An Elizabethan Assassin

by John Hall

  Notes

  78 Gauci and Mallat, The Palaeologos Family.

  79 Currently in Chino State Prison, Mr Paleologus writes to me insisting he is innocent of murder and continues his attempts to have the conviction overturned. He was previously an inmate of Corcoran maximum security prison, where high-profile fellows included Charles Manson, Juan Corona – convicted of twenty-five murders – and, until recently, Sirhan Sirhan, assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.

  Epilogue

  At the end of our examination of the life, careers, ancestors and descendants of Theodore Paleologus, how close are we to deciding whether he was the genuine article or an imposter?

  We know that the credentials set out on the Landulph brass were accepted at face value by generations of eminent historians, with the one exception of Oldmixon. There was, however, a marked predisposition in former times to repeat the assertions of earlier scholars without further investigation. This explains the longevity of mistaken or even fraudulent statements such as Theodore’s two non-existent marriages in Chios and Suffolk, to mention only the most obvious. There are other endlessly repeated elements of the traditional story, such as the Greek deputation travelling to Cornwall and Barbados, which we might treat with some scepticism but which would not affect the question of authenticity.

  This rests essentially on what we can glean from the archives and allowing for the question mark over the paternity of John, the rest of Theodore’s ancestry seems amply borne out by the documents at Pesaro.

  My own view is that the century-long association with their patrons the Rovere dukes of Urbino is the most persuasive fact we have before us. This dated back to a time when memories of the imperial refugees were, if not fresh, not beyond recall.

  Have present-day historians cast an objective eye over Theodore? Hoaxers like Demetrius Rhodocanakis have left a stain on the name of Paleologus and the outlandish claims of later pretenders may well have made the entire subject beyond the pale for academic research, at least for the present. Steven Runciman was the doyen of Byzantine studies in his time and since the publication of The Fall of Constantinople in 1965 no one referring to the man buried at Landulph seems to have queried the new orthodoxy that he was an imposter: this despite the fact that Runciman makes a clear error of fact in the single reference to Theodore he committed to print. His case for the non-existence of a son of Thomas called John was grounded on the writings of Sphrantzes, the contemporary of the last emperor, but this supposedly contemporary chronicle has been undermined by historians since Runciman’s death.

  It is true that the bulk of the work we rely on to flesh out the story was undertaken by clerical amateurs like Jago Arundell and Adams, but their perseverance cannot be faulted and their labours rooted out a great deal of evidence unnoticed or ignored by professional historians. Runciman himself said that as an historian he added to his writings ‘the qualities of intuitive sympathy and imaginative perception’, and perhaps our Landulph antiquaries should be allowed the same latitude.

  The paucity of ascertainable facts led to much scholarly speculation which was later shown to be misguided. And indeed many of the abiding myths must be laid at the door of Jago Arundell, who despite his ground-breaking research was not immune to the romantic susceptibilities of his day, a kind of osmosis from the gothic novels. There is no doubt he ardently desired that Theodore should be de stirpe Imperatorum, to a point where he may well have been inclined to turn a blind eye to any contrary evidence. It is surely significant that after so many years absent from England he returned to be buried beside Theodore, the misappropriated coat of arms of Arundell fixed to the wall below Theodore’s imperial eagle. Canon Adams himself, despite decades of forensic investigation, took up ideas which have since proved to be mistaken; no doubt there are many conjectures in this book which will suffer the same fate.

  The last question to ask on the matter of descent is whether it really matters. Until fairly recent times there was a generally shared veneration for old names and old titles which has largely disappeared. Few today would lose sleep over the extinction of an ancient name, as few of us care for a concept of nobility which rests exclusively on heredity: these days we are probably more enthralled by charlatans and pretenders. This is a huge cultural change that would have astounded and horrified most educated people throughout history.

  Canon Adams reflected that whatever the truth might be, Theodore was surely no upstart imposter, and sportingly added: ‘He was certainly no saint but compared to most of the imperial family he almost deserves a halo.’ For my own part, years of studying Theodore Paleologus have led me to conclude he was indeed of imperial stock, though probably a bastard. I am also inclined to think his ancestor was from the refugee generation following the fall of Constantinople rather than a related branch from an early time. John was most likely a son of Despot Thomas, but probably illegitimate. Alternatively, the shadowy ancestor may well have been the son of one of Thomas’s undisputed offspring, the feckless Andrew or the apostate Manuel. As I speculated earlier, in the former case Theodore’s great-great-grandfather and namesake, the Theodore born in 1504, would therefore be the legitimate if extremely embarrassing child of Andrew’s Roman wife Caterina. Small as the possibility is, I am loath to abandon it entirely. Emperor and prostitute: if I were a writer of fantasy fiction, I could desire no better heredity for my hero.

  The debate over Theodore has kept scholars busy for centuries, spawned generations of charlatans and dreamers, and propelled his dynasty into realms of ever more fantastic invention. With a theoretical pedigree stretching back to the Caesars, he already belongs to a world closer to fable than to history. And however many of his different faces we glimpse – scholar, bigamist, master of horse, assassin, spy – the real Theodore always manages to slip back into the shadows. He may continue to intrigue and entertain us in after lives still undreamed of.

  I cannot end with a great revelation, but it is perhaps more appropriate that what remains is an enduring mystery rather than a cast-iron certainty. A final consolation is that if Theodore Paleologus was indeed an imposter, the fraud itself is now of a respectable antiquity.

  Appendix A

  The Joust And The Changing Face Of Warfare

  The tournament was still a living tradition at Elizabeth’s court, though the primary purpose was now to shine in an elegant spectacle rather than to beat the living daylights out of an opponent. Taking their cue from the royal example, great nobles erected tilting barriers at their country properties, as the first Earl of Lincoln did at Tattershall. His son Earl Henry respected the tradition.

  Introduced to tilting in his youthful days at Urbino, Theodore Paleologus belonged to the last generation who saw the trappings of the tournament as an indispensable part of courtly life in England.80 Following a pattern set by French and Italian courts, the lists at Westminster had increasingly taken the form of the carrousel, a spectacle in which knights could show off extravagant armour and costume, enact emblematic scenes and display enigmatic imprese, usually to do with undying love for an unfeeling lady or devotion to the Virgin Queen. The most admired feats of horsemanship came to resemble an equestrian ballet. Theodore might have recognised this as a vestige of the world of Castiglione, though the great Italian arbiter of manners warned his perfect courtier to beware taking part in a tournament unless he was splendidly equipped as to horse, weapons and armour, and to keep in mind that it was unbecoming for a gentleman to deign to appear at ‘some country show’ where spectators and participants were common folk. This may have caused some heart-searching at Tattershall.

  Already an anachronism because of the changing face of warfare, the tourney was to be effectively supplanted under the Stuart kings by elaborate court masques, pageants and play-acting which carried minimal threat of physical harm. A new perspective on chivalry was signalled by the publication in 1605 of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the tale of a ridiculous knight-errant who tilted at windmills. The author was an old soldier who had been ma
imed at the battle of Lepanto and endured five years as a captive of the Barbary pirates.

  But the military value of the lists had not disappeared. Aggressive energies were still channelled in a disciplined manner in side attractions to the joust, such as running at the ring and the quintain, which helped develop practical eye-and-hand skills for use in warfare. Most of all, the coordination of horse and rider were increasingly important because of the rapid increase in the use of handguns by light cavalry. By the late sixteenth century the fast-moving mounted pistoleer had largely displaced the lumbering heavy cavalryman in full armour, notably in the wars of the Low Countries in which Paleologus had fought under Prince Maurice.

  The new breed of light cavalrymen were armed with wheel-lock pistols – there might be several of these weapons, attached to belt and saddle and even stuffed into boots. These mounted soldiers were known in German as reiters, in French, reitres, in Italian, raitri, in English, riders. Riders had to be consummate horsemen as their effectiveness in battle depended on moving fast in tight formation towards the enemy’s infantry, firing their weapons at close range, then wheeling away to make room for the following rank of the squadron. One of the prominent English soldiers fighting in the Netherlands, Sir Roger Williams, was an enthusiastic supporter of the new tactic. In his Briefe Discourse of War published in 1590 he declared: ‘Without a doubt, the Pistoll discharged hard by, well charged and with judgement, murthers more than the Launce.’ Speed and manoeuvrability came at the expense of personal safety, however, since riders necessarily dispensed with much of their armour. It was in such a charge of riders at the battle of Zutphen that Sir Philip Sidney received a deadly Spanish musket ball in his unprotected leg.

  There seems a paradox in the fact that the high-born Englishmen most closely associated with the romance and old-world spectacle of the Elizabethan tournament – the likes of Sidney, Leicester and Essex – were eager proponents of the new-style warfare, as demonstrated by the many portraits in which they pose with the latest handguns. The Earl of Lincoln’s gentleman rider was surely of the same mind. His long service in the continental wars, coupled with his famed equestrian skills, almost certainly point to Paleologus as a rider in the contemporary military sense, with the pistol as a key item in his private armoury.

  The kind of education in the military arts Paleologus gave to young John Smith was summarised by Sir Charles Cornwallis, an early biographer of Henry Stuart,81 who would become Prince of Wales on the accession of his father James VI of Scotland to the English throne. Prince Henry hero-worshipped Maurice of Nassau, who sent Henry with his compliments ‘a Dutch captain … a most excellent engineer in all manner of Things belonging to the Wars’. We read that the prince ‘did also practice Tilting, Charging on Horseback with Pistols, after the manner of the Wars, with all other the like inventions. Now also delighting to confer, both with his own, and other strangers, and great Captains, of all Manner of Wars, Battle, Furniture, Arms by Sea and Land, Disciplines, Orders, Marches, Alarms, Watches, Stratagems, Ambuscades, Approaches, Scalings, Fortifications, Incampings.’

  Notes

  80 The Western-style tournament had reached as far as Byzantium during the Paleologan era. Emperor Andronicus III learned the sport from Italian knights who escorted his bride, Anne of Savoy, to Constantinople in 1326.

  81 Cornwallis, Discourse of the Most Illustrious Prince Henry, Late Prince of Wales, first published London, 1641.

  Appendix B

  Paleologus’s Letter To The Duke Of Buckingham

  Monseigneur

  L’honneur & La courtoisie qu’il vous a pleu me tesmoigner a vostre derniere venue en ceste Ville de Plymmouth, me donnent la hardiesse de vous remercier par ceste ci, n’estant pas capable assez de Le Vous tesmoigner par discours, plustost par effect, estant un gentilhomme, né de bonne maison & adonné a toute sort d’honnesté Exercise digne du Nom que ie porte, mais malheureux au reuers de Fortune que mes Ancestres & moi ont senti. Vous priant Monseigne de croire que s’il vous plaist de m’employer suiuant vostre promesse, Vous trouuerez en moi, fidelité & suffisance assez (si ie l’ose ainsi dire) & prendrez pitié d’un poure gentilhomme qui peut & desire seruire le Roy en ce qu’il professe. Je dis Monseigneur qui peut, Ayant vescu & respandu son sang a la guerre depuis sa Jeunesse, comme il a pleu au feu Prince d’Orange, & autres djuers Seigneurs Anglois & Francois qui m’ont veu & cognu, du rendre tesmoinage. Que s’il plaist a Vostre grandeur de m’employer au seruice du Roy, & commander a Sir James Back qu’il lui plaise de me donner de vostre part quelque chose pour m’aider a passer le reste de ma vie, Il ne sera pas Ingratement employé & esperant vous donner toute sorte de contentement, apres auoir prié Dieu pour Vostre Sante & prosperite, Je demeurai a Jamais

  Monseigneur

  Vostre treshumble & tres obeisant Serviteur

  Theodoro Paleologe

  De Plymmouth ce seix Mars 1628

  Appendix C

  The Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain is a Greek Orthodox authority established in 1922, the year of the Smyrna massacres. It covers the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, the Irish Republic and Malta. It takes its name from one of the Seven Churches named in the Book of Revelation.

  Known in classical times as a great centre of dyeing and the indigo trade, Thyateira was located in what is now the modern Turkish city of Akhisar. In Revelation, Thyateira is where Jezebel entices the Christians into sexual immorality. In the Acts of the Apostles, a woman called Lydia, ‘from the city of Thyateira and a dealer in purple cloth’, was baptised by St Paul and is honoured by the Orthodox Church as the first known European Christian. The ruins of Thyateira were explored by the Revd Jago Arundell during his pilgrimage to the Seven Churches.

  Elected as head of the Orthodox in Britain in 1988, Archbishop Gregorios is a Cypriot born near the now Turkish-occupied city of Famagusta. In 1994 he established the only Orthodox church in Cornwall, a former Methodist chapel at Falmouth.

  There are an estimated 300,000 Greek-speaking residents of the United Kingdom.

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