Editors Weekly Round-up, August 25, 2019

by the EHFA Editors

Linda Root has the spotlight this week with a comparison of the screenplay and the source material for the 2018 film "The True Life of Mary Queen of Scots". How does the film stand up?

The True Life of Mary Stuart and the Movie Version

Part 1,  Part II 

by Linda Fetterly Root

   

 

 

Editors Weekly Round-up, April 7, 2019

by the EHFA Editors

Never miss a post on English Historical Fiction Authors.

Linda Root takes the spotlight in this week's round-up. Enjoy!

Katherine, Countess of Suffolk 

and the Fall of the House of Howard

by Linda Fetterly Root

Katherine, Countess of Suffolk and the Fall of the House of Howard

by Linda Fetterly Root

When researching my recent novels focusing on the Gunpowder Treason and its aftermath, I uncovered a list of seven English aristocrats who were on retainer to the King of Spain. Had their identities become public after the events of November 5, 1605, there would have been a public outcry demanding they be tried for treason. Some were persons in high places. The list was closely guarded, even from the king. The last thing James wanted to hear was news of a handful of embedded spies at court so early in his reign. Of the five men and two women on the list, some were no doubt closet Catholics, some sought political gain, and others were in it for the money. The best known of the seven was Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, a notorious antipapist and no friend of the King of Spain. Motives behind his duplicity are still debated. But the most dangerous of the lot was one of the women. She was Katherine Knyvet Howard, Countess Suffolk, and of the motives mentioned, she possessed all three. Others were prosecuted for plots she promulgated, and some of them died. Her only punishment was banishment, forcing her to do her scheming on a smaller stage. The fall of her husband’s mighty house is often blamed on her conniving

Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk

Katherine, Countess of Suffolk

Two of Henry VIII's wives were Howards, and both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard ended their lives before the block. Yet, the House of Howard withstood the stigma. Great Harry's Dynastic claim was new and tenuous. He and his offspring needed the military prowess, wealth and prestige inherent in the Howard bloodline. Although Henry VIII did not trust them as he once had, by the time Elizabeth ascended in 1558, the Howards had reacquired much of their former precedence. Even when Elizabeth's cousin, the mighty Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, was executed for secretly plotting to marry the captive Queen of Scots and ostensibly restore England to the Catholic Faith, the performance of Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham during the Armada threat had restored the family to high favor before Elizabeth died and the crown passed to James VI of Scotland, Marie Stuart’s son.  At the time, the leader of the Howard faction was Thomas Howard, then known as Baron Howard de Walden.  He had been a child when his father was executed at Tower Hill in 1572.

When James I ascended to the English throne in 1603, one of his first official acts was to make an earl of the man who might have been his step-brother had the Duke of Norfolk married the Queen of Scots. By then, the new Earl of Suffolk had married the widow of Baron Richard Rich, the clever and attractive Katherine Knyvet. The new Countess of Suffolk was a noted beauty, an heiress, and a woman possessed of an insatiable thirst for power. She and the Earl had several children including three daughters who figured prominently in the ambitions of their redoubtable mother, who traded them as commodities.  But the Countess was more than an overly ambitious parent.  Among other questionable activities, she was a paid agent of the King of Spain. Despite the dominance of males in the society of her day, she was the most richly compensated of Felipe III’s agents and one of few amongst the Seven who knew who most of the others were. She was Cecil’s courier and a Hapsburg spy using the codename Rodan.

However, five new names came to dominate the politics of 1605: Cates, Fawkes, Percy, Winter, and Wright, to which others were added as what we know as The Gunpowder Conspiracy expanded.  The plan to blow up Parliament on its opening day when the Royals were in attendance came surprisingly close to fruition when it was thwarted. Its principals were scions of aristocratic Catholic Midland families. The King, and his minister Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, was certain the handful of primary suspects had not acted alone. The Jesuit Mission to England and anyone who harbored or supported it were also targeted. It was a bad time to have ties to the Midland Catholic families who had priest hides in their mansions. Among others, suspicion fell upon the well-known recusant relatives of the deceased Lord George Vaux, whose sisters Anne Vaux and Eleanore Brooksby were disciples of the Jesuit Superior, Father Henry Garnet. Also, their sister-in-law Eliza, the self-styled Dowager Lady Vaux, was believed to have kept the most flamboyant of the Jesuits, John Gerard, as a member of her household for as long as six years, sometimes in hiding and at other times, using aliases of Brooke, Standish, Lee, and Tomson while frequenting the drawing rooms of Midland aristocratic families and charming the ladies.

.

However, in early November 1605, Gerard’s link to the Vaux estate at Great Harrowden presented a problem for the Countess of Suffolk, who could not risk being identified as a possible traitor. She had just negotiated a beneficial marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to the youthful Lord Edward Vaux.  The young people were eager to wed, for unlike participants in most arranged marriages, they were very much in love. To avoid impropriety on the part of the lovers prior to the nuptials, Eliza sent her son to the Low Countries for a tour. But when the Gunpowder Treason surfaced, and the Dowager Lady Vaux was hauled off to London to be interrogated, the Countess lost no time before insulating her family from taint. Taking advantage of the absence of the Vauxs, she arranged a hasty marriage of her daughter to aging Sir William Knollys and sent her distraught daughter to his bed in virtual bondage. The details of the forced marriage might have gone unnoticed by historians were it not for litigation in modern times over claims of Elizabeth Howard’s descendants to Lord Knollys’ earldom of Banbury. Apparently, both of her sons bore striking resemblances to Lord Edward Vaux, who Elizabeth married before her octogenarian husband’s body cooled. The competing claims to the Banbury title on the one hand and the Vaux inheritance on the other spawned a case at Common Law establishing the rules governing uterine bastardy, some aspects of which survive in current British and American family law litigation (The Case of the Earl of Banbury, 1813).

 Lady Suffolk’s role in her daughter’s heartbreaking marriage must have inspired her to do better in the future. She married another of her daughters to the son of Lord Robert Cecil, a match which increased her husbands’ power at court.  But soon she faced another marital misadventure in need of correction, one that provided England with a scandal even she could not control. It began with another ambitious betrothal of a daughter, Frances, when she was a lass of fourteen, and ended with the fall of the House of Howard.

2nd Earl of Essex

The Duke of Norfolk was not the only peer to lose his head during Elizabeth Tudor’s reign. Her young favorite, the handsome and opportunistic Robert Devereux, 2^nd Earl of Essex, resented his treatment by the Queen after his military failures in Ireland and launched an abortive rebellion.  He was executed on Tower Green in 1601.
When James Stuart came to England in 1603, he restored the lands and titles to Devereux’s young son, who became a close companion to Prince Henry Frederick.

3rd Earl of Essex as a child

The new Earl of Essex was thirteen when the Countess of Suffolk, probably with support from her brother in law Northampton and the Earl of Salisbury, arranged a marriage between Essex and 14-year-old daughter Frances. In those days, sex between couples of so young an age was considered dangerous, so the marriage went forward, but the bedding was delayed. Robert was shipped to Europe before the marriage could be consummated and his adolescent Countess remained at court in the care of her parents. A noted beauty, she soon became highly visible.

Earl of Essex 

Countess of Essex

Robert Carr, Somerset

 When, at age 17, Essex came back from his European tour with plans to deflower his bride, the long-delayed bedding ceremony did not go well. Frances snorted, and Robert snored, and there was no need to check the sheets to know the outcome.  It soon became apparent the couple detested one another. It was equally evident that Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, was smitten with the king's favorite, Robert Carr of Ferniehirst, a Scot. He was a posthumous son of Thomas Ker of Ferniehirst, one of Marie Stuart’s lifelong champions, and possessed mannerisms ideal to the court of James Stuart, who preferred the company of men. Initially, the king’s minister Salisbury, promoted him because his presence at court kept James occupied and out of Salisbury’s hair.

Thomas Overbury

Carr had an older friend named Tom Overbury, an Englishman he had met in Edinburgh earlier in his youth, who had the skills and education needed to help Carr navigate the politics of Court and Council.  Soon Carr was giving advice to the king on topics headier than where to buy the best Belgian lace. Rabie Carr had looks and charm, but Overbury had brains. Concurrently, it was becoming obvious to the Howards that Frances and her dashing husband were irreconcilably estranged. Katherine and her brother-in-law, the Earl of Northampton, hatched a plan to end the Essex marriage on grounds it had not been consummated.  Essex did not oppose if his wife confirmed her allegations of his impotence was limited to attempts with her. Books have been written about the litigation, which became a cause celebre at court. There was open wagering as to the outcome. Frances agreed to submit to a physical examination of her hymen by a group of midwives, on condition she could insulate herself from embarrassment by wearing a veil. Whoever appeared shrouded, probably Northhampton's daughter was declared a virgin and an annulment was granted.

Carr was not so easily snared. Frances was enthralling, but Tom Overbury urged restraint. He considered Frances a tart and cautioned that marriage to her would be a step-down, not up. To silence him, her uncle Northampton convinced James to offer Overbury an ambassadorship to Russia, but Overbury was having none of it. Overbury went to the tower for declining the offer. In September 1613, he died, ostensibly of natural causes. Carr was named Treasurer and granted the Somerset Earldom. On December 26, 1513, he married Frances in a service attended by the King.

The Howard triumph did not last. In September 1615, with Carr’s power at its pinnacle, a Tower warder shouted ’Poison!’ Rumors abounded, yet King James did nothing until Carr audaciously carped at him for showing favor to the charming sycophant George Villiers (Buckingham). The anti-Somerset faction included Chief Justice Edward Coke and Attorney General, Francis Bacon, who prosecuted the Somersets for the Overbury murder. Only Frances confessed. Both were convicted and sentenced to death, but always quick to pardon those he had held in affection, James spared them both. Their commoner co-defendants were not as lucky. Trial testimony implicated  Katherine in obstructing justice through bribery, but she was not charged.  

In 1619, in a final scandal, the Suffolks were convicted of embezzling from the Crown. The Countess spent only ten days in the Tower but was forever banished from the court she had used as a marketplace for influence peddling. The Somerset marriage deteriorated, and without a male heir, the line was doomed. To the Countess of Somerset's credit, Essex had similar problems with his second wife.
~~~~~~~~~~

Editor's Weekly Round-up, November 11, 2018

by the EHFA Editors

Join us every week on English Historical Fiction Authors. We have saints and sinners, politics and war. Read about kings, queens, the common man and woman, and legends from ancient to post-WWII.

Linda Root takes the spotlight in this week's round-up. Enjoy!

The Man in the Tower Suite ~ 

Henry Percy, the Ninth Earl of Northumberland 

by Linda Root

Editors Weekly Round-up, January 7, 2018

by the EHFA Editors

Join us for original articles on all aspects of British history. Our round-up for the week ending January 6 features:

Traditional New Year's Celebrations

by Maria Grace

Bad Queens 

Part I & Part II

by Danielle Marchant

Lift Your Mug of Wassail and Raise Your Voice in Song: 

a Brief Look at Twelfth Night

by Linda Fetterly Root

Historic Woking in Surrey

by Lauren Gilbert

Editors Weekly Round-up, October 1, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

Enjoy this week's round-up of articles from the blog!

The True Will Shakespeare

by Linda Fetterly Root

Playing Doctor with the Queen

by Anna Belfrage

(an Editor's Choice from the archives)

The Comfort of Soup

by Lauren Gilbert

And don't forget - you can join our Facebook group and follow us on Twitter for more posts on British history.

The True Will Shakespeare

by Linda Fetterly Root

A comparison of the three earliest portraits, compiled by Stratford Brice
from Public Domain Art- Wikimedia

The faces of William Shakespeare

The three earliest portraits of Will Shakespeare are compared above. The first two were likely painted while he lived and the third was used when his first Folio was published. All three portraits are ante-dated by the sculpted image at Shakespeare's burial site in Trinity Church, shown below.

A Man of Natural Talent or a Ghostwriter?

I realize there are otherwise credible people who deny the Holocaust, the moon landing, the existence of the historical Jesus, and the assassination of JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald. Most of them are motivated by a political point-of-view compatible with their belief structure. I find no such justification for questioning the contribution to world literature by a guy named William Shakespeare. This does not mean other writers might not have contributed to his works. But does anyone claim Jim Henson did not create the Muppets simply because a second inventive genius named Frank Oz was involved? In treating the question, it would be disingenuous of me to claim the insight of the many distinguished thinkers who have raised the point: Freud, Samuel Clemons, and Helen Keller, to name a few, but their acknowledge genius does not make them right. Some of the disclaimers are based on mathematical analysis of word use and structure, others on principles of linguistics or the viewpoints expressed in the plays. Mine is simplistic and based on what we do know about Shakespeare, and what I know about the nature of writers. 

Shakespeare was real

Those disclaiming Shakespeare’s authorship of his many plays do not go so far as to claim there was no such person as William Shakespeare, the young man from Stratford-on-Avon. There is no question a merchant named John Shakespeare and his wealthy wife Mary Arden gave birth to a son named William, who was baptized by that name on April 26, 1564, at Trinity Church in Stratford-on-Avon. The custom of the times would suggest the ceremony occurred approximately three days after birth, which is why April 23rd is accepted as Shakespeare's birthday. Below is the record of John Shakespeare's son William's baptism.

While some doubters stress the paucity of information about Shakespeare’s early years to question the authenticity of his achievements, that is not the case when one factors in the profile of his father. John Shakespeare was politically active at the rural level, with ties to Midland England's aristocratic families including the Catesbys and probably the Treshams and Vauxes. At one time he was the Bailiff of Stratford—in modern terms, its mayor, a position unlikely to have been awarded to a highly visible recusant.

The restored family home on Henley Street, Stratford-on-Avon

At the time of Shakespeare’s birth, his father was probably what was called a closet Catholic—those who gave the outward appearance of embracing Anglicanism, but embraced the auld religion in the privacy of the home. His wife Mary Arden was Protestant and came from a wealthy family. She gave birth to eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood.

William Shakespeare probably attended the parish school in Stratford, which kept no surviving records. Some writers presume he was home schooled, but that is unlikely. While there was no compulsory education in early modern England, there were penalties imposed for homeschooling to avoid the curricula of parish churches, and until 1762, it was against the law for Catholics to teach. In addition, the prevailing evidence indicates both of his parents were illiterate. That single fact has been used to attack Shakespeare’s authorship of the large body of literature published in his name, but it confuses literacy with intellect.

Literate or not, Shakespeare's father was a civic leader. Snitterfield, the village where John Shakespeare grew to adulthood, had no parish school, but Stratford did. In all accounts, John Shakespeare was a successful designer/fabricator of leather gloves and headgear, with more than an average dose of entrepreneurship. He did, however, suffer an economic set-back possibly associated with his association with his Catholic leanings, or because his real estate investments were lucrative, but his other money lending was not, and at one point he had been charged and fined for usury. He became reclusive and ceased attending counsel meetings. Some writers state he was rehabilitated before his death, but by that time, his son William had acquired considerable wealth and influence, and may have been responsible for his father being granted a Coat of Arms which Shakespeare himself later used.

Sketch of the Schoolhouse at Stratford (PD Art)

Shakespeare was influenced by historical and religious events, consistent with themes expressed in his poetry and plays

John Shakespeare and William Catesby, father of the leader of the Gunpowder conspirators, were both dignitaries in their separate Midland communities and were friends. On one occasion, both appeared on the same list of those who had been fined by the Protestant church hierarchy for missing mandatory services. Both families had ties to the nascent Jesuit mission to England launched by the priests Edmund Campion and his Jesuit superior, Fr. Robert Persons.

Shortly after their arrival, the priests traveled to the Midlands, a hotbed of recusancy and Counter-Reformation sentiment. Father Campion likely stayed in the Catesby home, a mere 18 miles from Stratford-on-Avon. Persons is believed to have stayed with the Shakespeares.[1] There is evidence the two Jesuits distributed copies of a document to the recusants who harbored them. It was designed to be used as a model Spiritual Will and constituted a declaration of its testator’s abiding Catholic Faith. A handwritten copy signed by John Shakespeare and believed to be, for the most part, genuine was found in the rafters of one of William Shakespeare’s houses in 1757, although the first two provisions were likely forged by the man named Jordan who discovered them. Unfortunately, the entire document was later lost. Only it’s translation survives.[2]

Some historians use the materials concerning John Shakespeare as proof his famous son William knew the later martyred and Canonized Edmund Campion personally, but while it is possible, it is speculative. Shakespeare would have been a child at the time. What is apparent is Shakespeare’s youthful exposure to the English Catholic cause and thought which surely shaped his works. During his career, Shakespeare demonstrated the ability to treat issues in a provocative manner nevertheless inoffensive to his sovereign.

The lack of record does not mean Shakespeare was uneducated

One argument against Shakespeare as the likely author of his plays is a lack of education, a highly Charlatan point of view fed by its companion argument raising the lack of historical record of his youth. Each argument feeds the other, and neither considers what I consider to be a highly salient fact: in Shakespeare’s day, a Catholic education was illegal. It is likely that a child born of a recusant family might be overlooked in a rural schoolhouse, but those who advanced to England's few universities were vetted and culled. This does not mean there were no highly educated Elizabethan Catholics, but those who were had been educated abroad. The prime mover of the Gunpowder plot, Robert Catesby, attended nearby Oxford but dropped out rather than sign the Oath of Supremacy demanded of university graduates. Had Shakespeare been sent to Oxford, he would have faced the same obstacle.

As stated above, homeschooling was a criminal offense. Also, Shakespeare’s parents did not have the expertise to teach, but once the Jesuits appeared in the Midlands during Shakespeare’s early adolescence, it would not have been that difficult to place an educated priest or layman tutor in the home under the guise of a footman or a stablemaster. Before his father’s financial problems arose, the Shakespeare household could have afforded one. Other Midlanders such as the female recusant Eliza Roper, the Dowager Lady Vaux, held her own when interrogated by men like Lord Robert Cecil and his henchman Coke when suspected of harboring the much-sought-after Hunted Priest [3]John Gerard, and survived to establish a clandestine Jesuit boys’ school at the family estate at Great Harrowden .There is evidence the Wizard Earl of Northumberland intended to establish a similar school in the courtyard at Warkworth Castle. We cannot eliminate Will Shakespeare and the author of plays like Lear simply because he did not make his way to Oxford.

Nor would he have been ignorant of the dramatic form. Not only were plays written in Latin, a part of the grammar school curriculum at parish schools like the one in Stratford, but during Shakespeare's youth, aldermen issued licenses to more than twenty traveling theatrical companies [4] . And while It is tempting to confuse the terms educated and smart, even in modern times, such assumptions invite mistake. Think of John Steinbeck packing his duffel and leaving Stanford. Ben Franklin was homeschooled, and Ben Affleck dropped out of both the University of Vermont and Occidental College. Ever hear of a guy named Bill Gates? Frank Lloyd Wright? No one accuses self-taught Abraham Lincoln of having hired a ghostwriter to draft the Gettysburg address[5]. Look at your own life and think about gifted people you have encountered and ask yourself how many of them did not acquire their genius in a classroom.

What about William Shakespeare's early history? 

From the china cabinet of Linda Root, photo by the author

To illustrate the weakness of the argument of those who find insufficient evidence of Shakespeare’s potential because of the lack of documents from his youth, I entered the name of the most famous of my grammar school classmates into several search engines, and did not find enough information to distinguish him from others of the same name, although he has served as head of a federal financial entity. Next, I tried the same with the most successful graduate of my high school class and was overwhelmed by posting and videos, but none which dated back to his youth and early successes and failures. Why should we demand more of William Shakespeare than we do of Ron Rosenfeld or Dan Spinazzola? With Shakespeare, images of his birthplace, the site of his christening, and the houses of his mother, Mary Arden and his wife, Anne Hathaway can be found in the dinnerware in my credenza. We know William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway and they raised three children in Stratford-on-Avon, where his family remained when he moved to London. Details as to how he amassed his moderate fortune are sketchy, but hardly to the point to justify labeling his life as a husband and father living in rural England as ‘Lost Years.’

While there are several plausible stories as to what might have lured Shakespeare into the theater, and thus, to London, all of them are speculative. The fact, however, is he went, and by the time he arrived, he already had a reputation as an actor and fledgling playwright sufficiently widespread for a presumably jealous colleague, successful and prolific author Robert Greene, to call him an ‘upstart crow'.[6] ,[7] What Greene did not call him was a plagiarizer.

Robert Greene was not a fan of his youthful rival. He wrote his contemporary dramatists and begged them to put the upstart in his place. He may have thought Shakespeare's early works borrowed heavily on extant histories, but he never accused Shakespeare of putting his name to works penned by colleagues. The informative book, The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol 13, ed. Alfred Bates, London, Historical Publishing Company, 1906, pp. 104-107 makes a compelling case for Shakespeare’s authorship of his plays by referring to Robert Greene’s acerbic criticism, written shortly before Greene’s death in 1592 in critiques approaching the polemic. In The Drama, Bates make the following point concerning Shakespeare's productivity during the years prior to the bard's arrival in London only a year before his detractor's death:

‘Even in his wrath, however, Greene bears eloquent witness to Shakespeare’s diligence, ability and success, both as actor and playwright. Of Shakespeare’s amazing industry, and also of his success, there is ample evidence. Within six or seven years he not only produced the brilliant, reflective and descriptive poems of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece but at least fifteen of his dramas, including tragedies, comedies and historical plays’.

In conclusion, an argument I find compelling is based on my experience as a writer and a former prosecutor: Shakespeare's contemporaries most often propounded as the true authors of his plays never raised their claim. Those of us who write or perform are a prideful lot. We also have acquired the gift of access to a public audience: in essence, we have Voice. Would Ben Johnson, Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe, all of whom have been nominated as the true Will Shakespeare have remained silent when their colleague from Stratford-on -Avon claimed their masterworks? Never.

Christopher Marloew

Sir Francis Bacon

Ben Johnson

The Stratford Bust, possibly taken from a death mask.

References:

[1] Pearce, Joseph, The Quest for Shakespeare, Ignatius Press, 2008.
[2] Roth, Steve, Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country, Open House, 2 edition (December 23, 2013)3. [3]Gerard, John. S.J., The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest (Translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman, S.J., Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1952
[4] Wikipedia, ‘Shakespeare’s Life: The Lost Years’
[5] See https://despicablewonderfulyou.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/brilliant-minds-and-great-people-not-necessarily-with-a-college-degree/
[6] Robert Greene, Wikimedia, Shakespeare’s Life: The Lord years, and ` http://www.theatrehistory.com
The Drama; Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization: British drama – Alfred Bates, James Penny Boyd, John Porter Lamberton
[7] Bates, et al, Ibid.

~~~~~~~~~~
Linda Fetterly Root is a writer of historical fiction set in Marie Stuart's Scotland and Early Modern Britain. She is a retired major crimes prosecutor living in the Morongo Basin area of the Southern California hi-desert, on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park. She is a member of the Marie Stuart Society, the Historical Novel Society, and the Bars of California and the United States Supreme Court. William Shakespeare appears briefly in her current work-in-progress, The Deliverance of the Lamb, based upon the escape from England of flamboyant Jesuit John Gerard.

Editors' Weekly Round-up, September 3, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

Enjoy this week's articles from the blog.

The Promise and the Curse of Dynasty: 

A Stuart Tragedy

by Linda Root 

The Murder of Martha Reay: 

Victim Blaming in 18th Century England

by Lauren Gilbert

Hero's Journey: Royal Brothers and the Great Fire of London

by Sally A. Moore

Editor's Choice

Follow EHFA on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ehfablog.

Join us on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/212369672160560/, where readers, researchers, and authors come together to share posts on British history. Join the discussion. Find new books to read.

Editors Weekly Round-up, July 30, 2017 #EHFA

by the EHFA editors

Enjoy this week's round up of articles from the blog.

Lady Spy

by Linda Fetterly Root

Beowulf: Tales Told in Mead-Halls

by Mark Patton

Make Me Immortal with a Kiss

by Hunter S. Jones

The Overshadowed Brother

by Anna Belfrage

Editors' Weekly Round-Up, May 7, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

This week, EHFA featured a trio of excellent articles.

MayDay, MayDay, Mayday!

by Mike Rendell

(from the archives)

The Infamous Countess of Carlisle

by Cryssa Bazos

Who was Robert Catesby? 
A look at the real Man Behind the Mask
by Linda Root
(from the archives)

Who was Robert Catesby? A look at the real Man Behind the Mask

by Linda Root

Why May and not November?

One would expect a post about the mastermind behind the Gunpowder Treason to appear on November 5 rather than in May, but like so much else about the plot, it had not been planned for November. The original plot was to be sprung in February and designed to reach fruition by the end of spring.

Had the conspiracy gone forward as originally projected, by the end of May  James I would be dead, the crown would be tottering on the head of his nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth, the Earl of Northumberland or some other peer sympathetic to the Catholic cause would be Protector of the Realm, and the man who is widely blamed for it all--Guy Fawkes-- would have been in the Spanish Netherlands explaining the necessity for the regicide to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.

Then the king went and ruined it all by delaying the opening of parliament until autumn because he feared the lingering plague, unaware of greater dangers lurking.

In the months between the Spring of 1605 and infamous November 5, the original plan was refined and in a sense, improved, but it was also weakened as the circle of conspirators expanded. Then, on October 26, 1605, William Parker, Lord Monteagle, received an anonymous letter warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament. According to traditional histories, he passed the letter on to Robert Cecil, then known as Salisbury,  and consequently saved the day.

National Archives -{{US-Public domain - expired copyright.}}

Or did he?

There is an alternative history that propounds a different theory --one in which Cecil had been watching Guido (aka Guy) Fawkes for months based on warnings from English spies in the Netherlands who had documented his visits there. Fawkes had been placed on Cecil's watch list, and thus, Cecil had been aware of the plot all along. He simply had not acted  until he had  conceived of a way to net all of the culprits and designed a way to implicate the Jesuits in the evil deed.

According to that version, the Monteagle letter was a hoax concocted by Cecil and Lord Monteagle, taking advantage of one of the plotters who was Monteagle's relative, a cousin who had spilled the beans to Parker. The authorship of the letter was pinned on him and he mysteriously died of poison while languishing in the Tower, a very convenient act of damage control if Cecil actually was behind the ruse.

Lord Monteagle benefited from grants of interests in England's overseas enterprises at the cost of the life of a mere cousin. In the aftermath, Cecil got his vengeance against England's leading Jesuits, Catholics were again persecuted by a less tolerant King James than the one who had arrived from Holyrood two years earlier, and the false hero Monteagle got to keep the change.

So, how did Guy Fawkes figure in all of this?

The statement that Guy Fawkes almost blew up Parliament is about as accurate as when those of us who are Americans call George Washington the father of our country or claim that Abraham Lincoln fought the Civil War to free the slaves. There is much more to the Gun Powder Treason than a conspiracy to bring down the government, and it involves issues that plague us today. To put the caper at the feet of Guy Fawkes is about as complete an analysis as blaming 9/11 on Abdulaziz-a-Omari. How many readers recognize the name well enough to identify what part Omari played in it? Likewise, Fawkes was not the instigator of the Gunpowder Plot--he was the bloke who got caught.

Public Domain -Anonymous, from work already in the public domain.

Fawkes had two specific roles to play, both of them suited to his talents. His experience as a soldier made him the ideal choice when it came to spreading the explosives and lighting the fuse. But he also was a veteran of the wars waged against the rebellious Dutch, and in the Spanish Netherlands he was regarded as a loyal Catholic soldier whose interests aligned with those of Spain.

His projected duties went well beyond the event planned at Westminster. In modern terms, he was the conspirators' public relations man. His role was to plant the seed before the explosion and after the deed was done, market it to the crowned heads of Europe in the least offensive terms imaginable.

He was suited to the task because during the time he had spent in Flanders he had established many friendships among the Catholic English exiles and had performed well in services of the Spanish in their war against the Dutch. He had comported himself with honor and bravery exceptional in a mercenary,  and thus would be a persuasive apologist  in defense of what would otherwise appear a heartless regicide.

His was an important mission, designed to combat two features of the Gunpowder Plot that made it particularly odious.

 First, it threatened the concept of Divine Right of Monarchy, a fact certain to offend Philip III and Henry IV as well as the Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia, co-rulers of the Spanish Netherlands. Killing kings was the job of other kings and to be done with honor, not by knaves hunkering in dark basements stockpiled with explosives.

The other troublesome feature of the Gunpowder Treason is what we call collateral damage, and collateral damage of the worst kind, because among the intended victims would be women and children and many souls sympathetic to the conspirators. It was the aspect of the plot that even the most radical among the group found difficult to accept and for which they sought counsel from representatives of the Pope.  It was Fawkes' assigned duty to minimize the stigma by spreading the doctrine that had evolved as the plot progressed--the concept of necessary evil.

In spreading the propaganda, Fawkes was not the orchestrator but the messenger. Blaming him is like blaming a guy named Bernard Barker for Watergate.

Exclusive image: ID 16858073 © Steve Allen | Dreamstime.com 

Who was Robert Catesby?

Fawkes was a principal in the commission of the crime, but he was not the mastermind. That dishonor falls on the head of a man named Robert Catesby. He doesn't have a day named for him. No one goes running about on November 5 in a Robert Catesby Mask. No one stages public protests in his name, and to my knowledge, no one burns him in effigy. He was never tried of convicted or racked or disemboweled. He was fortunate to get himself killed while trying to escape arrest.

He was the ringleader, a member of the landed gentry, as were most of the others. And while he was firm in his Catholic faith, there was nothing that pointed him out as a man who would kill a king. He was known to be one of many recusants but he was not considered instrumental in any current Papist plot.

Catesby was an Oxford man who left before graduation, apparently to avoid having to take the Oath of Supremacy that would have forced him to betray his faith. He had taken part in the Essex Rebellion of 1601, and escaped Elizabeth's wrath by paying a substantial fine  that caused him to divest himself of his estate. By the time of Elizabeth Tudor's death, he had become radicalized. When hopes that James would lift restrictions on the mass when he ascended to the English throne in 1603 were dashed, Catesby decided it was time to act.

Ashby-Saint -Ledgers, home of Anne Catesby - Wikimedia Commons, P.D.

Parts of his early planning occurred at the family estate at Ashby-Saint Ledgers, Catesby's mother's home. It was centrally located to the residences of  the others he had drawn into the plot.

Among his earliest recruits were men he knew from the Essex Rebellion. Clearly it was Catesby and never Fawkes who was the principal in the evolving plot. And as other men were brought into it, it was Catesby who had the final word as to their suitability to join. Fawkes was accepted into the group  by virtue of his devout Catholicism, his contacts in Europe and his military expertise. When the Parliament set for February 1605 was cancelled due to the king's fear of plague in London, the plot had expanded from the original five--Catesby, Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes-- into one involving a group of thirteen men, many of whom were aristocrats.

The thirteen Gunpowder Plot conspirators- Wikimedia Commons-P.D.

The plan called for most of the participants to be far away in the Midlands when the Houses of Parliament exploded,which of course resulted in Fawkes being caught with the power keg. Part of the gang was posing as a hunting party near the manor house where the Princess Elisabeth resided. Their objective was to take possession of the princess and make her titular queen, possibly under a regency with the Earl of Northumberland as Protector.

News of Fawkes' arrest sent them into flight. When news of Fawkes's capture and the discovery of the explosives reached Catesby, he lied about it to his followers and those he hoped to recruit to his cause, declaring that the king was dead. When that deception failed, he changed his tactics and sought to build his own revolt. When he declared that his rebel group stood for God and Country, a resident of the village he tried to bring into his ranks replied, "We stand for King, God and Country." That indeed was the prevalent sentiment.

 It was not the first time that radical Catholic dissidents misjudged the sentiments of England's moderate Catholics. From the time when Catholic dissidents colluded with the King of Spain to place imprisoned Marie Stuart on the English throne, the loyalty of most English to their sovereign was underestimated.

Sadly, it was not the first time that moderates became the scapegoat of the royal wrath. After all, many English peers, protestant and Catholic, some with their wives and families in attendance,  were scheduled to attend the opening day of Parliament, including not just the king, but Queen Anne, the formidable and much admired Prince of Wales Henry Frederick and possibly the frail five year old Charles, Duke of York, who at last had learned to walk.  It is the strike against their own coreligionists and the entire royal household that so inflamed not just James but the common English.

In judging the heat of their passion, one recalls that the concept of a royal family was a new thing in the life experience of English men and women of the time. Elizabeth had been an independent childless woman. Her closest relatives were cousins, nephews and nieces. The Stuarts were still a romantic phenomena to the average English man and woman.  The plotters had attacked a popular new institution - that of the Royal Family.

While James opened the following year's Parliament with conciliatory words and assured the Catholic kings of Europe that he bore no ill will to his common Catholics, his policy of looking through his fingers at the activities of recusants ended. Thus, the plotters were defeated  in principal as well as in design.

One died and another was blinded in an accidental fire when gunpowder moved from other locations to Holbeche House in Staffordshire caught fire. Others, including Catesby, died the following day when the Sheriff of Worchester arrived with 200 armed men with no intention of extending leniency. Many depictions show Catesby being injured in close combat, but most historians report that he was shot.

Public Doman Art ((US)) -
Anonymous drawing of the death of Robert Catesby,
Wikimedea Commons 

Some say he died clutching a small statue of the virgin or at a larger statute of the virgin's feet. The men who died at Holbeche House were luckier than the survivors who suffered the indignities and horrors of a traitor's death. 

Fawkes did not give up his comrades until he was tortured by increasingly gruesome means. Others who were only peripheral to the plot also suffered. The mighty Earl of Northumberland was imprisoned in the Latham Tower for his association with his cousin Thomas Percy, one of the original five, with whom he had lunched on November 4th. Thomas Percy had died along with Catesby, some say from the same bullet, leaving no one to condemn or exonerate the earl, who eventually was released upon levy of a substantial fine but who never  regained his former prominence.

A second version shows Caesby in close combat over the death of his comrade Percy. Public Domain from Wikimedia Commons {{US-Art}}Add caption

The Death of Guy Fawkes:

King James personally participated at the initial interrogations of Fawkes,who was arrested under an alias he commonly used--John Johnston. James approved the use of what was called 'the gentle tortures' at first, and eventually allowed the more severe. Fawkes held out until he had been racked repeatedly, and when he did confess, his former proud signature was barely legible.

He met his death as he had lived his life, in the manner of a soldier. When Guy Fawkes and the others who suffered with him were taken to their place of execution at a site within view of the Houses of Parliament, unlike the others, Fawkes died from a broken back during his hanging and was dead before they cut him down. Thus the man whose likeness is a symbol of anti-establishment protest met his end.

Just as it so often happens today,  as it happened then, few remember the man who had set the conspiracy in motion,. It is Fawkes who is burned in effigy. Even the art of the day, as shown below, misrepresents the truth. When Fawkes met his death, there is no way he would have been able to climb the ladder on his own.

 John Cruikshank,Wikimedea Public Domain Art

Was Robert Catesby a Terrorist?
Much has been written about the relationship of the Gunpowder conspirators to modern terrorists. Certainly the act meets most definitions, all but one. It has been said in different words and in different contexts that the goal of terrorism is terror, and that terrorist acts target civilian non-combatants.

That was not the objective of Robert Catesby and the others involved in the Gunpowder Treason. In modern terms, what they sought was regime change.Their ultimate goal was to affect a revival of Catholicism. Their target was the king. The result of their failed conspiracy was to make his personal agenda as a Peacemaker difficult to implement.

To that extent, I disagree with Antonia Fraser and others who have called the Gunpowder plotters terrorists. Perhaps fanatics is the better term.  Nevertheless, even this thumbnail analysis begs the question of whether they deserve to be remembered by some as patriots who dared to strike out against a despotic regime. New information about the goals of James VI and I counter most arguments as to  the proprietary  of their cause.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Faith and Treason ~the Story of the Gunpowder Plot, by Antonia Fraser, is a remarkable work that should be in the library of any scholar of English history and anyone who loves historical mystery. It is written with the same vitality and style as her seminal biography of the Queen of Scots, and is often lauded as a well crafted detective story. It is the foundation of this thumbnail sketch and the basis of research in my current work in progress In the Shadow of the Gallows, the fourth installment in my series The Legacy of the Queen of Scots.

This Editor's Choice was originally published May 23, 2014

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Linda Fetterly Root is a retired major crimes prosecutor and a historical novelist writing of events in 16th and 17th century Scotland, France and England. She lives in the Morongo Basin area of the California desert with two wooly malamutes, a flock of chickens and assorted wild things. Her books are on Amazon.