Mark Thomas-James's Blog
September 8, 2013
The 1536 Rebellion Against Henry VIII
The rebellion of 1536 was a protest against the radical policies of King Henry VIII’s government towards the church and the pope, and its harsh tax laws.
Historians argue about the conception of the insurgence. Was it the consequence of advanced planning? Was it a popular movement that spread spontaneously by word of mouth, fuelled by rumour?
At its zenith, 50,000 were prepared to march on London. For a month or so, they had won. King Henry had agreed to all their demands.
The king’s son, the Duke of Richmond, and his mother, Elizabeth Blount, were at the centre of the insurrection. If the Duke were victorious against his father England would reject this new heretical thinking. The abbeys and monasteries would be saved. His triumph would tip the balance of power and convince all Europe to re-pledge loyalty to the pontiff.
England would join Spain in its rejection of slavery, as Queen Catherine’s mother had done in Castile and Aragon. United in its rejection of the preaching of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, the New World of America would evolve and flourish, devoted to St Peter.
Historians argue about the conception of the insurgence. Was it the consequence of advanced planning? Was it a popular movement that spread spontaneously by word of mouth, fuelled by rumour?
At its zenith, 50,000 were prepared to march on London. For a month or so, they had won. King Henry had agreed to all their demands.
The king’s son, the Duke of Richmond, and his mother, Elizabeth Blount, were at the centre of the insurrection. If the Duke were victorious against his father England would reject this new heretical thinking. The abbeys and monasteries would be saved. His triumph would tip the balance of power and convince all Europe to re-pledge loyalty to the pontiff.
England would join Spain in its rejection of slavery, as Queen Catherine’s mother had done in Castile and Aragon. United in its rejection of the preaching of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, the New World of America would evolve and flourish, devoted to St Peter.
Tofig The Dane Inspired The English Reformation
Who Was Present At The Birth Of The English Reformation?
Answer: Edward Foxe, Stephen Gardiner and a man called Mr Cressy.
Tofig the Proud, the Dane from Montacute, unwittingly conceived it. It was born at Waltham in Hertfordshire, on 2 August 1529. Oh, and the godfather there was Thomas Cranmer.
Jesus Christ, obviously, was responsible for it all.
Joseph of Arimathea was the Virgin Mary’s uncle and thus was Jesus’s great-uncle. It was Joseph who took down Jesus’s body, and prepared it for burial in a tomb that he had donated. It was from that tomb that Christ ascended to heaven.
After the passion of Christ, Joseph, a trader in tin, left Jerusalem for Britain. He had business here and had visited several times before. Tin had been mined in the south-west of Britain for thousands of years, even before the birth of Jesus. Much of the tin was exported by sea to the Mediterranean. In Jerusalem, Joseph’s life was in danger, but in Britain he was welcomed to stay by King Arviragus who granted him the island of Tnys Avalon, now known as Glastonbury, where he founded the first Christian church in the world.
The story of Joseph of Arimathea, though obscured by the mists of time, has existed in these isles for centuries and it was Thomas Cranmer who wiped the thick layers of dust from the storybook.
Kicked Wolsey’s Backside Around Blackfriars
Cranmer retold the story and changed Christianity, because a few days before the end of July 1529 Cardinal Campeggio announced, with Cardinal Wolsey complicit, that Henry’s divorce hearing at Blackfriars would be adjourned at the end of the month. Campeggio was taking his annual holiday, he would be gone until October, it was papal policy, and that was that. He went.
Henry was furious. At this stage we may imagine him incandescent with rage, crimson-faced, jowls wobbling, screaming blue murder at Wolsey as he kicked his backside around Blackfriars.
Progress
Nevertheless, on 2 August, Henry left London with Anne Boleyn, on the first stage of the summer Progress. Among the courtiers and councillors with them were Cambridge friends Stephen Gardiner, royal secretary, and Edward Foxe, leading member of the King’s Spiritual Council. With the divorce proceedings in disarray these two loyal servants sought other remedies to satisfy the will of their sovereign to marry mistress Anne.
The first stop on the Progress was Waltham Abbey.
The Abbey was of sufficient size to accommodate the immediate royal party but Gardiner and Foxe were allocated lodgings nearby at the home of Mr Cressy. Also lodged at the house was Dr Thomas Cranmer, a kinsman of Mr Cressy and Jesus College tutor of his two sons. They had travelled south from Cambridge to take refuge from the plague when it had struck the university.
Supper At Waltham
At supper in Cressy's house, on the night of Gardiner’s and Foxe's arrival, the three fell into conversation. As Cambridge men, they talked about the university then later they discussed the king’s divorce. Cranmer said that, unlike his two acquaintances, he had made no particular study of the question but he went on to suggest that perhaps they were pursuing the wrong strategy on behalf of the king.
The history books tell us that his suggestion was to canvass university theologians throughout Europe for their support of Henry’s divorce claim, and they tell us that when Foxe and Gardiner, a couple of days later, told the king about their meeting at Waltham, Henry was so impressed that he called for a personal interview with Cranmer.
But there must have been more to Cranmer’s impending meteoric rise than the proposal to canvass the universities. There was nothing new in that suggestion.
More To It Than The Universities – Red and White Oxen.
Of course there was more to it!
In Waltham, some say his name was Tovi while to others he was Tofi, but all we know is to call him Tofig. The Dane – Tofig – held large estates in Essex and Somerset, one of which, in Somerset, was at Montacute near Glastonbury. In 1035 a buried flint cross was discovered. It was believed to be part of the True Cross on which Jesus died and that had been brought to Montacute by Joseph of Arimathea.
Speculation followed that Joseph might have been buried there as well.
Tofig arranged to have the cross moved. It was loaded on to a cart that was pulled by a dozen oxen. To be true to the story, it was six red oxen and six white oxen. This was obviously no small cross. The oxen were uncertain where to take it. Tofig reeled off a number of destinations but they would not budge until he said ‘Waltham’. Then without further delay the oxen moved off (there is a spoilsport dimension to this legend in that the beasts merely responded to ‘Walk on’, which surely cannot be true) and did not stop until they reached Waltham, where the cross was erected and the great Abbey of Waltham was built.
Certainly canvassing the universities was discussed, but while sitting at the supper table in Waltham, Cranmer, now fully acquainted with the king’s problems, told Foxe and Gardener this story of Joseph of Arimathea, Tofig and the Waltham Holy Cross.
Joseph Was Here Before The Preachers From Rome
He told them that Joseph of Arimathea was the first preacher of the word of God in Britain, not the preachers from Rome who arrived hundreds of years later. He suggested they consider that the Roman preachers had usurped the authority of the first English Church, and that there were extant manuscripts to prove that the king was the only legitimate head of the Church in England.
When Gardiner and Foxe met Henry back at Waltham Abbey they told him of Cranmer’s theory. They told the king that he was head of the church and always had been. The Pope had no authority in England and never had had.
Cranmer was summoned to meet the king and Henry ‘retained him to write his mind in that cause of his divorcement’. Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father, was also called before the king and Henry said to him, ‘I pray you, my lord, let Dr Cranmer have entertainment in your house at Durham Place for a time, to the intent that he may be there quiet to accomplish my request, and let him lack neither books nor anything requisite for his study.’
Matters moved at a pace: within weeks Wolsey was indicted for praemunire in the King’s Bench and in little over twelve months all clergy were indicted on the same charge. They were pardoned upon payment of £100,000 and a submission that Henry was the ‘sole protector and Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy’.
Answer: Edward Foxe, Stephen Gardiner and a man called Mr Cressy.
Tofig the Proud, the Dane from Montacute, unwittingly conceived it. It was born at Waltham in Hertfordshire, on 2 August 1529. Oh, and the godfather there was Thomas Cranmer.
Jesus Christ, obviously, was responsible for it all.
Joseph of Arimathea was the Virgin Mary’s uncle and thus was Jesus’s great-uncle. It was Joseph who took down Jesus’s body, and prepared it for burial in a tomb that he had donated. It was from that tomb that Christ ascended to heaven.
After the passion of Christ, Joseph, a trader in tin, left Jerusalem for Britain. He had business here and had visited several times before. Tin had been mined in the south-west of Britain for thousands of years, even before the birth of Jesus. Much of the tin was exported by sea to the Mediterranean. In Jerusalem, Joseph’s life was in danger, but in Britain he was welcomed to stay by King Arviragus who granted him the island of Tnys Avalon, now known as Glastonbury, where he founded the first Christian church in the world.
The story of Joseph of Arimathea, though obscured by the mists of time, has existed in these isles for centuries and it was Thomas Cranmer who wiped the thick layers of dust from the storybook.
Kicked Wolsey’s Backside Around Blackfriars
Cranmer retold the story and changed Christianity, because a few days before the end of July 1529 Cardinal Campeggio announced, with Cardinal Wolsey complicit, that Henry’s divorce hearing at Blackfriars would be adjourned at the end of the month. Campeggio was taking his annual holiday, he would be gone until October, it was papal policy, and that was that. He went.
Henry was furious. At this stage we may imagine him incandescent with rage, crimson-faced, jowls wobbling, screaming blue murder at Wolsey as he kicked his backside around Blackfriars.
Progress
Nevertheless, on 2 August, Henry left London with Anne Boleyn, on the first stage of the summer Progress. Among the courtiers and councillors with them were Cambridge friends Stephen Gardiner, royal secretary, and Edward Foxe, leading member of the King’s Spiritual Council. With the divorce proceedings in disarray these two loyal servants sought other remedies to satisfy the will of their sovereign to marry mistress Anne.
The first stop on the Progress was Waltham Abbey.
The Abbey was of sufficient size to accommodate the immediate royal party but Gardiner and Foxe were allocated lodgings nearby at the home of Mr Cressy. Also lodged at the house was Dr Thomas Cranmer, a kinsman of Mr Cressy and Jesus College tutor of his two sons. They had travelled south from Cambridge to take refuge from the plague when it had struck the university.
Supper At Waltham
At supper in Cressy's house, on the night of Gardiner’s and Foxe's arrival, the three fell into conversation. As Cambridge men, they talked about the university then later they discussed the king’s divorce. Cranmer said that, unlike his two acquaintances, he had made no particular study of the question but he went on to suggest that perhaps they were pursuing the wrong strategy on behalf of the king.
The history books tell us that his suggestion was to canvass university theologians throughout Europe for their support of Henry’s divorce claim, and they tell us that when Foxe and Gardiner, a couple of days later, told the king about their meeting at Waltham, Henry was so impressed that he called for a personal interview with Cranmer.
But there must have been more to Cranmer’s impending meteoric rise than the proposal to canvass the universities. There was nothing new in that suggestion.
More To It Than The Universities – Red and White Oxen.
Of course there was more to it!
In Waltham, some say his name was Tovi while to others he was Tofi, but all we know is to call him Tofig. The Dane – Tofig – held large estates in Essex and Somerset, one of which, in Somerset, was at Montacute near Glastonbury. In 1035 a buried flint cross was discovered. It was believed to be part of the True Cross on which Jesus died and that had been brought to Montacute by Joseph of Arimathea.
Speculation followed that Joseph might have been buried there as well.
Tofig arranged to have the cross moved. It was loaded on to a cart that was pulled by a dozen oxen. To be true to the story, it was six red oxen and six white oxen. This was obviously no small cross. The oxen were uncertain where to take it. Tofig reeled off a number of destinations but they would not budge until he said ‘Waltham’. Then without further delay the oxen moved off (there is a spoilsport dimension to this legend in that the beasts merely responded to ‘Walk on’, which surely cannot be true) and did not stop until they reached Waltham, where the cross was erected and the great Abbey of Waltham was built.
Certainly canvassing the universities was discussed, but while sitting at the supper table in Waltham, Cranmer, now fully acquainted with the king’s problems, told Foxe and Gardener this story of Joseph of Arimathea, Tofig and the Waltham Holy Cross.
Joseph Was Here Before The Preachers From Rome
He told them that Joseph of Arimathea was the first preacher of the word of God in Britain, not the preachers from Rome who arrived hundreds of years later. He suggested they consider that the Roman preachers had usurped the authority of the first English Church, and that there were extant manuscripts to prove that the king was the only legitimate head of the Church in England.
When Gardiner and Foxe met Henry back at Waltham Abbey they told him of Cranmer’s theory. They told the king that he was head of the church and always had been. The Pope had no authority in England and never had had.
Cranmer was summoned to meet the king and Henry ‘retained him to write his mind in that cause of his divorcement’. Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father, was also called before the king and Henry said to him, ‘I pray you, my lord, let Dr Cranmer have entertainment in your house at Durham Place for a time, to the intent that he may be there quiet to accomplish my request, and let him lack neither books nor anything requisite for his study.’
Matters moved at a pace: within weeks Wolsey was indicted for praemunire in the King’s Bench and in little over twelve months all clergy were indicted on the same charge. They were pardoned upon payment of £100,000 and a submission that Henry was the ‘sole protector and Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy’.
Catherine of Aragon Was Poisoned: So Says Eustace.
Eustace – some call him Eustache – Chapuys was ambassador for Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in England, from 1 September 1529 to May 1545. He has made a significant, if unintentional, contribution to English history with his lively, detailed and perceptive despatches to Charles about the latest events in English politics.
He was a master of the arguments in the divorce case between Henry VIII and Catherine, and was appointed at her request to support and advise her as matters progressed. He arrived a few weeks after the legatine court at Blackfriars, where the divorce proceedings were held, had broken up for the summer recess, but was in time to witness the demise of Cardinal Wolsey.
The court was due to be reconvened in October, but in the meantime Henry was presented with documents that persuaded him that he was head of the church in England and the pope was irrelevant in his empire. In little over a year, the clergy had submitted to his authority. There was therefore no prospect of reconciliation between the king and Catherine. Henry was determined to have Anne Boleyn as his queen, and as a consequence, Chapuys’ duties to Catherine changed.
Balance Of Power In Europe
In Europe, the balance of power tipped between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Francis I, King of France, and from across the channel in England Henry VIII held sway. The support of the English on either side could tilt the balance in favour of one to the ruination of the other.
Charles V was Catherine’s nephew. Anne Boleyn was a protégé of the court of King Francis I and she was intimate with the French king’s sister.
The previous king, Henry VII, and Margret Beaufort had matched the nouveau riche Tudors with Catherine’s Hapsburg family through her marriage to Prince Arthur. With the death of Arthur and Henry VIII as king, the alliance had gone terribly wrong. Henry preferred the politically astute Anne.
Banished, Catherine refused to accept the king’s supremacy and of course any suggestion that she was not legally married to the king. Her actions incurred Henry’s wrath and so Chapuys, redundant as a divorce adviser, became Catherine’s protector from a transformed royal court with Anne now at its heart, overtly hostile to her perceived obstinacy.
Slapstick Eustace
Chapuys did well to help keep the peace and even Thomas Cromwell complimented him on that skill.
Catherine was held at Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire with a few servants and forbidden to leave the estate. Chapuys sought permission from the king to visit her, but the king did not respond. His patience wore thin, and so as time went by the indomitable ambassador seized the initiative. To a great fanfare, he clattered through London with an escort of sixty horsemen in garish livery followed by a plodding baggage train of mules. With an archer’s salute to the king, he departed London for Kimbolton.
Eustace made a great show of his visit north to the beleaguered Catherine and travelled slowly though the towns and villages en route. So slowly indeed that on the second day a king’s messenger overtook them, galloping on ahead to Kimbolton. The king’s man returned, riding back south in good time to meet them still sauntering north, and confirmed that he had delivered the king’s order to the steward at Kimbolton not to let Chapuys into the castle.
Catherine, obviously now in higher spirits, however, had found out about the king’s order. She despatched to Chapuys and the approaching cavalcade ‘a great deal of game and venison and many bottles of wine and begged him make good cheer’. He and his retinue did, and more: they continued the merriment into the next day. At Chapuys’ behest, ‘The next morning about thirty horsemen started [out to Kimbolton] all in very good order, and they took with them a very funny young fellow who had been brought by the ambassador and who was dressed as a fool, and had a padlock dangling from his hood.’ On arrival at Kimbolton, ‘The fool as soon as he saw the ladies at the [castle] window, alighted from his horse and made as if to go into the moat of the castle crying out that he wanted to get to them.’ As a Spanish chronicler recorded, ‘He got himself in as far as his waist and everybody who was looking on thought that he was silly and cried out that he would drown.’ To finish his show three men theatrically pulled him out as he threw the padlock into the moat and shouted, ‘Take this. Next time I will bring the key.’
Perhaps not quite a Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin performance, but besides bravely beating the bounds of diplomatic privilege this was an example of Chapuys’ dedication to bolstering Catherine’s spirits and maintaining her faith. Many subjects had died terrible deaths defending her and many more were yet to be butchered in the name of her complaint.
Swear And Sign Here
Spring gave way to summer in 1535 and the net closed around those who refused to accept Henry as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Now there was an oath to swear. Prevarication was prohibited and the choice was stark: to swear or not to swear, and if not so, to be executed.
On 22 June Cardinal John Fisher was executed. The famous story says he was without his cardinal’s hat. On 6 July Sir Thomas More, Henry’s former chancellor, was also executed. If they refused to swear, would Catherine and her daughter Mary follow them? Catherine is reported to have ‘despaired of the Mercy of God’, and she probably had a point.
Her appeals to Charles for help fell upon deaf ears. In the east, the emperor had problems with the Turks and in the west war drums beat in France; he did not want to heighten the problems with Henry in England.
Unpacking And Repacking
Then Catherine fell ill in December 1535. The news reached Chapuys and the worried ambassador packed and readied himself to visit her at Kimbolton. He was about to depart when news arrived that she had recovered. He unpacked and stayed at home, but not for long because Catherine had relapsed by 29 December. Chapuys, suspicious, cut short his Christmas celebrations and packed again, but on his arrival at Kimbolton, she mysteriously recovered. Catherine bid him stay a few days and he spent two hours each afternoon with her. From her being at death’s door when he arrived, Chapuys was now content to write, ‘That same evening I saw her laugh two or three times and half an hour after I left her, she wanted to amuse herself with one of my people, who entertained her.’ She was now in sufficiently good health for the relieved ambassador to take his leave. He, at least, was grateful for God’s mercy – for now.
Chapuys sense of gratitude towards God was all too brief. Upon his return to London, he had precious little time to hang up his coat because on the afternoon of 7 January 1536 Catherine died.
Poison, he reported to the emperor in his lively, detailed and perceptive despatch, and named the perpetrator as Sir Gregory di Casale.
Some say he was he was correct, others say he was wrong. All we know for certain is Eustace was closer to Catherine than we are.
He was a master of the arguments in the divorce case between Henry VIII and Catherine, and was appointed at her request to support and advise her as matters progressed. He arrived a few weeks after the legatine court at Blackfriars, where the divorce proceedings were held, had broken up for the summer recess, but was in time to witness the demise of Cardinal Wolsey.
The court was due to be reconvened in October, but in the meantime Henry was presented with documents that persuaded him that he was head of the church in England and the pope was irrelevant in his empire. In little over a year, the clergy had submitted to his authority. There was therefore no prospect of reconciliation between the king and Catherine. Henry was determined to have Anne Boleyn as his queen, and as a consequence, Chapuys’ duties to Catherine changed.
Balance Of Power In Europe
In Europe, the balance of power tipped between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Francis I, King of France, and from across the channel in England Henry VIII held sway. The support of the English on either side could tilt the balance in favour of one to the ruination of the other.
Charles V was Catherine’s nephew. Anne Boleyn was a protégé of the court of King Francis I and she was intimate with the French king’s sister.
The previous king, Henry VII, and Margret Beaufort had matched the nouveau riche Tudors with Catherine’s Hapsburg family through her marriage to Prince Arthur. With the death of Arthur and Henry VIII as king, the alliance had gone terribly wrong. Henry preferred the politically astute Anne.
Banished, Catherine refused to accept the king’s supremacy and of course any suggestion that she was not legally married to the king. Her actions incurred Henry’s wrath and so Chapuys, redundant as a divorce adviser, became Catherine’s protector from a transformed royal court with Anne now at its heart, overtly hostile to her perceived obstinacy.
Slapstick Eustace
Chapuys did well to help keep the peace and even Thomas Cromwell complimented him on that skill.
Catherine was held at Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire with a few servants and forbidden to leave the estate. Chapuys sought permission from the king to visit her, but the king did not respond. His patience wore thin, and so as time went by the indomitable ambassador seized the initiative. To a great fanfare, he clattered through London with an escort of sixty horsemen in garish livery followed by a plodding baggage train of mules. With an archer’s salute to the king, he departed London for Kimbolton.
Eustace made a great show of his visit north to the beleaguered Catherine and travelled slowly though the towns and villages en route. So slowly indeed that on the second day a king’s messenger overtook them, galloping on ahead to Kimbolton. The king’s man returned, riding back south in good time to meet them still sauntering north, and confirmed that he had delivered the king’s order to the steward at Kimbolton not to let Chapuys into the castle.
Catherine, obviously now in higher spirits, however, had found out about the king’s order. She despatched to Chapuys and the approaching cavalcade ‘a great deal of game and venison and many bottles of wine and begged him make good cheer’. He and his retinue did, and more: they continued the merriment into the next day. At Chapuys’ behest, ‘The next morning about thirty horsemen started [out to Kimbolton] all in very good order, and they took with them a very funny young fellow who had been brought by the ambassador and who was dressed as a fool, and had a padlock dangling from his hood.’ On arrival at Kimbolton, ‘The fool as soon as he saw the ladies at the [castle] window, alighted from his horse and made as if to go into the moat of the castle crying out that he wanted to get to them.’ As a Spanish chronicler recorded, ‘He got himself in as far as his waist and everybody who was looking on thought that he was silly and cried out that he would drown.’ To finish his show three men theatrically pulled him out as he threw the padlock into the moat and shouted, ‘Take this. Next time I will bring the key.’
Perhaps not quite a Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin performance, but besides bravely beating the bounds of diplomatic privilege this was an example of Chapuys’ dedication to bolstering Catherine’s spirits and maintaining her faith. Many subjects had died terrible deaths defending her and many more were yet to be butchered in the name of her complaint.
Swear And Sign Here
Spring gave way to summer in 1535 and the net closed around those who refused to accept Henry as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Now there was an oath to swear. Prevarication was prohibited and the choice was stark: to swear or not to swear, and if not so, to be executed.
On 22 June Cardinal John Fisher was executed. The famous story says he was without his cardinal’s hat. On 6 July Sir Thomas More, Henry’s former chancellor, was also executed. If they refused to swear, would Catherine and her daughter Mary follow them? Catherine is reported to have ‘despaired of the Mercy of God’, and she probably had a point.
Her appeals to Charles for help fell upon deaf ears. In the east, the emperor had problems with the Turks and in the west war drums beat in France; he did not want to heighten the problems with Henry in England.
Unpacking And Repacking
Then Catherine fell ill in December 1535. The news reached Chapuys and the worried ambassador packed and readied himself to visit her at Kimbolton. He was about to depart when news arrived that she had recovered. He unpacked and stayed at home, but not for long because Catherine had relapsed by 29 December. Chapuys, suspicious, cut short his Christmas celebrations and packed again, but on his arrival at Kimbolton, she mysteriously recovered. Catherine bid him stay a few days and he spent two hours each afternoon with her. From her being at death’s door when he arrived, Chapuys was now content to write, ‘That same evening I saw her laugh two or three times and half an hour after I left her, she wanted to amuse herself with one of my people, who entertained her.’ She was now in sufficiently good health for the relieved ambassador to take his leave. He, at least, was grateful for God’s mercy – for now.
Chapuys sense of gratitude towards God was all too brief. Upon his return to London, he had precious little time to hang up his coat because on the afternoon of 7 January 1536 Catherine died.
Poison, he reported to the emperor in his lively, detailed and perceptive despatch, and named the perpetrator as Sir Gregory di Casale.
Some say he was he was correct, others say he was wrong. All we know for certain is Eustace was closer to Catherine than we are.
September 4, 2013
Shakespeare: Who Was The Mysterious Mr W.H.?
A sonnet is poetry of fourteen lines in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 of these poems. They embrace such themes as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, and were first published in 1609.
For years there has been speculation that the sonnets provide an insight into the personality of Shakespeare. In my humble opinion, however, if they are Shakespeare’s, they were written to order – commissioned by various people for different purposes, and the clients’ identities quite possibly were unknown to the author.
There is the famous dedication to Mr W.H. But who can Mr W.H. be?
The favourite is oft touted as William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and almost as oft dismissed because of the title Mr.
Conventional wisdom says the begetter was an untitled man.
This is the dedication. It was probably intended to resemble an ancient Roman lapidary inscription.
TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
So we are looking for an untitled man who is an adventurer and who wishes at wells – ah, and with a Roman connection.
Could the well be Coventina’s Well near Carrawburgh on Hadrian's Wall? Coventina was the Romano-British goddess of wells and springs. Does the term adventurer refer to an indefatigable ‘singular lover of venerable and learned with all’ collector of books, manuscripts and Roman inscribed stones?
I think there is a red herring in this mystery. The red herring is that Mr W.H. has come down to us in history as a lord, but Lord was merely a courtesy title, assumed by him because he was a younger son of a Duke. He was not a peer of the realm.
This ‘Lord’s’ home was Naworth Castle in Cumbria, where Hadrian’s Wall crosses the castle grounds, and it stands close to the Roman fort at Birdsowald. His descendants built Castle Howard in Yorkshire, and Sir Walter Scott called him Belted Will.
His Name: Lord William Howard.
There is, however, at least one flaw with this theory. The flaw is that if Lord William Howard was Mr W.H., then the sonnets might not be written by the author we know as William Shakespeare. Could they be a collection of work by Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Sir Thomas Wyatt? Henry Howard was William Howard’s grandfather. He and Sir Thomas Wyatt, his friend (or maybe they were the rival poets of the sonnets), were the first English poets to write in the sonnet form that Shakespeare later used. Sir Thomas and William Howard’s grandfather became known as the ‘Fathers of the English Sonnet’.
Anne Boleyn inspired Wyatt’s poetry. Is the Dark Lady of the sonnets Anne?
Unthinkable!
Isn’t it?
Copyright Mark Thomas-James
www.whentheharvestisin.com
For years there has been speculation that the sonnets provide an insight into the personality of Shakespeare. In my humble opinion, however, if they are Shakespeare’s, they were written to order – commissioned by various people for different purposes, and the clients’ identities quite possibly were unknown to the author.
There is the famous dedication to Mr W.H. But who can Mr W.H. be?
The favourite is oft touted as William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and almost as oft dismissed because of the title Mr.
Conventional wisdom says the begetter was an untitled man.
This is the dedication. It was probably intended to resemble an ancient Roman lapidary inscription.
TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
So we are looking for an untitled man who is an adventurer and who wishes at wells – ah, and with a Roman connection.
Could the well be Coventina’s Well near Carrawburgh on Hadrian's Wall? Coventina was the Romano-British goddess of wells and springs. Does the term adventurer refer to an indefatigable ‘singular lover of venerable and learned with all’ collector of books, manuscripts and Roman inscribed stones?
I think there is a red herring in this mystery. The red herring is that Mr W.H. has come down to us in history as a lord, but Lord was merely a courtesy title, assumed by him because he was a younger son of a Duke. He was not a peer of the realm.
This ‘Lord’s’ home was Naworth Castle in Cumbria, where Hadrian’s Wall crosses the castle grounds, and it stands close to the Roman fort at Birdsowald. His descendants built Castle Howard in Yorkshire, and Sir Walter Scott called him Belted Will.
His Name: Lord William Howard.
There is, however, at least one flaw with this theory. The flaw is that if Lord William Howard was Mr W.H., then the sonnets might not be written by the author we know as William Shakespeare. Could they be a collection of work by Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Sir Thomas Wyatt? Henry Howard was William Howard’s grandfather. He and Sir Thomas Wyatt, his friend (or maybe they were the rival poets of the sonnets), were the first English poets to write in the sonnet form that Shakespeare later used. Sir Thomas and William Howard’s grandfather became known as the ‘Fathers of the English Sonnet’.
Anne Boleyn inspired Wyatt’s poetry. Is the Dark Lady of the sonnets Anne?
Unthinkable!
Isn’t it?
Copyright Mark Thomas-James
www.whentheharvestisin.com
