The sailor interrupted Timon’s soliloquy. Eyes wide, he stood before the girl. “That’s my purse?”
“Here you go, sweet,” she said a bit impatiently. “You’ll need this in America.” She sighed and handed him the purse, patting his cheek.
“If ever I return, Nancy,” he said fervently, “I swear to make you my bride. You takes good care of me every time I’m in London. I see that now. You could have kept this, but you didn’t. That’s how good you are. So listen for word of the Concord in six months’ time. Find me. We shall seal ourselves together. Is that a deal?”
“Done,” she said gently, and clearly without the slightest hope that it was true.
The sailor nodded once, tried to kiss Nancy’s cheek, missed it, and headed back toward the Concord.
She turned then to seek approval from Timon.
But Timon was gone.
She took three quick steps forward, searching the speckled crowd for a thin, white shirt. There were striped sailors, crashing gulls, rioting roisters, a cutthroat with a scar, an apple-squire, and seven doxies, but nowhere among them could she find the one she wanted.
She thought for a moment that she saw his tousled black hair in that throng and called, “Wait!”
But her sailor boy, her Johnny, mistook the word, thought it was for him. He turned back smiling and waving.
“Never fear, Nancy! I’ll be back someday!”
She smiled distractedly at him, and when she looked back to see Timon’s face, it was gone once more. Into the crowd or onto the ship, she could not tell.
She rushed forward, not really knowing why she so urgently wanted to see the stranger once more. She searched the faces and the clothes. She stood on the dock for the next hour. She clutched the silver crown in her fist.
Once she fancied she saw him in the street, just out of the corner of her eye. He was not on board the ship at all, but headed back toward London! Alas, when she’d turned that way, no one was there. Surely he had boarded his ship.
The Concord weighed anchor and cast off at last. Nancy watched it ease away from the dock, turning seaward. She gazed high at the black-winged gulls circling the middle mast. Her eyes darted everywhere along the ship from bow to rudder, but they did not find the man they sought.
And when the white sails filled with sunlight and the river seemed to swell to help the ship away, she blew a single kiss onto the wind. She bade it find that man, wherever he might be, and fill his senses with the knowledge that a girl named Nancy wished him farewell.
Some Historical Data
The King James Conspiracy is, of course, a work of fiction. There is no evidence whatsoever that Pope Clement VIII employed assassins or anything like them. (The Borgia popes may have employed less than perfect means to accomplish their ends, but theirs is another story.) In this book Clement sends Brother Timon to Cambridge not to kill anyone but to memorize their work. The murders are a result of mad men, some of them associated with the Inquisition. There is ample historical evidence that the Inquisition employed men who were perfectly capable of murder. Additionally, the real Clement was dead by March of 1605, succeeded that year by Pope Leo XI, who died shortly thereafter that same year, and then by Pope Paul V.
James VI lived from 1566 until 1625. He was King of Scotland as James VI until 1603 when he became King of England and Ireland as James I. He succeeded Elizabeth I, the final Tudor monarch of England and Ireland. He died at the age of fifty-eight.
Most of James’s dialogue in The King James Conspiracy is taken directly from his own writings (paraphrased or quoted relatively accurately). James did, in fact, write Demonology; and the portrayal of the North Berwick witch trials of 1590, which included the participation of James, who was (then James VI of Scotland), is well documented in the volume Newes from Scotland. A copy of that book exists in the library of John Ferguson (1837–1916), a bibliographer and Regius Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University. A facsimile of the volume may be seen on the Web site http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/aug2000.html.
The Main Characters
1. Brother Timon is the only wholly fictional character in The King James Conspiracy, but he is, in part, based on the historical figure Giordano Bruno (1548–1600). Bruno’s expertise in the art of memory brought him to the attention of patrons, and he traveled to Rome to demonstrate his abilities to the Pope. He invented a new memory system, based on the work of the medieval scholar Ramon Llull, using circular memory wheels. He was able to memorize thousands of pages of text with perfect accuracy. He lived for a time in England and may have worked for Philip Sidney; was certainly at Oxford University. He was eventually arrested by the Inquisition; for eight years he was kept imprisoned and interrogated periodically. In 1600 he was burned at the stake with his tongue nailed to his jaw, a black bag over his head, and a sack of gunpowder tied around his neck. The specific charges for which he was executed are lost, and his body was so destroyed by the explosion of the gunpowder that it could not be identified with any certainty. The specifics of his memory science are lost to history.
2. Francis Marbury was a deacon at Christ Church, Cambridge. Because he spoke openly about his belief that most of the ministers in the Church of England gained their positions through political means rather than scholarly merit, he was often arrested and spent time in jail. He married Bridget Dryden (an ancestor of John Dryden) and eventually settled into the Church as rector of St. Martin’s Vintry, rector of St. Pancras, and finally rector of St. Margaret’s.
3. Anne Marbury was born in 1593 and would have actually been fourteen years old at the time of the novel. (While she was considered more or less an adult at that age in her own time, the general thought was that contemporary audiences might not accept her as such.) She was home-schooled and acquired from her father a keen interest in theological studies. She married Will Hutchinson when she was twenty-one and became an avid follower of the sermons of the Puritan minister John Cotton. In 1634, Will and Anne, along with their fifteen children, sailed to America following John Cotton in the hope of religious freedom. As Anne Hutchinson she is often cited as America’s first feminist, an early apologist for the rights of women in the colonies.
The Eight Cambridge Translators
1. Edward Lively was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and King’s Professor of Hebrew. As one of the world’s great linguists of his day, he was greatly admired by King James and was involved in the Bible’s translation from the beginning. Alas, he died in May, 1605, of a quinsy, leaving his children, according to one report, “destitute of necessaries for their maintenance, but only such as God, and good friends, should provide.”
2. Dr. Robert Spaulding was Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He succeeded Edward Lively as Regius Professor of Hebrew.
3. Dr. Lawrence Chaderton was born in 1537 into a wealthy Catholic family, and his father sent him to London to be a lawyer, but instead he followed a Protestant religious path. When Chaderton asked his father for economic aid in 1564 for such studies, his father sent him a sack with a groat in it—the smallest possible English currency of the day, and told him to go begging for the rest. Chaderton became master of arts in 1571; and bachelor of divinity in 1584. He was on friendly terms with many of England’s rabbis. He died in 1640 at the age of 103, one of the most honored scholars of his day.
4. Dr. John Richardson was born at Linton, in Cambridgeshire. He was first Fellow of Emmanuel College, then Master of Peter house. He was fond of the custom of holding public arguments in Latin that displayed his skill, and he likened himself to the ancient knights and Roman gladiators. He died in 1625.
5. Francis Dillingham was a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge. He was known as “the great Grecian” after a public debate with William Alabaster conducted in Greek. It was such a famous spectacle at the time that many of the scholars of the age used it as a benchmark from which to date themselves.
6. Dr. Roger Andrews was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and became
prebendary of Chichester and Southwell, owing to his older brother’s influence. He was a famous linguist in his time, but less regarded than his brother Lancelot, who was also the bishop of Winchester and president of the first company of translators.
7. Thomas Harrison was eventually Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was excessively modest though he was, in fact, one of the examiners in the University who tested other professors’ knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.
8. Dr. Andrew Bing, not mentioned in The King James Conspiracy, was the final member of the Cambridge team, a Fellow of Peter house, Cambridge. He was subdean of York in 1606 and was the archdeacon of Norwich by 1618.
Others
1. Lancelot Andrews (1555–1626) was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She appointed him dean of Westminster. King James held him in awe, and made him bishop of Chichester in 1605. He topped the King’s list of selected translators for the Bible.
2. Pope Clement VIII was elected in 1592, the same year Shakespeare received his first review, Tintoretto painted “The Last Supper,” and the plague killed 15,000 in London. During the famous jubilee of 1600, when three million pilgrims visited the holy places, Clement presided at a conference to determine the questions of grace and free will. On February 17 of that same year, he approved the guilty verdict against Giordano Bruno, an advocate of free will, who was then executed. Clement died in 1605 and a Medici was selected Pope Leo XI to take his place.
The Translation
1. From King James’s opening address at the Hampton Court Conference in January of 1604, where it was decided that the new King James Bible be created: “I assure you we have not called this assembly for any innovation, for we acknowledge the government ecclesiastical as it now is, to have been approved by manifold blessings from God himself, both for the increase of the Gospel, and with a most happy and glorious peace. Yet because nothing can be so absolutely ordered, but something may be added thereunto, and corruption in any state (as in the body of man) will insensibly grow, either through time or persons, and because we have received many complaints, since our first entrance into this kingdom, of many disorders, and much disobedience to the laws, with a great falling away to popery; our purpose therefore is, like a good physician, to examine and try the complaints, and fully to remove the occasions thereof, if scandalous; cure them, if dangerous; and take knowledge of them, if but frivolous, thereby to cast a sop into Cerberus’s mouth that he bark no more.”
2. Six groups of translators worked on the King James Bible, two at Westminster, two at Oxford, and two at Cambridge. Each group was assigned a specific section of the Bible to work on, but all the groups shared research at every turn before final decisions were made.
3. From the introduction to the Bible, written by King James: “Translation it is that openeth the window to let in the light, that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered. Indeed without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but children at Jacob’s well, without a bucket.”
An Abridged History of the English Translation of the Bible
The Christian Bible began mostly in Hebrew and Greek, and thereafter for a thousand years in Latin. The first notable translation into English was produced in the decade of the 1380s by John Wycliffe, made from the Catholic Latin Vulgate.
By 1516, the scholar Erasmus began to correct the corrupt Latin Vulgate and published a revised Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. Erasmus insisted that the Latin Vulgate had become inaccurate, and that it was important to refer to original languages to create a true English translation.
William Tyndale used the Erasmus text as a source to translate and print the first New Testament in English in 1525. For this work Tyndale was pursued by inquisitors and bounty hunters, but one of his texts found its way to King Henry VIII. Tyndale was eventually captured, tried, strangled, and burned at the stake in 1536. His last words were said to be “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”
That happened, apparently, in 1539, when King Henry VIII funded the printing of an English Bible known as the “Great Bible.”
John Calvin published a complete Bible in English in 1560. It became known as the Geneva Bible. It was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the chapters, so that referencing specific passages would be easier. Every chapter was also accompanied by extensive marginal notes and references. This was Shakespeare’s Bible, and he quotes it hundreds of times in the plays. It was the Bible most enjoyed by the general population of England.
Queen Elizabeth I tolerated the Geneva Bible, but the marginal notes were a problem. They strongly opposed any institutional church and were critical of rulers in general. She preferred the Bishops’ Bible, also in English, a less inflammatory version used by the Anglican clergy.
When Queen Elizabeth I died, Prince James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. The Anglican clergy approached him in 1604 demanding a new translation that might please everyone, priest and parishioner alike. Many proposed a combination of the Geneva and Bishops’ Bibles.
From 1605 to 1606 James’s scholars engaged in private research. From 1607 to 1609 the work was assembled. By 1611 the first printed copies of the King James Bible were available.
The Name Jesus and the History of Its Translation
Christ’s name may have begun as the Hebrew Yehoshua, translated into Aramaic as Yeshua, then to Greek as Iesous, Latin as Iesus, and finally English as Jesus.
The basic root of the name comes from the Hebrew name Yshua (Joshua), which means salvation. There is some argument, however, that a more complete explanation for the name Jesus comes partly from the authority of Moses. In Numbers 13:1-16, “the Lord said to Moses, send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. Send one man from each tribe, all of them princes . . . but Ho-shea, son of Nun, Moses called Yeho-shua.”
Early Christians cited this ability of Moses to invent names, and invented secret names for the Savior and His twelve disciples (Mark 3:16-19). By the fifth century BCE the name Yeho-shua (which means God Saves) had been shortened to Yeshua (Nehemiah 8:17). By the first century AD the name Yeshua was again shortened, first to Y’shua, then to Y’shu.
From the Gospel of Philip: “Jesus is a hidden name, Christ is a revealed name. For this reason Jesus is not particular to any language; rather he is always called by the name Jesus. While as for Christ, in Syriac it is Messiah, in Greek it is Christ. Certainly all the others have it according to their own language. The Nazarene is he who reveals what is hidden.”
The early gospels were often written in Greek, and there were two ways of turning a Hebrew name into a Greek name, translation or transliteration. The Greek translations attempted to approximate the sound of the Hebrew name and produced IhsouV, roughly pronounced ee-ay-soos.
In 382, when Jerome translated the Bible from Greek to the Vulgate or Common Latin Bible, he transliterated the Greek name of the Savior as Iesus because of the differences between the Greek and Latin alphabets. (By 1229, the Council of Toulouse made the Latin the official language of the Bible, forbidding translation into any other language.)
Finally in 1066, with the Norman invasion of England, the letter J, which had not existed in English before that time, was introduced and began to replace the I or Y in male names that began with those letters (because, it is suggested, that the J sounded more masculine). Iames became James. Iesus became Jesus.
In 1384, however, when John Wycliffe offered the first translation of the New Testament from Latin into English, he maintained the Latin spelling and pronunciation of Iesus. Apparently not until William Tyndale’s English language translation in 1525 did the name Jesus appear in the Bible.
Tyndale had 18,000 copies of his illegal English translation smuggled into England. He was capture
d in Belgium, tried by the Catholic Church for heresy, and executed in 1536 by strangulation, after which his body was burned at the stake. Eventually King Henry VIII sponsored an English language Bible. This gave James a regal precedent for his translation.
Other Texts
1. From the introduction to Demonology, written by King James (exactly as it was written, spelling unaltered): “The fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devill, the Witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine, not in any way (as I protest) to serve for a shew of my learning and ingine, but onely (mooved of conscience) to preasse thereby, so farre as I can, to resolve the doubting harts of many; both that such assaultes of Sathan are most certainly practized, and that the instrumentes thereof, merits most severely to be punished.
2. A book called Enemies of God: the Witch-Hunt in Scotland (1981) by Christina Larner is generally considered the standard book on the Scottish witch-hunt. A good discussion of the Berwick trials may be found in Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James VI’s Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts (eds.), 2000). I also found it enjoyable (as I always do) to consult Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (New York: Macmillan, 1922), especially his chapter concerning magic and religion.
But to hear the details from the horse’s mouth, this quote is from “News from Scotland” a historical document reporting the North Berwick witch trials of 1590 in which James was involved. It appears here exactly as it was written, spelling unaltered. “Geillis Duncane took in hand to help all such as were troubled or greeued with any kinde of sicknes or infirmitie: and in short space did perfourme manye matter most miraculous” [for this activity she was suspected of being a witch,] “Geillis Duncan was tortured with the pilliwinkes on her fingers and by binding or winching her head with a cord or roape. She did not confess until her tortures declared they had found her ‘devil’s mark’-it being believed at that time that by due examination of witchcraft and Witches in Scotland, it hath lately beene founde that the diuell doth generally marke them with a privie marke.”
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