method; no-one will disclose to him how they operated to hurt or kill.
Scheffer was reporting on a very old, and dying tradition: “In these latter times they do not so frequently practise this, and dare not profess it so publicly as before, being severely prohibited by the King of Sweden”. We can see how witch stereotypes were imposed on the Sami practices: Schaffer says spirit familiars were bequeathed to children, the earlier woodcut is decorated with zoomorphs out of depictions of pacted witches.
Scheffer reports of Lapland that “Diverse of the Inhabitants are almost naturally Magicians”, but like J K Rowling’s ‘squibs’, not all could practise with any success: “The Laplanders do not all agree in the same disposition, so neither do they arrive to the same perfection in this art. For some are so stupid and dull, that howsoever they may seem qualified for other employments, they prove altogether unfit for this.”
“Here it is indeed, where, rather than in America, we have a new World discovered”, says the preface to the 1674 translation.
Seventeenth century Lancashire seems to have been regarded as a reliable source of supernatural follies. Ben Jonson has Satan tell the naïve devil Pug (in The Devil is an Ass) that he might cope adequately with being the diabolic familiar of some Lancashire witch, but street-wise London is out of the question.
I have been looking at Zachary Taylor’s The devil turn'd casuist, or, The cheats of Rome laid open (1696), obviously a late 17th century text, but it contains an anecdote dated back by the author to the mid-century. It concerns that time-honoured device for high-pressure proselytizing, an exorcism. The Catholic priest conducting the exorcism wanted to put on a good show, and seems to have been willing to help things along a little: it came down to a conjuring trick, with misdirection of the audience, and an accomplice.
Who bungled it:
“Between 30 and 40 years ago I am told there was another Exorcism as this, in the same place, for it is a Nest of Papists. And when the Devil was to go out, he said he would have a living soul with him, which frighted the poor People sadly, and made them Sweat and Sigh, not knowing whom he would have. But the Priest manfully withstood him, and would not suffer him to touch any Soul there. This was a little comfort to them. Then the Devil would have some other living Creature, a Cock or Hen, &. But the Priest thought that too good a Morsel for the Devil, and would not allow it him. In short the Priest would allow him nothing but three broken pieces of a Tobaco-pipe, which he laid upon a Trencher on the Table, and when he went, he was to take them, as a sign of his Departure. When the minute was at hand, the Priest makes a bustle, and cries out now He comes, He comes, He comes, &c. and by this means (which is right Leger-de-main) calls the People’s eyes from off the Trencher to the Demoniack, and an hand came behind over the Table, and catch’d at the pieces of the Pipe, but unluckily got but two, the third slipping off the Trencher, which a Protestant took up. And when the Priest told them that they might know by what they saw that the Devil was gone out. Yes saith the Protestant perhaps he is, but he is better than his word, for he hath left one piece of his pipe behind him, and here it is. This I had from a neighbouring Clergy-man, who is rector of the Parish where the person lived that took up the Pipe, and who had it from his own Mouth.”
The set-up here was to have the fragments of pipe stem seem to have disappeared as evidence of the departure of the exorcised devil. There’s a parallel in the exorcisms reported from 1696. The demoniac is named as Thomas Ashton, a weaver from the parish of Wigan. In his case, the signal of the devil’s departure was that one of the diamond-shaped panes of glass (a ‘quarrel’) in the window would vanish. But the exorcists realise that they have too much attention fixed on the window from the very people they want to convert, the local Protestants. Nor do they seem to have a notion of misdirecting attention at the crucial instant, so they abandon the plan:
“All the People, especially the Protestants cast their eyes upon the Window, and the Quarrel out of which he was to go, and take it with him. But whether the peoples eyes being fixt upon the Quarrel might make them apprehensive, that they would discover the Trick by discerning how the quarrel was conveyed away (for the priests Elbows were often very near it: but whether it was this or something else I know not; but neither the Devil nor the quarrel went.”
This particular exorcism did not run smoothly: the weaver Ashton had been primed with some Latin, but the attempted impressive execration of the devil in the learned tongue faltered when the priest himself forgot the Latin for a toad, and had to be prompted by a spectator, while another Protestant observer, getting drawn in, enthusiastically joined in with speaking to the devil in Latin: he wanted to see the devil’s tongue (actually blackened either by dye or thumb pressure, says Taylor), and cried out ‘Verte ad me’, ‘Turn towards me!’, which Ashton did not understand, and ignored.
The pamphlet runs together various follies of this kind. In this final story, a Mrs Ditchfield is the target for conversion, and the fake demoniac is a maid servant called Alice Pennington, a convert and a willing (if rather giggly and transparent) accomplice. A ‘good understanding Protestant’, William Smith, sets about demonstrating that what seems wonderful in the possessed maid is less remarkable when performed with equal aptitude by himself:
“in a little time they gained upon her (Mrs Ditchfield), and she began to tell Mr Smith of the virtue of the Holy-Water, and what strange effects it wrought on the Demoniack, of which she could desire that he might be a witness; and so to the Maid they went, and she sprinkled Holy-Water in her face, and the Maid spit at her, Oh (saith she) do not you see what a strange power is in the Holy-Water? Yes (saith Mr. Smith) and pray will you try it upon me; and with some persuasions she was prevail’d with to make the Experiment on him, and she flung Holy-Water on his face, and he spit in her face; and she flung again, and he spit again, what do you mean saith she; O what Strange power saith he, is there in this Holy-Water, but Dear Mrs, saith he, do you not plainly see that all this is only to delude and abuse you, I am heartily sorry for you; she made him no reply, for they had now prevail’d upon her.”
(Image from Histoires prodigieuses et memorables, 1598Slide 64)
So, there they all were, a 'large party' returning to Paris after a day out cycling, 'all very hilarious' (I think we can assume, better lubricated than their bicycles), 'when two of them quarrelled' (never get anything like that in my club, what, only two of them quarrelled?) 'They decided to settle the dispute with swords on their bicycles' (not a good idea, unless you really are a trick-cyclist). This in the Boulevard Ney.
The combatants lined up fifty yards apart and were then ordered to charge. The account, which might all be embroidery for an audience capable of believing anything about the French, fails to say where they suddenly got swords from - knocked on a few doors, maybe? 'They rode at one another at a furious pace, but overshot the mark and failed to meet. Wheeling quickly round, they returned to the charge, and this time came together with a terrific shock. Both were thrown, whilst the seconds, who were following behind, also on bicycles (it could have been llamas, after all) fell in their turn, and were both injured. Neither of the combatants touched each other with his sword, but in falling one ran his weapon into himself and his opponent injured his leg'.
Back with the Illustrated Police News (Dec 11th, 1897) and a rather less grim duel in prospect between 'the notorious mistress of Senor Donvaldez and the well known Spanish dancer, Carmen Paxodol'. The former threw a bunch of onions on stage during a performance by the latter. That's not really anything anyone could forgive and forget, and it led to more than tears.
I have included the write-up, as it is priceless, with its 'great laxity of morals is prevalent here' (says our panting correspondent in Madrid) - "duelling, bull-fighting and assassination are by no means uncommon" (sometimes all three at once) alongside this latently pornographic image ("interesting", as the paper puts it) of Senora Paxodol practising (she's the implausible tiny-footed hourglass on the right), which the newspaper claims to have based on a photograph.
Again, one has to suspect publicity-seeking, and that the duel itself (despite Senora Paxodol's stated eagerness to avoid the police) may never have taken place.
The Illustrated Police News is by this date a fruity source for those who might want to seek evidence of the secret lives of late Victorians: adverts for 'Rubber Specialities' ('the Capote Anglaise' is described in one small ad as 'the most wonderful appliance of the 19th Century for Married Ladies only', at a pricy five shillings and sixpence 'complete in box'), 'Spicy Books', imports of French and American 'specialities' for 'those about to marry', and bottled cures for (implicitly) venereal disease. No wonder the illustrations are so dubious.
Back with duelling women, and the Illustrated Police News for Saturday 15th March, 1873. This reports from the Figaro for the Thursday before, and provides an account of that rare thing, a fatal 'duel' between women ("the two women agreed to decide their dispute by means of a duel with knives"). I suppose it counts as a duel, rather than a knife-fight, if they actually did agree to meet at some future time rather than fighting spontaneously. The women are not named, but the conflict was over a man called Juglin. One was mortally wounded, the other seriously. Juglin was arrested: "in what way he has offended against the law has not yet been manifest", says the report, which cannot say if he was present, or in any way promoted the duel ("if so, he deserves heavy punishment").
The 'field of honour', such as it was, is specified, and is interesting: it was inside a house at 84, Boulevard de Courcelles. The British scandal-rag's image is thus far accurate, though the special frisson the hypothetical image seems to aim for is of mortal strife breaking out in a prosperous home, with a salon full of respectable folk dithering in horror. The artist has in part made the fight look spontaneous: an opened letter lies on the ground between the combatants. There may be a little more of the suggestion of a pre-arranged duel in the way the two women crouched behind the fighters both hold a bag - are they meant to be seconds, who have had care of the chosen weapons?
"The encounter was marked by an amount of savageness and ferocity rarely met with, and it is surprising that the spectators who were present at so singular and unnatural a conflict should have allowed it to proceed for so long a time", says the newspaper, with teeth-sucking disapproval neatly extended by the suggestion that this is precisely the sort of thing tolerated in France. 'Unnatural' perhaps betrays that the writer thinks duels between men to be allowable.
Other images of women fighting to the death in the same source do depict lower class combatants: they are not automatically promoted to being middle class fashion plates. The modes worn here look very unsuited to the purpose. It is generally fights between frenchwomen that the Illustrated Police News finds to report. There's a carry-over here from earlier wars: the women have acquired Franch revolutionary faces as they fight in clothing one might see in a painting by Tissot.
I was reminded of John Bell’s ghastly little pamphlet Witch-craft proven, arreign'd, and condemn'd in its professors, professions and marks by diverse pungent, and convincing arguments, excerpted forth of the most authentick authors, divine and humane, ancient and modern. By a Lover of the truth (Glasgow, 1697) while reading P.G. Maxwell-Stuart’s Witch Hunters (2003). The modern scholar cites (p. 98) the case of Margaret Atkin in 1597, who was arrested on suspicion of being a witch, threatened with torture, and confessed. She then offered ‘to detect all of that sort, and to purge the Country of them, so that she might have her life granted’. She claimed that she could do this because ‘they had a secret mark, all of that sort, in their eyes, whereby she could surely tell, how soon she looked upon any whether they were witches or not’. To save herself, she set about judicially murdering other women, being taken from town to town to inform against the local suspects. In Glasgow, backed by a credulous minister, she had yet more innocent women executed, until she exposed her own imposture by declaring the same women guilty one day and (when they were presented to her again in different attire) innocent the next.
Maxwell-Stuart notes blemishes in the eye, or the rare condition of a double pupil as possible ‘marks’ that were notionally looked for: but anyone could see these. I think it’s possible that John Bell gives a full account of what the witch-finder alleged he or she could see.
Bell’s work shows him to have been a die-hard demonologist of the old school. He promises to give “some vive and shrewd Marks, and some unquestionable tokens … by what means, a Witch (in League, and Covenant with the Devil) may be discerned to be so”.
The first is the witch’s mark “the insensible or dead nip of a blea colour”; the second
“that such can by no means be drowned, tho' tyed hand & foot together, & thrown into a River … having renounced Baptism”. Then, inevitably, Sprenger and Kramer’s sadistic allegation is the third: “They cannot weep, not even torture can draw “from them the least tear, though to that end they often distort, throw, and wring their faces, making as tho' they were weeping”.
But it is Bell’s fourth mark which is of interest here:
“The Fourth Mark is, the Basilisk, or Serpentine sight, wherewith they be endued to kill, poison, and destroy, what, and whensoever they please … which sight is in them above all other men and women in the world most remarkable, for while as in the Apple of the Eye there is to be seen in all and every one, the Image of a man … with the head up and the feet down; the quite contrary is to be seen in them, to wit, the feet up, and the head down; God as it were hereby making open show to the World, that He who keepeth His own as the Apple of the eye, taketh no such thought for ye Slaves of Satan, but suffers the Devil whose Image they bear thus (by inversion) as an external Sign.”
To complete this dismal litany, the fifth mark is that they will not repeat the Lord’s prayer, ten commandments or the creed without “several minckings, eikings, or inversions”, burning salt ‘in the Pipe of a Kye’ [I think he means within the tube of a key] will cause them to urinate if they see the blue flames is the sixth mark, and lastly, that they smell with “a peculiar scent or smell, which is to be found in them, beside all other People in the World, and which neither flows from the nastiness of Clothes, Vermin, or the like, but a contradistinct smell from any such thing … the Devil being in full Possession of their Soul, must needs emit his own scent even that of the Pit.”
The investigator has to notice whether his or her reflection is inverted in the pupil of the true witch’s eye - this seems a suitably ‘secret’ mark to me. You could easily persuade yourself, if you had taken against the accused, that you had seen yourself upside-down. Not could you be cross-checked, as you were looking for this far more metaphysical mark than any blemish in the iris.
My images, though, come from Christina Hole’s work, Witchcraft in England, 1977, which was illustrated by no less than Mervyn Peake 'over twenty years ago', the fly leaf says, for the first edition - it was in 1945:
Peake had just gone through great mental suffering after being on the scene at the liberation of Belsen. Yet his witches are just that, witches rather than victims, sinister figures as darkly imagined as anything in Jacob de Gheyn. Not that you would wish an imagination like Peake's to deny itself. I have looked along a long 'Cooliris' wall of Google images, but didn't see any from this book. he also did illustrations for a book by D K Haynes, Thou shalt not suffer a witch in 1949: it would be interesting to see the best of those.
