Bacon's Dictionary
Appendices
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56
57 58 59
The exhibits and miniatures of which are found in this section, are designed to assist the serious student and reader in following the path of the Authorship Controvesy that has been so laboriously persued by many authors and researchers during its commence.
These exhibits have been placed here as not to interrupt the flow of reading in the Baconian Dictionary sections, being a finding list of Bacon’s works, his history, his thoughts and his aims, which are a subject of study and discussion.
Elizabethan Age
Wages paid to the Privy Chamber by the Year:
The Bedchamber: £ s. d.
The Lady Cobham, by the year 20 0 0
The Lady Carewe 33 6 8
Mrs. Blanch Apprye 33 6 8
Gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber:
Bridget Cave 33 6 8
The Lady Howard 33 6 8
The Lady Stafford 33 6 8
The Lady Arundell 33 6 8
The Lady Leighton 33 6 8
Frances Howard 33 6 8
Dorothy Edmundes 33 6 8
Chamberers:
The Lady Bartlett 20 0 0
The Lady Drury 20 0 0
Mrs. Mary Skydmore 20 0 0
Mrs. Katherine Newton 20 0 0
Mrs. Jane Brucella 20 0 0
Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber:
Sir Christopher Hatton, Knight 50 0 0
John Ashley, Esq. 33 6 8
Gentlemen Usher of the Privy Chamber:
Sir Drew Drury, Knight 30 0 0
Grooms of the Privy Chamber:
Thomas Ashley 20 0 0
Henry Sackford 20 0 0
John Baptiste 20 0 0
Thomas Knevett 20 0 0
Edward Carey 20 0 0
Thomas George 20 0 0
William Killigrew 20 0 0
—— —— ——
Summa Totalis 673 6 8
The above 673l. 6s. 8d. was the whole sum paid out of the Privy purse; but it is to be borne in mind that these persons were allowed diet and lodging in the Court, so that, after all, the payments were not quite as insignificant as they may at first seem. Whatever also may have been the case with the Ladies, it is certain that the Gentlemen had other sources of emolument derived from the Crown, such as monopolies, valuable grants of royal domains, leases of customs, &c., which altogether made up an ample income. Sir Christopher Hatton, for instance, could not have built Holdenby out of his 50l. a year as Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. 1 To offer another jest of the time, the Queen, seeing Sir Edward in her garden, one fine morning asked the Knight in Italian, “What does a man think of when he thinks of nothing?” Sir Edward, who had not had the offer of some of the Queen’s grants of land so soon as he had desired, paused a little, and then made answer: “Madam, he thinks of a woman’s promise.” The Queen replied: “Well, Sir Edward, I must not confute you. Anger makes dull men witty, but, sometimes, it makes them poor.” (Burke). 2 This jest was recorded by Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was well acquainted with Elizabeth.
The reign of Elizabeth is one of the strikingly picturesque pages of history. The last of the Tudors, that family of royal despots who had ruled England with a heavy hand for eighty-three years, she came to the throne, we might well say by chance, if we regarded only the letter of history, and overlooked its providential aspects, when the English people were yet striving to emerge from barbarity. This is instanced by the deplorable condition of society as disclosed by the annals of the time.
The reigns of Henry VIII., and of his elder daughter, who by her harsh rule earned the title of “Bloody Mary,” have been pictured grimly in English annals, while the reign of his younger daughter, Elizabeth, who had inherited the few better traits of her father, as well as most of his numerous bad ones, has been coloured too brightly by writers who have been dazzled by its brilliancy. Her family had come to reign in England as conquerors, and their ideal of government was the mailed hand and the supple knee. All the conditions existing at their advent favoured despotic rule. With an ignorant and turbulent populace, no other seemed possible, and it soon became more oppressive than autocratic rule in Russia has been within the past century. The nobility monopolized the wealth and power of the realm, though the more numerous middle class, in spite of the obstacles of caste and custom which opposed it, was slowly attaining vantage-ground. The common people had no rights which they dared assert, and for the most part quietly submitted to their superiors, while those in official life held their positions by tenures too weak to permit them much repose, for they were ever conscious that they might at any time be cast out in disgrace by a caprice of their royal master, or through the machinations of those who had gained his ear. To question the absolute power of the monarch was treason. Sir Thomas More, statesman, jurist, and Lord Chancellor, went to the block because his conscience would not permit him to acknowledge the King’s supremacy where it involved illegal divorce from his Queen, and an arbitrary change in the succession, as well as the Chancellor’s own renunciation of one of his deepest rooted religious tenets.
Said James I., “The absolute prerogative of the Crown is no subject for the tongue of a lawyer. It is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a King can do, or say that a King cannot do this or that.” All men are the creatures of heredity and environment, and the fruit of their endeavours, if it escapes final blight, is coloured and flavoured by them; hence, it was but natural that Elizabeth, sired as she was, and reared to maturity in an atmosphere of tyranny, should have had an invincible faith in the dogma of the divine right of monarchs to rule as they willed, and should have regarded official life as wholly dependent upon servile subservience to political necessity, that illusive but convenient phrase which has been thought to excuse the violation of human rights. In the Tudor family she was simply a dependent young woman without future prospects beyond those of other noble families, and she could have cherished no reasonable expectation of ever reaching the throne. Her brother Edward succeeded her father, and after a reign of six years gave place to her sister Mary, who, married to the Spanish Philip, seemed certain to have heirs, even if she did not outlive her, for with a sister jealous of her every movement, and ready to suspect her of treason upon the slightest pretext, Elizabeth’s chance of life was none too promising. She had given her family ample cause for distrusting her by a scandalous affair with Lord Seymour when in her sixteenth year, says Lingard: “Seymour’s attentions to the Princess were remarked, and their familiarity was so undisguised that it awakened the jealousy of his wife by whom he was one day surprised with Elizabeth in his arms.” Shortly after the wife conveniently died, her death being “attributed to poison,” and we are told that he “redoubled his Court to the Princess; her governess was bribed, her own affections were won.” From the testimony of Elizabeth’s governess, “the reluctant Mrs. Ashley,” as Lingard calls her, “it appears that the courtship was not conducted in the most delicate manner. The moment he was up, he would hasten to Elizabeth’s chamber, “in his night gown and barelegged”: if she were still in bed, “he would put open the curtains and make as though he would come at her, and she would go farther in the bed, so that he could not come at her”: (Lingard). 3 The wife of the Spanish minister, Feria, an English lady, was one of Queen Mary’s household, and on Elizabeth’s accession went to Spain, where she resided until her death in 1612. Amongst Queen Mary’s personal friends were several of the wives and daughters of leading Reformers such as the Duchess of Somerset, and Lady Bacon. (Burke). 4 In her Life is the following relating to the Princess Elizabeth: “A great lady who knew her very well, being a girl of twelve or thirteen, told me that she was proud and disdainful. In King Edward’s time what passed between the Lord Admiral, Sir Thomas Seymour, and her, Dr. Latimer preached in a sermon, and was chief cause that the Parliament condemned the Admiral. There was a bruit of a child born and miserably destroyed, but could not be discovered whose it was, only the report of the midwife who was brought from her house blindfold thither, and so returned, saw nothing in the house while she was there but a candle light, only she said it was the child of a very fair young lady. 5 It seems that a clandestine marriage was planned, her governess was bribed, her own affections were won, when it was realized that Elizabeth by such a marriage would forfeit her right to the succession. Parliament was therefore applied to. Elizabeth in a letter to the protector informed him of Seymour’s proposal of marriage, and to a report that she was pregnant declared it to be a shameful schandler.” There is much more on this unsavoury subject, but we have already quoted too much.
In the summer of 1554, for supposed sympathy with the claims of Lady Jane Grey to the throne, she was thrown into the Tower, that gateway to the block, with Robert Dudley, whom she had known from childhood, and to whom she had shown marked favour at her brother’s Court. He was noted for his fascinating personality, and she would have been only too glad to marry him had he not been encumbered with a wife that history affirms he subsequently disposed of in the hope of such a consummation; [Also see Appendices Castle of Kenilworth.] indeed, immediately following his wife’s death, Elizabeth announced her intention of so doing, which prompted the Queen of Scots to declare that, “The Queen of England was about to marry her horse-keeper [he was master of horse], who had killed his wife to make a place for her.” 6 After a life so disheartening as Elizabeth’s had been, to be suddenly and unexpectedly elevated to almost unlimited power was an event which must have seemed to her miraculous, as it did to her friends. The Spanish Ambassador, Le Feria, wrote his Sovereign, April 18, 1559: “They tell me that she is enamoured of Lord Robert Dudley and never leaves his side. He is in such favour that people say she visits him in his chamber day and night.” 7 It was rumoured seemingly on Lord Robert’s own authority that some private but formal betrothal had passed between the Queen and himself. 8 And Throgmorton wrote to Cecil from Paris: “The bruits be so brim, touching the marriage of the Lord Robert and the death of his wife, that I know not where to turn me, nor what countenance to bear.” 9 And Sir Henry Sydney told the Bishop of Aquila that “The Queen and Lord Robert were lovers: but they intended honest marriage.” 10 On January 22, 1561 the Bishop wrote: “Some say she is a mother already but this I do not believe.” 11 Was she really married to Dudley? When certain letters of the Bishop of Aquila fell into the hands of Cecil, and he was charged with having written Philip, “That the Queen had previously married Lord Robert in the Earl of Pembroke’s house,” he replied: “I wrote what I said to the Queen herself, that it was reported all over London that the marriage had then taken place. She betrayed neither surprise nor displeasure at my words. Had I so pleased I might have written all this to his Majesty; nor do I think I should have done wrong had I told him the World’s belief that she was married already.” 12 If this were true it would account for her persistent fencing with matrimonial adventurers, and her deep attachment to Dudley which dominated her during her life, and drove Burghley to the verge of distraction. In spite of her sordid parsimony, which on several occasions imperilled the safety of the nation, she was as lavish to him as she was in gratifying her personal extravagance which was carried to extremes. It is stated that she left at her death “more than 2.000 gowns with all things answerable.”
Bacon’s baptism at St Martin-in-the-Fields is given by his father’s scribbles in the register: Baptizatus fuit Mr. Franciscus Bacon. Filius Dm Nicho: Bacon Magni Anglie Sigilli Custodis. Cautious and practical thinkers ask of this entry to its cause and purpose. Of one such thinker, is Alfred Dodd, who was a Stratfordian until 1929, “until Francis Bacon revealed his personality” to him “in the Sonnets, thoroughly unexpectedly and to” his “utter consternation.” 13 Every reader of British history may recall that Queen Elizabeth I., remained a virgin till her dying day, yet few things impress the imagination more. In the Add. MSS. 5524., is an apparently modern note, stated to be in the handwriting of Mr. Ives, to the following effect: “I have heard it confidently asserted, that Queen Elizabeth was with child by the Earl of Essex, and that she was delivered of a child at Kenilworth Castle, which died soon after its birth, was interred at Kenilworth, and had a stone put over it, inscribed Silentium.” This is doubtless one of the many tales, which, as Osborn says, may be found in the black relations of the Jesuits, and some French and Spanish Pasquilers. These slanderers were chiefly, Parsons or Persons, and Sanders, who scrupled at nothing that would tend to blacken the character and reputation of Elizabeth. Thus besides the above, and other stories of Elizabeth herself, it was stated by Sanders that her mother, Anne Boleyn, was Henry VIII’s own daughter; and that he intrigued, not only with Anne’s mother, but with her sister. 14
In Burton’s Parliamentary Diary, 15 “Osborn 16 says, “Queen Elizabeth had a son, bred in the state of Venice, and a daughter, I know not where or when; with other strange tales that went on, I neglect to insert, as fitter for a romance than to mingle with so much truth and integrity as I profess.” Fortunately we are not obliged to prove that Francis Bacon was Robin Hood’s pennyworths of the Tudor Court; many writers and poets were or are still under that obligation. Of one poet we must pause upon and offer his words of Gluttony, one of the Seven Deadly Sins that infers that Bacon was not born to Lady Anne Bacon and Sir Nicholas Bacon: 17 “My parents are all dead, and the devil a penny 18 they have left me but a bare pension, and that is thirty meals a day, and ten bevers 19 a small trifle to suffice nature. 20 O, I come of a royal parentage. My grandfather was a gammon of bacon, 21 my grandmother a hogshead of claret wine. My godfathers were these: Peter Pickle-herring and Martin Martlemas-beef. 22 O, but my godmother, she was a jolly gentlewoman, and well beloved in every good town and city; her name was Mistress Margery March-beer.”
1 Notes & Queries, No. 3. p. 41, 1849
2 S.H. Burke. Historical Portraits, Vol III. 1883
3 John Lingard. The History of England, Vol. V. pp. 273, 274, Boston, 1883
4 S.H. Burke. Historical Portraits, Vol II. 1883
5 The Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, p. 83. London, 1887
6 James Anthony Froude, M.A. History of England, Vol. V. p. 303. New York, 1867
7 MSS. Simancas; Froude, Vol. V. p. 87
8 Froude. Vol. V. p. 297
9 Hardwicke Papers. Vol. I. p. 121
10 Froude. Vol. V. p. 316
11 Ibid., p. 320
12 Ibid., Vol. V. p. 414
13 Alfred Dodd. The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon, 1931
14 Article on Elizabeth in Bayle’s Dictionary
15 Vol. IV. p. 135
16 Works, 1673. p. 442
17 Kit Marlowe. Doctor Faustus, 1588
18 Not a damned penny
19 Drinks or snacks
20 Satisfy the appetite
21 Ham
22 Beef slaughtered on November 11 for winter at Martlemas
The Persian Lady Sonnet
The restless swallow fits my restless mind,
In still reviving still-renewing wrongs;
Her just complaints of cruelty unkind
Are all the music that my life prolongs.
With pensive thoughts my weeping stag I crown,
Whose melancholy tears my cares express;
His tears in silence, and my sighs unknown,
Are all the physic that my harms redress.
My only hope was in this goodly tree,
Which I did plant in love, bring up in care;
But all in vain, for now too late I see
The shells be mine, the kernels others’ are.
My music may be plaints, my physic tears,
If this be all the fruit my love tree bears.
The Maiden Queen, and the Court which she then maintained at the Royal Palace of Greenwich, after noticing the appearance of the presence-chamber, the floor, after the English fashion, strewed with hay, is a portrait of her Majesty, in her sixty-fifth year, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, but black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops. She wore false hair, and that red. Upon her head a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Luneburg table. At this distance of time, it is difficult to say what this was. Elizabeth’s christening gift from the Duchess of Norfolk was a cup of gold, fretted with pearls; that noble lady being completely unconscious of the chemical antipathy between the acidity of wine and the misplaced pearls. Elizabeth seems thus to have been rich in those gems from her infancy upwards and to have retained a passionate taste for them long after their appropriateness as ornaments for her had ceased. With respect to the rich pearl earrings, it may not be uninteresting to remark that Elizabeth seems to have been particularly fond of pearls, and to have possessed the same taste for them from youth to even a later period than her sixty-fifth year. The now faded wax-work effigy preserved in Westminster Abbey (and which lay on her coffin, arrayed in royal robes, at her funeral, and caused, as Stow states, “such a general sighing, groaning, and weeping, as the like hath not being seen or known in the memory of man” exhibits large round Roman pearls in the stomacher; a carcanet of large round pearls about her throat; her neck ornamented with long strings of pearls; her high-heeled shoe-bows having in the centre large pearl medallions. Her earrings are circular pearl and ruby medallions, with large pear-shaped pearl pendants. This, of course, represents her as she dressed towards the close of her life. In the Tollemache collection at Ham House is a miniature of her, however, when about twenty, which shows the same taste as existing at that age. She is here depicted in a black dress, trimmed with a double row of pearls. Her point-lace ruffles are looped with pearls. Her head-dress is decorated in front with a jewel set with pearls, from which three pear-shaped pearls depend. And, finally, she has large pearl-tassel earrings. In the Henham Hall portrait 23 the ruff is confined by a collar of pearls, rubies set in a gold filagree pattern, with large pear shaped pearls depending from each lozenge. The sleeves are ornamented with rouleaus, wreathed with pearls and bullion. The lappets of her head-dress also are adorned at every crossing with a large round pearl. Her gloves, moreover, were always of white kind, richly embroidered with pearls on the backs of the hands. A poet of that day asserts even that, at the funeral procession, when the royal corpse was rowed from Richmond, to lie in state at Whitehall, “fish wept their eyes of pearl quite out, and swam blind after,” doubtless intending, most loyally, to provide the departed Sovereign with a fresh and posthumous supply of her favourite gems. 24
Of sanguinary measures from the realm; laws are made on the relief of the poor, on matters of the navy, on maintenance and increase of tillage, on the punishing of vagabonds, 25 forgers of evidences, clippers, washers, rounders, and filers of money, phantasticall prophecies, conjurers or sorcerers, buggerers, and perjurers, for translating the Bible and divine service into the Welsh tongue. An uncomfortable premonition of fear creeps upon Lady Anne Bacon’s sacris conciliis alterum columen; Sir Nicholas Bacon is temporarily dismissed from Court after a misunderstanding with the Queen who holds him privy to a book of John Hales, a most opiniative, but of much variety in learning man who wrote a favourable account of Lady Catherine Grey to the throne in case her Majesty should die without issue, to the House of Suffolk. John Hales, clerk of the hanaper, a learned and able man, and, like all who espoused this party, a zealous Protestant, had written, and secretly circulated, a book in defence of the claims of the Lady Catherine, and he had also procured opinions of foreign lawyers in favour of the validity of her marriage. For one or both of these offences he was committed to the Fleet prison, and the secretary was soon after commanded to examine thoroughly into the business, and learn to whom Hales had communicated his work. A more disagreeable task could scarcely have been imposed upon Lord Burghley; for, besides that he must probably have been aware that his friend and brother-in-law Sir Nicholas Bacon was implicated, it seems that he himself was not entirely free from suspicion of some participation in the affair. But he readily acknowledged his duty to the Queen to be a paramount obligation to all others, and he wrote to a friend that he was determined to proceed with perfect impartiality. In conclusion to this event, Hales was liberated after half a year’s imprisonment. Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, appeared to have seen the book, and either to have approved it, or at least to have taken no measures for its suppression or the punishment of its author, was not removed from his office; but he was ordered to confine himself strictly to its duties, and to abstain henceforth from taking any part in political business. But by this prohibition Lord Burghley affirmed that public business suffered essentially, for Sir Nicholas had previously discharged with distinguished ability the functions of a Minister of State; and he never desisted from intercession with her Majesty till he saw his friend fully reinstated in her favour. Lord John Grey of Pyrgo, uncle to Lady Catherine, had been a principal agent in this business, and after several examinations by members of the Privy Council, he was committed to a kind of honourable custody, in which he appears to have remained till his death, which took place a few months afterwards.
These punishments were slight compared with the customary severity of the age; and it has plausibly been conjectured that the anger of Elizabeth on this occasion was rather feigned than real, and that although she thought proper openly to resent any attempt injurious to the title of the Queen of Scots, she was secretly not displeased to let this Princess perceive that she must still depend on her friendship for its authentic and unanimous recognition. (Weston). 26 The hand of this time sweeps John Hawkins’ second voyage to the New World; Robert Dudley elevates to the peerage of Earl of Leicester; Galileo Galilei is born; John Valvin dies, and to end this sweep, Sir Nicholas Bacon’s former influence at Court is soon regained. Queen Elizabeth I’s speech is heard in regard to the Speaker of the House, Thomas Williams: the succession to the crown:
Williams, I have heard by you the common request of my Commons which I may well term (me thinketh), the whole realm because they give, as I have heard, in all these matters of Parliament their common consent to such as be here assembled. The weight and greatness of this matter might cause in me, being a woman wanting both wit and memory, some fear to speak and bashfulness besides, a thing appropriate to my sex. But yet the Princely seat and Kingly throne wherein God (though unworthy), hath constituted me, maketh these two causes 27 to seem little in mine eyes though grievous perhaps to your ears, and boldeneth me to say somewhat in this matter, which I mean only to touch but not presently to answer: for this so great a demand needeth both great and grave advice. I read of a philosopher whose deeds upon this occasion I remember better than his name, who always when he was required to give answer in any hard question of school points, would rehearse over his alphabet before he would proceed to any further answer therein, not for that he could not presently have answered, but have his wit the riper and better sharpened to answer the matter withal. If he, a common man but in matters of school, took such delay the better to shew his eloquent tale, great cause may justly move me in this so great a matter touching the benefit of this realm and the safety of you all to defer mine answer till some other time, wherein I assure you the consideration of my own safety (although I thank you for the great care that you seem to have thereof) shall be little in comparison of that great regard that I mean to have of the safety and surety of you all. 28
Coming to the summer of 1564, Queen Elizabeth visits the University of Cambridge. Her gracious intention of honouring this seat of learning with her royal presence was no sooner disclosed to the secretary, who was Chancellor of the University, than it was notified by him to the Vice-Chancellor, with a request that proper persons might be sent to receive his instructions on the subject. It appears to have been part of these instructions, that the University should prepare an extremely respectful letter to Lord Robert Dudley, who was its high-steward, entreating him in such manner to commend to her Majesty their good intentions, and to excuse any their failure in the performance, that she might be inclined to receive in good part all their efforts for her entertainment. So notorious was at this time the pre-eminent favour of this courtier with his Sovereign, and so humble was the style of address to him required from a body so venerable and so illustrious. Lord Burghley arrived at Cambridge the day before the Queen to set all things in order, and received from the University a customary offering of two pairs of gloves, two sugarloaves, and a marchpane. Lord Robert and the Duke of Norfolk were complimented with the same gift, and finer gloves and more elaborate confectionary were presented to the Queen herself. When she reached the door of King’s College Chapel, the Chancellor kneeled down and bade her welcome; and the orator, kneeling on the church steps, made her an harangue 29 of nearly half an hour. First he praised and commended many and singular virtues planted and set in her Majesty, which her highness not acknowledging of to shake her head, bit her lips and her fingers, and sometimes broke forth into passion and these words; Non est veritas, et utinam; On his praising virginity, she said to the orator, “God’s blessing of thy heart, there continue.” After that he showed what joy the University had of her presence. When he had done she commended him, and much marvelled that his memory did so well serve him, repeating such diverse and sundry matters; saying that she would answer him again in Latin, but for fear she should speak false Latin, and then they would laugh at her. This concluded, she entered the Chapel in great state; Lady Strange, a Princess of the Suffolk line, bearing her train, and her Ladies following in their degrees. Te Deum was sung and the evening service performed, with all the pomp that Protestant worship admits, in that magnificent temple, of which she highly extolled the beauty.
The next morning, which was Sunday, she went thither again to hear a Latin sermon ad clerum, and in the evening, the body of this solemn edifice being converted into a temporary theatre, she was there gratified with a representation of the Aulularia of Plautus. Offensive as such an application of a sacred building would be to modern feelings, it probably shocked no one in an age when the practice of performing dramatic entertainments in churches, introduced with the mysteries and moralities of the middle ages, was scarcely obsolete, and certainly not forgotten. Neither was the representation of plays on Sundays at this time regarded as an indecorum. A public disputation in the morning and a Latin play on the story of Dido 30 in the evening formed the entertainment of her Majesty on the third day. On the fourth, an English play called Ezechias 31 was performed before her. The next morning she visited the different Colleges, at each of which a Latin oration awaited her and a parting present of gloves and confectionary, besides a volume richly bound, containing the verses in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee, composed by the members of each learned society in honour of her visit. Afterwards she repaired to St. Mary’s church, where a very long and very learned disputation by doctors in divinity was prepared for her amusement and edification. When it was ended, the Lords, and especially the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Robert Dudley, kneeling down, humbly desired her Majesty to speak something to the University, and in Latin. Her highness at the first refused, saying, that if she might speak her mind in English, she would not stick at the matter. But understanding by Mr. Secretary that nothing might be said openly to the University in English, she required him the rather to speak; because he was Chancellor, and the Chancellor is the Queen’s mouth. Whereunto he answered, that he was Chancellor of the University, and not hers. Then the Bishop of Ely kneeling said, that three words of her mouth were enough. By entreaties so urgent, she appeared to suffer herself to be prevailed upon to deliver a speech, which had doubtless been prepared for the occasion, and very probably by Lord Burghley himself. This harangue is not worth transcribing at length: it contained some disqualifying phrases respecting her own proficiency in learning, and a pretty profession of feminine bashfulness in delivering an unstudied speech before so erudite an auditory: her attachment to the cause of learning was then set forth, and a paragraph followed which may thus be translated:
23 Engraved in Vol. VII. of Miss Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England
24 (a) Hentzner. Travels (b) Recollections of Royalty, Vol. II. p. 119
25 Of near an Act that came out in 1572 for the punishing of vagabonds; all convicted vagabonds aged fourteen or over to be whipped and burnt through the right ear
26 Weston. The Kings and Queens of England, 1852
27 Marriage and succession
28 Public Record Office with annotations by Sir William Cecil
29 There is a passage in Fielding’s famous history of Jonathan Wild, which possibly may soon become unintelligible to many readers, and therefore it may be proper to elucidate it in a few words. In Bk. III, Ch. VI., he observes, in justification of the speeches put into the mouth of Jonathan, whom he has there represented as an illiterate man, that the ancients not only embellished speeches in their histories, but “even amongst the moderns, famous as they are for elocution, it may be doubted whether those inimitable harangues, published in the monthly Magazines, came literally from the mouths of the Hurgos, &c. as they are there inserted.”
30 A Latin tragedy, acted before Queen Elizabeth in the magnificent chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, when she honoured that University with a visit in 1564. It appears from a Latin account of her Majesty’s reception at Cambridge, written by Nicholas Robinson, afterwards bishop of Bangor, that Dido was composed by one of the fellows of King’s College. See MSS., Baker, 7037, p. 203. The author of this opus oenustum et elegam, for so it is styled, we may suppose to have been John Rightwise, who was elected fellow of King’s in 1507; and, according to A. Wood, “made the tragedy of Dido out of Virgil, and acted the same with the scholars of his school (St. Paul’s, of which he was appointed master in 1522) before Cardinal Wolsey, with great applause.” Hatcher, in his MS., collections in the Bodleian Library, assigns it to Edward Halliwell, who was admitted a fellow of King’s College in 1532. The Death Of Dido, a masque, by R. C. 1621. It may be questioned whether this piece was printed in 1621. If it had appeared at that time, it would probably have been mentioned by either Kirkman, Langhaine, or Gildon; none of whom have taken notice of it. Jacob was the first who gave the title to it; and for the date we have no authority, or, which is the same thing, only that of Chetwood
31 A play, by Nicholas Udal, acted before Queen Elizabeth at Cambridge, 1564. “This day (August 8) was nothing done publique, save that at 9 of the clocke at night an English play called Ezekias, made by Mr. Udal, and handled by King’s College men onlye,” Nichols’ Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, Vol. III. p. 177
I saw this morning your sumptuous edifices founded by illustrious Princes my predecessors for the benefit of learning; but while I viewed them my mind was affected with sorrow, and I sighed like Alexander the Great, when having perused the records of the deeds of other Princes, turning to his friends or counsellors, he lamented that any one should have preceded him either in time or in actions. When I beheld your edifices, I grieved that I had done nothing in this kind. Yet did the vulgar proverb somewhat lessen, though it could not entirely remove my concern; that Rome was not built in a day. For my age is not yet so far advanced, neither is it yet so long since I began to reign, but that before I pay my debt to nature, unless Atropos should prematurely cut my thread, I may still be able to execute some distinguished undertaking: and never will I be diverted from the intention while life shall animate this frame. Should it however happen, as it may, I know not how soon, that I should be overtaken by death before I have been able to perform this my promise, I will not fail to leave some great work to be executed after my decease, by which my memory may be rendered famous, others excited by my example, and all of you animated to greater ardour in your studies.
After such a speech, it might naturally be inquired, which College did she endow? But, alas the prevailing disposition of Elizabeth was the reverse of liberal; and her revenues, it may be added, were narrow. During the whole course of her long reign, not a single conspicuous act of public munificence sheds its splendour on her name, and the pledge thus solemnly and publicly given, was never redeemed by her, living or dying. An annuity of twenty pounds bestowed, with the title of “her scholar” on a pretty young man of the name of Preston, whose graceful performance in a public disputation and in the Latin play of Dido before mentioned had particularly caught her fancy, appears to have been the only solid benefit bestowed by her Majesty in return for all the cost and all the learned incense lavished on her reception by this loyal and splendid University. (Weston). 32 Fruits of lunacy continues to leak from Parliament; Bacon’s private tutoring begins under the wing of Master John Walsall. The heights of magnanimity and love in studying could not prevail much upon a five-year-old as much as Nature whilst Lord Burghley, his uncle, upon his loyalty to the crown tells: “I do hold and will always this course in such matters as I differ in opinion from her Majesty as long as I may be allowed to give advice. I will not change my opinion by affirming the contrary, for that was to offend God to whom I am sworn first. But as a servant I will obey her Majesty’s commandment and no wise contrary the same, presuming that she, being God’s Chief Minister here, it shall be God’s will to have her commandments obeyed, after that I have performed my duty as a Counsellor.”
The reign of Elizabeth had passed its meridian when two events happened which marked a new epoch in literature. The Euphues, forerunner of the English novel, appeared, and a few months later, in 1579, The Shepherd’s Calendar, harbinger of an illustrious era of English poetry, dropped anonymously into being, as it were from the clouds. These two events ushered in the glorious day of England’s Renaissance. From this date, despite social strife, war and rumours of war, the new day advanced in splendour; the gentle Colin retuned his oaten pipe, and sang the joy of home-coming; The Faerie Queene, Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece thrilled English hearts in hall and palace; above all, dramatic art felt the quickening impulse, and works of a new order, many anonymous, and many under the names of hitherto unknown men. Marlowe, dead at twenty-nine in a brawl; Greene, at thirty two from a debauch; Peele, before forty, from an unspeakable disease; and when these had finished their course, similar works, bearing the name Shakespeare, imparted new life to the theatre. Similar works, because these men today lead the van in the history of the great literary revival of the sixteenth century, and the works accredited to them, some certainly without warrant, are marked by the same expressions, display a knowledge of the same literary sources, and publish to the world the same lofty sentiments; in fact, this has been so fully recognized that critics, almost without exception, have declared that they collaborated or duplicated the work of one another. That they should have done so unconsciously exceeds the limits of reason. Elizabeth detected, as ominous, all dwarfs and monsters, and seldom could be induced to bestow an appointment, either civil or ecclesiastical, on a mean-looking, ugly man; in fact, it was a proverb at Court that she regarded ugliness as a greater crime than witchcraft. “She always,” says Francis Bacon, “made sedulous inquiries regarding the moral qualifications of any candidate for preferment; and then considered his main and appearance. Upon one of these occasions she observed to me “Bacon, how can the magistrate maintain his authority if the man be despised?” 33
Returning to these men wits of pen, because they appear so early in the movement, there were others who fell into line during the fourty or more years of its especial activity, and got their names on the Roll of Remembrance: Drayton, Nashe, Lodge, Dekker, Heywood, Sidney, Massinger, Fletcher, Kyd, Webster, Jonson, and others; some with slight reason. This, however, is not a history of English literature; that has been written more or less acceptably by Hallam, Symonds, Saintsbury, Lee; and we mention these writers only in recognition of their place in the literary movement of which we have spoken. All must agree that it would be interesting to know who was really the moving spirit in this great movement. Across the Channel it was Ronsard who initiated and directed the French Renaissance. In England it has been accredited to Spenser, who was a poor exile in Ireland; it is quite evident that the men we have named were incapable of doing it. Who was the English Ronsard? Does he reveal himself in the Shepherd’s Calendar or the Shakespeare Works?
Robert Jones 34
He vowed by his shepherd’s weed,
An oath which shepherds keep.
That he would follow Phillyday,
Before a flock of sheep. 35
In studying the Shakespeare works, we cannot fail to be impressed with the persistent purpose, which they reveal of enlarging the scope of human thought, and leading the mind to loftier heights of knowledge. Their author reasoned wisely in selecting the drama for this purpose, for by it he could appeal through ear and eye to the common understanding, and open the readiest path to the popular mind, leaving upon it impressions less easily effaced than those of the novel. The dramas and poems which comprise these works were unlike anything which had been known heretofore to the English people, being saturated with the loftiest sentiments and the acutest philosophy, as well as the profoundest learning. We may well ask, were these works, which were so far above the intellectual capacity of the patrons of the theatre, written for mere gain? Halliwell-Phillipps, attributing their authorship to the Stratford actor, and having an intimate knowledge of his character, asserts that his “sole aim was to please an audience, most of whom were not only illiterate but unable either to read or write.” Pope crystallizes the same opinion in a verse, which everybody has read, that he “For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight, and grew immortal in his own dispite.” But such an opinion of the author of the Shakespeare works involves a paradox, we can conceive of him only as one who, conscious of being entrusted with an important message to man, makes its delivery his chief object. It is especially with these works that we have to do.
The distribution of domestic buildings in the Elizabethan age, is well illustrated in the Survey of Theobald’s taken by the Parliament’s Commissioners in 1650. This mansion was built by Lord Burleigh about 1560: it afterwards became a favourite residence of James I., who received it from Lord Salisbury in exchange for the manor and palace of Hatfield. The houses erected during the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth century were frequently of magnificent dimensions, picturesque from the varied lines and projections of the plan and elevation, and rich by the multiplicity of parts; but they had lost all beauty of detail. The builders, having abandoned the familiar and long practised Gothic style, were now to serve their apprenticeship in Grecian architecture: “stately Doricke and neat Ionicke work” were introduced as fashionable novelties, employed first in the porches and frontispieces and gradually extended over the whole fronts of buildings. Among the architects employed at this period some foreign names occur. Holbein was much favoured by Henry VIII., and gave various designs for buildings at the old palaces of Whitehall and St. James. John of Padua had a salary as deviser of his Majesty’s buildings, and was employed to build the palace of the protector Somerset. Jerome de Trevisi is also mentioned; and it is said that the designs for Longleat and a model of Audley End were obtained from Italy. The last circumstance is altogether extraordinary; this was the very best period of Italian architecture, and it seems highly improbable that semi-barbarous designs should proceed from the country of Palladio and Vignola. Thorpe, Smithson, and other Englishmen, were also eminent builders; and probably these persons might have travelled, and thus have gained the imperfect knowledge of Grecian architecture, which appears in their works. They were immediately followed by Inigo Jones, who formed his style particularly on the works of Palladio, and became the founder of classic architecture in Britain.
As one time will owe another, Queen Elizabeth openly took sides with the players of her time. To the Earl of Leicester’s troupe she issued special royal licenses, authorizing them to act as well within the city of London and liberties of the same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any cities, towns, boroughs, whatsoever; and to the Mayors and other Officers she gave strict orders not to interfere with such performances: “Willing and commanding you, and every of you, as ye tender our pleasure, to permit and suffer them herein without any your lets, hindrances, or molestation during the term aforesaid, any act, statute, proclamation, or commandment heretofore made, or hereafter to be made, to the contrary notwithstanding.” A license was a direct challenge to the authority of the Lord Mayor. He dared not answer it as directly; but on December 6, 1574 he secured from the Common Council the passage of an ordinance which placed such heavy restrictions upon acting as virtually to nullify the license issued by the Queen, and to regain for the Mayor complete control of the drama within the city. The Preamble of this remarkable ordinance clearly reveals the puritanical character of the City Government: “Whereas heretofore sundry great disorders and inconveniences have been found to ensue to this city by the inordinate haunting of great multitudes of people, specially youths, to plays, interludes, and shews: namely, occasion of frays and quarrels; evil practises of incontinency in great Inns having chambers and secret places adjoining to their open stages and galleries; inveigling and alluring of maids, specially orphans and good citizens’ children under age, to privy and unmeet contracts; the publishing of unchaste, uncommonly, and unshamefaced speeches and doings; withdrawing of the Queen’s Majesty’s subjects from divine service on Sundays and holy days, at which times such plays were chiefly used; unthrifty waste of the money of the poor and fond persons; sundry robberies by picking and cutting of purses; uttering of popular, busy, and seditious matters; and many other corruptions of youth, and other enormities; besides that also sundry slaughters and maiming of the Queen’s subjects have happened by ruins of scaffolds, frames, and stages, and by engines, weapons, and powder used in plays. And whereas in time of God’s visitation by the plague such assemblies of the people in throng and press have been very dangerous for spreading of infection. And for that the Lord Mayor and his brethren the Aldermen, together with the grave and discreet citizens in the Common Council assembled, do doubt and fear lest upon God’s merciful withdrawing his hand of sickness from us (which God grant), the people, specially the meaner and most unruly sort, should with sudden forgetting of His visitation, without fear of God’s wrath, and without due respect of the good and politic means that He hath ordained for the preservation of common wheels and peoples in health and good order, return to the undue use of such enormities, to the great offense of God.”
In February 1577 the Office of the Revels made a payment of 10d. for the carriage of the parts of the well counterfeit from the Bell in Gracious Street to St. John’s, to be performed for the play of Cutwell. On June 23, 1579 James Burbage was arrested for the sum of £5 13d. as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play. The name of the proprietor of this Inn-playhouse is preserved in one of the interrogatories connected with the case: “Item. Whether did you, John Hynde, about xiii years past, in Anno 1579, the xxiii of June, about two of the clock in the afternoon, send the Sheriff’s Officer unto the Cross Keys in Gracious Street, being then the dwelling house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London. The two prose books played at the Bell Savage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain; the Jew and Ptolome, shown at the Bull, neither with amorous gesture wounding the eye, nor with slovenly talk hurting the ears of the chast hearers.” 36 At the beginning of July 1582 the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting the city authorities to give license to his servant, John David, this bearer, to play his profess prizes in his science and profession of defence at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or some other convenient place to be assigned within the liberties of London. The Lord Mayor refused to allow David to give his fencing contest in an Inn, which was somewhat too close for infection, and appointed him to play in an open place of the Leaden Hall, which, it may be added, was near the Bull. In 1583 Tarleton, Wilson, and others note the stay of the plague, and ask leave to play at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or the Bell in Gracechurch Street. 37 The Privy Council on November 26, 1583 addressed to the Lord Mayor a letter requesting that “Her Majesty’s Players, Tarleton, Wilson, etc., may be suffered to play within the liberties as heretofore they have done.” And on November 28, the Lord Mayor issued to them a license to play at the sign of the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the sign of the Bell in Gracious Street, and nowhere else within this City. James Cranydge in 1587 “played his master’s prize the 21st of November at the Bellsavage without Ludgate, at sundry kinds of weapons,” and played with him nine masters. Tarleton became a member of the Queen’s Players in 1583, and he died in 1588. 38
32 Weston. The Kings and Queens of England, 1852
33 S.H. Burke. Historical Portraits, Vol IV. 1883
34 For a brief bio, see Part II: Jones Robert
35 The composer [Robert Jones] (or his printer) seems to have omitted some verses of this poem. There is an obvious break of continuity between the third and fourth stanzas
36 Extract from Stephen Gosson’s The Schoole of Abuse, 1579
37 William Rendle. The Inns of Old Southwark, p. 235, 1583
38 Tarlton’s Jests
At the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, where the Queen’s Players oftentimes played, Tarleton coming on the stage, one from the gallery threw a pippin at him. There was one Banks, in the time of Tarleton, who served the Earl of Essex, and had a horse of strange qualities; and being at the Cross Keys in Gracious Street getting money with him, as he was mightily resorted to. Tarleton then, with his fellows playing at the Bell by, came into the Cross Keys, amongst many people, to see fashions. At the Bull at Bishopsgate was a play of Henry V. The several jests indicate that the Inn-yards differed in no essential way from the early public playhouses. In 1588 John Mathews played his master’s prize January 31 the Bell Savage without Ludgate and in November 1589, Lord Burghley directed the Lord Mayor to give order for the stay of all plays within the city. In reply the Lord Mayor wrote: “According to which your Lordship’s good pleasure, I presently sent for such players as I could hear of; so as there appeared yesterday before me the Lord Strange’s Players, to whom I specially gave in charge and required them in Her Majesty’s name to forbear playing until further order might be given for their allowance in that respect. Whereupon the Lord Admiral’s Players very dutifully obeyed; but the others, in very contemptuous manner departing from me, went to the Cross Keys and played that afternoon.” On October 8, 1594 Henry, Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain and the patron of Shakespeare’s company, wrote to the Lord Mayor: “After my hearty commendations. Where my now company of players have been accustomed for the better exercise of their quality, and for the service of her Majesty if need so require, to play this winter time within the city at the Cross Keys in Gracious Street, these are to require and pray your Lordship (the time being such as, thanks to God, there is now no danger of the sickness) to permit and suffer them so to do.” By such devices as this, the players were usually able to secure permission to act within the city during the disagreeable months of the winter when the large playhouses in the suburbs were difficult of access. Around 1596, none of those who went to Paris Garden, the Bell Savage, or Theatre, to behold bear-baiting, interludes, or fence play, can account of any pleasant spectacle unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold, and the third for a quiet standing. 39 March 31, 1602 the Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor that the players of the Earl of Oxford and of the Earl of Worcester had been joined by agreement together in one company, to whom, upon notice of her Majesty’s pleasure, at the suit of the Earl of Oxford, toleration hath been thought meet to be granted. And as the other companies that are allowed, namely of the Lord Admiral, and the Lord Chamberlain, be appointed their certain houses, and one and no more to each company, so they do straightly require that this third company be likewise appointed to one place. And because they are informed the house called the Boar’s Head is the place they have especially used and do best like of, they do pray and require that the said house, namely the Boar’s Head, may be assigned unto them. That the strong Oxford-Worcester combination should prefer the Boar’s Head to the Curtain or the Rose Playhouse indicates that the Inn-yard was not only large, but also well-equipped for acting. In a draft of a license to be issued to Queen Anne’s Company in 1604, those players are allowed to act as well within their now usual houses, called the Curtain and the Boar’s Head, within the County of Middlesex, as in any other playhouse not used by others. Four years later (1608) the Boar’s Head seems to have been occupied by the newly organized Prince Charles’ Company. From the payments of the City of Leicester we find the entry: “Itm. Given to the Prince’s Players, of Whitechapel, London, xx s.” 40