The Heretics (John Shakespeare 5)

by Rory Clements

  She converted in secret to Catholicism, the faith she had once loathed, and sometimes spoke out in favour of her new religion. Her father Thomas Gray, described as a ‘vigorous Puritan’, began to harbour suspicions.

  As it became clear that she had converted, he became enraged and started to threaten her. ‘Nothing was left him,’ says Weston, ‘except to show openly his implacable anger and hatred and his solid alliance with the devil.’

  Her father and her husband joined forces against her. Though she was pregnant, they would not allow her the services of a midwife. Subsequently, she suffered a miscarriage, narrowly escaping with her life.

  She left her husband and went home where she had to put up with daily barracking from her father. Even her mother, who still loved her, argued with her constantly.

  When they tried to make her to go to the parish church, she refused and they attempted to drag her there by force.

  Tempers boiled over and a public row ensued. Her father was heard to call her a ‘base woman’. In a fury, he drew his dagger and ran at her. Ursula tried to flee but her father caught her. There was a struggle against a door in which she managed to wrest the knife from him. She ran off into the town but could find no refuge. The locals were terrified of her father. ‘But an honourable and wealthy woman having pity on her took her in for the night,’ wrote Weston. ‘Then, with the help of Catholics, it was arranged for her to ride off on horseback as quickly as possible to a certain Catholic house.’

  Not only did she leave behind her parents and husband, but also her own children. She is believed to have never seen her family again.

  Though Ursula is long dead, it would be wrong to suggest that my character Sorrow Gray is based on her, nor would it be right to impugn her reputation in any way. It was merely the idea for Sorrow that came from the young woman’s story.

  The Deaths of Drake and Hawkins

  In August 1595, the great mariners Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins set sail from Plymouth on what would prove to be their last voyage. They both died at sea while attempting to capture Panama from the Spaniards.

  Hawkins, whose brilliant reputation as a seafarer and treasurer of the navy has been tarnished in recent times by his activities as a slave trader, died first, on 12 November of that year, after a two-week illness. He was sixty-three, and was buried at sea near Porto Rico. He was largely credited with having built the fast, nimble warships that defeated the Spanish Armada.

  Drake followed two months later, dying, as he had lived, in a most dramatic fashion. The seemingly immortal admiral caught dysentery in January 1596 while refitting his ships at the island of Escudo.

  He put to sea again, but his condition worsened and by 27 January, as they approached Porto Bello, it became clear he would die soon. An unseemly battle over his property and will then broke out between one of his captains named Jonas Bodenham and his brother Thomas Drake.

  Sir Francis ordered the two men to shake hands to make up. In the early hours, sensing that death was close, he rose from his sick bed and had his servants dress him in his armour so that he might die as he had lived, as a warrior.

  But he was too weak to remain on his feet and returned to his sickbed, where he died within the hour at 4 a.m. on 28 January, aged fifty-six. He had asked to be buried on land, but he was buried at sea in a lead coffin off Porto Bello.

  His heroic place in history was guaranteed by his defeat of the Spanish Armada, but it was his circumnavigation of the globe – the first by a sea captain (Magellan died en route) – that was his greatest glory.

  Three Early Feminists

  Queen Elizabeth was not the only powerful and highly educated woman in England in the sixteenth century. Three of the very finest minds of the age appear as characters in this book . . .

  Lady Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent (born 1554)

  Susan Bertie spent her early years in exile in Poland with her parents Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Richard Bertie. They were outspoken Protestant radicals who returned to England only when Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. Susan was educated to a high degree. Miles Coverdale, the translator of the Bible, has been named as her tutor. At sixteen, she married Reginald Grey, who was raised up as Earl of Kent, but she was widowed three years later, aged nineteen. Susan joined the court and was taken into Elizabeth’s orbit. In 1582, she married the soldier Sir John Wingfield and went with him to the Low Countries where their son Peregrine was born in 1589.

  Back in England, she became a patron of the arts and a mentor to the young Emilia Lanier, who was greatly influenced by Susan’s Protestant humanist circle of friends. Lady Susan greatly valued and emphasised the importance of young girls receiving the same level of education as young men. Emilia Lanier called her ‘The mistress of my youth, the noble guide of my ungoverned days’.

  Emilia Lanier (1569–1645)

  One of the first Englishwomen to be a published poet, Emilia has been suggested as the Dark Lady of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. She was the daughter of Baptista Bassano, a court musician. On his death she entered the household of Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent, where she received a humanist education, learnt Latin and developed a love of poetry. She became the mistress of the great courtier and patron of the arts Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, who was forty-five years her senior and held senior office as Lord Chamberlain. When she became pregnant at twenty-three with his son Henry, Hunsdon paid her off and she married a musician named Alphonso Lanier.

  She was clearly a beautiful woman and it is possible she met William Shakespeare about this time. The identification of her as his ‘Dark Lady’ – seemingly the object of the author’s affection in his sonnets – was first suggested by the historian A. L. Rowse. Much of what is known about her is revealed in the diary of Dr Simon Forman, who seems to have had a sexual interest in her but was rejected. He says she had several miscarriages and tells us much about her happy relationship with Lord Hunsdon and her subsequent unhappy marriage to Lanier. ‘The old Lord Chamberlain kept her long,’ says Forman. ‘She was maintained in great pomp . . . she had £40 a year.’ Not so with Mr Lanier. ‘Her husband has dealt hardly with her and consumed her goods and she is now in debt.’

  In 1611 her proto-feminist poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum was published with dedications to both Lady Susan Bertie and the Countess of Cumberland. It tells the story of Christ’s passion almost entirely from the point of view of the women around him. Emilia makes a point of denying the subservience of women.

  Margaret, Countess of Cumberland (1560–1616)

  The countess was widely read with an inquiring mind that led her to embrace many subjects in the arts and sciences, including alchemy, medicine and mining. Born Margaret Russell, the daughter of the Earl of Bedford, she was given an extensive education – a benefit she would pass on to her own daughter, Lady Anne Clifford. At the age of seventeen, Margaret married George Clifford, the Earl of Cumberland, but eventually left him because of his continual adultery.

  One of the talented women she helped was the poet Emilia Lanier, who had also been befriended and mentored by Lady Susan Bertie. In the early 1600s, Emilia spent some time at Margaret’s home in Cookham, and in turn dedicated poetry to her. Margaret’s daughter described her mother as having a ‘very well favoured face with sweet and quick grey eyes and a comely personage’. She tended towards Puritanism and was deeply pious.

  The Dean of Rochester’s Wanton Wife

  Alice Blague might be described, kindly, as a fun-loving girl. Married at fifteen to an ambitious clergyman named Thomas Blague, who was twice her age, she spent the rest of her life having affairs with other men and spending far too much money.

  She doesn’t appear in The Heretics as a character, but she is mentioned by other people. In truth she could easily be made the subject of a book in her own right.

  Much of what is known about her comes from the secret diaries of Dr Simon Forman, who used the word ‘halek’ as code for having sex. He certainly haleked with Ali
ce Blague on at least two occasions – in June and July 1593 – and earned a fortune from her by providing medical and astrological consultations for a wide range of conditions and personal problems.

  Forman gives us a very clear description of her character and appearance: ‘She had wit at will but was somewhat proud and wavering, given to lust and diversity of loves and men; and would many times overshoot herself, was an enemy to herself and stood much on her own conceit. And did, in lewd banqueting, gifts and apparel, consume her husband’s wealth, to satisfy her own lust and pleasure, and on idle company. And was always in love with one or another. She loved one Cox, a gentleman on whom she spent much. After that, she loved Dean Wood, a Welshman, who cozened her of much: she consumed her husband for love of that man. She did much overrule her husband.

  ‘She was of long visage, wide mouth, reddish hair, of good and comely stature; but would never garter her hose, and would go much slipshod. She had four boys, a maid and a shift [miscarriage]. She loved dancing, singing and good cheer. She kept company with base fellows of lewd conversation – and yet would seem as holy as a horse.’

  Alice came from a well-to-do family, as did Blague, who had been schooled in the household of Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth’s most senior minister.

  Dr Blague, a Cambridge graduate, evidently believed he was destined for the very top of the church tree – for both he and his wife consulted Dr Forman about his chances of success when bishopric vacancies arose.

  But perhaps it was his wife’s activities that held him back. One of her lovers was, like her husband, a church dean. She was utterly infatuated with Dean Owen Wood, who was married to a wealthy widow, and she was desperate to know whether he was in love with her.

  However, Dean Wood’s eye was as roving as hers. We know this because a maid from his house consulted Forman (as did many great ladies and gentlemen of the court). This maid told Forman of the day she saw her master with another man’s wife, having seen him ‘occupy Wem’s wife in her own house in the garret. He did occupy her against the bedside, her mistress being abed in Tottenham.’

  Maybe Forman thought it wise not to pass on this bit of tittle-tattle to Alice Blague.

  Alice gave Forman substantial amounts of money for her frequent consultations. For instance, she wanted to know whether her supposedly good friend Martha Webb (another patient that Forman took to bed) was having an affair with Dean Wood behind her back; she also wanted to know if she should have a child with Dean Wood. These two consultations cost her £1 3s 3d and she promised the huge sum of £5 if Forman would use magic to ensure that Wood would be hers alone.

  Belief in magic and demonic possession were commonplace in the Elizabethan era. The Blagues knew all about supposed possession by devils, for one servant girl had been ‘much vexed with spirits in her youth’.

  Many of Alice’s consultations concerned physical ailments. She and her husband were given expensive medicines for a whole host of illnesses and pains.

  During the plague year of 1603, she became frantic with worry and went time and again to Forman. He said her only problem was that she was afflicted ‘with melancholy, and much wind. It makes her heavy, sad, faint, unlusty and solitary; and will drive her into a melancholy passion’.

  She survived the plague and continued her wanton way through life for many more years.

  Did the Dean of Rochester know about his wife’s philandering? He once asked Simon Forman ‘whether she be enchanted by Dean Wood or no’. But the answer he got was evidently ‘no’, for Dr Blague never forsook her. On his deathbed in 1611, he made her executor of his will and praised ‘her wisdome and fidelitie’. Little did he know. Or perhaps he simply turned a blind eye to her activities.

  As for Alice, a mother of four, she went on to marry a prison keeper named Walter Meysey. They soon separated.