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Castle-Come-Down faith
and doubt in the time of Queen Elizabeth I Part 2. THE CONTINENT (1583-1587) CHAPTER XV. "MY LUTE, AWAKE!" (1584) (Narrative of Thomas Throgmorton) "Instead
therefore of the sword, which we cannot obtain, The kindliest time of all the time that I have spent here, sojourning like great Brutus among the Trojan fugitives of ancient Greece, but myself not so great and (I fear) never finally so victorious--the only kindly time, as now I remember me, was in the spring of 1584. It was, to be sure, a precarious time and a time of doubt and fear, but it is not without reason that now I think upon it as our best time. There may be many causes, good and bad, why the young gentlemen of our nation do withdraw themselves to this side the sea. Some are moved by a youthful and vain tickling humor to be wandering abroad in strange and foreign countries; others are in hope here to grow to great preferment, advancement, employment, and wealth; others pursue matter of conscience, seeming to have sure confidence that here they may live with more liberty and ease of mind than within that realm of England they enjoy. Of these first two I cannot say much good, for here our greatest preferment is like to be a bare pension, which in the Spanish service we call libranca, that is our greatest wealth, which were nothing but the paper given us, and from time to time, after long sitting before doors and padding after the paymasters of the army, a small note of promise to pay which we may perhaps redeem in the city at a murderous discount. And for employment, why that is like to be in the armies, to be shot through and through with English arrows, or if not that, then as a spy or something worse, and like dogs trained to a great lord's hand, glad to snarl and bite where we are commanded to and set on. And all, our soldiers, our spies, made sport of oftentimes and spat upon by the men of other nations, who reckon us as traitors and malcontents, like dogs to be kicked and despised by uncharitable men. But some men come to us in conscience, in hope of free worship, which otherwise in England at this day they cannot have, and here I will say nothing. For the wisdom and reason of this course lies in the breast of the man, or I may say of the woman too, who chooses it, and some would come with our Lord to the Calvary Hill for the same cause. Some are scholars and may come to enroll in the priesthood, even mere youths who cannot learn Catholicly at home, and come to us very young, and many wish only in time to travel home again for the solace of them that remain, and perhaps to gain a martyr's crown. These blessed youths I am in awe of, as perhaps I would be fascinated to observe a moth approach the flame, albeit a holy flame. There is, too, a fourth category of those amongst us here, after those who come foolishly for adventure's sake and those who come to make their fortunes, and those who come for faith, which is those who less come to this side than flee the other. These men truly do I pity, for no choice was theirs; it is as if they had awakened one morning to find the continents revolved beneath them, arising from their beds in a strange, friendless land and forced now to walk abroad in the same, while their hearts are still at home. I am, I suppose, rather of all four than of any one. When my poor father died, harried into his grave by the infamous earl of Leicester, whose encroachments in the city and country of Chester my father had set himself vainly to combat, then it was plain and evident that no good would come to me in those parts. Not only would his lordship ever have me in his books, but also, for that we were known recusants at that time, and because of the charges frivolously brought upon my father by Leicester's friends in the courts, I would everywhere be observed in all my attempts; and our other woes still prosecuted upon us, my father's lands sold to repay great sums of peculation, as is said, that never he did see. Well, I chose this way hitherward, for adventure, perhaps, being but a young man, and employment; chiefly for conscience I like to think; and somewhat also for fleeing the implacable earl, who like an avenging god or alastor pursues his adversaries fully to the third generation. My brothers, though, would not take flight with me, Francis, who remained behind for the queen of Scots her sake, and our little George, who lay in prison too, uncharged in any matter of the law, until a half year later, in July, when he was set out of the postern gate and bid to walk his ways. It is too too plain what trials we suffer daily. I bid you prevent me from starting now, or I shall weep till Sunday. But the worst is, for all our cold reception and tardy hospitality in these towns here, the worst is our treacheries among ourselves. In the spring of '84, and this I remember gladly, these factions were not yet come in amongst us, or leastwise were they not come in to harry us like old Cloots and make us wish us never born. Mr. Arundell had but newly come over with my Lord Paget, fleeing (like me) the unappeasable wrath of my lord of Leicester. It was my brother's trouble which had sent them headlong flying, but more than that I never learned of him, for he was loath to speak upon that theme. The Lord Paget, who at their coming was his very friend, grew somewhat apart from us. Though all of us made a party still for the good of our great lady the queen of Scots, yet was there some coldness and strangeness between Mr. Morgan and Mr. Paget and some of theirs on the one side, and Mr. Fitzherbert and Mr. Foljambe and others on the other, who look to Dr. Allen for the lead and direction in matters of religion. The Lord Paget, when he joined us, was his amiable good self, but he was not our frequent crony to that extent I think Mr. Arundell would have wished for. For most of that spring, excepting brief excursions elsewhere for a need, I dwelt in Mr. Fitzherbert's chambers near the street we englished to St. Andrew's, as also did Mr. Arundell and Mr. Fitzherbert, and also Mr. Tresham sometimes, whose company in the new regiment, since yet it existed chartaceously at that time and not in the field, could spare him. Upon a day, when a cold rain kept us in, Mr. Arundell recounted for us gathered there some new jests of the earl of Leicester which lately he had heard at my lord ambassador's table. Twice or thrice in that February he had been to dine with Stafford, the English lieger here, who holds some bond of kinship with him, and ever there the talk was wont to turn to Leicester, for that Sir Edward's wife, an old rejected paramour of the earl's, did hate the earl as the Romans hated Tarquin. Now, there was scarce a man of us who did not lay half or more of his private woes at his lordship's door, to say nothing of our country's present misery, and we fed upon such tales as the Israelites fed upon manna, and thrived thereon, for there was little else to nourish us withal except that bitter food. Mr. Verstegan was with us, too, lately got free of the Bishop's Prison by the intercession of his eminence the nuncio of the pope, and when we had laughed a while to Leicester's derogation, he brought forth his book of pictures of the English cruelties, which Arundell took and turned the pages over as one deep in thought, and paced up and down the chamber, and then said here was our way to make our pens into swords if only we would trouble ourselves a little. For however we gloried and triumphed now upon the earl's facinorous acts, yet was he little hurt thereby, for we were only a few impotent men afar off, muttering in our sulks. For, quod Mr. Arundell, a proper showing of the earl in all his colors, a painting so to the life as must be of truth undoubted, will bring the earl to a public shame and give scandal to his cause. Then will his Puritan fautors see him as he is, and go out from him, and likewise will the captains and soldiers, when they discern his cowardice, turn to other generals, and it may be even the queen, ashamed to hear her lovely favorite so generally cried out upon, will cast him out. And so on that day we amused ourselves in imagining what each of us would have in such a book, and then, though it was put aside amongst other doings of the time, ever we turned again to take it up, chiefly Mr. Fitzherbert and myself, and sometimes Mr. Tresham, Mr. Arundell making notations of all things that passed our lips, discarding some of them as frivolous, or too bold, or too nearly touching the queen imputatiously perhaps; and also my Lord Paget sometimes, and even, mark you, my lord ambassador, who likewise added many a merry jest of his recollection to our store. Whether or no any such book or libel were ever written, we passed many a friendly evening in plotting tricks and devices for its writing, and often laughed to late hours at outlandish inventions of some wag or Sir Pasquino among us. Especially we were concerned also for the queen of Scots, and my Lord Paget brought a little treatise of the bishop of Ross, first made many years ago but newly in part brought forth again in Rouen, which showed by many learned arguments how her highness were the true and legal heir to the throne after her majesty that now is. This Mr. Arundell promised to read over and find what profit we might take of it. And each of us singly had his private grudges against the Great Bear Leicester, myself for my father's unhappy cause, of course, the Lord Paget for the harassment of one Robinson his friend in Staffordshire, and for Mr. Arden and Mr. Greville and Mr. Gifford, and so on. Innumerable charges we collected, as it were the devil's roll call of the sins of all humanity, but all committed by this one man, or rather monster, and the problem were not the want of matter but having too much of it. Even the ambassador's wife had infamous tales to tell, which Mr. Arundell returned with to our ears, which (forgive me) made me blush to hear them. Since all of hers made much of other beautiful ladies of the court, we forgave ourselves for doubting perhaps a one or two of them. This were otherwise a slow and heavy time for all of us. I awaited with both fear and settled resignation the trial of my poor brother, who though slenderly charged withal, yet was much made of and bruited for the greatest traitor ever discovered, by providence and God's love of princes, since Captain Catiline in ancient Rome. The Great Bear did ever lust bloodily for the life of our Scottish mistress, which only the natural mercy of her majesty's sisterly feeling did protect from his claws that rend and tear; and here, Mr. Secretary made a mountain of a mole's hill that her majesty might in terror and jealousy forsake her care and hand that captive sainted lady to her persecutors gaping for her dear blood. For as long as Christian Queen Mary did live in England, never in that time should Leicester and Walsingham count themselves as safe, because if ever the crown should come to shuffling (and with Elizabeth's death it will, as one day sure she will come to it, as all mortals do), and our mistress come to throne, on the next day come these two to the block. And lest that time should ever happen, by fair or foul means and with the effusion of innocent blood, they will find plots in Mary's name, plotters in Mary's cause, all to put the now queen in terror of her natural cousin and loving heir. My poor foolish noddy Francis, ill hap, wandered into the wrong house in the night season, and I had no hope he'd scape out of it again. Also in April, as I awaited news of Francis, and we all watched the fate of my lord of Northumberland and Mr. Shelley and my Lord Harry Howard, also taken in those broils, another sufferer in the same cause came to us in Paris. He was Don Bernardino de Mendoza, quondam lieger in London for the king of Spain, whom Walsingham sent tramping for his supposed foreknowledge of all my brother's silly schemes. He came to us from the prince of Parma's camp, where first upon quitting England he had repaired, and roosted with Seņor Tassis, King Philip's man in this town at that time. Don Bernardino travelled on then into Spain, and the rumor ran wide he was gone to arrange for the great armada awaited so long by some, but it did not fall out so. Mr. Arundell in this time spent more than a few evenings with Sir Edward Stafford, as already I have said before, only in causes of old friendship, as I think, though some few murmured darkly otherwise, and Mr. Morgan came once to our chambers with his little company of friends to tell him he did cause concern among the godly of this land, lest he be doubted of too great sympathy with the heretic queen's own man. But at the same time, Mr. Ambassador had to bid him stay away, too, for he had comminatory messages from the Secretary plainly forbidding him Mr. Arundell's company. What a passion old Charles flew into then. For no one could tell by what unsavory means Mr. Secretary had learned of his resort thither, and it was to be feared that spies were abroad. This also gave Mr. Arundell finally to understand that there was no going home for him, which had contrary effects upon him, as I remarked him. For first, do you see, he moaned and hummed lugubrious lutesongs and stared long out at muddy streets as if the hearths of home were all his joy. Until that time, it may be, though the truth was as plain to me as that cardinals wear red hats, he hoped still for some atonement again by Mr. Ambassador's good intercession. But this were a slender hope, for say the law whatsoever it will say, where Leicester hates there shall never be repose, and now, by Mr. Secretary's missives to Sir Edward, that chimerical hope lay slain at last. But also he was I think relieved, if only for that now he knew certainly, and need not listen at the door for the chance of a passport brought him. And after learning of Mr. Secretary's settled hatred of his name and face, with or without the process of the law, he seemed relieved as well as wretched, in such a kind of contrarity as I have not seen save in lyrical songs of lovers. So that from his sometimes choler and impatience, he passed now by degrees to a certain calmness, I had almost said a certain peace, though that would be scarce believable of any man in our condition (except a half-addled seminarian)--but at least a less moony agitation; and henceforth he began to look around him at this new city, and began to press upon Morgan and my lord the old archbishop of Glasgow for some moneys owed him of old time, whereupon to live. Moreover, in that vein, he willed Dr. Parry, by means of special bearers into England, to have his servant to prepare his accounts for secret sending over, and I think he looked for the servant, too, to come if he could. Once there came to us one Captain du Bourg, an ill-favored military gentleman, sent from the duke of Anjou since his unceremonious expelling out of the Low Countries, who lay now in a strange indisposition at his house at Château Thierry. Monsieur the duke would have had Mr. Arundell to come to him there, for old fellowship's sake, but he speaking coldly to the captain said that mayhap the good fellowship of Monsieur's great friend the earl of Leicester would be more grateful unto him at this time. To which the captain replied that oh, that lesson had well been taken out, that Monsieur had found the earl to play not honestly with him in the Low Countries, poisoning his reception there by the prince of Orange, and now, after these late last reverses of his, which have proved the effect of Leicester's perfidy, Monsieur has learned to sing another air, and who his true friends are. But Arundell would never be moved, and offered press of business as preventing him, saying on another day he would ride to see the duke. Not long afterward, in early June or so we learned of Monsieur dead of some diseases, scarce thirty years old, but death is everywhere. Indeed, in the next month, was the prince of Orange too murdered at his house in Delft, which gave the Protestants in those countries somewhat to muse upon. Also then, in July, my brother Francis returned to the celestial home whence we all come and, I pray, must return. So if not disease, then assassin, and if not that, then the gallows. "Since death shall dure till all the world be waste, What meaneth man to dread death then so sore?" Upon a time in May, then, when I had returned from some days and nights in Rouen, where affairs had bid me journey, I discovered Mr. Arundell sitting still in his nightclothes, though it had gone three of the clock, before our little table. Beneath his hand lay a pile of papers, scraps of every size and shape, all scrawled upon in his hasty, scratching hand. He glared at me with a jesting fierceness, as who should say, "I have here somewhat to make you shudder." "Oh Lord," I cried then, "you have written our book! Pray let me look." "Step back," he shouted. "Never lay your unclean hands upon it. The oracular leaves are sacred to the god of Leicester! I replace them in the Temple Jars." And so saying, he folded up the doors of the desk and enclosed the writings within. "Take time while time is, Tom," he said then. "Come wi' me now while I walk by the river, in the dying light of this excellent day, and let anticipation grow." So we passed then out of doors, and circumambulating the houses of the Augustinian friars, issued out upon the embankment along the river Seine, where in the warmth of the waning sun we strolled upon the green and commented wryly upon fishermen and housewives. We passed some goodly time in this wise, speaking little, for Mr. Arundell seemed depleted and strangely in a dump, walking very slowly to and fro along the bank. And then of a sudden he roused himself and proposed a supper at the Inn of Alemains. And there we dined, at his expense, be it remembered gratefully, following which we returned to our chambers and found Mr. Fitzherbert and my Lord Thomas Paget (whom he had summoned) awaiting us. "My dear boy," cried his lordship at once, making to Mr. Arundell a deep congee. "Oh the brain incorruptible! Is this the night we have long expected?" "This is that very night," replied my friend, smirking. "Oh applause. Call for wine!" There is a kind of barbarian people told of by the ancient authors, as by Herodotus, whose use is before deliberation in their councils to apply themselves to drink, whereby in short time they render themselves incapable of any guile or double-meaning, and so conclude their business in more honesty. This like some other pagan customs, though not all, has much of wisdom in it. And thus with my companions did I bring my stool up to table, with wine before us, and we proceeded to remove our double-meanings. Then Mr. Arundell brought out the script and dropped it before us on the board, set before him his ink and quill, and said, "Let us now begin." Some sheets, he said, remained unfinished, others called for mending, and now he proposed we must set our heads together and make our final determinations, adding what we would, exscinding what misliked us, and polishing upon all. The whole was in a manner of a conference or conversation, had not long since among three interlocutors, to wit: a young scholar of Cambridge and a worthy gentleman of the town, both Protestants, and to make a third, an ancient gentleman of the law, who was a moderate papist, but nothing inclined to evil willing towards any person. To this advantage (quod Mr. Arundell), that here you may see the papist will seem least contentious, least suspect of prejudice, and must in his natural good will to all men be then convinced by plain evidence, forced upon him by these Protestants, of the earl of Leicester's evil preparations for the crown. "All good, Charles," said Tom Fitzherbert then. "But with these Protestant conversants and this hollow papist---." "Not hollow, Tom, nay, say not hollow, rather say temperate, or moderate." "Well, moderate; what will our worthy Jesuits say when they overread our little book? Who here will defend the pope? Who here will speak for the plight of Catholics? Who will cry out upon the cruelties of Protestants against our friends?" "A timely thought, but needless worry," said Mr. Arundell. "For the Jesuits, we must let them write their own books, which daily we see they never fail to do. The pope will not go undefended. For us, we cry out upon no Protestants for these cruelties; rather we lay them at the door of Robin of Leicester and his atheistical followers--for, let me read my hasty words," he said, turning over some leaves, "the earl, 'being himself of no religion, feedeth notwithstanding upon our differences in religion, to the fatting of himself and the ruin of the realm.'" "Oh well put!" said Lord Thomas. "Yes, if it does not say the whole truth of these afflictions, yet it says enough truth. I put it out of doubt," he said, "that there are now Protestants innumerable in England who would gladly live in all harmony with their Catholic neighbors, if they might do so without suspicion of this man's friends and spies. Well, we must demonstrate to the satisfaction of all good and friendly men whence come these outcryings and uproarings, and then let us all join to put aside these fishers in stirred waters and live together as Englishmen only, whatsoever sect or denomination we may privately in our bosoms cling to." Mr. Fitzherbert objected still, however, saying that however much he stood in sympathy with such goodfellowlike sentiments, yet he saw there were many points of doctrine still at lively issue between us and the heretics of all their factions, and he feared that this strategy of men living together as if all were of no religion at all would be found to err by glossing over those points in which instruction were most necessary for those in present error. Mr. Arundell agreed thereto, but said that for the time he could be content to let the Protestants wander eternally in Cimmerian night, so they would desist from depriving us of life and living; and for his part it were worth the simplification of causes of these troublous times, if we might help to bring all good men to agreement on the worst cause, which is Leicester and his ambitious favorers, which if removed, time and good intentions may cure the residue. And so this strategy was approved by all, and in this little book we pretended all to be well-meaning Protestants. And now Mr. Arundell commenced to read over the pages of this conference, which pleased us all heartily, only noting the change of a word here and the adding of a tiny morsel there. Here we heard introduced as the causer of the outcries of treason against those who would never offend, the earl of Leicester and his faction, for the reason that they themselves sought absolute rule and the compass of the crown, and meant to achieve the same by exacerbating these differences to desperation and setting one part against another to the weakening of the whole realm. Then to the more ample disqualification of the earl in his own person, Mr. Arundell proceeded to the indictment of his crimes, recounting here, in the guise of this dialogue, all of the stories which long had passed current among us, both here in this city and for many years together in our homeland. Here, in all detail and quoted testimony of many worthies, were his murders, his excesses of bestiality and venality, his oppressive rapine and depredations upon infinite good families--O, succession of infamies. It were tedious in me now to recite all the merry and some tragic things that Mr. Arundell read out to us of his own inditing, both on this night by candles set among us and again on the morrow and the next night, and more tedious to mention the bits which we thought good to add from time to time. Which were a work of supererogation, for the book now printed is still to be had, and suffices. From leaf to crowded leaf we progressed from Leicester's crimes against particular men and in particular times and places to the anatomy of my lord's manipulation of the court, thence to the great danger to all men by his unbridled appetite for a crown, and finally, the exposition (namely with some borrowings from the bishop of Ross his little treatise) of the present state of the succession after her majesty that now is--how the only claim in justice to be allowed was of the queen of Scots, who only stood between our realm's happiness and this man's brutal lust of power. It was, in brief, a most brilliant book, so damning of his lordship's flagitious enormities and gross influence, so constructive of our lady's present safety and future hopes, as when at last Mr. Arundell threw aside his quill we stared in admiration. "Gentlemen," said my Lord Paget. "Hats off, gentlemen." And with that his lordship raised his glass and proposed a toast to all of us, but especially to our English Cicero, who with a stroke of his golden pen had justified our sufferings at Leicester's hand and struck another great blow for our return in triumph. "Would it were so," Mr. Arundell replied, "but it is, Tom, only a book after all. It is but a book." "Oh, oh, but such a book. Such a book, Charles," Lord Paget said, and we all chimed in our sympathy with that judgment. Now we pressed him to learn how he had come to writing it, and in so short time. To which he explained that ourselves being all elsewhere, and the weather coldly wet, he had got himself in the dumps again and considered he was at the end of his long trials, forgotten here in this strange land far from home. And he had thought then in his mind of all the tasks undone, words unsaid, friends unrepaid, enemies still thriving, even girls unkissed; and had resolved if not to kiss the girls, at least before he passed from this great stage, hurried from the boards by this action which was not his, by the great actors who addressed one another over his head, scarcely even seeing him below, to speak one line at least before retiring. "And then," he told us, "I brought together ink and pens and knife and dust and paper and all, and sat me here with our notes and all before me, and then sang out, with old Wyatt:
And in four days' time I had done indeed." "Oh, but you are not done yet, Charles, not by a far cry," we cried out to him. "No, not done yet," he answered. "Now we must find a printer."
There was plague in Paris in that summer. By day and, more terribly, by night, lantern-lit bellringers went their sorrowful rounds, and blue-clad Michael's Men appeared round corners, bearing their mortal burdens from houses marked with the red cross, bound for the cemeteries already swelled with new inhabitants. This early in the summer season--I speak of late in May, perhaps--the toll was not yet so high, yet too high for so early in the season, which promised to be long and very torrid. "We are but dust, and die we must," as the poet says.
But one more thing I would fain tell you of, that happened in our road toward Rouen. We had ridden down beneath the trees in a shadowed length of hillside and reached an open meadow dropping gently to the stream below, when Mr. Arundell swore an oath and drew up sharply. We followed his eyes to the hilltop whence we had come. There, in the full light of the sun, standing out in great vividness from the shadow all about, sat a party of travellers on horseback. It was a gentleman or lord, as he seemed from his brilliant habit shining in the sunlight, with two or three companions about him and a little troop of servingmen hard by, and appeared to be gazing down into the city, though it may be the man was watching us instead. He wore a doublet of astonishing blueness, with a panache of white feathers falling all about his high cap, and his trappings and sword hilts and the badge of his hat gleamed like mirrorglasses in the light. For some moments this gentleman and his band sat immobile far above us; then they wheeled abruptly and passed beyond the brow of the hill. Mr. Arundell, however, stared after them at the place where they had stood, somewhat abashed by the sight, seemingly. But he only shook himself as if to dispel some eerie charm put on him, and we resumed our way. Later, however, he explicated for us this strange mood of his. Of a sudden, he said, he had been taken by the fancy that this brilliant rider, this shining courtier upon the height, had been the earl of Leicester's very self, for he had sat just as Charles had seen him once before, plump upon a hilltop surveying some scene below, observing all things before him silently, with his troop of friends about him, then wheeled off to other business and left Charles with others in the shadows beneath him, knowing not even whether the earl had been remarking them especially, or had merely seen them as a part of the composition of the scene, or had even deigned to notice them at all; but that he had sat on high like the Almighty surveying his creation, perhaps musing with himself which of his creatures he had pride in and which he regretted having given being to, and found unnecessary. "For that is my remembrance of the earl," quoth Arundell then. "Daily at times I have passed him in the chambers of the queen's palace. Often I have stood next him as we danced with some gay ladies at a ball, or have passed him on the river or in the road from court. But always my remembrance of him is of this sitting ahorse upon a height, all in a great halo of light, in a wardrobe that at auction would relieve my want for a lifetime. Ha, ha," he said-- "And always myself below, gazing upward as at a celestial throne, ha, ha."
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The
task we set ourselves to was the printing of our book. Mr. Morgan would be of
no help, because he had not had the writing of it himself; the queen of Scots'
good moneys were not for rogue enterprises, he said, and without he should have
the revising of it, he would hear no more word about it. And so perforce we took
horse and came to Rouen, where the Jesuit Parsons perused the thing and, albeit
something squeamish about our Protestant-seeming interlocutors, agreed to have
it printed on a press of his own in that city, then to be transported into England
by his means. And so was our little book published, titled thus, The
Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Arts of Cambridge to his Friend in London,
but very soon called "the book of Leicester's life" or "Leicester's
Commonwealth." And those factious men who still cry out upon Mr. Charles
Arundell for his coldness towards Morgan and some more sympathy with the Jesuits,
may chew upon this cause, among other, if it should come to their ears.
Please
do not reproduce this text in any form for commercial purposes. Historical references
for events recreated in this story can be found in D. C. Peck, Leicester's
Commonwealth: The Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584)
and Related Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985). Feedback and
suggestions are welcome, 
.
Written 1973-1989, posted on this site 10 June 2001.The 16th Century reprints
Other stuff
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