This article is the sequel to an essay first published in 2009 in the Online Research Journal of the Marlowe Society (Vol.6)1, under the title The French Connection: New Leads on Monsieur Le Doux. In view of the extent of the new documentary evidence here presented, and the chronological overlap, the reader may wish to refer to the previous article for additional information on the links between “Le Doux” and Christopher Marlowe, and indeed on Marlowe’s claim to the authorship of the works of “Shake-speare”.
I should begin by giving a brief outline of the background to the historical events and negotiations which are discussed in both articles, with apologies to those readers for whom this is already familiar ground:
1. In 1568 the United Provinces of the Netherlands rose in revolt against Spanish Habsburg rule. Their cause gained the open support of Queen Elizabeth during the mid-1580s; England provided both funds and military forces for the continuance of the war against Spanish occupation, a lengthy conflict which was not resolved until 1609, when peace was made with Spain. The Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, saw service in the Netherlands under the Earl of Leicester (1585-1586) and later, in 1591, led a force into France in support of King Henri IV against the Catholic League; Essex’s brother Walter was killed at the siege of Rouen.
2. Throughout the 1580s and 1590s, the Dutch navy assisted England against the threat of Spanish invasion, not only obstructing Parma’s landing barges in 1588 but also participating in the English assault on Cadiz (in 1596) and the less successful “Islands Voyage” of 1597.
3. After four decades of civil war in France, the Protestant King Henri IV, formerly King of Navarre, had taken the strategic step of officially “converting” to Roman Catholicism in 1593. King Henri made very astute use of the next five years, with the aim of unifying and strengthening his devastated country. By introducing widespread economic reforms and repairing the nation’s damaged infrastructure, Henri eventually succeeded in restoring prosperity to France.
4. Despite the signing of a peace treaty with Spain in 1598 (the Peace of Vervins, 2nd May), during the following ten years the King of France gave secret assistance to the Dutch revolt, sending large amounts of money and volunteers to the United Provinces, thus undermining the Spanish occupation in the South (present-day Belgium) and opposing the armies of Archduke Albert. The Archduke’s campaigns in the Netherlands and elsewhere were, of 1 See http://www.marlowe-society.org/pubs/journal/journal06.html
course, under the direction of the Catholic King of Spain, Philip II, with the financial backing of treasure from the New World and the vast resources of the Papacy.
5. In 1595 the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, instructed Anthony Bacon, the brother of Sir Francis Bacon, to begin the task of setting up an intelligence-gathering network in Europe, operating mainly in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Fortunately for historians, invaluable records of this network have survived amongst the Anthony Bacon Papers at Lambeth Palace Library in London.
Our late colleague A. D. Wraight discovered in this archive certain papers and letters of a supposedly “French” intelligencer, “Monsieur Le Doux”, including a highly significant list of the books in his possession2, many of which are source-works for the Shake-speare plays. These important documents, including the three extant letters from Monsieur Le Doux, were first published in A. D. Wraight’s Shakespeare: New Evidence (Adam Hart, London, 1996). The name “Le Doux” is now believed by many to have been the alias of the surviving Christopher Marlowe, previously supposed to have been killed on 30th May 1593, just ten days after his arrest by the Court of Star Chamber on capital charges, including that of Heresy. Marlowe’s predicament had been all the more perilous owing to the Court’s seizure of an “Heretical Treatise” which he had owned - it was a serious scriptural study, but of an Arian (i.e. anti-Trinitarian) nature.
In my opinion, the arrest of Christopher Marlowe was a first step towards the planned indictment of his friend and fellow freethinker, Sir Walter Raleigh, on similar charges (i.e. “Atheism” and Heresy). The disappearance of Marlowe to some extent frustrated this plot. In the spring of 1594, Raleigh was subjected to a formal enquiry into his religious beliefs; however, the ecclesiastical Court of High Commission was unable to secure a conviction.
New Discoveries in the Search for “Monsieur Le Doux”
In my previous article, I assessed the significance of the twenty-one references to Monsieur Le Doux in the letters of Paul Choart, the Seigneur de Buzanval, French Ambassador at The Hague, addressed to King Henri IV in Paris and to his Secretary of State, Nicolas de Neufville, the Seigneur de Villeroy; these letters date from October 1598 to November 15993. In addition to his duties as the bearer of official dispatches between Paris and The Hague, on several occasions Le Doux supervised the transfer of large amounts of money to the Netherlands. In November of 1599, he appears to have left the service of Buzanval (and possibly also that of King Henri IV).
2 Lambeth Palace Library, Bacon MSS 655 f 186, 185r & v, dated 15th February 1596 OS
3 Lettres et Lettres et Negociations de Paul Choart, Seigneur de Buzenval, et de Francois d’Aerssen, 1598-1599, edited by
Pursuing the various “leads” identified in my previous research, I have located eight new documentary sources4 which mention Le Doux by name; the dates range from March/May/September of 1597 to April and May of 1598 and January and August of 1599. These documents, in their turn, present us with much new information and some intriguing “clues” which are very promising for future investigation. There are also official records of payments made to the royal courier Jacques Le Doux, at The Hague, on eight separate occasions between 1595 and 1598.
We have previously learned a great deal about the work of Anthony Bacon’s agent “Le Doux” during 1595 and 1596, based on the evidence of the Anthony Bacon Papers, as interpreted by A.D. Wraight, Peter Farey and others; more recently, as I have said, we have learned of Le Doux’s activities during 1598 and 1599, when he was travelling between the French Court (usually at Paris) and the French Embassy at The Hague. The extraordinary thing is, that we now find a diplomatic courier of the same name, “Le Doux”, operating in many of the same locations as before and carrying out very similar assignments, and all of this in association with an already-familiar cast of characters, many of them eminent statesmen and scholars.
The principal persons whose names feature in the new documents are as follows:
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547-1619), the Advocate of Holland, founder of the Dutch Republic. He was a statesman of great wisdom and rare patience, who together with William the Silent and his son, Prince Maurice of Nassau (1567-1625), succeeded in establishing the United Provinces of the Netherlands as a fully independent state.
Justin of Nassau (1559-1631), illegitimate son of William the Silent, Dutch army commander and Lieutenant-Admiral of Zealand; in 1588 he took part in the fight against the Spanish Armada, and his ships played a vital role in preventing the Duke of Parma from launching his landing barges. Justin’s navy also helped to deter later Spanish attacks on England.
Liévin van Calvart (d. circa 28th May 1597), Agent of the United Provinces of the Netherlands at Paris from the summer of 1593 until May 1597 (i.e. Ambassador, though he was not formally allowed that title). He attended the Anglo-French negotiations in London during April and May 1596, at the request of King Henri. He was also Secretary of the States of Brabant.
Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), described as “the greatest scholar of the Renaissance” who “revolutionised ancient chronology”;5 he was a Classical Scholar, a Huguenot and Calvinist. From 1593 he was Professor in Greek at the University of Leiden, not far from The Hague. He lectured on Aristotle and Cicero. With his friends Justus Lipsius and Isaac Casaubon, Scaliger is the
4 See Appendix 1
5 Oxford Companion to English Literature, O.U.P., 1973
subject of Charles Nisard’s Le Triumvirat Litteraire (1852). In the interim between the death of Liévin van Calvart and the appointment of his successor, Francois Van Aerssen, Joseph Scaliger acted as the unofficial agent of the States-General in Paris.
Francois Van Aerssen (d’Aerssen) (1572-1641), Dutch Ambassador in France from 1598 to 1613,successor to Liévin van Calvart. Like Joseph Scaliger, Van Aerssen was a friend of the Humanist Classical scholar Justus Lipsius, whose book De Constantia was in the possession of Le Doux in 1596 [see Shakespeare New Evidence, pp. 67-68, for the influence of Lipsius on Titus Andronicus (written 1592-3), Macbeth (1606) and Measure for Measure (1604) ]. Van Aerssen, it will be recalled, was closely linked with the Seigneur de Buzanval and was mentioned in my previous article, The French Connection: New Leads on Monsieur Le Doux.
Paul Choart, the Seigneur de Buzanval (c.1550-1607), French Ambassador at The Hague from 1591 to 1607. He was a close friend of Sir Francis Walsingham: both men were ardent Protestants and both had been survivors of the appalling atrocities of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a tragedy retold in Marlowe’s play The Massacre at Paris (1592). Buzanval was French Ambassador in London from 1585 until 1589. It is clear that he was a friend of both Anthony Bacon and Monsieur Le Doux. His letters reveal a personality of great warmth, intelligence and foresight. He was in contact with many eminent scholars throughout Europe.
Daniel van der Meulen (c.1550-1600), Merchant and scholar, a close friend of Lord Buzanval. Originally from Antwerp, he settled in the town of Leiden, which is about twenty miles from The Hague. Between 1580 and 1600, he founded two trading companies which established contacts in Germany, Scandinavia, France and elsewhere. Van der Meulen had broad cultural interests; through his friendship with Buzanval, he was put in touch with such scholars as Joseph Scaliger and Bonaventura Vulcanius (see Letter 53 in Appendix 2, below). He also possessed a very large library of some 1200 volumes, to which Le Doux almost certainly had access. Buzanval and Scaliger frequently borrowed books from the Leiden merchant, and on one occasion Van der Meulen presented the Ambassador with the gift of a very finely bound copy of the Itinerario by Jan Huygen van Linschoten (see Letters 63 and 64 in Appendix 2). This important book featured a new map of the Spice Islands of the East Indies, which is mentioned in Shake-speare’s Twelfth Night (see Appendix 3, below).
Sir Thomas Edmondes (1563-1639), diplomat and politician. He was sent to France in 1592 as agent of Queen Elizabeth to King Henri IV; was appointed “Secretary of the French Tongue” in 1596; and returned to Paris in 1597.
Anthoine De Sailly (d.1608), Agent at Calais of the States-General of the Netherlands.
From the work of the Dutch historian Dr. N. Japikse7, I learned of certain payments made on at least seven occasions between 1595 and 1598 by the government of the Netherlands (the “States-General”) to a courier named “Jacques Le Doulx”; it is clear that these payments are remuneration for his services in delivering despatches. The first payment is recorded in the Resolution of 28th September 1595. The documents delivered by Le Doux on this occasion almost certainly included a very detailed six-page Report from the Dutch ambassador to France, Liévin Calvart, dated 29th August 1595 (NS); it was sent from Lyon and was received by the States-General on September 25th 1595 (NS). Three days later, they made their first payment to Monsieur Le Doux, in the sum of fifty florins8; this would be about £2,270 today, so our “French” courier was well rewarded for his efforts.
This record, dating to 28th September 1595, is the earliest information that we possess, thus far, concerning the movements and career of “Monsieur Le Doux”; the dating fits in well with A. D. Wraight’s thesis - namely, that from about one month later, Le Doux was staying at the mansion of Sir John Harington at Burley in Rutland [Leicestershire], where he arrived in October 1595, remaining there until January 25th 1596 (NS). The information that Le Doux was using the first name Jacques (sometimes spelled “Jaques”) receives independent confirmation from Dr.S. P. Haak and Dr J. H. Kernkamp9 (see their notes to Documents D and G in Appendix 1); these scholars also state that Jacques Le Doux was a royal courier in the service of King Henri IV of France.
Now, in relation to the playwright “Shake-speare”, readers will be aware of the fact that the first name “Jaques” has a certain significance, because in As You Like It (written 1599-1600) there is a very enigmatic figure of the same name, a nobleman in attendance on the exiled Duke Senior; the portrayal of “Jaques” in this play has frequently been interpreted as a self-portrait of the author. “Jaques”, of course, has the famous speech beginning:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players ;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
As You Like It, II.vii.139-166
One notes, incidentally, that at the end of the play, the “melancholy” Jaques is not really free to leave the “forest”, unlike his companions; as “Monsieur
6 In what follows, I have tried to give all dates in New Style (NS)- i.e. ten days later than Old Style (OS) - unless otherwise
specified.
7 Dr N. Japikse, Resolutien Staten-Generaal Oude en Nieuwe Reeks, 1576-1625, Vol. 8 (1925), p. 432.
8 The reference given by Dr Japikse is “R.A., S.G. 6669 (orig.) Bodeloon [i.e. “Courier Payment”] f.50 aan Jacques Le Doux: R.
[Resolution of] 28 Sept [1595]”; see also Vol. 9, p.421 and Vol. 10, pp.67 and 875. Further information may be found at the website www.inghist.nl/retroboeken/statengeneraal
9 See their notes to Documents D and G in Appendix 1.
Traveller”10 he has had to resign himself to a life of permanent exile. He is afflicted with the “humour” of “melancholy”, which he ruefully describes as “a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples [“ingredients”], extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination [“constant reflection”] wraps me in a most humorous [changeable] sadness” (the sad experience of exile is of course a major theme of the Shake-speare Sonnets11). His Humanist, cynical outlook may also be significant.
It is, of course, well known that As You Like It has a number of curious references to the supposedly-dead Christopher Marlowe (e.g. III.iii.9-11). Though entered on the Stationers’ Register in 1600, this play was permanently “stayed” from publication12, for reasons which remain somewhat obscure; it did not appear in print until the First Folio of 1623.
Now, returning to Liévin Calvart, the Dutch Ambassador to France: his six-page Report to the States-General, dated August 29th 1595, was sent from Lyon, where King Henri had arrived on the 23rd (he was still there in late September). Monsieur Le Doux was almost certainly the bearer of this Report (his name may be present in a sentence which is mostly in cipher). Calvart sends news of the general progress of the King’s military campaigns against the Catholic League and the Spanish army (France had declared war on Spain in January 1595).
As one might expect, Calvart’s Report contains numerous references to the Duke of Mayenne (Charles de Lorraine) and Marshall Biron (Charles de Gontaut); these individuals stand behind the characters of “Dumaine” and “Berowne” respectively in Shake-speare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost, written between 1592 and 1595.
On August 24th 1595, a few days before the date of Calvart’s Report, the King had written to Ambassador Buzanval’s friend Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay, confirming the submission of the Duke of Mayenne:
"The Duke of Mayenne has asked me to allow him three months for the purpose
of informing the enemy of his determination, in order to induce them to join him
in recognizing me and serving me. So doing, he has also agreed to bind himself
from this present date to recognize me and serve me, whatever his friends may
do."
The King had arrived at Lyon on 23rd August; on the 23rd of September he sent details of the truce to the Governor of Dieppe, Monsieur De La Chatre.
10
As You Like It, IV.i.31
11 A.D. Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (Adam Hart Publishers, 1994) - pp 56, 184-198.
12 Stationers’ Register entry of 4th August 1600 (OS)
Another significant name that crops up in Calvart’s Report is that of Joseph Scaliger (“De Le Scalla”), himself an important figure in this research and the writer of Document B in Appendix 1.
To summarise the above: in September 1595, “Jacques Le Doux” received a payment of fifty florins from the States-General. Five further payments to “Jacques Le Doux”, of the same amount, are recorded during 1597: the relevant Resolutions are dated 26th July, 13th September, 9th October, 14th November and 20th December. As we will see, these dates fit perfectly with our new information on the movements of Monsieur Le Doux (see, for example, Document C in Appendix 1, below). The fact that Liévin Calvart knew Le Doux is confirmed by the former’s letter to the States-General, dated 14th March 1597 (Document A in Appendix 1). A further payment to Le Doux is recorded under the Resolution of 17th April 1598.13
I should add that Christopher Marlowe, as one of Sir Francis Walsingham’s intelligencers, could certainly have met Liévin Calvart much earlier, for the latter had been in contact with Walsingham since 1587.
The First Return from Exile: Monsieur Le Doux and Baron Zeirotine
It would appear that in the late summer of 1595, Monsieur Le Doux was returning from a stay of more than two years in Northern Italy, which corresponds closely with the period during which certain celebrated Shake-speare plays were written, including Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice. The vivid Italian setting of these plays is completely authentic in every detail; Professor Ernesto Grillo, a recognised authority on the subject, stated categorically that the author of the Shake-speare plays must have spent a considerable time in Northern Italy.14
From the evidence of the Anthony Bacon Papers, we know that from October 1595 until 25th January 1596 (NS), Le Doux was at the mansion of Sir John Harington at Burley in Rutland, having been placed there temporarily in the role of tutor to the latter’s young son. This role was a “cover”, for in reality Le Doux was preparing to undertake an intelligence-gathering mission on the Continent, on the instructions of Anthony Bacon and the Earl of Essex. Monsieur Le Doux’s first commission was to accompany John Dionisius, Baron Zeirotine, the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, on his return to Prague. They would pass through Germany, where Le Doux had additional assignments; when these had been completed, he was directed to move on to Northern Italy (the aims of his mission are specified in the Memoires Instructives, dated March 19th 1596 (OS).15
13
Haak, Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt (1934) Vol. 10, p.67. 14
Ernesto Grillo, Shakespeare and Italy (Glasgow, 1949).
The exact date of Baron Zeirotene’s arrival in England “to see the Realme” is not known; we do know that he was granted at least one audience with the Queen, and also that he was carrying letters from the Emperor Rudolf to King James VI of Scotland. Zeiroteine’s biographer, Peter Von Chlumecky, says nothing of the Baron’s journey to England in 1595/1596, nor of his intention to proceed to the Court of King James, though he does mention an earlier visit that took place in 1588. Curiously, Zeirotine may also have been in England two years earlier; a surviving letter from Queen Elizabeth states: “Since my last letters to you by the Baron of Zerotin, we have had no further advertisements from Connaught”16. Was Zeiroteine, in some sense, a “double agent”?
The Emperor Rudolf had withdrawn from Vienna in 1583, transferring the Imperial capital to Prague, primarily because the more northerly city was less directly threatened by the armies of the Ottoman Turks. In the late 16th Century, the Turks presented a serious threat to central Europe; back in 1593, the Emperor had begun a long and indecisive war against them, which was to continue for thirteen years. Austria had been in grave danger from 1593 to 1595 and was still under threat in 1596, when the Turks invaded Hungary. In that year, demonstrating the grim determination of the Turks, Sultan Mohammed III took to the field of battle in person, his forces taking the fortress of Erlau in Northern Hungary on October 12th 1596.17
In Christian Europe it was greatly feared that the mighty Ottomans would eventually attack Venice and the rest of Italy; these fears are of course reflected in Shake-speare’s Othello. At the same time, there was a growing awareness of the need for reconciliation between the divided nations of Christendom, so that the fight against the Turks could be conducted more effectively. In this context, it is understandable that the Emperor’s emissary, Baron Zeiroteine, would receive a warm welcome in England.
Presumably the Holy Roman Emperor, in sending his envoy to Scotland in early 1596, was seeking to obtain some form of support from King James in the Turkish war, whether in the form of money, troops or munitions; perhaps Rudolf also hoped that the Scottish King would exert some influence over the independent Princes of Germany, to the same end. Another current question, and one that generated much controversy, was that of the succession to the English throne. And, given the timing of Zeiroteine’s visit, he may well have made contact with some of the English and French delegates who arrived in London in the Spring of 1596 to negotiate the Treaty of Greenwich. In general, therefore, one may deduce that the purpose of Zeiroteine’s visit was to enable him to report to the Emperor on strategic and political developments in Western Europe. In return for this, Baron Zeiroteine could advise Queen Elizabeth and King James on the extent of Turkish aggression in the Mediterranean and the danger of attacks on Italy and elsewhere.
16
See the website British History Online, August 1586 (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49006).
17 See Lord Buzanval’s Letters 19 and 79 in Appendix 2.
Extant Letters of Monsieur Le Doux and Baron Zeiroteine
In early 1596, two passports were issued for Le Doux, both over the signature of the Earl of Essex; they are dated 10th February (OS) at London, and 10th March (OS) at Richmond18. Both passports specify the Low Countries and Germany as the destinations, but neither makes any mention of Baron Zeiroteine, which suggests that although Le Doux was definitely assigned to accompany the Baron to Prague, they did not cross the Channel at the same time (evidently Zeiroteine was planning to rejoin Le Doux at a later stage)19.
It would seem that Monsieur Le Doux and his assistant, Jacques Petit, made a brief visit to the Continent in February20. Baron Zeirotene was issued with a passport for his journey to Scotland on 7th March 1596 (OS); however, he fell ill at Cambridge and was unable to continue (his servants Henri d’Eberbach and Jacques Petit were with him, but not Monsieur Le Doux). A few days later, on March 16th (OS), Henri d’Eberbach wrote to Anthony Bacon requesting permission for Petit to convey the letters to Scotland21, but this was refused22. However, within three weeks Baron Zeiroteine had recovered, for we learn from Le Doux’s first extant letter23 - somewhat surprisingly - that he has rejoined the Baron and that they are somewhere in the vicinity of London (perhaps at Greenwich or Gravesend).
Zeirotene’s apparent change of plan requires some explanation; one can only surmise that he had decided to make his journey to Scotland by sea, rather than undertaking the long and arduous overland route. In his letter of 5th April (OS) Monsieur Le Doux, writing on behalf of Zeirotene, asks for news of the expected Spanish invasion fleet; it would be quite understandable if the Baron had concerns about taking ship at that particular time. Le Doux’s letter also reveals that the hyper-sensitive Jacques Petit was seeking to “avenge himself” by way of a meeting with Jean Castol, Minister of the French Church in London, who was a close friend of both Anthony Bacon and Monsieur Le Doux. Petit’s annoyance was probably the result of some “slight” or humiliation, real or perceived, endured by the irascible Gascon at the hands of “Mr Disorder”.24
18
LPL MSS 655 f191 and 656 f191 19
Thomas Birch’s statement that Monsieur Le Doux left England “with the Baron de Zerotin” is unreliable, though one cannot
absolutely preclude the possibility that Le Doux, having gone over to Middelburg in April 1596, subsequently re-crossed the
Channel in order to accompany the Baron at the time of the latter’s departure. See Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth, Vol II: 38. 20
See Wraight, Shakespeare: New Evidence, p.111; also Lord Buzanval’s Letter 19 in Appendix 2, dated 26th February NS
[16th February OS]
21 LPL MS 656 f27
22 LPL MS 656 f28
23 LPL MS 656 f371, received 5th April OS (Transcript and Facsimile in Wraight, op cit, pp. 136-137).
24 Petit had described Christmas at Burley as “the cause of much vain expense for tragedies and plays by Mr Disorder”, i.e. Le
The tone of Le Doux’s second letter25, written around 25th April 1596 (NS), is rather different (unfortunately this document is incomplete; but the extant part makes no mention of Baron Zeiroteine). In this letter, received by Anthony Bacon on April 30th (NS), Le Doux writes of a Spaniard named Cyprian who has travelled from a place called “Neübüry” (note the umlauts) to “this town”, in order to have a book published. The phrase “this town” hardly seems applicable to London, which was at that time the largest metropolis in Europe; furthermore, one would think that if the Spaniard “Cyprian” had managed to get all the way to London, he could easily have approached Anthony Bacon directly, especially given his son’s connections with “the late Mr Walsingham”.
It seems to me that “this town” is much more likely to denote Middelburg in the Netherlands, for a large number of printing firms were based there. During the 1590s and early 1600s Middelburg became (after Amsterdam) the most important trading centre in the Netherlands, and the town’s printer/booksellers were making very substantial profits26. In fact, by the end of the Sixteenth century, the Netherlands had become home to an abundance of printing firms; often the printers were of a freethinking persuasion - and, as Dame Frances Yates has shown27, many of them were members of the sect known as the Family of Love (Familists). These included the famous Christopher Plantin (1514-89) and the Englishman Thomas Basson (1555-1613), who set up his press at Leiden in collaboration with a certain Thomas Brewer. Plantin’s establishment at Leiden was inherited by his grandson Christopher Raphelengius, who is mentioned in Buzanval’s Letter 79 (see Appendix 2). It is well known that the printing presses in the Netherlands were not subjected to the rigorous censorship that was enforced in England; Christopher Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Elegies was printed at Middelburg at some time before June of 1599, when copies were burned on the orders of Archbishop Whitgift.
I should add that the Earl of Essex owned a house at Middelburg (a letter to Essex from a merchant of Zealand, Baltazar de Moucheron, was sent “de votre maison a Middelbourg, 26 Mars 1598”28. Presumably this house was used as a base for the Earl’s intelligencers.
If I am correct in surmising that Monsieur Le Doux’s second letter was sent from Middelburg, then clearly he had crossed to the Continent ahead of Baron Zeiroteine and intended to rejoin him later (I note, incidentally, that on the 22nd April (NS) Jacques Petit wrote to the Seigneur de Sancy29, Ambassador from the King of France, "concerning a passport for Le Doux", which would seem to confirm the imminence of the latter’s departure from England).
25 LPL MS 656 f372; transcript and facsimile in Wraight, op cit, pp.138-139 26
See Laura Cruz, Bookselling in the Seventeenth Century, at www.psupress.org. 27
Francis Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 1972; Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell, (Adam Hart, 1994) - p.351.
28 Gustav Ungerer, A Spaniard in Elizabethan England, (Tamesis Books, 1974) 2 Vols.
Now, this second letter from Le Doux contains some very intriguing remarks beginning: “Our Frenchmen are not very happy with the man who is in your Library”30 (i.e. at Essex House, where Anthony Bacon had taken up residence in October 1595). Having considered various possible identifications, I recalled that I had read somewhere that there was a portrait of the Earl of Essex in the Library at Essex House - that would be the obvious place to put it, since the Earl was proud of his intellectual aspirations and his patronage of Humanist scholars. I suggest, therefore, that this remark of Le Doux’s was, in fact, an oblique reference to the Earl himself; the recent events in France, in particular the fall of Calais, and the date of Le Doux’s letter, enable us to establish quite clearly which individuals are meant by “our Frenchmen”, and the reason for their anger directed at Essex, somewhat unfairly it must be said. As we will see, the phrase denotes the French Protestant (i.e. Huguenot) community residing in the Netherlands, including Ambassador Buzanval, and also a party of Frenchmen who had recently escaped from the siege of Calais and taken refuge in Holland and Zealand.
The citadel at Calais surrendered on April 24th 1596 (NS), after a short siege of about two weeks. At this time, the Earl of Essex had 8,000 men at Dover, just twenty miles across the Channel; Jan den Tex makes the comment that "nothing would have pleased him more than to use the soldiers for the relief of Calais. Elizabeth forbade it unless Henri would cede the town to her. She sent [Robert] Sidney to Boulogne to practise this discreditable blackmail. [Liévin] Calvart went with the King to the shore [around April 24th] to welcome Sidney and heard from the former, not from the shamefaced English nobleman, how their conversation had ended. The King had refused. He hoped that he would at some time be able to recapture the town from the Spaniards, but not that it would be given back to him by the English.”31
I conclude, then, that in writing of “our Frenchmen”, Monsieur Le Doux means the French Protestant community in the Netherlands, especially the circle surrounding his friend Buzanval, and the French Protestants then at Flushing and Middelburg, many of them refugees; clearly these Frenchmen were angered by Essex’s failure to use his ships and soldiers for the relief of Calais. Le Doux may also be thinking of Anthoine de Sailly, agent of the States-General at Calais, who was definitely known to him (see Document C in Appendix 1, below); Sailly had been sent urgently to Middelburg by the Governor of Calais, Monsieur de Vidosan, just after the beginning of the siege (Buzanval, writing to Daniel Van der Meulen on April 12th, reported that “Sailly has arrived at Middelburg”)32. In the same letter, Buzanval expresses the hope that the King had concluded the siege of La Fere, but this was not the case; in fact King Henri had to remain at La Fere until May 22nd.33
30
“Noz francois ne sont pas beaucoup contents de l’home q’est en vre [votre] librairie.” 31
Jan den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, Cambridge University Press, 1973 32
Kernkamp, op cit, p.201. 33
Letter 24 in Kernkamp and Heyst, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschapp, Vols 76-78 (1962).
On 11th April 1596, soon after the beginning of the siege, Ambassador Buzanval had written to the Governor of Calais urging him to keep open the sea approaches to the port. In giving this advice, the Ambassador was again prescient of the eventual outcome; for when a Dutch relieving force arrived in the vicinity of Calais on April 17th, it was prevented from approaching the town on account of the overwhelming strength of the Spanish artillery. It was rapidly becoming clear to everyone that Calais could only be relieved from the sea; but by April 24th, all hopes of English intervention had been crushed. On the 3rd of May, Buzanval wrote again to Van der Meulen, confirming (somewhat regretfully) that:
“the English are going ahead with their voyage [the expedition against Cadiz]
and the ships belonging to this nation [the Netherlands] are now on their way to
Plymouth.” 34
Liévin Calvart, Jacques Le Doux and the Triple Alliance
In the Spring of 1596 a French delegation, led by the Duke of Bouillon (Henri Turenne), arrived in England to take part in talks towards a “League Offensive and Defensive” between France and England - it was anticipated that this League, soon to be ratified as The Treaty of Greenwich, would be expanded into a Triple Alliance with the Netherlands against Spain. At the personal request of the King of France, Liévin Calvart accompanied the Duke of Bouillon’s mission to England, arriving in London around April 26th; at the same time Antonio Perez, the Spanish exile, managed to attach himself to the French delegation, only to be avoided by most of his English acquaintances. Perez was still hoping desperately for permission to reside permanently in England, which was refused - no doubt because the Queen and her Privy Council regarded the eccentric Spaniard as entirely untrustworthy; he left England around May 29th (NS).
The Seigneur de Sancy (Nicolas Harlay) was certainly a leading member of Bouillon’s delegation, although in fact Sancy had been sent ahead of the Duke to press the urgency of King Henri’s appeal for English assistance in rescuing Calais. Sancy arrived in London on the 20th of April 1596 (NS); he was carrying a letter from King Henri to Anthony Bacon dated 11th April 1596 (NS), in which the King asked his old friend Bacon to use his influence with the Earl of Essex (i.e. towards the relief of Calais). However, as Bacon was unwell, the King’s letter was actually delivered by our “French” intelligencer, Monsieur Le Doux, on April 21st (NS)35; apparently Le Doux was also the bearer of Bacon’s reply, entrusted to Sancy the next day. Bearing in mind what has been said (above) about the likely origin of Le Doux’s second letter to Anthony Bacon, endorsed 30th April 1596 (NS), we may conclude that Le Doux left England for the Netherlands around April 23rd to 25th.
The Treaty of Greenwich was duly signed by the Queen and the Duke of Bouillon on May 24th 1596 (some authorities say the 26th); the Duke was 34
back at Gravesend with Sancy on the 28th of May, waiting to cross the Channel. However, Liévin Calvart did not return to France with them, but went directly to the Netherlands, in the company of Guillaume d’Ancel (French Ambassador to the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor); this is confirmed by Thomas Birch, who states that Monsieur d’Ancel “passed over to Holland with a copy of the Treaty … in the company of Laevinus Calvart, the Dutch ambassador to the French King, at whose desire he had attended the negotiation of that Treaty, which was not ratified [in England] until August following [1596]”36. The States-General of the Netherlands formally ratified the Treaty at The Hague on 31st October.
I conclude, therefore, that since Liévin Calvart, the writer of Document A in Appendix 1, accompanied the French delegation to England in the Spring of 1596 and then went to the Netherlands at the end of May, he clearly had opportunities to renew his acquaintance with Monsieur Le Doux, particularly at Middelburg.
The Third Extant Letter of Le Doux; Zeirotene joins him at Middelburg
Now, where was Baron Zeiroteine during April and May of 1596? The fact that his passport for home was issued as late as May 31st (OS) must surely indicate that he fulfilled his original commission and travelled to Scotland, delivering Emperor Rudolf’s letters to King James; and it may be significant that the Baron’s passport was issued so soon after the signing of the Treaty of Greenwich. Presumably Zeirotene had gleaned some useful information from the French delegates, which would enable him to report in detail to the Emperor on the signing of the Treaty and the prospect of a Triple Alliance.
It is notable that Zeiroteine’s passport specifies the port of Flushing as his immediate destination - he is “to make his retorne over the seas homewarde by Flushing”37; this is modern Vlissingen, a town very close to Middelburg, where he would rendezvous with Monsieur Le Doux.
Certainly both Zeiroteine and Le Doux were at Middelburg on 22nd June 1596 (probably OS), for that is the date and origin of the latter’s third extant letter38 and also of Zeiroteine’s letter to Anthony Bacon, written in Italian and sent to thank the latter “for his civilities to him in England”39. As this is some three weeks after the issuing of Zeirotene’s passport, it seems that the Baron may have delayed his departure for Prague, perhaps to observe the progress of the Dutch towards the ratification of the Triple Alliance; for the new Treaty had strategic implications for the Empire, in connection with the war against the Turks and the hope of gaining the support of the German Princes.
36
Birch, op cit, Volume II, p.3. 37
Acts of the Privy Council, Volume 25 38
LPL MS. 657 f227; transcript and facsimile in Wraight, op cit, pp. 140-141 39
The Baron’s party probably left Middelburg at the end of June, for Le Doux’s letter of the 22nd indicates that they will be passing through Brabant, which was the logical route for their journey into Germany and Bohemia. No doubt Baron Zeiroteine was carrying dispatches to the Holy Roman Emperor from Queen Elizabeth, probably also from King James of Scotland and the States-General of the Netherlands.
We must now ask this question: having accompanied Baron Zeiroteine safely to Prague, did Le Doux then proceed from Bohemia to Northern Italy, as planned, and if so, how much time was at his disposal? His assignment in Italy was potentially very demanding, though it is clear from the Memoires Instructives that the Earl of Essex fully appreciated this fact and noted that his intelligencer might not have sufficient time even for a brief visit: “in case you should find a good commodity to go to Italy”.
If we assume that Monsieur Le Doux reached Northern Italy in the autumn of 1596, this would have allowed him a few months in which to make a start, at least, on his intelligence-gathering. But the new documentary evidence shows that by March of 1597 he was back in Northern France, at Beauvais, soon to be sent from there to the Netherlands.40 Evidently Monsieur Le Doux was unexpectedly recalled from Italy in early 1597, perhaps on account of strategic developments in France and their implications for the Netherlands.
It is likely that the redeployment of Le Doux was one of the matters discussed during a meeting between Lord Buzanval and his old friend Anthony Bacon, that had taken place in London on November 28th 1596; perhaps the King’s ambassador pointed out that the services of Le Doux, a reliable and experienced intelligencer, would be extremely useful in France and the Netherlands. Under this new arrangement, Le Doux would continue to send information to Anthony Bacon, whilst providing invaluable assistance to Lord Buzanval and his master, the King of France.
Events of 1597: the Fall and Re-capture of Amiens; Travels of Jacques Le Doux
Having returned from his second visit to Italy in early 1597, we now find Monsieur Le Doux travelling between Paris and the Hague, conveying despatches and apparently employed in much the same role as he would be in 1598 and 1599 (as outlined in my previous article); he has entered the service of Ambassador Buzanval and the King of France.
For the year 1597, the records of the States-General at The Hague41 show that five payments were made to the courier Jacques Le Doulx; the relevant Resolutions are dated 26th July, 13th September, 9th October, 14th November (“per procuratie”, “by proxy” - possibly to Ambassador Buzanval?)
40
See Liévin Calvart’s letter of 14th March 1597, Document A in Appendix 1 41
and 20th December. Le Doux would also have received a payment at the end of March, probably from Buzanval.
In a surprise attack, on March 11th 1597 the Spanish army captured the strategically vital town of Amiens in Northern France; it was an unmitigated disaster for the French, since all of the King’s munitions and supplies for the coming campaign were stored there (Amiens would not be recaptured until September, after a siege of some three months).
The loss of Amiens was truly a huge setback for Henri - yet this is where his astonishing resilience, and his sheer determination, shine through: he refuses to give in to despair, but immediately prepares to launch a counter-attack against the town of Arras, with the intention of cutting off the Spanish army’s northern supply route from the occupied provinces (i.e. modern Belgium).
In the meantime, King Henri sent his special envoy, the Sieur de Fouquerolles, to Queen Elizabeth with an urgent appeal for help, and with instructions even to offer her Calais as a “pledge town” if that should be necessary. We know from Calvart’s letter of March 14th 159742 that our intelligencer “Monsieur Le Doux” was then at Beauvais, about thirty-five miles north of Paris, and that the King was planning to send him immediately to the government of the Netherlands with a similar appeal (the States-General received Henri’s letter on March 31st 1597).
Le Doux was back in Paris before the end of May. This is confirmed in a letter from the famous scholar Joseph Scaliger, addressed to the States-General of the Netherlands, dated May 30th 1597 43, in which he states that:
“The letters which your Lordships have written to the King [Henri] by way of
the courier Le Doulx [sic] have been delivered into the very hands of His
Majesty by the Sieur de la Rossiniere, elder son of the late Monsieur de
Calvart.”
After Calvart’s death, which had occurred a few days previously, Scaliger voluntarily took over the role of Dutch ambassador in France, which underlines his deep commitment to the Protestant cause,
At this point, the date of Le Doux’s return to The Hague is unknown, but it is surely significant that another payment to Jacques Le Doulx, of fifty florins, is listed in the records of the States-General for July 26th 1597 (Japikse, op cit, Vol. 9, p.421) - this could well be in respect of a further letter from Joseph Scaliger. Then, in August, Monsieur Le Doux was back in France, for we know that he was the bearer of a letter from Jan van Oldenbarnevelt, dated 27th August 44, to Anthoine de Sailly, formerly agent of the States-General at Calais; in this letter, Oldenbarnevelt informs Sailly of the surrender of the town
42
See Document B in Appendix 1, and Letter 48 in Appendix 2. 43
of Berck. Anthoine de Sailly was then at Pecquigney, near Amiens; his reply, dated September 9th45, was delivered to The Hague by Le Doux, for which service he received a further payment of fifty florins on September 13th (a glance at a map of Northern Europe will confirm that Le Doux could easily have made this journey in four days, bearing in mind also that the prevailing wind in the Channel is from the west or south-west. To put this schedule into perspective, the journey from Paris to London normally took between four to seven days).
The next development, so far as Monsieur Le Doux is concerned, is his receipt of a larger payment of 75 florins at The Hague on October 9th, just after the King had recovered Amiens. The French recapture of Amiens was excellent news for the United Provinces of the Netherlands - the members of the States-General were evidently in a celebratory mood, hence the bonus payment of an extra 25 florins from the grateful Councillors. It is clear that Le Doux’s constant diligence in these matters was as greatly appreciated by the Dutch authorities as it was by Ambassador Buzanval.
The Resolutions of 1597 authorising these payments to Le Doux are summarised by Dr Japikse46 as follows:
• “Bodeloon (f 25 voor het brengen van de overgave en f 50 aan Jacques
Le Doulx [sic] voor het brengen van den brief): R, 9 October.”
• Courier Payment of 25 florins for bringing [news of] the surrender [of
Amiens, on September 25th] and 50 florins to Jacques Le Doulx [sic] for
bringing the letter [probably that of Anthoine de Sailly, dated 30th
September]: Resolution of 9th October.
• Other courier payments: Resolutions of 26 July, 13 Sept, 14 Nov. p.p., 20
Dec. [1597]
Early in the new year, Jacques Le Doux received another payment of 40 florins at The Hague, this time as the bearer of a letter from Anthoine de Sailly, as yet unlocated (Resolution of the States-General, 27th January 1598).47
After the surrender of Amiens, the French King turned his attention to the situation in Brittany, where his last opponent, the Duke of Mercoeur (Philippe Emmanuel, formerly Governor of that province) was still holding out, with the support of King Philip II of Spain. King Henri led his army against Mercoeur early in 1598 and received his submission at Angers on March 20th 1598 -
Mercouer finally came to terms for the sum of four million livres, and was exiled to Hungary.
Negotiating the Peace: the Treaty of Vervins, 1598
We now come to the spring of 1598. At this time, King Henri was seriously inclining towards making peace with Spain - indeed in January he had secretly sent negotiators to Vervins (Bellievre and Sillery) to take part in preliminary talks with the Spanish.
Both the Dutch and the English governments sent delegations to France to discuss the situation and to present their objections. Clearly, for France to make a separate peace with Spain would be directly contrary to the terms of the Triple Alliance; but the situation was far more complex than it might at first appear.
Certainly the Dutch delegation, led by Justin of Nassau and Jan van Oldenbarnevelt, was vehemently opposed to the Peace Treaty; they wanted a continuation of the war, and, being profoundly anti-Spanish, they did not trust the latter to abide by their promises. In this policy the Dutch had the strong support of the Seigneur de Buzanval, who was “fiercely anti-Spanish”48; as we will see, Ambassador Buzanval accompanied the Dutch delegation to Angers and took part in the talks.
As for the English delegation, led by Sir Robert Cecil, there is much confusion among historians about the purpose of Cecil’s mission and Queen Elizabeth’s intentions in sending him to France - indeed the entire episode is often omitted from biographies of Elizabeth, or receives no more than a cursory glance. Where the question is discussed, the usual line is that the Queen wanted to prevent Henri from making peace with Spain: this is a misleading over-simplification.
The true picture, as far as I can ascertain it, is this: Elizabeth directed her envoy Cecil to inform King Henri that she was opposed to any Peace Treaty with Spain that did not include the Netherlands; nevertheless, at the same time, she instructed Cecil to warn the French King that England was not in a position to provide any further help, financial or otherwise, towards the continuation of the war (Cecil also tactfully reminded King Henri of his existing debts to the English treasury).
Those were Cecil’s instructions; Elizabeth herself, shrewd and pragmatic as ever, doubtless realised that the French King was absolutely determined to make peace with Spain, and she fully appreciated the advantages that this would bring. There were now many good reasons, financial and political, for favouring such a peace, whatever opinions might prevail amongst the English public, which was instinctively xenophobic. One important factor was the rapidly declining health of King Philip II, the hated tyrant who had been England’s most implacable enemy (he died on September 13th 1598). As for 48
the King of France, what the Queen most resented about him was his recalcitrance in repaying his huge debts to the English exchequer, amounting to more than a million crowns...
What was the reasoning of King Henri in these matters? Looking at the complicated political situation in 1598, one begins to understand the extent of his difficulties. It was not merely a question of making peace with Spain; he had also been obliged to come to terms with various rebellious factions within the borders of France itself, whether by force or by negotiation. In some cases the rebels were simply paid off, as in the case of the Duc de Mercoeur. And, crucially, by 1598 Henri’s authority as King of France was at last being recognised by the majority of his subjects. Meanwhile his economic reforms were making good progress, and the prosperity of the nation was very likely to improve further in the context of a peace settlement. These were all strong arguments in favour of peace with Spain, at least in the short term.
Queen Elizabeth’s embassy to France left England at the beginning of February 1598; on this mission, Sir Robert Cecil was accompanied by the young Earl of Southampton, who is of course associated with the name of “Shake-speare” by virtue of the Sonnets and the Dedications to both Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece (Sonnets 1 to 17 had been written for Southampton in 1590, probably at the request of Lord Burghley, Marlowe’s employer at the time).
Cecil’s party was in Paris on 12th March 1598 and must have left the city soon after, for they were at Blois on the river Loire on March 22nd, en route to Angers, where Cecil was to confer with King Henri and the delegates from the Netherlands. As we will see, this journey would certainly have provided the Earl of Southampton with further opportunities to meet up with his old friend “Monsieur Le Doux”.
The Dutch embassy to France, led by Jan van Oldenbarnevelt and Justin of Nassau, departed from The Hague on 18th March 1598; its Secretary, Francois Van Aerssen, was accompanied by the Seigneur de Buzanval, who, like Oldenbarnevelt, was vehemently opposed to Henri's peace plans. They reached Dieppe on March 20th and then proceeded to Rouen, arriving eleven days after Cecil; they were at Blois on March 30th, eight days after the English delegation. Two days later, the Netherlanders embarked on the River Loire, on their way to Tours (a distance of about thirty-five miles). Their ultimate destination was the town of Angers, also accessible from the River Loire, where their conference with King Henri had been arranged. They arrived on April 4th, having been at Saumur on the 3rd.
Evidently at some stage of the journey, Francois Van Aerssen and Lord Buzanval had gone ahead of the rest of the Dutch party, for at Saumur "Francois Van Aerssen came back from Angers with a royal courier [this was definitely Le Doux - see Document D in Appendix 1], bringing important
messages both from Buzanval, who had gone ahead, and from Cecil"49 (this, incidentally, provides further proof that Le Doux/Marlowe knew Buzanval in the spring of 1598; in fact they had almost certainly known each other since the late 1580s).
For what reason were Le Doux and Aerssen sent back up-river with these “important messages”? Undoubtedly their purpose was two-fold: firstly, to warn Oldenbarnevelt and Justin of Nassau that King Henri was firmly resolved on making peace with Spain, and secondly (sweetening this bitter medicine) that the King had offered to give secret support to the Dutch struggle for independence, initially in the form of substantial cash subsidies, and later in the form of troops and munitions. A few days later, the total subsidy for the next four years was agreed at one million ecus. True to his word, King Henri continued to send money and supplies to the fledgling Dutch Republic for the next ten years, until its full independence was achieved in 1609.
Henri’s proffered support of the Dutch rebellion was the main subject of a conference which took place on 7th April with Secretary Villeroy, the Sieur de Maisse [André Hurault, formerly the King’s envoy to Queen Elizabeth] and Lord Buzenval. Jan den Tex explains that “Villeroy, however pro-peace, was well disposed towards this help, since Spain, encircling France on three sides, remained a dreaded potential enemy whom it was in France's vital interest to keep occupied on the northern frontier". King Henri "declared that he would not desert the States… but by restitution of the money advanced [i.e. in former years] assist them to keep their cause going, repeating the same more than once in high-sounding words”. It was hinted that the war would be resumed in a few years; "In the next ten or twelve years, Henri was constantly setting a course for war, applauded by Oldenbarnevelt, while Villeroy was doing everything to prevent it, though without for a moment stopping the supply of money and volunteers to the States.”50
Villeroy and Buzenval "promised in the King's name a subsidy of 200,000 crowns as repayment of the moneys voted by the States; half would be taken at once by Buzenval, the rest was promised by October [1598]. But this was not all: the King would receive Oldenbarnevelt the next day, Sunday, at a leave-taking audience and then name the whole amount. At the audience, which was again held in the garderobe, Henry fixed the total amount of subsidy to be granted at one million ecus of three francs each, to be spread over four years." 51 Possibly also, later, the King would send engineers, commanders and soldiers.
Such was the compromise that the Dutch delegation was obliged to accept; but important concessions were made to the cause of Protestantism and religious toleration. Henri, of course, would never forget his own experience of religious persecution as a Huguenot - that memory spurred him on in his 49
efforts to establish freedom of worship in his divided nation. It was a bold aspiration that bore fruit in the signing of the Edict of Nantes on April 15th, shortly before the departure of the Dutch delegation; by this Edict, King Henri “secured to Protestants liberty of conscience and impartial justice”.52 Having thus safeguarded the rights of his Protestant Huguenot subjects, and to some extent placated the Dutch, Henri had cleared the way for the signing of the Treaty of Vervins on the 2nd of May, which contained an added stipulation (however unrealistic) that the English “were to be granted a period of six months to decide whether or not they wanted to join in”.53
Oldenbarnevelt and the Dutch envoys departed for Paris on 28th April 1598 and reached the city on the 8th of May. A few days later, they crossed the channel to Dover, together with Justin of Nassau, but almost certainly without Buzanval; they then proceeded to London, where the Queen granted Oldenbarnevelt an immediate audience. It was his second face-to-face encounter with Elizabeth; on the previous occasion there had been a certain coolness, but now the Dutch statesman was warmly welcomed as “the personally trusted leader of the policy of a valued ally, with whom Elizabeth was glad to discuss the consequences of the Peace of Vervins”.54 They also visited the Earl of Essex, who was ill in bed [late May 1598]. The Dutch envoys were again received by the Queen before their departure (Oldenbarnevelt would make a further visit to England in July).
We know that on the 9th of May 1598, Monsieur Le Doux was at Paris, soon to be sent to Rennes.55 This is a distance of some two hundred miles, a considerable journey; Le Doux completed it in five days, covering about forty miles a day, which represents very rapid progress indeed - one is reminded of Ambassador Buzanval’s comments of the following year, for example “his customary diligence” (Letter XLVII in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations). On his arrival at Rennes on the 15th May, Le Doux was immediately sent on by Aerssens to deliver a letter to Oldenbarnevelt (presumably at The Hague, where it would await the latter’s return from England). Le Doux was back in Paris by October, and was probably also there in mid-summer.
Although Sir Robert Cecil returned to England at the end of April 1598, the young Earl of Southampton remained in Paris for several months, from April to November; this was partly to evade the fury of the Queen, incurred over the fact that Southampton had impregnated one of her maids-of-honour, Elizabeth Vernon (he returned to England very briefly, in August, to marry her). This factor aside, we know that the “fantastical” Earl had a reputation as one who enjoyed “the high life”, so probably the idea of spending the summer in Paris was very agreeable to him. As we have seen, during his extended stay in France, Southampton had plenty of opportunities to meet up with his friend Monsieur Le Doux. One wonders if perhaps, before the Earl’s departure, Le 52
Chambers Biographical Dictionary 53
Alison Plowden, Elizabeth Regina, BCA, 1999 - p.126.
Doux/Marlowe might have presented him with a finished play-script or two, for performance by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men? If so, the likeliest plays are Much Ado about Nothing and Henry IV Part 2.
Monsieur Le Doux continued in the service of the King of France for the whole of 1598 and most of 1599 (as detailed in my previous article). We can now supplement that research with the additional information that in late November 1598, Jacques Le Doux received a further payment of fifty florins at The Hague “for [conveying] a letter from Aerssen”.56 Le Doux had arrived at The Hague on November 16th (which makes one wonder if he travelled to the Netherlands with Southampton?). Ten days later, Le Doux was sent back to France with a letter from Lord Buzanval to King Henri (Vreede, Lettres et Negociations, Letter IV, dated November 26th)
Dr Haak’s summary of the relevant Resolutions of the States-General for 1598 translates as follows: “Courier Payments were made to Jacques Le Doux, regular courier of the King of France: Resolution of 27th January [1598, mentioned above] - (40 florins for conveying a letter from Sailly): Resolution of 22nd November (50 florins for a letter from [Francois van] Aerssen); aan Johan Leveille: Resolution of 17 April.”57
For Le Doux’s activities during 1599, I must refer the reader to my previous article in this Research Journal. Evidently Le Doux had earned the complete trust of the King of France and Ambassador Buzanval, for apart from conveying dispatches, in 1599 he was placed in charge of the transportation of substantial funds to the Dutch Republic, in support of their revolt against Spain. In this work he was assisted by one Jean Du Temps, who turns out to have been a scholar of some repute, known as “Joannes Temporarius”; he is mentioned in the letters of Scaliger and Casaubon. Temporarius had published an important book on the subject of chronology, Chronologicarum Demonstrationum Libri Tres, which was printed at Frankfurt in 1596 and again at La Rochelle in 1600; this work is mentioned in Buzanval’s Letter 62, dated 4th December 1598. Thus it becomes clear that Temporarius was, like Marlowe/Le Doux, a classical scholar; it is obvious that a thorough knowledge of Latin would have been a considerable asset in communicating with foreign envoys at Courts throughout Europe.
The appointment of Temporarius underlines the fact that those who served the King of France as royal or diplomatic couriers were always men of quality and standing in their own right - as one would expect; frequently they were Humanist scholars. We have a further example in the employment of the celebrated poet Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur Du Bartas, in the role of courier; in 1587 Du Bartas had been sent on a mission to the Court of King James VI. Possibly related to this mission is a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham from 56 This was Francois van Aerssen’s letter of 10th November 1598 (Letter II in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations (p.12). The
States-General Resolution is dated 22nd November. 57
“Bodeloonen werden verstrekt aan Jacques Le Doux, ordinaris Koerier van den Koning van Frankrijk: R. 27 Jan; (f 40 voor
het overbrengen van een brief van Sailly): 22 Nov. (f 50 voor een brief van Aerssen); aan Johan Leveille: R. 17 April.” (Haak, op
Monsieur Du Pin, a Secretary of State to Henri of Navarre, dated April 9th 1586 or 1587, which mentions Du Bartas as the bearer; he died in 1590.58 Du Bartas had been a close friend of Anthony Bacon.
Fighting Against Famine: Agricultural and Economic Reforms under Henri IV
On the 1st of January 1599, Ambassador Buzanval wrote to his friend Daniel Van Der Meulen, the Leiden merchant59, asking him to supply a consignment of cauliflower seeds, which is to be collected from Leiden by Monsieur Le Doux and conveyed to Paris, along with the usual dispatches (by carriage, for this was by now Le Doux’s usual mode of transportation - compare Buzanval’s reference to “his driver”, “son charrier” in Letter 65). Le Doux was back at The Hague within days; he left for Paris around the 5th January, bearing not only the consignment of seeds but also a letter from Buzanval to Secretary Villeroy, dated January 4th 1599 (Letter VII in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations).
This initially-puzzling allusion to agricultural matters soon falls into place when it is interpreted in the light of three much earlier letters60 from the Seigneur de Buzanval to Daniel van der Meulen; in these letters, dating to February and March of 1596, the Ambassador had pressed the urgency of a similar order from the the Seigneur de Villeroy, King Henri’s Secretary of State.
Among many other items, such as pepper, Daniel Van der Meulen had been supplying cauliflower seeds and plants for Secretary Villeroy since 1594, by way of Ambassador Buzanval and Van der Meulen’s brother-in-law, Jacques de la Faille; the arrangement is confirmed in a letter from Jacques Reiniers to the Leiden merchant, dated 11th May 1594.61 It is very clear, from the above-mentioned letters of Buzanval, that the consecutive orders for cauliflower seeds came from Secretary Villeroy; they may well have originated with the King himself.
We should not be surprised to learn that during the late 16th Century, France (and indeed much of Europe) suffered a sequence of devastating famines: they were the “crises de subsistence” of the French people, and were particularly severe between 1596 and 1599. The entire national economy had been shattered by decades of civil war, exacerbated by drought and by renewed conflict with Spain (since 1595); in such times the threat of famine, or its reality, was never too far away.
The sad truth, of course, is that war, famine and disease have always accompanied one another - this unpleasant fact is sometimes overlooked in our own time, at least in the developed world, though the reality can be seen
58
Calendar of State Papers, Elizabeth, Foreign Series, Vol 21, Part 1 - p.260. 59
Document G in Appendix 1 (Letter 64 in Kernkamp, op cit, p.232)
all too clearly in regions ravaged by war, in the collapse of economy and infrastructure and in the terrible suffering of civilians. A French proverb warns that la guerre amène la disette - “war brings famine in its train” - recalling to mind a passage from the Prologue to Henry V (1599):
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment.
Henry V, Prologue, lines 5-8
(Ambassador Buzanval, in his letter of 4th January 1599 to Secretary Villeroy, writes of the famine then raging in Spain and Portugal - Letter VII in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations)
When Henri of Navarre became King of France in 1589, he was faced with formidable challenges: one was the task of resolving the huge social and economic problems that afflicted his country. It would take a man of King Henri’s calibre to restore the nation to prosperity - a man of intense determination, combined with wisdom, patience and practicality. On coming to the throne, the King had quickly surrounded himself with knowledgeable counsellors, and he was willing to heed their advice; foremost among them was the financier Maximilien de Béthune de Rosny (later the Duke of Sully) under whose cautious guidance, over many years, Henri succeeded in planning and implementing his far-reaching economic reforms. Back in 1576, Béthune had accompanied the young Henri in his flight from the French Court, and later he took an active part in the war; he also successfully reformed the corrupt system of taxation, thus raising the huge sum of 110 million livres.
The King’s rapid progress in these matters owed a great deal to two other experienced counsellors: firstly, his friend Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), the Huguenot commander and scientist, author of La Cueillette de la Soie and Théatre d’Agriculture (1600, dedicated to King Henri); and, secondly, Barthélemy Laffemas (1545-1612), Henri’s Valet-de-Chambre, who from 1596 advised the King on economic and agricultural reform (Robin Briggs writes of “the efforts of the tireless Barthélemy Laffemas and the conseil de commerce he organized.”62 Rosny, de Serres and Laffemas would certainly have been known to Monsieur Le Doux.
The most urgent task was to increase agricultural production. There were large areas of uncultivated land, and also too much dependence on wheat, barley and oats; advanced farming techniques, such as the scientific use of crop-rotation, were little known. These problems were exacerbated by the fact that winters in northern France could be extremely harsh (as indeed they often were in the Netherlands, though the Dutch, being more advanced in agricultural matters, had largely overcome that problem). In France, the situation would now be addressed by three main strategies: firstly, increased 62
local specialisation; secondly, the drainage of swamps to produce fertile land; and thirdly - perhaps most importantly - the introduction of winter crops, or rather “all-year-round” crops, such as cauliflower and other varieties of Brassica, which are very suitable for cultivation in Northern Europe (until this time, they had been mainly restricted to Italy; indeed, Van der Meulen’s cauliflower seeds probably originated there, transported to Holland by sea).
At the same time, King Henri initiated an ambitious program of reconstruction, repairing roads, building bridges and canals, even new lighthouses. These far-seeing reforms would bring many advantages; in the long term, the King’s agricultural projects would lead to improvements in diet and nutrition, and in the meantime they would provide employment, especially for young men, thus reducing the widespread lawlessness and banditry, a problem which in recent years had become acute.
By 1599, then, a great deal had been achieved; but there was another important matter on the mind of the King of France. Having spent many years indulging in dalliances and affairs with various aristocratic ladies, Henri was now resolved to proceed with the negotiations towards his proposed marriage to Marie de Medici, the niece of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. His motivation was partly financial - the bride would bring with her a magnificent dowry - but the King was also concerned to provide himself, and France, with a legitimate heir. However, the marriage could not take place unless Henri succeeded in obtaining a Papal decree dissolving his existing (unfruitful) marriage to Margaret of Valois. And this, in turn, depended on bringing an end to the war with Spain (if only temporarily). We will return to this question in due course.
The Disgrace of the Earl of Essex
We should now consider at what stage Monsieur Le Doux left the service of Ambassador Buzanval and King Henri, and to what extent his departure was linked to the predicament of the Earl of Essex - that is, his fall from the Queen’s favour and the collapse of his intelligence network.
During the late 1590s, the signs of Essex’s increasing instability had been all too plain. An incident that occurred in the summer of 1598 demonstrates his growing arrogance and defective judgement: during a heated argument at Court, Essex contemptuously turned his back on the Queen. For this insolence he received a “box on the ear” from Elizabeth, to which he responded with the even more outrageous act of moving to draw his sword against her. Somehow he evaded further punishment, but the truth is that afterwards, Essex was never fully reconciled with her.
For all the Earl’s admirable qualities and achievements - his great courage, for example, and the spectacular success of the attack on Cadiz - it is generally agreed that he was an extremely impulsive character, and also burdened with excessive pride. In fact it seems that after 1598, Essex was more interested in his own personal renown, and his status at Court, than in the service of his country. It is true that his tarnished reputation was to some extent restored in early 1599, when he was appointed as Commander-in-Chief against the Irish
rebels, but this command was, in reality, something of a “poisoned chalice” - as everyone knew, it was a task fraught with great difficulties. Nevertheless, it represented a final chance for Essex to redeem himself; unfortunately, he would fail utterly.
Having arrived in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant in April 1599, the Earl spent the next six months squandering his army on minor campaigns, and he even held secret talks with the Chief of the rebels, the Earl of Tyrone, agreeing an unwarranted and ill-defined “truce”. These serious errors were compounded by his sudden and unauthorised return to England in September, in direct defiance of the Queen’s orders; it was an act of utter folly, prompted by Essex’s delusions about his “enemies” at Court. The Earl’s disobedience in abandoning his Irish command was exacerbated by his ill-mannered behaviour on arriving at Nonsuch Palace, intruding unannounced into the Queen’s Bedchamber (on the morning of September 28th 1599).
Within days, the Queen had issued her judgement against him: on the following Monday, October 1st, he was committed into the custody of the Lord Keeper at York House, under close house-arrest. A month later, his entire household at Essex House was dispersed and the one hundred and sixty servants were turned away to seek employment elsewhere.
It has been suggested, by a number of historians, that Essex’s unpredictable and erratic behaviour and his increasing paranoia could possibly have been symptoms of syphilis in its advanced stages. But whatever the cause, his principal Secretary, Anthony Bacon, can hardly have failed to notice the deterioration in the Earl’s mental state, and he must have been extremely alarmed by it. Certainly Essex’s disgrace, and his ever-more volatile temper, produced a great deal of nervousness amongst his supporters - a nervousness which later, after the failed insurrection of February 8th 1601, turned into terror.
By the end of 1598, Essex’s European intelligence network was unravelling rapidly; his most senior agent, Dr. Henry Hawkins, had returned from Venice in March of that year. As for Monsieur Le Doux, who was moving between France and the Netherlands during that period, doubtless he continued to send information to Anthony Bacon from time to time, possibly through Ambassador Buzanval; but after October of 1599, when it had become clear that the Earl’s disgrace would be permanent, his agents in Europe were obliged to sever any direct connection with their former master, owing to the serious breach in security.
Now in this context, the timing of Le Doux’s final departure from The Hague must surely be significant. Essex had been placed under house-arrest on the 1st of October 1599; within seven weeks of that date, we learn from a letter of Ambassador Buzanval63 that Le Doux has gone. Clearly, then, Monsieur Le Doux’s work as diplomatic courier between Paris and The Hague had ceased
63
Letter LXV in Vreede, dated 19th/22nd November 1599; op cit, p.323
from November 1599 at the very latest. He must also have adopted a new nom de guerre, though probably retaining his well-practised cover as a “Frenchman”.
Ambassador Buzanval, at The Hague, was well aware of the trouble in which the Earl of Essex found himself: in a letter to Secretary Villeroy, dated 10th November 1599, he mentions the ill-judged “truce” (“trêve”) which Essex had made with the Earl of Tyrone, which had greatly angered the Queen (Letter LVIII in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations, p. 297). A few days later, the Ambassador reports to Villeroy that “everyone is talking of the treatment of the Earl of Essex”64; in the same letter, Buzanval mentions “the lack of Le Doux” and his replacement by Monsieur Du Temps (Temporarius).
So where did Monsieur Le Doux find refuge and employment at this time? A. D. Wraight and others have put forward the interesting theory that Marlowe/Le Doux returned to Northern Italy and entered the service of Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano65 and nephew to the Grand Duke of Tuscany (we will return to this possibility in due course, with its important connection to the Shake-speare play Twelfth Night). If Le Doux/Marlowe did return to Italy in late 1599, that would help to explain the renewed Italian influence which is evident in certain Shake-speare plays, including Twelfth Night (1600), All’s Well that Ends Well (1602-3), Measure for Measure (1604) and Othello (pre-1604).
Now it just so happens that the autumn of 1599 would have been the perfect time for King Henri to recommend the services of his friend “Monsieur Le Doux”, a reliable and highly gifted intelligencer, to the Duke of Bracciano, since Virginio Orsino was the cousin of Henri’s fiancé Marie de Medici. In late 1599, with the King’s planned marriage to Marie rapidly approaching certainty, it would have been a simple matter for the King of France to arrange Le Doux’s transfer to Orsino’s Court in Tuscany.
What was the situation of Anthony Bacon at this time? Unfortunately there is a gap in the documentary record, because the Countess of Essex is known to have burnt most of the Earl’s papers after the failed insurrection of 8th February 1601. We cannot therefore know whether Anthony Bacon formally disassociated himself from the Earl; but in any case, Anthony’s failing health during 1600 and 1601 had forced him to retire from public affairs.66 His brother Francis, in an infamous act of betrayal, played a major part in the prosecution of his former patron, which led to the Earl’s execution for Treason on February 25th 1601.
64
Letter LXV in Vreede, op cit - p.323.
65 Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano (1572-1615), should not be confused with his namesake, Virginio Orsino, Duke of Selci,
who himself had numerous contacts with the Earl of Essex during the 1590s.
66 The last extant letter from Anthony Bacon is dated 4th July 1598 (OS).
King Henri IV, Marie de Medici and Ferdinand I, Grand Duke of Tuscany
King Henri’s proposed marriage to Marie de Medici, the niece of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, had been the subject of lengthy negotiations that had commenced as early as 1592. The King and his ministers continued to exchange correspondence with the Grand Duke for many years, though most of it was conducted in strict secrecy, since Marie’s union with a formerly Protestant King was a highly delicate matter from the point of view of both religion and Italian politics.
It was well known that the Grand Dukes of Tuscany were fabulously wealthy (Queen Elizabeth gave Grand Duke Ferdinand I the code name “Riches”); Ferdinand was then “perhaps the wealthiest Prince in Europe in contanti or ready money”.67 The result was that the Grand Dukes were continually approached for loans, not least by the Kings of France - Henri himself had borrowed more than 100,000 crowns. In 1599, the total French debt stood at more than a million gold crowns.
From the point of view of diplomacy, an important first step had been made in September of 1595, when King Henri had received Absolution from Pope Clement VIII. Two years later, Henri sent his representative Cardinal Gondi to Florence to revive the marriage negotiations. Further delays and re-negotiations had followed, particularly regarding the amount of the dowry, which in reality was the central issue, bearing in mind the existing French debt. Then, in March of 1599,68 Henri again sent Cardinal Gondi (this time accompanied by Secretary of State Villeroy) to meet with the Grand Duke. The dowry was eventually agreed at 600,000 crowns: 350,000 to be paid in cash, and the remainder to be deducted from the outstanding debt (one can only estimate the true value of such a huge dowry in modern coinage, but I would calculate that 600,000 silver crowns would be the equivalent of about 82 million pounds today).
The second major problem, that of King Henri’s existing marriage to Marguerite of Valois, has already been mentioned. In January of 1599 two special envoys, Cardinal Ossat and Nicolas Brûlart, the Seigneur de Sillery, were sent to Rome to seek an annulment (to which Marguerite herself consented in February); it was eventually granted by Pope Clement VIII on 17th December 1599. That removed the final obstacle to Henri’s match with Marie de Medici, and the formal marriage agreement was concluded late in December.69
It may be significant that in the Spring of 1599, an English envoy visited the Florentine Court; he was William Cecil, nephew to Sir Robert Cecil and the heir of Thomas, Lord Burleigh. Cecil was cordially entertained at the Pitti
67
Hotson, op cit - p.47. 68
For the record, since the year 1599 was evidently a turning-point in the career of “Monsieur Le Doux”, King Henri’s extant
letters to the Grand Duke include those of 13th January, 21st March, 31st May and 9th June 1599. The King may well have been writing to the Duke of Bracciano at the same time.
69 See Louis Battifol, Marie de Médicis and the French Court in the XVIIth Century (Paris, 1908)
Palace by none other than Duke Virginio Orsino, Marie’s cousin. As A. D. Wraight points out, Orsino’s conversations with William Cecil may well have whetted his curiosity to see for himself the magnificent Court of the famous “Gloriana”: “When Don Virginio reached London the following winter, he was given reciprocal hospitality at the home of the Cecil’s, so perhaps the invitation to visit England might have been extended in Florence, sowing the seed of his later decision.”70 According to a letter of Ralph Winwood71, Orsino was also hoping to visit the Protestant Low Countries.
We can now move on to events of the year 1600 and King Henri’s marriage to Marie de Medici. Early in the Spring, Sillery returned to Florence with his son d'Alincourt, and on April 25th 1600 the marriage contract was signed. The initial wedding ceremony, “by proxy”, took place on the 5th of October in Florence, with the absent King Henri represented by the Duke of Bellegarde; shortly thereafter, Queen Marie and her party were due to set out on the journey to southern France, to the town of Lyon, where the wedding would be re-enacted.
On 13th October 1600, the new Queen of France left Florence, attended by a large and resplendent company which included the Duchess of Tuscany and her sister, the Duchess of Mantua; also escorting her, officially as far as Marseilles, was her cousin Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano, who had been brought up with Marie from a very young age at the Pitti Palace in Florence. The first stage of the journey took them to the city of Pisa and then on to Leghorn (Livorno), where they were to embark for their voyage to Marseilles; Grand Duke Ferdinand had provided a magnificent gold-adorned barge for the bridal party, with the additional protection of a squadron of sixteen galleys.
Queen Marie duly arrived at Marseilles on November 3rd, but the King failed to keep his promise to welcome his new bride in person. In the event, Marie saw her royal husband for the first time at Lyon, where the long-awaited wedding finally took place on December 3rd 1600. Queen Marie was twenty-seven, her royal husband forty-six.
A letter of Ralph Winwood, who had personally witnessed Marie’s arrival at Marseilles, describes the inadequate welcome that she received (in a letter to his superior, Sir Henry Neville, then on leave in London). A few days later, on November 20th, having travelled to Lyon with Marie’s French escort, Winwood wrote again to Neville, noting that Don Virginio had “made show to depart with the galleys [at Marseilles], but afterward came disguised to Avignon” [en route to Lyons]. The subterfuge was necessary, for the unlicensed visit of a Florentine nobleman to the heretic nations of England and the Low Countries would be a momentous event, with huge political implications; it turned out well enough for the Florentines, in the long run, but when it first became
known it created a storm of controversy in Catholic Europe, with Orsino incurring the wrath of King Philip IIIof Spain and Pope Clement VIII.
Duke Orsino and his party left Lyon in December 1600, setting out on the long journey to London. The Duke was travelling modestly, “incognito”, with only four attendants: two young noblemen, Giulio Riario and Grazia de Montalvo; a secretary of his household, Emilio Fei; and an un-named “servant” (could this have been our “Frenchman”, Le Doux/Marlowe?). Orsino had written ahead to the Grand Duke’s London agent, the rich Florentine merchant Filippo Corsini, who was preparing his house in Gracechurch Street to receive the ducal party;72 they would arrive in London on the 3rd of January 1601, just three days before the festivities of Twelfth Night.
Duke Orsino, Twelfth Night and a Map of the Indies
This brings us to a fascinating connection with “Shake-speare”; as many readers of this article will know, Duke Virginio Orsino was the “original” of Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night and was present at the very first performance of the play in Whitehall Palace, as the honoured guest of Queen Elizabeth; it was acted by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men on the evening of January 6th 1601. Twelfth Night is full of apposite and refined complements to both Duke Orsino and Queen Elizabeth herself, represented (in a younger form) as the beautiful Countess Olivia, a grieving but highly marriageable widow.
It was the maverick Shake-spearean scholar Dr Leslie Hotson who unearthed the long-forgotten documents relating to Orsino’s visit; he tracked down the original letters of Duke Orsino and others, translating them from Italian, German and Russian, and thus revealed the whole story in extraordinary detail.
Hotson’s investigations had begun with his discovery of a copy of the original Memoranda of Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon, containing orders for the preparation of the Palace of Whitehall and the ceremonies of Twelfth Night.73 These Memoranda show that Hunsdon had been directed “to confer with my Lord Admirall [Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham] and the Master of the Revells for taking order generally with the players to make choyse of [a] play that shal be best furnished with rich apparell, have great variety and change of Musicke and daunces, and of a subject that may be most pleasing to her Majestie”.74 No contemporary source gives the name of the selected play, but Hotson established beyond reasonable doubt, through an abundance of circumstantial and internal evidence, that it can only have been the Twelfth Night later attributed to Shake-speare. Duke Orsino himself describes the play, in a letter to his wife, as “ una commedia mescolata, con musiche e balli” - “a mingled comedy, with pieces of music and dances”.75
72
Hotson, op cit, pp 63-64 73
Historical MSS Comm. Third Report, App., 51b; Papers of the Duke of Northumberland. 74
Hotson achieved a real breakthrough with his detective work on Duke Orsino and the forgotten visit to Elizabeth’s Court, but his fascinating and compelling discoveries are strangely overlooked (or even dismissed) in published commentaries on the play. Why?
There are three main reasons for this collective obtusity:
1. “Stratfordians” are instinctively nervous about any new evidence that has biographical implications ;
2. “Orthodox” academics in the majority of English Literature faculties around the world still adhere to the once-fashionable view that biographical matters have no bearing on any “literary work of art”. This is utter nonsense, of course, but it nevertheless remains the “default” position in academia.
3. Those few Stratfordian scholars who tried to make the new evidence fit William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon were unable to make it work.
On this last point, of course, I concur entirely. One must reject Hotson’s totally unwarranted assumption throughout his book that William Shakspere of Stratford was present or had anything to do with the 1601 performance of Twelfth Night - he was almost certainly spending a quiet Christmas at home in Stratford-upon-Avon.
I believe that Shake-speare’s Twelfth Night was written during the spring and summer of 1600. If we are correct in the hypothesis that Monsieur Le Doux had entered the service of Duke Orsino towards the end of 1599, then he would have had prior knowledge, for many months, of Orsino’s aspiration to visit the English Court.
It was a tradition at Queen Elizabeth’s Court that plays and other entertainments were presented there at Christmas, and especially on Twelfth Day and Twelfth Night. Elizabeth herself was very fond of plays, and she enjoyed the spectacle of humorous “leg-pulling”; Twelfth Night was always an occasion for light-hearted entertainment, with lots of music and also, of course, the time-honoured element of mischief or “misrule”.
Le Doux/Marlowe would have been well aware of the kind of Courtly drama that was required for such an occasion - his own play Love’s Labour’s Lost had been performed at Court during the Christmas festivities of January 1598, as we know from the title page of the first Quarto edition (1598). Love’s Labour’s Lost is often associated with the Earl of Southampton and his circle, and it may be significant that in late 1597 and early 1598, Southampton had been in unusually high favour with the Queen.
So now, in 1600, Marlowe set about fashioning a suitable play for the coming Christmas: it would have to include musical interludes with dancing, and it would be enlivened with a genteel merriment that would prove pleasing to the Queen, and, at the same time, would offer a fitting tribute to his noble master,
Duke Orsino. With several months in which to complete his new play, Marlowe had plenty of time to perfect it: the Italian source that he adapted for Twelfth Night was a Sienese comedy entitled Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones), which had been “popular for seventy years in the Duke’s own Tuscany”76 (it had first been performed in 1531).
No doubt Marlowe / Le Doux had long had the comic plot of Gl’Ingannati in mind as a suitable framework for a performance at Court, and now he skilfully adapted it for the specific occasion of Twelfth Night and the context of Orsino’s visit, doubtless blending in certain themes and ideas which had been taking shape in his mind for many months. He also added some topical touches, including jokes that touched on recent scandals at Court: these he would have known from rumour, which even in those times spread far and wide in a short space of time. Equally, he could have heard of these matters from a number of close friends, including Sir Walter Raleigh, then in high favour with the Queen, and the famous actor/manager Edward Alleyn, whose acting company, the Lord Admiral’s Men, performed at Court on the very same Twelfth Day of 1601. Their master, Lord Admiral Charles Howard, had been specially appointed as Lord Steward of the Royal Household for that Christmas season.
Raleigh had been reinstated as Captain of the Queen’s Guard in 1597: in the following years he had countless private conferences with Elizabeth, and frequently went riding with her; they also spent many evenings playing at cards. Towards the end of 1600, Raleigh had also gained the friendship of the Earl of Southampton, despite the latter’s closeness to the Earl of Essex, Raleigh’s former rival.
The many honours bestowed by the Queen on Duke Orsino would include “sending her conqueror of the Armada to feast him” - Lord Admiral Howard - and also sending Raleigh, “her greatest corsair in the world, as a supper-guest”. In fact, Raleigh was much involved with Duke Orsino’s visit; on January 9th, he personally guided the Duke around the Palace of Hampton Court, and a few days later, just before the latter’s embarkation for Flanders, Raleigh accompanied him to view “her Majesties galleons and ships”, which were then lying at anchor on the River Medway near Rochester.77
Politically, Duke Orsino’s visit had been a very significant event - indeed it was a considerable “coup” for Queen Elizabeth, for by welcoming the young Florentine nobleman, she had strengthened her bonds of friendship with the wealthy and independent rulers of Tuscany, and, at the same time, confounded Pope Clement VIII, one of her most powerful enemies.
Did Marlowe/Le Doux accompany Duke Orsino and Marie de Medici on their journey to France? He would certainly have been an invaluable guide… and did he then travel further, assisting Orsino on his unfamiliar route northwards -
perhaps even all the way to England? This is, of course, conjecture, but it is certainly an intriguing possibility.78
For more information on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, his nephew Virginio Orsino, and Marie de Medici, I refer the reader to Louis Battifol’s Marie de Médicis and the French Court in the XVIIth Century and R. Galluzzi’s History of the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Florence, 1781). On the significance of King Henri’s marriage to Marie de Medici, and the Shake-speare connection, A. D. Wraight gives a very perceptive account in The Story that the Sonnets Tell,79 inspired of course by Leslie Hotson’s ground-breaking research.80
The “Spice Islands” Map
We can now move on to that allusion in Twelfth Night to a famous map of the East Indies. In the third Act, Olivia’s maidservant Maria, speaking of the deluded and love-sick Malvolio, jokes that “he does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.”81
There has been disagreement among commentators as to whether this is a reference to the extraordinarily-detailed map of the East Indies published in Jan van Linschoten’s Itinerario, or to some other map of the period. However, as we will see, the evidence in favour of Linschoten is overwhelming82; it relates to a very fine map of the Spice Islands entitled Insulae Moluccae, drawn by the celebrated cartographer Peter Plancius of Amsterdam. In December 1598, Le Doux’s friend Ambassador Buzanval had acquired a copy of Linschoten’s Itinerario containing the Plancius map, which means that Le Doux would certainly have seen it.83
One can discern from Twelfth Night that the author was very interested in the profitable Indies trade and in the recent Dutch attempts to gain access to it: what is more significant is his strong interest in exploration and discovery, which matches Monsieur Le Doux’s fascination for the subject.84 This characteristic is evident throughout the works of both Marlowe and Shake-speare, but especially in Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello and The Tempest.
In Twelfth Night, Fabian jests that Sir Andrew Aguecheek has now “sailed into the north of my Lady’s opinion, where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard” (III.ii.24-6); this is agreed to be a reference to William Barents and his voyages to the Arctic in search of the “North-East Passage”. This perilous venturing into the Arctic Ocean was certainly not an end in itself
78
See Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell, - pp. 369-377 and 385-423.
79 The Story that the Sonnets Tell (Adam Hart, London, 1993) - pp.371 and 385-413.
80 Published in The First Night of Twelfth Night (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954).
81 Twelfth Night III.ii.80.
82 For a summary of the debate, with an account of Plancius and his map, and further notes on the Itinerario, see Appendix 3.
83 See Letters 63 and 64 in Kernkamp; extracts in Appendix 2.
84 See Wraight’s analysis of the 1596 Book-List, op cit, pp.65-66 and 124.
- it was an attempt to find a quicker and safer route to the East Indies. William Barents made three voyages to the Kara Sea, accompanied on the first two expeditions (1594-5) by Linschoten himself. Barents’ third voyage to the Arctic cost him his life - he died of exposure in 1597, north of Novaya Zemlya.
Returning to Shake-speare: in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c.1597) Sir John Falstaff, speaking of Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, declares that “They shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both” (I.iii.65-66); in Twelfth Night, Sir Toby Belch praises Maria as “my metal of India”, i.e. as very precious (II.v.14); and in As You Like It (1599-1600), Orlando declares that:
From the east to western Inde,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
As You Like It, III: ii: 88-89
Was Marlowe in London in the Summer of 1600?
The historian A. D. Wraight has suggested that Monsieur Le Doux made a clandestine visit to England in the summer of 1600, and that, in doing so, he brought with him the finished manuscript of As You Like It.85 If this is correct, then it is possible that Marlowe/Le Doux also brought to England his first draft of Twelfth Night - a preliminary version, to be sure, in which he avoided identifying Don Virginio Orsino by calling him “the Duke” or “Duke”; as I have said, for political reasons Orsino’s plan to visit the English Court had to be kept secret.
Twelfth Night was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 - it is generally agreed that there was no quarto edition, for on 8th November of that year, the play was entered in the Stationers’ Register along with a further fifteen previously unpublished Shake-speare plays, all subsequently printed in the 1623 Folio. Curiously, the designation of Orsino as simply “Duke” throughout the stage-directions and speech-headings appears to be a survival from the original playscript86 - implying that the author had carefully maintained confidentiality throughout his first draft. It would thus have been possible for the players to rehearse Twelfth Night during the latter months of 1600, without having any idea of the true identity of the Italian nobleman who was then preparing to make a discreet visit to England.
In the autumn of 1600, when Thomas Thorpe published Christopher Marlowe’s translation of The First Book of Lucan, he added to it a strangely cryptic Dedication in the form of a letter to his friend Edward Blount. In this letter, Thorpe writes of “that pure Elementall wit, Chr. Marlowe; whose ghoast or Genius is to be seene walke the Churchyard87 in (at the least) three or foure sheets”. A. D. Wraight interprets this remark as a hint that Thorpe
85
Wraight, Thorpe Writes a Letter, in The Story That the Sonnets Tell - pp.378-84.
86 “Orsino is always Duke in the stage-directions and the speech headings” - Twelfth Night (Arden edition, Methuen, 1975) -
p.xix). Even in the text, the name “Orsino” occurs only seven times.
87 St Paul’s Churchyard; the booksellers’ stalls there had been a favourite haunt of Christopher Marlowe’s.
himself had recently seen the supposedly-dead Christopher Marlowe in person, and that Marlowe had given him a certain manuscript or “booke” which Thorpe intended to bring to Blount. According to Wraight’s theory, the “booke” that so excited Thomas Thorpe was the finished manuscript of a new “Shake-speare” play, As You Like It (entered on the Stationers’ Register on August 4th 1600 (OS), but “stayed” until 1623).88
Wraight states that Marlowe’s purpose in travelling to London was two-fold; first, to deliver the manuscript of As You Like It, and second, to set in motion certain necessary preparations for Duke Orsino’s planned visit to the English Court. Naturally the Italian nobleman needed to ascertain whether such a visit would meet with the royal approval. In making this enquiry during that summer of 1600, Marlowe is most likely to have approached his own patron, Sir Thomas Walsingham, who was then in high favour with the Queen (Walsingham had been knighted by her in 1597). If not Walsingham, there were several alternative intermediaries: these include Marlowe’s friend Sir Walter Raleigh and also the 5th Earl of Rutland, Roger Manners, who was a close friend of the Earl of Southampton. Both men were given prominent roles in the organisation of Twelfth Day and Twelfth Night of 1601; Rutland and his two brothers had the responsibility of attending on Duke Orsino during his visit and escorting him at Court.
Whether Marlowe went to London in person in 1600, or only as far as the Netherlands, he certainly had reliable friends to whom these matters, and also manuscripts, could be entrusted. During that year, two of his closest friends, Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland89, went to the Netherlands: we know that the latter was a fellow-member (with Marlowe) of Raleigh’s philosophical group, the “School of Night”. Northumberland went to the Low Countries on several occasions in 1600; the Northumberland Household Accounts show that between February 12th and March 27th, the Earl made a payment of forty shillings “to Sir Francis Veres his players in Holland”. In July he went back to the Low Countries, accompanied by Raleigh and the Earl of Rutland. Northumberland was conveying a message from Queen Elizabeth to Sir Francis Vere, commander of the English troops in the Netherlands; he also took part in military operations, thus gaining “first-hand information on the art of war”.90 He returned to England in February 1601, but was again in the Netherlands from June 1st to September 29th, serving under Sir Francis Vere at the siege of Ostend. (I have given this information in some detail because of Northumberland’s friendship with Christopher Marlowe; the Earl had known King Henri IV since 1596 or earlier, for in that year he had carried to him the insignia of the Garter).
88
Wraight, The Story That the Sonnets Tell, p.378 89
Christopher Marlowe was "very well known" to Northumberland: PRO State Papers (Holland) SP84/44/60. 90
The Background to Shake-speare’s Othello: Paolo Orsino, Lazaro Soranzo and the Turkish Threat
The tragic history of the Orsino family seems to have influenced another Shake-speare play, Othello, which of course explores the destructive power of jealousy. The author had personal experience of this emotional torment (the treachery of his “Dark Lady” Emilia Lanier, lamented in the Sonnets), but Shake-speare’s interest in jealousy, “the green-ey’d monster / Which doth mock the meat it feeds on” (Othello III.iii), may be related to the story of Virginio’s father, Paolo Giordano Orsino, Duke of Bracciano. Paolo was a man of very violent temperament; he had won renown in battle as “general of Venetian infantry against the Turk”,91 receiving an arrow-wound during the famous sea-Battle of Lepanto (1571), but his violent temper also dominated his personal life - in 1575, when Virginio was only three years old, Paolo had strangled the boy’s mother, Isabella de Medici, in a fit of jealousy. A few years later, in 1582, Paolo arranged another murder, that of his mistress’ husband (she too was later murdered, at the hands of another Orsino). These tragic events are described in John Webster’s play The White Devil (written 1609-1612) in which “the horrors of Virginio’s childhood” are graphically depicted.92 By the age of thirteen, Virginio Orsino had lost both of his parents.
In 1593, war had broken out between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Turks. It rapidly developed into a serious crisis, and the Emperor Rudolf II sent out an appeal to Christian princes for military assistance. Virginio Orsino, answering this call, fought at Giavarino93 in 1594 and was rewarded the following year at Prague, receiving costly gifts from the Emperor. In 1596, the Turks commenced another invasion of Hungary and looked set to advance into Austria.
In 1599, Duke Orsino was again fighting against the Turks, having been appointed commander of the Grand Duke’s fleet sent to capture the island of Chios (Orsino acquitted himself well, but the expedition was unsuccessful).
In Ambassador Buzanval’s Letter 7994 to Daniel Van der Meulen, dated 20th October 1599, he is returning a book by Lazaro Soranzo entitled The Ottoman and seems to have ordered an additional copy. Soranzo’s book, published in 1598, focused on the ambitions of the much-feared Sultan Mohammed III and the extent of the Turkish threat to Christian Europe. This situation is, of course, the background to Shake-speare’s Othello. I have not, as yet, had sufficient time to investigate the text of The Ottoman, so any direct links with Othello will be detailed in a future article.
Monsieur Le Doux’s Books: Three Authors linked to the New Evidence
1. Philippus Camerarius (1537-1624)
The letters of Ambassador Buzanval reveal his connections with the Camerarius brothers (for detailed information, see Letters 29, 30 and 32 in Appendix 2). Among the books in Le Doux’s trunk was a work entitled Operae Horarum Succisivarum Sive Meditationes Historicae by Philippus Camerarius, a son of the famous scholar Joachim Camerarius I (the Elder) (1500-1574). A.D. Wraight gives the date of publication as 1506, which is obviously an error, though not hers - in 1506 even the elder Camerarius was only five years old!
Wraight’s error is due to a misprint on the title page of a later edition published at Frankfurt in 1606. Gustav Ungerer states, incorrectly, that the author of Operae Horarum was Joachim Camerarius the Elder, but the author was definitely the latter’s son Philippus. The copy in Le Doux’s trunk must have been the first edition, published at Nuremberg (“Noribergae”) in 1591 by Lochner and Hofman. Curiously, this book contains one of the earliest versions of the “Faust” legend. Monsieur Le Doux’s copy was apparently purchased in 1595, but if Le Doux/Marlowe knew the book at an earlier date, then it could well have influenced him in the writing of Doctor Faustus - indeed it may have been Camerarius who originally sparked Marlowe’s interest in the legend, because Marlowe’s main source was not published until 1592 (it was The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus, an English translation of the German Faustbuch of 1587). Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus was written between 1592 and 1593, and first performed in 1594.
Philip’s brother, Joachim Camerarius II (1534-98), was “one of the most learned physicians and botanists of his age”.95 Both men knew Sir Philip Sidney, and there is an extant letter from Sidney to Philippus and Joachim, dated 1st May 1578 (now at the Huntingdon Library). Their friendship is confirmed in an essay by D. J. Gordon96: “In his journeys abroad, Sidney came into contact with Protestant scholars who belonged to the circle of the Camerarius family, and the sons of Joachim were themselves scholars. Philippus Camerarius records a talk he had with Sidney when Sidney was in Prague on an embassy to the Emperor [Rudolf II]”. There are at least seventy extant letters from Joachim Camerarius II - also documents describing some seven hundred medical cases and “necropsies”.
As A. D. Wraight pointed out,97 Le Doux’s interest in scientific chronology and the true age of the world is attested by his possession of a manuscript of unknown authorship entitled Une Astrologie Depuis le Commencement du Monde. The Shake-speare Sonnets are of course famous for their reflections
95
Chambers Biographical Dictionary 96
The Year’s Work in English Studies, Volume XXVIII, 1947. 97
on the subject of Time, including meditations on impermanence (for example, Sonnets 55 and 65), “the old age” (Sonnet 127) and “If there be nothing new” (Sonnet 59, inspired by the work of Francesco Guiccardini [1483-1540]).
2. Justus Lipsius (Joest Lips) (1547-1606)
The Flemish Humanist and Classical scholar, a Professor at Jena, Leiden and Louvain. He was the author of De Constantia, a copy of which was owned by Le Doux. The writings of Justus Lipsius include editions of Tacitus and Seneca (both strong influences on Shake-speare). As I have mentioned above, the influence of Lipsius is evident in Macbeth, Titus Andronicus and Measure for Measure.98 When Lipsius retired from his Professorship at the University of Leiden in 1591, his friend Joseph Scaliger was appointed as his successor; after initially declining the offer, Scaliger took up the post two years later, moving permanently to the Netherlands in 1593. We have already established that Joseph Scaliger knew Monsieur Le Doux, as did another friend of Lipsius, Francois d’Aerssen. The correspondence of Lipsius therefore deserves further investigation.
3. Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe) (1511-1576)
A Humanist scholar and poet, he was personal physician to William the Silent. Junius was the author of two further books in the possession of Monsieur Le Doux, namely the Onomasticon; a Lexicon of 7 Languages and the Nomenclator.
There is an interesting connection with Adriaan Junius (d.1620), a secretary to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt; this Adriaan Junius was apparently related to Hadrianus Junius.99 He also seems to have known Liévin Calvart (not surprisingly, since both were in the service of Oldenbarnevelt). It is therefore very likely that this Adriaan Junius knew Monsieur Le Doux during the 1590s, if not before.
The link between Calvart and Adriaan Junius is confirmed by a document of 1585; it is a Report from Paris, dated 23rd February 1585, from the 4th Earl of Derby and Sir Edward Stafford, concerning the presentation of the Order of the Garter to King Henri III: “Next day there came to us Junius, “Moyllery”, Calvart and three more in the name of the Deputies.”100
Adriaan Junius later rose to some prominence; in 1600, he acted as a commissioner for Oldenbarnevelt, and in 1602 he became a judge in the Hoge Raad.101
98
Wraight, op cit - p.68.
99 See Dutch biographical website www.dbnl.org.
100 See British History Online at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/.
Hadrianus Junius and his relative, Adriaan, are not to be confused with the Earl of Leicester's secretary Jacobus Junius, nor with the language scholar Franciscus Junius (1591-1677).
Prospects for New Research
Although we still lack any further examples of Le Doux’s handwriting, we now have a much clearer idea of where to look. A. D. Wraight suggested that Le Doux himself wrote very few letters, but I believe that there is now good reason for optimism. It is surely significant that Anthony Bacon, when wring to Le Doux102 in the Spring of 1596, reminded him always to use the code-names that he had been given, for himself and others, and to use the selected cipher: “J’entends que Monsieur Reynoldes vous a baillé un Chiphre, aussi que je ne doubte que vous n’ayez arresté les noms qu’il faut user tant à la superscription que subscription des lettres”: “I understand that Mr Reynolds has provided you with a Cipher, also that I have no doubt that you will continue to use the names that must be employed, as much in the heading as in the subscription of letters.” This obviously implies that Bacon was expecting to receive regular communications from Le Doux.
In view of the rapidly expanding amount of information on Le Doux, and the large number of archives involved, it is likely that more letters will be discovered, possibly amongst the Calvart Papers at The Hague. Other important archives in the Netherlands include the Nationaal Archief at The Hague, the Koninklijk Huis Archief, and the Instituut Voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis.
Le Doux’s connection with the Humanist scholars Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614) needs further investigation. If there is one special characteristic that emerges unmistakeably from the plays of “Shake-speare”, it is surely the fact that their author’s philosophy was firmly centred in the tradition of late Renaissance Humanism - this is exhibited throughout his works, in the avid search for knowledge and, at the same time, a certain angst about the human condition and human suffering - an emotion felt at some times more acutely than at others. It was an insecurity resulting from the end of the old “certainties” of scholastic dogma - the collapse of a world-view which had arrogantly placed mankind at the centre of the universe.
Scaliger and Casaubon were both Classicists, and their work includes translations and commentaries on many ancient authors including Aristotle, Suetonius, Sophocles, Euripides, Cicero, Homer, Seneca and Tacitus. Their commentaries, and their interpretations of history, may thus have influenced such Shake-speare plays as Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus. Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Julius Caesar and Hamlet have been listed by Stanley Wells as Shake-speare’s most “Senecan” plays.103 Isaac Casaubon published commentaries on Suetonius (author of The Twelve Caesars), Aeschylus, Aristotle and Pliny (Pliny the 102
LPL. MS 656, no. 137, endorsed March 17th 1596 OS; printed in Ungerer, op cit - p.240.
103 Stanley Wells, Shakespeare; An Illustrated Dictionary, OUP, 1981, p.155.
Elder’s Naturalis Historia is known to have influenced passages in Othello). In 1592 Casaubon published a Latin translation of Theophrastus’ Characteres (Stock Characters), with a commentary.
Collections of Private Correspondence
The Van der Meulen Archive at Leiden is probably the most promising resource for those seeking to trace “Monsieur Le Doux”; it contains thousands of letters, including those of Nicolas Malapert to Van der Meulen (sent from Frankfurt, 1596-1600; Inventory No. 587); also those of Jacques de la Faille (Inventory No. 538), Samuel Godin, Christian Huygens, Jacques Reiniers, George Fremin, Jacques de Bodry, Baptista Oyens and Abraham Berrewijns (Van der Meulen’s clerk). The Rotterdam Record Office has a further 684 documents relating to Daniel Van der Meulen. After the latter’s death in 1600, his extensive book collection was sold at auction in Leiden (on the 4th of June 1601); it would be interesting to trace what happened to these books, since we may be sure that some of them ended up in the hands of the Seigneur de Buzanval and his friends.
The letters of George Gilpin (1514-1602), Queen Elizabeth’s minister to The Hague, may well yield further clues. Gilpin lived in the same house at The Hague as Ambassador Buzanval (the House of Aremberg), so Le Doux must have known him - indeed he may well have stayed there himself from time to time, as seems to be implied in some of the Ambassador’s letters. Gilpin had been English Secretary to the Dutch Council of State from 1586 and had been appointed Councillor in 1593. Other important letter-writers of the period include Ralph Winwood, Secretary to the English Embassy in Paris until 1603; the Duke of Sully; Justus Lipsius; and Sir Thomas Edmondes.
For many years Ambassador Buzanval exchanged letters with his friends Joachim II Camerarius and Philippus Camerarius. During the 1590s, the Camerarius brothers were acting as confidential agents for Buzanval, in addition to their work as scholars, which was equally valued by the Ambassador - as had been the case with Jean Du Temps, for example. Joachim II also wrote regularly to Jacques de Bodry. Many of the Camerarius letters have survived.
The correspondence of Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon extended from 1594 to 1610. Casaubon lived in Paris from January of 1599 until 1610, when he went to England; Le Doux was almost certainly the bearer of some of their letters. Many letters of Casaubon are in the Collection Dupuy at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Further useful information on Joseph Scaliger may be obtained through the Scaliger Institute and the Scaliger Family Papers.
There are thousands of letters in the Orsini Papers, and one hopes that future research into these documents may reveal details of the later career of “Monsieur Le Doux”; as I have said, we need to discover his new nom de guerre, adopted towards the end of 1599.
Since the previously-known evidence concerning Le Doux related only to the period from October 1595 to June 1596, the new documents here presented (in Appendix 1) provide us with a “bridge” between Wraight’s discoveries and the later employment of Le Doux during 1598 and 1599 as a diplomatic courier in the service of the King of France and Lord Buzanval (as outlined in my previous article). This will enable us to construct a much more detailed picture of Le Doux’s activities during the 1590s; we now have reliable and consistent documentary evidence covering almost a full five years, from September of 1595 to the end of 1599.
It must be emphasised that the primary evidence identifying “Le Doux” as Marlowe/Shake-speare is contained in the documents first published by A D Wraight in Shakespeare: New Evidence: this crucial evidence comprises, first and foremost, the list of the books in Le Doux’s possession, many of which are source-works for the plays and poems attributed to “Shake-speare”; secondly, the significant biographical information revealed by the documents in Le Doux’s possession (i.e. his travels and employment as an “intelligencer”); thirdly, his own letters, which prove his connection with the Walsingham family and Antonio Perez, the “Don Armado” of Love’s Labour’s Lost; and, finally, the handwriting, which has been matched to the extant page of Marlowe’s play The Massacre at Paris.
These arguments are now supported by an abundance of circumstantial evidence, including what has been set out in these articles. Gustav Ungerer, for one, was convinced that the “Le Doux” of the Anthony Bacon Papers was the same man as the royal courier “Le Doux” whom we find in the service of King Henri IV and Lord Buzanval during 1598 and 1599. As for the identification of Le Doux as Marlowe and as the real “Shake-speare”, this is a question for the reader to decide, but in my own opinion the documentary and circumstantial evidence are now combining to build a formidable case. We still lack further samples of Le Doux’s handwriting, and one would like to know more about his book acquisitions, but hopefully these will be forthcoming.
If I am correct, with Wraight and others, in suggesting that Monsieur Le Doux had been a friend of King Henri IV since the latter’s early years in Navarre, and was later appointed as his royal courier, then Le Doux was ideally placed to gain an understanding of the trials and burdens of kingship, which are so memorably and movingly depicted by “Shake-speare” (for example, in King Lear). It was an age of assassinations and plots of assassinations; in such times, Le Doux would have seen clearly enough that every monarch must reign beneath the ever-present threat of the “Sword of Damocles”. Such was to be the fate of King Henri: he was murdered in 1610, by a religious fanatic named Ravaillac, spurred on to the crime by the Jesuits.
King Henri is frequently, and justifiably, called France’s greatest King - Henri le Grand, famous for his courage, his cordiality, his “amours” and his wisdom. In his youth, however, Henri had been the victim of religious persecution - as
such, he would surely have been sympathetic towards the plight of the exiled Christopher Marlowe, forced into hiding because of his religious opinions. Despite Henri’s strategic “conversion” to Catholicism in 1593, the King would never forget what the Catholic mob had done in 1572, spurred on by the Guises - perpetrating such outrages as the murder of Admiral Coligny, the much-admired the leader of the Huguenots, and the brutal slaughter of many thousands of innocents.
It has often been pointed out that the Shake-speare plays display a familiarity with Courtly protocol - for example, the etiquette surrounding visiting princes, ambassadors and nobles. As a royal courier and diplomatic envoy, Monsieur Le Doux was well-placed to observe the procedures of government and the conduct of international diplomacy - including the urgent “peace or war” negotiations that are so vividly depicted in Henry V:104 these matters were the very substance of Le Doux’s daily employment. The works of “Shake-speare”, with their extraordinary knowledge of life at Courts throughout Europe, offer us an impressively thorough portrait of that glamorous, yet precarious, world.
As we have seen, King Henri’s friend Paul Choart, the Seigneur de Buzanval, was another key figure in the emerging history of Le Doux, bearing in mind Buzanval’s long residence in London during the 1580s and his friendships with both Anthony Bacon and Sir Francis Walsingham, Christopher Marlowe’s employer at that time. One would like to know more about Buzanval, particularly in earlier years. This aspect is yet to be confirmed, but I strongly suspect that during his residence in London during the 1580s, Ambassador Buzanval was a literary patron, at a time when there was a certain vogue for French culture; if so, then he was continuing a tradition of hospitality established by his predecessor, Michel de Castelnau, who was a Humanist patron and a friend of Giordano Bruno105. The Seigneur de Buzanval seems to have been associated with the circle of Sir Philip Sidney; he is known to have been an admirer of Sidney’s beloved “Stella”, Lady Penelope Rich,106 the sister of the Earl of Essex.
It is clear that Monsieur Le Doux had easy access to a wide range of books, both in France and in the Netherlands - for example, at the Royal Library in Paris, where Joseph Scaliger’s friend Isaac Casaubon was sub-Librarian from January 1599 until 1610. At The Hague and the nearby University town of Leiden, he could readily have obtained books through the Seigneur de Buzanval, Joseph Scaliger and Daniel Van der Meulen. All of these men had scholarly contacts throughout Europe - in the case of Van der Meulen, most were in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Bremen and Nuremburg.
104
Particularly in Act III of Henry V.
105 Wraight, In Search of Christopher Marlowe, p.164.
106 See J. A. Van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers and the Leiden Humanists (OUP,
I would suggest, therefore, that a number of “Shake-speare” plays of the 1590s were written in Paris or at The Hague, where Le Doux’s departure was frequently delayed for long periods because of contrary winds in the Channel.
On a more personal level, the travels of Le Doux/Marlowe in the coastal regions of France and the Netherlands could well have presented him with an occasional opportunity to be re-united with friends and family - perhaps even a return to England, if only briefly, for a meeting at Dover or adjacent ports.
It was to be expected that Le Doux/Marlowe, as a “fugitive” from the Court of Star Chamber, would be careful to “cover his tracks” as far as possible; but we are very fortunate to have the evidence that was hidden for so long amongst the Anthony Bacon Papers and so admirably expounded by our late respected colleague, A. D. Wraight, in Shake-speare New Evidence. That information has now been supplemented with the new documentary evidence that is discussed in these articles. Certainly there is much that remains unknown; but, if we are willing to pursue the emerging clues with the perseverance that they merit, and with an open mind, much more will be discovered, shedding new light on the meaning of the great works of “Shake-speare” and the powerful inspiration that lay behind them.
Appendix 1: The New Documentary Evidence in Chronological Order
Note: The documents analysed in my previous article, consisting mostly of letters from the Seigneur de Buzanval and Francois D’Aerssen, are dated between 28th October 1598 (NS) and 22nd November 1599 (NS).
Document A
A letter from Liévin Calvart to the States-General of the Netherlands, sent from Paris and dated 14th March 1597 NS:
Heading: The Besieging of Calais offered by Elizabeth; Peace Proposals through the mediation of the Pope.
The town of Calais had fallen to the forces of Archduke Albert in April of 1596. Early in 1597, Pope Clement VIII sent an envoy to Paris (the General des Cordeliers) in the hope of persuading King Henri IV to make peace with Spain; but Calvart tells us that the King was “wavering” and still inclined to continue the war.
Queen Elizabeth had previously offered to send a force to besiege Calais, but only on the condition of retaining it as a “pledge-town”, like Brill and Flushing in the Netherlands. King Henri had vehemently rejected Elizabeth’s offer, but now, in March of 1597, we find him sending his Ambassador, the Sieur de Fouquerolles, to Elizabeth with an urgent request for help towards the relief of Amiens, and with a mandate, in the last resort, even to offer her Calais on the terms she had demanded. At the same time, the King is going to Beauvais to prepare for an attack on Arras. From Beauvais the King intends to send Monsieur Le Doux on a mission to the States-General at The Hague. Henri left Pontoise, just outside Paris, on March 14th 1597, and on the same day he wrote a letter to the States-General with an appeal for funds, which reached them on March 31st 1597.
This schedule allows plenty of time for Le Doux to return to Paris before the end of May, bringing with him the letters from the States-General which are mentioned by Joseph Scaliger in Document B, below. The ever-diligent Le Doux was back in The Hague again in July 1597 (receiving a payment of fifty florins around July 26th) and again at the end of August (a further payment of fifty florins was recorded on September 13th).
The news of the disastrous loss of Amiens had reached Paris on March 12th 1597, just two days prior to Liévin Calvart’s letter107.
107
For the sudden loss of Amiens, see the notes to Letter 48 in Appendix 2
This is the relevant paragraph in Calvart’s letter, mentioning Le Doux:
His Majesty [Henri IV] requires, in the first part of the aforesaid Resolution, by
summons of his said Ambassador [the Sieur de Fouquerolles), that as soon as
my own health permits, I should attend on His Majesty, in order to resolve on
the return and dispatch of the afore-mentioned Ambassador, and that he [Henri]
will deputise the courier Le Doux from Beauvais, in order to advise Your
Honours in this matter. If His Majesty will now give instructions to the former
[“Van’t gene S.M. nu ter hant sal trekken”], he will solicit far more advice and
help, than can be said [expected?] of certain Resolutions.
Henri’s Ambassador to the Netherlands, the Seigneur de Buzanval (who certainly knew Le Doux) had travelled to France in late January 1597; he was in Paris on the 13th of March (Letter 48 in Appendix 2). By April 19th he was back in Zealand, at Flushing; he reached The Hague on May 31st 1597.
From: Gedenkstukken van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt en Ziyn Tiyd (1862), Vol Two, by M. L. Deventer (Letter CV, p.148): there is a copy at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich.
Liévin Calvart died at Paris in late May 1597. His successor was Francois D’Aerssens, duly appointed in 1598. The Sieur de Fouquerolles was killed in July 1597 at the siege of Amiens.
A letter from Joseph Scaliger (“De Lescale”) to the States-General of the Netherlands, from Paris, dated 30th May 1597 NS
The letters which your Lordships have written to the King [Henri] by way of the
courier Le Doulx [sic] have been delivered into the very hands of His Majesty
by the Sieur de la Rossiniere, elder son of the late Monsieur de Calvart.
(signed “De Lescale”)
This letter would seem to confirm earlier indications that Scaliger and Le Doux knew each other.
A fleet of merchant vessels, passing alongside the islands of Xaitonge [off La
Rochelle], produced so much alarm in that region that the news has reached as
far as this town [i.e. Paris], where the “wolf” is declared to be much larger
than it actually is - they are saying that it must be the Spanish army, consisting
of a hundred and twenty ships, in which there are, supposedly, twenty thousand
soldiers.
Scaliger also mentions the departure and rapid return of Sir Thomas Edmondes, Agent of Queen Elizabeth (see Winwood’s Memorials).
From: Vreede’s Inleiding tot Eene Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Diplomatie (1858 edition, published at Utrecht by Broese), Vol 2, part 1 (Appendices, p.178 of third section, Bijlage XLVI)
Note: As the following document shows, Le Doux was the bearer of a letter dated 27th August 1597 from Oldenbarnevelt (at The Hague) to Antoine de Sailly (presumably at Pecquigney).
A letter from Antoine de Sailly, Agent at Calais of the States-General, to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Advocate of Holland; sent from Pecquigny (near Amiens, on the River Somme, in Picardy, Northern France) and dated 9th September 1597 NS
Monsieur,
I have received your letter of the 27th August via the courier Le Dou [sic], in
which you inform me of the surrender of the town of Berck. From my last letter,
of the 31st August, you will have seen how much progress there is at the siege of
Amiens. Now I can tell you that the King and the strongest of his army expect to
reach the conclusion of the siege in six days, there being soldiers installed on
the rampart between the top and the bottom, where the mines are, and five or six
of them are ready to go off.
(signed “De Sailli”)
From: Vreede’s Inleiding tot Eene Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Diplomatie (1858), Vol 2, part 1 (Appendices, pp.167-168 of third section, Bijlage XLV)
This letter is also reproduced in Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Volume 80, which is Dr S. P. Haak’s Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt (1934, publisher Martinus Nijhoff), No.194, p.362.108
Note: If Le Doux was the bearer of this letter, he would have departed on the same day, September 9th, taking ship for The Hague; with a favourable wind, he could easily have reached The Hague in four days (the prevailing wind in the English Channel is from the South-West or West).
The States-General made a payment (normally 50 florins) to Jacques Le Doulx [sic] on September 13th 1597; he received further payments at The Hague later in the year (Resolutions of 9th October, 14th November (“per procuratie”, “by proxy”) and 20th December.)
108
See the website http://www.inghist.nl/retroboeken/oldenbarnevelt 1570-1620
A letter from Francois Van Aerssen, Agent of the United Provinces in France, to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, sent from Paris and dated 29th May 1598 NS:
Much of this letter is in cipher.
Monsieur,
Matters are much improved [“meures”] since your departure for England, and
my previous letters of the 15th [May, from Rennes] sent via Le Doux,
concerning which, although I could report to you but little with sufficient
certainty, I do not doubt that, as you approach the frontiers, you will have been
abundantly informed from other sources. Everything has been handled with so
much secrecy that one can hardly extract any information about it. In any case,
as we are approaching the settlement, both regarding England and the
publication, it will not be long before we see everything clearly.
D’Aerssen states (pp.397-398):
I spoke the day before yesterday with Monsieur Edmont [Sir Thomas Edmondes]
at Orleans, newly returned to his station from England in order to present
himself here on the day ordained, but I found him completely disposed and
inclined towards the peace” and adds that “the inclination of the Queen [of
England] is towards peace...
Sir Thomas Edmondes was in regular contact with the Earl of Essex - his extant letters from France include those of 13th November 1594, 28th August 1595 and 8th December 1595.110
France is described as:
a sick country, exhausted by the continuance of war and unable to sustain it
much longer.
D’Aerssen mentions the general apprehension, not least of Oldenbarnevelt himself, that:
the disengagement of the Queen is the certain and inevitable ruin of our State”
[i.e. the Netherlands].
Nevertheless, he still regards Elizabeth as
the Protectress of our freedoms ... She is sending ambassadors to the Kings of
A letter from Francois Van Aerssen to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Advocate of Holland, from Paris, dated 29th May 1598 NS
I have not been able to conceal from you the contentment that people have here,
regarding your negotiations, and the regret of people of goodwill - those who
are well-affected towards the conservation of the State [the Netherlands] - in
that it could not have had better success.
…your letter of the seventeenth [May] …only reached me today; since then, you
are sure to have received the letter that I had conveyed to you via Le Doux, of
the 15th [May], the same day on which he arrived at Rennes. I will use all
diligence in having the two letters verified [examined], when I have received
that of Seigneur Lobel.
The implication of the above, as with the previous letter, Document E (both dated May 29th), is that Van Aerssen and Le Doux were at Rennes on May 15th 1598 (rather than Paris), and that it was from Rennes that Le Doux was sent to The Hague on that occasion.
From: Dr S. P. Haak’s Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt (1934, publ. Martinus Nijhoff), No. 223, pp.400-401.
A letter from Lord Buzanval to Daniel van der Meulen, Merchant of Leiden, sent from The Hague and dated 1st January 1599 NS
I thank you a million times for the book that you sent me, which you have greatly
enriched , for in the opinion of Monsieur de L'Escalle [Joseph Scaliger], the
ornamental borders are even more beautiful than the binding. Le Doux is
traveling to you to see if we could obtain [“recouvrer” - “recover”?] some
cauliflower seeds through your agency; I am making this request as a personal
favour and also to assist him [Le Doux] in the matter, if you have the means to
do it. As for news from France, we are pursuing [“nous sommes après”] our
Edict [i.e. the Peace of Vervins], which the King strongly urges; the judicial
Courts [“parlements”] are being evasive and the ecclesiastics are strongly
opposed. At this beginning of the New Year, the nuptials of Madame [Catherine
de Bourbon, only sister of Henri IV] are being celebrated. Your German princes
are gathering in strength, but, so far as I can see, without concluding anything.
Good day on this Happy New Year, Monsieur.
From: Kernkamp & Heyst, op cit, Letter 64, p.232.
Van Der Meulen was frequently obtaining books for Buzanval, often through his contacts in Germany (for example, Jacques de Bodry). Like Joseph Scaliger, Van der Meulen was based at Leiden; since that town is only twenty miles from The Hague, it was quite possible for them to receive each others’ letters on the same day they were written.
A footnote states the following regarding Le Doux’s departure from The Hague:
Jacques Le Doux, regular Courier of Henri IV [“ordinaris Koerier van
Hendrick IV”] attended in particular to the diplomatic post between the French
government and Buzanval. On 4th January 1599, Le Doux departed from The
Hague, probably supplied with the cauliflower seeds, in order to deliver a
memorandum of Buzanval to Villeroy, who had ordered such seeds from Daniel
van der Meulen on two previous occasions.111
The phrase “ordinaris Koerier” confirms that Le Doux was a royal courier in the direct employment of King Henri IV, rather than that of Lord Villeroy or Lord Buzanval.
As I have stated above, the order for cauliflower seeds must have been made in connection with the French King’s program of agricultural reform, designed to ward off the ever-present threat of famine. In view of this danger, in a letter dated 26th February 1596, (Letter 19 in Kernkamp), Ambassador Buzanval had made an urgent request for Van Der Meulen’s assistance:
Sir, I have a very substantial requirement for cauliflower seeds, Monsieur de
Villeroy has demanded it of me urgently.
Just two days later he had received the first consignment, with more to follow.
A letter from Buzanval to Villeroy, dated 4th January 1599, refers to the famine then raging in Spain and Portugal, which is also mentioned by Francois D’Aerssen in his letter of 19th June 1599.
Note: Le Doux was the bearer of Letter XLVI from Buzanval to Villeroy, dated 1st August 1599 (No. XLVI in Vreede); he left The Hague on the same day, carrying also a letter from Oldenbarnevelt to van Aerssen, mentioned below. He appears to have reached Paris in about a week, for we find him at Blois (near Orleans) on the 15th August. He left Blois for the Netherlands around August 16th, travelling via Paris, and arrived at The Hague on September 23rd 1599.
A letter from Francois van Aerssen to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, sent from Blois and dated 15th August 1599 NS:
Monsieur;
I wrote to you from Orleans on the 8th [August], and from this town on the 12th,
which which was fairly close to what I promised, though I wrote only briefly
[succinctly] regarding the subject: however, the affairs here and the season
must sufficiently excuse me, since these consist of nothing more than a love-
clique [“qui ne consistent qu’en caballe d’amour”].
These disapproving remarks of the Calvinist Aerssen are reminiscent of the shocked response of Jacques Petit towards the immoral goings-on at Burley112.
Your letter via Le Doux gave me great satisfaction at the settlement [payment],
concerning which I notified you through my servant [“laquais”]. For previously
I dared not hope for it at once, considering the uncertainty of intentions and the
first uncertain indications of the event of your announcement [“placcart”], but
now I no longer see any difficulty that we could have in making our position
secure. I would gladly insist on promises alone, were it not for the fact that
necessities are urged upon me, of which I pretend to know nothing, more
especially as so much money is squandered [“se consument”] as a bonus. And
at least I promise myself that, nevertheless, the fruit of my entreaties will not be
entirely useless. It is the place of the servant to make his endeavours, but it is
the place of the master, in rejecting them, to consider the times, the men and the
motives involved. If I have not assessed things as you do, Monsieur - for you see
very clearly in this matter - your great experience gives me sufficient excuse.
The date of collection falls due tomorrow. To this end, Le Doux is leaving for
Paris with full instructions [“avec tout ordre”]. I am awaiting His Majesty for
the authorisation, which could be delayed until Wednesday because of his
pursuit [“recerches”] of Mademoiselle D’Antraques [Catherine Henriette
d’Entragues, Marquess de Verneuil], whom he will follow to Langeais
[Langes], five leagues south-west of Tours; this mode of life is dissatisfying to
everyone, and still there is no sign of a conclusion; for we believe that, owing to
the indifference of the King, the Florentine arrangement [i.e. the long-standing
plan for a marriage between Henri and Marie de Medici] is virtually hopeless,
in view of the direct [non-mediated - “sans entremise”] solicitation made by the
Emperor [Rudolph II] for the success of his own suit, whereas the King uses
only indirect courses.
From: Haak, op. cit., no 268, p.543.
Van Aerssen’s complaints are understandable, though it was not particularly unusual for marriage negotiations to be conducted “by proxy”, as in the case
of King Henri and Marie de Medici; indeed the initial marriage ceremony would also be “by proxy”. Nevertheless, d’Aerssen and his colleagues were frustrated by the protracted negotiations. In March of 1599, King Henri had sent his senior representatives Secretary Villeroy and Cardinal Gondi to Florence, in order to move matters along; but there were further delays, and the Papal annulment was not issued until December 17th 1599. The marriage agreement was at last concluded in late December, and the Contract was signed on April 25th 1600 (NS).
Regarding the marriage hopes of the Holy Roman Emperor, V. J. Pitts confirms that:
the Austrian Habsburgs had proposed a number of Archdukes for Marie’s hand
in the 1590s, even at one point Emperor Rudolph II.113
Thus we see that in 1599, the Holy Roman Emperor was wooing Marie de Medici by “direct” means. Apart from his rather gloomy temperament and his reputation for mysticism, the Emperor would presumably have been a most eligible husband for any aristocratic lady in Europe; in the event, he never married.
Emperor Rudolph II was almost certainly known to Monsieur Le Doux from the latter’s mission to Prague in 1596, and there certainly could have been later contacts. Some have suggested that the magician Prospero, in Shake-speare’s play The Tempest, was inspired by Rudolph II.
Appendix 2: The Letters of the Seigneur de Buzanval to Daniel Van Der Meulen, 1595-1599;
with some Historical and Biographical Notes
Introductory Note
The eighty letters114 in this collection are all addressed to Lord Buzanval’s friend Daniel van der Meulen, the prominent Leiden merchant. They were all sent from The Hague, with the exception of Letter 48 (from Paris).
It is certain that Van der Meulen knew Monsieur Le Doux; Ambassador Buzanval refers to Le Doux by name in Letter 64, dated 1st January 1599 (listed also as Document G in Appendix 1, above). This must be placed alongside the twenty-two further references to Le Doux contained in the Ambassador’s letters to Secretary Villeroy and King Henri IV, as published by Vreede (see my previous article on this website115).
I have included certain details of the remaining letters not only because of their intrinsic interest, but also because they give us an invaluable insight into the historical background for the years 1596 to 1599, for example in relation to famine (Letters 19, 21 and 64). Furthermore, the Ambassador’s references to such scholars as the Camerarius brothers, Dr. Lobetius, Vulcanius, Clusius and Temporarius present us with much useful information, since many of these men also acted as suppliers of intelligence, and some of them certainly knew Monsieur Le Doux. Of course it must be understood that these “intelligencers” were not “spies” in the modern sense, but rather providers of general information on political and strategic developments throughout Europe, in an age when accurate knowledge of such matters was continually obstructed by slow communications and the endless spreading of rumour.
For similar reasons, the extensive Van der Meulen Archive is an extremely promising resource for future investigation; it is very likely to contain further references to Monsieur Le Doux.
Direct quotations from Ambassador Buzanval’s letters are given in blue italics; the remaining quotations are mostly from Kernkamp and Heyst.
1595
Letter 4: 28th July 1595
Mentions both Joseph Scaliger and the French diplomat and scholar Jacques de Bodry (see Letters 29 and 30) - Buzanval and Van der Meulen were in regular contact with both.
114
As published in Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschapp, Vols 76-78 (1962), edited by Kernkamp and
Heyst. 115
Article 5 in Marlowe Society Research Journal Vol. 6 (2009): http://www.marlowe-society.org/pubs/journal/journal06.html
The difficulties regarding rations [“vivvres”] are everywhere so great that I
have no idea how His Majesty will possibly be able to maintain his army in the
regions of Picardy.
There was widespread famine at this time:
If the harvest of 1594, both in the Republic and elsewhere, had already been
poor, in the following year the scarcity of corn became even worse ... from the
end of 1595, the French King repeatedly urged the States-General for urgent
assistance in the form of corn.116
Letter 8: 2nd November 1595
Because of the great losses that some of the German Princes had experienced in
the war between Spain and the Republic, the Imperial Rijksdag [Diet] at
Regensburg decided to try to bring about a peace. Emperor Rudolf II and the
States-General exchanged a number of letters, and certain German Princes
were charged with embassies to Brussels and The Hague. However, the States-
General refused them passports and notified the Emperor more than once that
the sending of delegates would not be appreciated.117
These comments may have some bearing on the mission of Baron Zeiroteine to the English and Scottish Courts.
Letter 10: 24th November 1595
The son of Buzanval’s friend Du Plessis, Philippe de Mornay (1579-1605), has enrolled as a student at Leiden - see also Letter 30, below.
Letter 11: 7th December 1595
Mentions the French envoy Nicolas Harlay de Sancy (1546-1629).
1596
Jacques de Bodry wrote to Camerarius on 18th February 1596 (Lettres, p. 445), asking if it was true that the Spanish army was recruiting mercenaries in Germany.
Letter 19: 26th February 1596:
Ambassador Buzanval makes an urgent request for supplies of cauliflower seed:
Sir, I have a very substantial requirement for cauliflower seeds, Monsieur de
Buzanval also states that he is expecting shortly to be sending a messenger to France (Paris is implied, since the consignments of seeds are for Secretary Villeroy). Could this perhaps have been Le Doux? A. D. Wraight believed that he and Petit had made a brief visit to the Continent at this time. The dates seem to fit quite well with the issue of passports, etc.
The French Ambassador at Constantinople (Francois Savary, Count of Brèves) has reported that the Sultan Mohammed III (the “Grand Seigneur”) has personally taken up arms in the Hungarian war. The increasing power of the Turks, both on land and at sea, was at this time a matter of great concern throughout Christian Europe; Buzanval warns that “they are arming 150 galleys”.
Letter 20: 28th February 1596
Buzanval writes “I fear for Calais” - this was a very accurate presentiment, since the town would be captured in April after a short siege. It was an event that took everyone else completely by surprise, so the Ambassador’s comment once again reveals his political and strategic astuteness.
Letter 21: 7th March 1596
Buzanval reminds Van der Meulen of the order for cauliflower seeds.
Letter 23: 4th April 1596
Again mentions Joseph Scaliger (“Monsieur de l’Escalle”).
Letter 24: 12th April 1596
Reports that Antoine de Sailly is at Middelburg. He was formerly based at Calais, but escaped before the town surrendered to the forces of Archduke Albert (on April 24th1596 NS).
Now that the enemy had made himself master of Calais, many expected that the
[Anglo-Dutch] expedition into Spanish waters would not proceed. Despite this
situation, the Republic’s auxiliary-squadron sailed from Zealand at the end of
April. Nevertheless, the expeditionary fleet, under the overall command of
Essex, did not sail from Plymouth until the 13th of June.118
King Henri’s special envoy, the Seigneur de Sancy, left for England in early April 1596, at the beginning of the siege of Calais; Bouillon left for England after its fall. Sancy was expected to go to The Hague before returning to France, but instead he returned directly to France (circa 28th May NS).
In a letter dated 16th May 1596 NS, Jacques de Bodry asked Daniel Van der Meulen to forward a number of letters to Sancy at The Hague; however, Jan
den Tex confirms that Sancy did not in fact go to the Netherlands, but “against expectations” sailed directly for France. 119
Letter 27: 17th May 1596
Ambassador Buzanval, at The Hague, is awaiting the arrival of Sancy and Liévin Calvart returning from England. Calvart arrived there on June 5th, but without Sancy.
On 16th May 1596, the occupants of La Fere concluded a pact with King Henri. The town was in his hands by the 22nd.
Letter 29: 14th June 1596
Yesterday a Royal Courier arrived here.
Monsieur Ancel…is here, preparing to go on a mission to the Princes of
Germany...
He will take with him important information for Jacques de Bodry [“tout clairté de affaires”], but he cannot leave for another month.
Guillaume d’Ancel (d.1615) was the ambassador of Henri III and Henri IV in Germany from 1576 to 1612. Kernkamp states that “he was a member of the delegation [to England - implied] that concluded the Treaty of Greenwich”. From June to November 1596, d’Ancel remained in the Dutch Republic and “took part in the conclusion of the Triple Alliance”120 (October 31st). He returned to Germany about 11th November “where, together with Jacques de Bodry, he tried unsuccessfully to induce some of the German Princes to join the Alliance.” 121
Jacques de Bongars de Bodry (1554-1612) had been appointed in 1593 as King Henri’s envoy to the Princes of Germany. He was a friend of Isaac Casaubon and the Seigneur de Buzanval, to whom he wrote regularly. He also exchanged correspondence with Daniel Van der Meulen and Guillaume d’Ancel, Henri IV’s resident ambassador at Prague, much of which has survived (in the Van der Meulen Archive). He had contacts in Switzerland and throughout Germany, including Cologne and Frankfurt, and was sent by Henri IV on numerous missions to Denmark, England and Holland. During the mid-to-late 1590s, he was based at Strasbourg, at the house of Dr. Johannes Lobetius. This, in itself, is significant, since Dr. Lobetius had been an agent of Sir Francis Walsingham during the 1580s - see Letter 54, below.
Jacques de Bodry also corresponded frequently with the Camerarius brothers; he regularly received “all kinds of news from Southern, Eastern and Central Europe, which reached him partly via Camerarius”.122 It was a very efficient 119
system: “the reports concerning the Turkish war, which reached Paris via Van der Meulen, were among the very first to arrive there.” 123
Liévin Calvart is still at The Hague, with Ambassador Buzanval.
Letter 30: 19th June 1596
This letter has the following postscript:
Monsieur (Van der Meulen), there is a small packet for Noremberg which I ask
you kindly to forward.
In this context “Noremberg” looks very much like a code-name, almost certainly for one of the Camerarius brothers, Philippus and Joachim II, or both. It is noticeable that Buzanval does not give their names, though it is abundantly clear from the correspondence of others that the Ambassador and his agents knew them.
Kernkamp’s footnote reads;
This was, in all probability, Joachim Camerarius the Younger (1534-1598),
Physician and Botanist at Neurenberg, founder of the Collegium Medicorum
there, to whom Buzanval wrote and who took care of the forwarding of the
latter’s letters. Jacques de Bodry corresponded regularly with Joachim
Camerarius II; the vast majority of the former’s Lettres, which were written
between 1588 and 1598, are addressed to Camerarius. They were published in
1695.124
These documents are of great value, because the fiercely-Protestant Camerarius
… had very good connections with the German Princes, as did his fellow-
physician Johannes Wyer. Camerarius, in return, was able to enlighten his
friends regarding events in Central and Eastern Europe; thus in the summer of
1596, when the son of Du Plessis-Mornay [a close friend of Buzanval] was
staying with Camerarius, Jacques de Bodry asked the latter, now Town-
Physician of Nuremberg, to let his guest have copies of all news from Austria,
Bohemia, Hungary, Transylvania, Poland, Pruisen [Prussia] and Sweden.
The young Philippe de Mornay visited Frankfurt’s famous Book-Fair in 1596, in the company of Janus Dousa (Jr).The Book Fair was held twice a year, around Easter and in September; we may be sure that Marlowe/Le Doux would have visited the Book-Fair at least once if he had the opportunity, which does seem to have been the case, given his travels in Germany.
Carolus Clusius, Seigneur de Watènes (1525-1609) (Charles de l'Écluse, L'Escluse) was a Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist. He kept up an extensive correspondence with Joachim Camerarius II, which was published in 1942 by F.W.T.Hunger. Clusius was perhaps the most influential of all 16th
123
Ibid, p.179.
124 Ibid, p.188. See, for example, his letter of 24th August 1595, sent from Ansbach.
Century scientific horticulturists. From 1593 he was a Professor at Leiden; the Emperor Rudolf II was one of his patrons. A letter from the Seigneur de Buzanval to Carolus Clusius, dated 8th October 1599, is in the Berends Collection at Leiden.
Note: the Treaty of Greenwich was ratified by Henri IV on 9th July 1596.
Letter 32: 12th July 1596
I ask you to kindly put Noremberg125
in possession of the enclosed [letters] for a
French gentleman who is in Hungary.
Letter 33: 20th July 1596
The Duke of Bouillon has not yet arrived in the Netherlands.
It had been anticipated that immediately after the 9th of July, Bouillon would go
to England in order to have the Treaty sworn by Queen Elizabeth, and that soon
thereafter he would come to the Republic. However, Henri IV delayed for so
long over sending Bouillon - who did not arrive in England until August 25th -
that it was widely feared in the Republic that the French King was trying to
reach an accord with Philip II, and for that reason was prepared to annul the
Treaty of Greenwich.126
Letter 35: 15th August 1596
Guillaume d’Ancel is still in the Netherlands.
Letter 36: 28th August 1596
The Duke of Bouillon arrived at Dover on 25th August. He returned to the Netherlands in September, arriving in Zealand on the 20th.
On 31st October 1596, the Triple Alliance and a separate Treaty between the Republic and France were signed. At that point, Bouillon intended to return to France, but unfavourable winds kept him in the Republic until 25th November.
On 19th October 1596, King Henri was presented with the Order of the Garter, in Rouen Cathedral. The King remained at Rouen until the beginning of February 1597.
Letter 41: 8th November 1596
Guillaume d’Ancel should be leaving by ship in three days.
Dietrich Wyer (Veyer), agent of the States-General in 1596 and 1597, was sent
to Germany with the French diplomats Guillaume d’Ancel and Jacques de
Bodry, to try to persuade the German Princes to join in the Triple Alliance.127
125
“Noremberg” = the Camerarius brothers, as in Letter 30. Ibid, p.207.
The Archduke Albert has attempted to have Sir Francis Vere assassinated, by means of treachery (Sir Francis Vere was commander of English support troops in the Republic from 1589 to 1604).
For this purpose he made use of the Scottish nobleman James Wimes [Lord
Wemis], who made contact with Captain Zegher de Rollé …who quickly
informed on him.
Wemis was beheaded and quartered on 8th January 1597.
On 4th December 1596, Jacques de Bodry sent Van der Meulen two reports from Frankfurt concerning events in the Turkish War. “the conflict between Mohammed III and Archduke Maximilien III of Austria, brother of Emperor Rudolf II.”
On 31st December 1596, the States-General ratifies the Triple Alliance.
1597
On 16th January 1597 the Seigneur de Buzanval left The Hague on a mission to Paris, probably accompanied by Monsieur Le Doux. They were travelling with a Dutch delegation to King Henri. Buzanval left Zealand on the 26th January and had reached Paris by March 13th.
Letter 47: 16th January 1597
Buzanval asks Van der Meulen to forward a packet to Guillaume d’Ancel, who was still in Southern Germany (now without Jacques de Bodry, however), trying to win over the German Princes and persuade them to link up with the Triple Alliance.
Letter 48: 13th March 1597 (from Paris)
On 11th March, in a surprise capture, Spanish troops had taken the
insufficiently-defended town of Amiens - which was a disaster for King Henri,
since he had laid up there everything necessary for the new campaign. Archduke
Albert now dominated the line of the Somme and directly threatened Paris. The
report of the fall of Amiens reached Paris during the night of 12th March; it
caused enormous consternation there ... [The Duke of] Sully recounts how the
report struck like a bolt of lightning in carnival-celebrating Paris.128
Amiens was not recovered until 19th September 1597.
From Liévin Calvart’s letter of March 14th, also from Paris (Document A in Appendix 1), we learn that King Henri had left Pontoise (just outside Paris) that very morning, heading for Beauvais, and that the King intended to
“deputise” Le Doux with the mission of conveying an update on the situation to the States-General at The Hague, with an urgent appeal for assistance. It may be implied that Le Doux was already at Beauvais, though it is possible that he accompanied the King on his journey from Pontoise. From Beauvais, King Henri hoped to be able to launch a surprise attack on Atrecht (Arras), perhaps with the intention of encircling Amiens and cutting off the northern supply route. On the same day (March 14th 1597) the King wrote a letter to the States-General of the Netherlands, asking them:
to help him without delay, by sending money and by directing the States’ army
to undertake some action. As early as the day of receipt, 31st March, Johan van
der Veken had obtained a mandate to transfer 75,000 guilders. 129
The logical conclusion is surely that the royal courier Monsieur Le Doux was the bearer of King Henri’s letter to the States-General; and, if Calvart’s letter caught up with Le Doux at Beauvais, then he could well have delivered that also.
Ambassador Buzanval was back in The Hague by May 31st 1597.
Letter 53: 12th August 1597
I beg you, sir, to borrow on my behalf, from Monsieur Vulcanius, a comedy by
Aristophanes, Eirene [Peace], printed at Paris [in 1589] and interpreted by
Florens Christianus; also a book in Greek interpreted by Passeratius [Jean
Passerat, 1534-1602], of which he spoke with me.
This was either Vers de la Chasse et d’Amour or Kalendae Januariae et varia quaedam poemata, both published in 1597 at Paris. The latter is mentioned in the auction catalogue of Vulcanius’ Library, now at the Meermanno-Westreenianum Museum at The Hague.
Bonaventura Vulcanius (1538-1614), the Dutch Humanist and Classical scholar, published the Historia Alexandri of Arrian (c.95-175 AD); he was Secretary to Philippe de Marnix in 1577; in 1581 he took up the position of Professor of Latin and Greek at the University of Leiden, where his students included Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius.
Letter 54: 11th October 1597
A package for the French Ambassador in Switzerland (Nicolas Brûlart, Seigneur de Sillery) is to be entrusted to the keeping of Doctor Lobetius at Strasbourg.
A Note on Dr. Lobetius: Dr. Lobetius had been one of Sir Francis Walsingham’s agents during the 1580s. The British History Online website130 has the following documents:
• A letter dated 24th March 1583 (OS), from George Fremin to Sir Francis Walsingham, sent from Antwerp: “I send you some Swiss news, from Lobetius”.
• A letter dated 27th July 1583, from Cobham to Walsingham, encloses reports from Dr. Lobetius.
• A letter dated 14th January 1586, from Dr Lobetius to Walsingham, regarding “what is to be expected from the Protestant Princes in Germany”; and
• A letter dated November 19th 1587, from Dr. Lobetius to Walsingham, sent from Strasbourg.
Dr Lobetius was a friend of Philippe Du Plessis Sr.; he also knew Sir Robert Sidney.
1598
In March of 1598, a Dutch delegation travelled to France, led by Oldenbarnevelt and Justin of Nassau; they were hoping to persuade Henri IV to suspend the peace negotiations (for more information, and the involvement of Monsieur Le Doux, see Documents E and F in Appendix 1 above). This delegation included Francois Van Aerssen and Hugo de Groot.
The Marriage of Archduke Albert
On the 16th May 1598, King Philip II announced the betrothal of his daughter, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, to Archduke Albert, Commander of the Spanish army in the Netherlands; the Archduke left for Spain on 14th September 1598; the marriage by proxy took place on 15th November and was solemnised at Valencia on 18th April 1599. Evidently Albert was not on very good terms with his brother Rudolf II:
It was intended that Archduke Albert would officially inform his brother, the
Emperor Rudolf, about his marriage; P. Bor131
relates how the meeting took
place with a distinct lack of harmony. Since the plague was raging in Prague,
the Archduke had to visit his brother in a castle located some distance from the
city.132
Note: On October 25th 1598, Jacques de Bodry wrote to Van der Meulen from Strasbourg, informing him that he would be travelling to France. Van der Meulen received no further communication from de Bodry until 2nd January 1599 (a letter sent from Paris, 21st December 1598). The latter returned to Germany at the end of February 1599.
Let me know what is being said about the protection of the towns of Bremen and
Hamburg and others taken by the Danes.
The Spanish encouraged the merchants of the Hanseatic League to take the
place of the Hollanders and Zeelanders in the trade with Spain. However, the
States-General ordered the seizure of all German ships that were suspected of
carrying war-materials to Spain or Portugal. The result was friction with the
Hansa towns - for they, like King Christian IV of Denmark, from whom they
sought support, wanted to maintain a neutral position between Spain and the
Republic.133
The Hanseatic League was an alliance of nearly eighty cities on the Baltic and North Atlantic coasts; the principal Hansa towns were Lubeck, Danzig, Hamburg, Brunswick, Bremen, and Cologne.
Letter 61: 13th November 1598
Please let me know what news you have from Germany, and whether it is true
that certain Antiacques [Hanseatic] towns have placed themselves under the
protection of Denmark.
Letter 62: 4th December 1598
If you know who has my book of the chronology of Temporib[us], I ask you to
take the trouble to recover it for me.134
This seems to be the earliest reference to Joannes Temporarius in Buzanval’s extant letters; also known as Jean du Temps, he was the author of Chronologicarum Demonstrationum Libri Tres, published at Frankfurt in 1596. From November 1598, Temporarius assisted Monsieur Le Doux in the conveying of funds from Paris to The Hague, and in November 1599 he was appointed as Le Doux’s successor in charge of such operations.
Letter 63: 12th December 1598
I thank you most humbly for your copy of Itinerarium; it is a gift which is most
pleasing to me.
This book was the Itinerario, Voyage ofte Schipvaert naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien, written by Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611). Linschoten was a Dutch Protestant, a merchant and explorer; the first edition was published at Amsterdam in 1596 by Cornelis Claesz. It contained the celebrated Spice Islands map by Peter Plancius, mentioned in Twelfth Night (see Appendix 3). The Itinerario was a huge success and was reprinted many times, including editions in French and German.
Jan van Linschoten “is credited with copying top-secret Portuguese nautical maps, thus enabling the passage to the elusive East Indies to be opened to the English and the Dutch. This enabled the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company to break the 16th Century monopoly enjoyed by the Portuguese on trade with the East Indies.”135
At the suggestion of the famous geographer Richard Hakluyt, an English translation was prepared; it was published in 1598 by John Wolfe, under the title Iohn Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies. Hakluyt was a close friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, who in turn was a friend of Christopher Marlowe.
The importance of Linschoten’s book is underlined by the formation of both the English and the Dutch East India Companies soon after its appearance; the English East India Company was granted a Royal Charter on December 31st 1600. The Dutch East India Company, established in 1602, was in fact an amalgamation of several existing companies, for the Dutch had been sending ships to the Far East since 1595, not always successfully; a Dutch fleet had reached Java in 1597. “By 1599, ten Dutch companies had been formed, sending between them 14 fleets of 65 ships, of which 54 made the return journey from the East safely.”136
Ambassador Buzanval himself took a keen interest in the spice trade, and on a number of occasions he received consignments of pepper from Van der Meulen. For further information on Linschoten, Peter Plancius and the “new map of the Indies”, see Appendix 3.
1599
Letter 64: 1st January 1599
Buzanval thanks Van der Meulen for his kind gift, a finely-bound copy of the Itinerario mentioned above. He also asks the Leiden-based merchant to supply another consignment of cauliflower seeds (for more information, see Document G in Appendix 1, above):
I thank you a million times for the book that you sent me, which you have greatly
enriched , for in the opinion of Monsieur de L'Escalle [Joseph Scaliger], the
ornamental borders are even more beautiful than the binding. Le Doux is
traveling to you to see if we could obtain [“recouvrer” - recover?] some
cauliflower seeds through your agency; I am making this request as a personal
favour and also to assist him [Le Doux] in the matter, if you have the means to
do it.
Your German Princes are gathering in force, but as far as I can see, without
In September 1598, Mendoza had invaded Germany with a large number of
soldiers, in order to capture certain positions of strength from which they could
undertake attacks on the borderlands of the Republic. However, Maurice knew
what measures to take to prevent Mendoza from taking any substantial actions.
The Spanish troops then went to occupy various German towns, and to plunder
the countryside. The German princes were slow in making a response, not
raising an army until the following Spring; by then, the Spanish troops “had
kept their promise to leave the Empire” - in accordance with the Imperial Ban
announced by Rudolf II - “and had ventured on an incursion into the
Republic”.137
Note: We know that Monsieur Le Doux was the bearer of a letter written by Ambassador Buzanval a few days later, to Secretary Villeroy in Paris, and dated January 4th 1599.
Letter 65: 29th January 1599
Yesterday, very late, there arrived here a courier from our Court whom I was
expecting [possibly Le Doux?], and from whom I have letters dated January
21st.
January 1599: not Ancel but the Marshall of Bois-Dauphin sent as ambassador to Prague.
Letter 66: 6th February 1599
A further mention of Joseph Scaliger. The Ambassador has received a letter from a contact in Sweden (Andreas de la Fromentière?)
Note: on 23rd February 1599, Buzanval sent a copy of the Imperial Ban to King Henri.
Letter 71: 14th April 1599
Envoys from Duke Karel of Sweden (1550-1611) have arrived at the Hague - they were Jacob Heylde and Johan Nielsson, sent “to gain the Republic’s support in the difficulties with Karel’s nephew King Sigismund (1566-1632) of Poland, and if possible to bring about an alliance” (Sigismund had also been King of Sweden since 1592 but had failed to establish his authority there, owing to the very strong Protestant opposition). The two envoys then travelled to England and returned to the Hague in June 1599.
Letter 72: 15th April 1599
Here, I am continually oppressed by some new setback. This very hour, a
This was almost certainly Andreas de la Fromentière, envoy of Duke Karel of Sweden:
After a short stay in the Republic, he travelled on to France to gain Villeroy’s
interest in Swedish affairs. He conveyed to the latter Buzanval’s report dated 1st
May 1599.
Letter 73: 30th April 1599
Mentions the Dutch blockade of Spanish and Belgian ports, under the command of Admiral Pieter van der Does.
Jan den Tex makes the following comments:
The strongest opposition [to the blockade] came from abroad. Oldenbarnevelt
had foreseen that it would, but probably not to such an extent. Buzanval had
warned him of the resentment that would be felt in France, and his prophecy
came true. Henry IV was extremely nettled, especially when a letter from
Oldenbarnevelt to Aerssen, asking him to inform the King of the Edict, got lost;
at a later stage he even threatened a rupture of relations if the trade with
Calais, also forbidden under the Edict, was not allowed. Loud complaints were
heard from Scotland, the Hanseatic League and Denmark, to which country an
embassy even had to be sent to convince the King [Christian IV] of the rectitude
of the blockade, without success of course."138
The Danish King was hardly in a position to complain very forcefully, since the Dutch Republic had recently allowed him to purchase munitions from them (see my previous article, Letter XXIX).
Letter 74: 7th May 1599
Is it true that a major plot has been discovered, whereby King Sigismund of
Poland has attempted to seize control of the Sound from the King of Denmark?
Buzanval reports that the Duke of Brunswick has taken to the field, with 8,000 cavalry and 10,000 foot-soldiers.
Letter 76: 11th June 1599
Addressed to Van der Meulen at Cologne.
Letter 77: 29th July 1599
At last the Duke of Brunswick and the other commanders of the German army
had set aside their dissension and rivalry and decided to drive the Spanish
occupiers from the fortress of Cleeves. At the end of August, after a brief and
fruitless investment of Rijnberg, the army was defeated before Rees; it turned
out disastrously for the German troops; in mid-September they retreated with
unnecessary haste. Maurice was therefore unable to put into effect his plan of
ending the 1599 campaign with a strategic offensive, by uniting his forces with
the German troops and attacking the Spanish army from the rear.139
Letter 79: 20th October 1599
I am returning to you your copy of the book by Sorranzo, and I thank you most
affectionately for the use of it. When the books arrive from Frankfurt, kindly do
me the favour of asking Raphelengius if he has brought me a copy as promised,
and ask him to give it to my book-binder for rebinding.
Lazaro Soranzo’s book was entitled L’Ottomano, Dove si da Pieno Ragguaglio della Potenza del pres. Signor de’ Turchi Mehemeto III, della Guerre d’Ongheria, published in quarto at Ferrara in 1598 (a Latin translation appeared in 1600, under the title Ottomanus Sive de Rebus Turcicus Liber, Continens Descriptionem Potentiae Mahemetis III).
Though not the principal source140, Soranzo’s book may well have had an influence on the writing of Shake-speare’s Othello (1598-1604), in which the setting is the war against the Turks and the defence of Cyprus. One wonders, in fact, whether the ordered copy of Soranzo was actually intended for Monsieur Le Doux, who was with Ambassador Buzanval from late September of 1599 (when he was “unwell”, Letter LVI in Vreede) until late October. As an accomplished linguist who had also lived in Italy, Le Doux/Marlowe could easily have read Soranzo’s book in the original Italian, as he had done with the source-books for several other plays (e.g. The Merchant of Venice). Soranzo’s book was not translated into English until 1603 (by Abraham Hartwell).
Lazaro Soranzo was a Venetian Senator, a Humanist, who was appointed as Consul at Constantinople. In Virginia Mason Vaughan’s Othello: a Contextual History, we read the following:
The security of Rhodes and Cyprus was precarious at best, and in 1572 Venice
lost the latter island to the Turks. Not surprisingly, Venetians defined the Turk
as irrational, deceitful and cruel. Lozarro [sic] Soranzo’s The Ottoman … is a
clear example of an anti-Turk tract. According to an entry in Elizabethan
handwriting in the Huntingdon Library copy [1603 - my bold], Soranzo was
a Venetian Senator ….He was the son of Jacomo Soranzo, a Venetian general.
His lengthy analysis of the Turkish threat describes Ottomite military strength
and its tyrannical government and concludes with a call for Europe to unite its
forces and take Constantinople.
By Shakespeare’s day, “the Turk” represented all that was barbaric and
demonic, in contrast to the Christian’s civil and moral rightness.141
139
Kernkamp, op cit, p.244.
140 That was Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, 1566.
141 From Othello: Venetians and Turks http://www.legacy.owensboro.kcts.edu/crunyon
It should be noted, in this connection, firstly, that Le Doux’s book collection in 1596 included five volumes on the subject of Turkish history142, and secondly, that Christopher Marlowe had not only written three plays about “the two great warriors who each successfully fought the Turks”143 - the Albanian Prince Castrioto (George Scanderbeg) and Tamburlaine the Great (“Timur the Lame”, 1336-1405) - but also a fourth play about the conflict with the Turks, The Jew of Malta. The two parts of Tamburlaine the Great were, of course, a phenomenal success on the London stage and made Marlowe’s name as a playwright; his play about George Scanderbeg is unfortunately lost.
Christoffel Raphelengius...
... for a number of years … managed the Plantin printing house at Leiden; he
became head of the establishment on the death of his father, in 1597. On
November 9th of that year, he was appointed by the Governors of Leiden
University as official College Printer, on condition that he brought with him
from Frankfurt, at his own risk and expense, the books that were needed by the
Professors and other prominent persons.”144
It would be very useful to know the titles of the other “books from Frankfurt” that Ambassador Buzanval had ordered through Raphelengius.
“More lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies”
George Steevens was the earliest commentator on Twelfth Night to identify Shake-speare’s “new map” as the extraordinary and beautiful map of the East Indies entitled Insulae Moluccae, drawn by Peter Plancius in 1594. This famous map, often called the “Spice Islands Map”, was first published in 1596 in Linschoten’s Itinerario: Voyage ofte Schipvaert van Jan Huyghen van Linschoten naar Oost ofte Portugaels Indien ... 1579-1592 (reprinted in 1598 and many times thereafter). This Itinerario, of course, is the book with which Ambassador Buzanval was so delighted (i.e. the 1598 Dutch edition) (see Letters 63 and 64 in Appendix 2).
Steevens states categorically that Shake-speare’s reference to:
the new map with the augmentation of the Indies ... is a clear allusion to a Map
engraved for Linschoten’s Voyages [the Itinerario] … this Map is multilineal in
the extreme, and is the first in which the Eastern Islands are included.145
It also has navigational “rhumb lines” in abundance.
Plancius’ map of the Insulae Moluccae (the Moluccan Islands) was based on a collection of charts and “ruttiers”146 which he had acquired in Lisbon in 1592 from Bartolomeu Lasso; his Insulae Moluccae is described as "one of the most fabulous [charts] ever produced of the East Indies and one of the rarest, showing the Spice Islands in a level of detail never previously seen".147 This matches Shake-speare’s use of the word “augmentation”, which is not a title but simply means “enlargement”, with the implication of greater accuracy.
Thus it is clear that Linschoten’s book provided for the first time a completely accurate and comprehensive navigational guide, revealing the safe sea-routes to the Spice Islands and the East Indies, across seas that were notoriously dangerous; these routes had previously been known only to the Portuguese. This is why the Plancius map qualifies perfectly both as an “augmentation” and as “new”, i.e. disclosing hitherto secret information. The Itinerario, with its new maps, created an absolute sensation when it first appeared, because of the implications for the very profitable Spice Trade.
The publication of the Itinerario served as a direct stimulus to the building of the
vast English and Dutch overseas empires. The book became indispensable to
commercial navigators, since it was a compendium of sailing directions,
information on islands, harbours, local produce, etcetera. It provided a general
guide for any merchant wishing to trade in exciting and active new markets. The
Itinerario was thus of immense benefit to merchant mariners, particularly for its
detail on trade and navigation throughout the Indies. The maps that accompanied
the book were based largely on Portuguese sea-charts that were never otherwise
145
Quoted by H. H. Furness in the New Shakespeare edition of Twelfth Night (Philadelphia, 1901, p.208). See below for a
refutation, by Dr H. R. D. Anders, of an alternative theory.
146 “Ruttier: a marine guide to routes and tides, etc” - O.E.D
printed; they are amongst the most sumptuously designed and engraved maps of
any period.148
W. Klooster states that:
the Itinerario contained so much detailed and accurate information about
shipping lanes, winds, and currents that seafarers could use it virtually as a
handbook. Many of Linschoten’s maps were in fact copies of the excellent models
of the Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado.
The Itinerario and its maps thus provided the Dutch with extremely valuable
information regarding Portuguese sea routes to the East, their resupply points
around Africa and their trading stations in the East, as well as vital navigational
data about currents, deeps and the location of islands and sandbanks.
Additionally, Linschoten gives detailed descriptions of the Portuguese territories
and how they were administered, and, most importantly, he included descriptions
of spice trees and spice growing areas. Apart from his detailed account of the
spice trade, Linschoten was not blind to other possibilities for profit, and he
therefore documented many other commodities … such as gems, minerals,
textiles, timber and porcelain.
Linschoten left the Netherlands for Spain in December 1576 to join his brothers
in Seville. He spent six years on the Iberian peninsula, eventually taking
employment with a merchant in Lisbon. When there was a downturn in trade,
Linschoten decided to take alternative employment. His brother, Willem, secured
him a position with the newly appointed [Portuguese] Archbishop of Goa,
Vincente de Fonesca. Jan van Linschoten set sail with De Fonesca for Goa on 8
April 1583. He spent just over five years as Secretary to the Archbishop of Goa,
where he had access to many Portuguese portolans149
, as well as other sensitive
commercial information, much of which he copied. 150
In September 1592, Linschoten returned to the Netherlands from Lisbon and immediately began work on his Itinerario, assisted by the eminent scholar Bernard ten Broecke (known as “Paludanus”). Linschoten was already very well-informed about every aspect of the spice trade; he knew precisely what commodities were in demand in the East Indies and also which currency was preferred by the local inhabitants - pieces-of-eight. Crucially, he also knew the sea-routes that were used by Portuguese ships in traversing the China Seas. Much of this information was based on secretly-obtained charts, originally drawn up by the Portuguese cartographers Fernão Vaz Dourado and Bartolomeo Lasso (cosmographer to the King of Spain).
The Itinerario encompassed Linschoten’s explorations of the geography, peoples and natural history of Africa, India, China and the New World.
148
http://www.vialibri.com/
149 A “portolan” or “portulan” is defined by the OED as “a book with sailing directions, describing harbours etc, and illustrated
with charts.”
150 Website ISS: Information Services and Systems - Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611)
Petrus Plancius (1553-1622) (= Plantevoet / Platevoete, etc), a Calvinist clergyman, was Holland’s foremost geographer and astronomer. He was a founder of the Dutch East India Company and was appointed as their official cartographer. At his nautical school in Amsterdam, Plancius instructed the Company’s pilots in navigation, teaching systematically how Spanish and Portugese possessions in the East could be usurped.
Like many other Protestants, Plancius had fled to the United Provinces from the Spanish Netherlands; he was based at Amsterdam for many years, so the Leiden merchant Daniel Van der Meulen almost certainly knew him - likewise the Seigneur de Buzanval (possibly Le Doux also).
The Riches of the East: Nutmeg, Cloves, Sandalwood and Pepper
The three most costly spices (nutmeg, cloves and sandalwood) are beautifully illustrated on the Plancius map Insulae Moluccae, to emphasise the prospect of profitable trading with the East Indies.
Pepper could be obtained in India without too much difficulty, but it was necessary to travel much further to obtain nutmeg and cloves. In his fascinating book Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, the historian Giles Milton explains that “even in the East Indies … nutmeg was a rarity; a tree so fussy about climate and soil that it would grow only on a tiny cluster of islands, the Banda archipelago, which were of such impossible remoteness that no-one in Europe could be sure if they existed at all.” Milton adds that the Banda Islands possessed “a rich volcanic soil and a strange micro-climate” which was the perfect environment for the nutmeg tree. “In the Banda Islands, ten pounds of nutmeg cost less than one English penny. In London, that same spice sold for more than two pounds and ten shillings - a mark-up of a staggering 60,000 percent.” 151
Aside from its use as a food preservative and flavouring, nutmeg was believed to have powerful medicinal properties - in England it was even claimed that it could cure the plague. It was also used in the manufacture of perfumes. As for cloves, Milton states that the clove tree “could only be found on a handful of islands in the Indonesian archipelago.”152
There had, of course, been attempts to transplant these valuable trees and cultivate them elsewhere, but always with unsatisfactory results.
The Dutch and English East India Companies
After the Portuguese, it had been the Dutch who made the earliest voyages to the East Indies, not always successfully; nevertheless, their progress was closely watched by the merchants and investors of northern Europe. By 1599, there were ten Dutch companies sending ships to the Far East, sending between them 14 fleets of 65 ships, of which 54 safely made the return journey
from the East. The amalgamated Dutch East India Company was formally incorporated in 1602.
In September 1599, a consortium of English merchant adventurers applied to Queen Elizabeth for permission to trade with the East Indies; she consented, but the project was blocked by the Privy Council. In 1600 they tried again; this time, the Queen sought the advice of Sir Fulke Greville, her Treasurer of the Navy, who supported the project with the invaluable information on the spice trade which he had learned from his own copy of Linschoten’s Itinerario.153
The English East India Company’s Charter was duly signed by Queen Elizabeth on 31st December 1600 - just six days before the first performance of Twelfth Night.
There were strong links between the English East India Company and the Virginia Company, which was to receive its Royal Charter in 1609. Sir Thomas Smythe was the Governor of both Companies, while the famous Captain John Smith, a leader of the first Jamestown colonists, was a friend of Peter Plancius - and himself a skilled map-maker.
An Alternative “Map” Theory Refuted
Whilst expressing certain reservations, a few commentators on Twelfth Night, among them C. H. Coote, have contested the point and tried to identify Shake-speare’s “new map” as a certain “map of the world” prepared by Edward Wright and published in 1599 in Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation. However, this “world map” is full of serious defects and inaccuracies; it certainly does not depict the East Indies in any detail.
Strangely, opponents of Steevens make much of the “rhumb lines” on the Edward Wright map, ignoring the fact that Linschoten’s maps too have an abundance of “rhumb lines” - indeed the Insulae Moluccae map is completely covered with them; as Steevens says, it is “multilineal in the extreme”. These “rhumb lines”, showing all the directions of the compass, were an extremely useful aid to navigators.
Dr H. R. D. Anders, in his PhD thesis entitled Shakespeare’s Books154, is highly critical of Coote’s opinions about Maria’s “new map with the augmentation of the Indies”, indeed he demolishes Coote’s assertions completely.
To begin with, Dr Anders points out that Coote’s remarks:
are open to the following criticism. If, as Coote supposes, 'Indies' refers only to
the East Indies, he should certainly have taken into consideration not merely
maps of the world but also maps of Asia alone. [What Coote claims as] "a marked
development in the geography of India proper" and "Ceylon" is non-existent. As
153
Ibid, p.72.
154 Dr H R D Anders, Shakespeare’s Books: a Dissertation on Shakespeare’s Reading and the Immediate Sources of his Works
early as 1561, Gastaldi had drawn a fairly good map of India in his map of Asia.
Compare also the advanced delineations of India in Mercator's Mappemonde
(1569), in De Jode's Asia Partium Orbis Maxima (1593), and the map of
[mainland] India in Linschoten's Itinerario. Coote's statement, by the way, "India
proper, then known as ‘the land of the Mogores or Mogol’ ”, requires to be
corrected, as only the northern part of the peninsula was subject to the Mogul
(compare the Atlases of Metellus, Janson, and Blaeu). The “great improvement”
in the geography of Corea, Cochin China, and Japan on Coote's map is not very
noticeable or plain, when we compare maps like Plancius's Orbis Terrarum
Typus (1594) [published in Linschoten’s Itinerario] or (setting aside Korea) De
Jode's above-mentioned Map of Asia, and the map of South-Eastern Asia (with
the islands) in Linschoten's Itinerario, 1596 [i.e. Insulae Moluccae].
The same remark applies to the delineation of the Malay Archipelago.155
With
regard to Coote's suggestion as to Australia, I think that the tract of land, drawn
below Java, is nothing more than a remnant of the old 'Terra Australis". What
Coote means by the "traces of the first appearance of the Dutch tinder Houtman
at Bantam" is difficult to say. Bantam had appeared on maps long before 1600.
We have to hear in mind, too, that Coote's map is what it professes to be: a
hydrographical map, that is, a chart, on which only coast-names are noted.
Coote's map has, indeed, comparatively few names. In the Eastern Archipelago,
for example, including the Philippines, we find but three-and-twenty place-names.
On Mercator’s Map of the World (1569) there were twenty-seven on Sumatra
alone. Even Plancius's Orbis Terrarum Typus [1594] has twenty-four. But sapient
sat! [“A word is enough to the wise!”] Whatever may be thought of the map in
Hakluyt's work, Mr. Coote's arguments for it require revision.
Further arguments against the “Coote” theory may be found in the works of L. Hallam and J. Lennox. Hallam, discussing the world map by Edward Wright156 which is “found in a very few copies of Hakluyt’s Voyages”,157 admits that “the Ultra-Indian region is inaccurate”; likewise James Lennox, discussing Hallam, not only acknowledges the superb accuracy of the Plancius map Insulae Moluccae but also admits that it was “the first in which these islands [the East Indies] were delineated on a large scale, or with any pretensions to accuracy.”158
155 The Portuguese possessed excellent manuscript maps of the Malay Archipelago at a much earlier date, as appears from Diego
Homen's map in Ruge's Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p, 535. The maps, however, were kept secret and remained unpublished.
156 For a facsimile of Wright’s map, see Volume Two of Voyages and Works of John Davis, edited by A. H. Markham (1880), or
William Winter’s Shakespeare’s England, Volume One, p. 174.
157 i.e. Hakluyt’s Principle Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation.
