Golden Lads, page 12
Alas, poor Ann Bacon. Did she pass sleepless nights alone at Gorhambury, regretting past times when the Lord Keeper was at her side to give wise counsel, and her father would send guidance from Gidea Hall?
Harvey was settled. But Nicholas Trott remained unpaid. There was nothing for it but that Anthony must sell one of his own properties to help his younger brother, and the fine manor of Barley in Hertfordshire came up for consideration. Alderman Spencer of the City, likely to become Lord Mayor of London, showed interest, but negotiations were to take several months, and the sale of this property would also displease their mother. Nor was the noble Earl of Essex, himself continually hard-pressed for ready cash, able to assist financially. He could barely find the necessary sums to pay his foreign agents. Anthony must find ways and means to keep them quiet, though never, naturally enough, by suggesting they withheld intelligence. Standen, that most assiduous of Anthony’s correspondents, was shortly due in England out of Spain brimful of information, and would expect good recompense, while Captain Goade, another under-cover agent now stationed in France, complained of an empty purse.
It was hardly an easy summer that the brothers Bacon could look forward to at the Inn of Glaucus, the younger still harried by his creditors, and the elder sifting his intelligence as best as he could and emptying his own pockets at the same time. They were running short of linen and must needs write to Gorhambury for replenishments, but this request, though granted, brought a furious outburst from her ladyship, not because of the linen, but because young Edward Burbage, son of the William Burbage who had caused lawsuits over Pinner Farm, employed by her son out of the kindness of his heart as a courier, had not only spoilt one of her best horses but had shown insolence to her very face.
‘He lied and wrangled disdainfully with me,’ she exploded, ‘so I bade him get out of my sight like a lying proud varlet. Whereupon, glad belike, he went immediately to the stable and put on his cloak and sword, and jetted away like a jack. I write this to tell you the truth, howsoever he lieth…’
Familiar words. ‘And a speake any thing against me, Ile take him downe, and a were lustier then he is, and twentie such Jacks: and if I cannot, Ile find those that shall: scurvie knave, I am none of his flurtgils, I am none of his skaines mates.’ Thus Juliet’s nurse. The Lord Keeper’s widow wouldn’t be put upon either.
Anthony summoned George Jenkyll and dispatched him forthwith with a message to the offending Edward.
Burbage.
Although your unthankfulness, and unfaithful dealing, would weary any master’s patience in England, how liberal and kind soever he were, yet for charity’s sake I am content to forebear just rigour till I receive by my man, this bearer George Jenkyll, your answer, which if it be not effectuate, then blame none but yourself if I make you feel what it is to incur wilfully the displeasure of so good a master, as the world knows, and your self cannot deny, I have been unto you. Therefore advise yourself thoroughly in the name of God.
From Gray’s Inn, this 21st of May, 1593.
Nothing but trouble with these Burbages. Anthony would dismiss young Edward… But the boy turned up the next day and acknowledged his faults, and Anthony had not the heart to send him away. The whole affair had precipitated an attack of gout, however. He felt ill. He must get away to Bath and take the waters. How to afford it, though? Then, suddenly, Standen arrived in London, and all thought of Bath was at an end.
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Standen had not set foot in England for twenty-eight years. Banished for his services to Mary Queen of Scots, he now returned to the country as a secret agent of Queen Elizabeth, but uncertain whether his information should be passed to her Majesty through the Lord Treasurer or the Earl of Essex. He was greeted with open arms by his friend and correspondent Anthony Bacon, who then threw a chain around his neck with a medallion of the Earl of Essex upon it.
Standen had been expected since early May. It was now June 13th, and Anthony, with his plans for Bath, had given up hope of his ever arriving. Standen had an exhausting tale to tell. He had been held up at Calais, he had been robbed, letters had been stolen, he had expected some assistance from the Lord Treasurer—with whom, in duty bound, he had been in correspondence—and none had been forthcoming. Was the Lord Treasurer, then, not interested in his arrival? Did he not value the intelligence which Standen brought?
Anthony calmed him down. Standen would indeed see his uncle Burghley, and the Earl of Essex too. The intelligence would be very welcome to them both. The Lord Treasurer was at present at his country estate at Theobalds, and Anthony promised that Standen should have his own coach and drive there the following day, or the day after, when he was rested. The truth was, as Anthony knew very well, and to his own cost, that his uncle was full of promises but very short on performance, and Standen would very likely find that, once his intelligence had been submitted, he would then be conveniently forgotten. Hence the gold chain from the Earl of Essex.
However, it did not do to offend the Lord Treasurer, and Anthony had always taken care to make copies of the various letters which Standen had sent him from the continent, the originals going to his uncle and the copies kept to pass to the Earl of Essex. As he told his brother, ‘The world stands and goes upon punctos. The best is, my gout has made me wakery, and my long living and conversing with the French hath taught me to look about me in such ticklish matters.’ He was not surprised, therefore, when word came from the Lord Treasurer at Theobalds that his son Sir Robert Cecil had that day arrived from Court, and could not as yet signify what her Majesty’s pleasure was concerning Mr Standen, and it would be best if he remained at Gray’s Inn for the present.
First rebuff. The coach that had set forth for Theobalds with its passenger returned, and Standen sat down and wrote a long letter to the Earl of Essex with the latest intelligence, mentioning how certain Irishmen had been in touch with the King of Spain and had offered him the town of Galway on the coast. More Irishmen had arrived in Madrid. There was talk of rigging ships and sending Spanish forces to Ireland. Standen concluded, ‘I am persuaded that I myself have been forgotten by the Lord Treasurer, since I have heard no more of him; in the meantime I live idle, and her Majesty’s service sleeps.’
Be that as it may, the gentlemen at the Inn of Glaucus did not sleep. Francis, who had been sick of a tertian ague at Twickenham, returned, and Anthony was obliged to write to their mother for some assistance in the entertaining of ‘a gentleman from beyond seas’. ‘Since my brother’s return hither whose chiefest ease and comfort during his sickness is by company… I am so bold as to desire your Ladyship to spare me if you can one hogshead of the same beer I had last, and three others of a later brewing, and also the Standing Cup doubly gilt which my father left me.’
It was hardly surprising that in Mr Standen’s next letter to the Earl of Essex he said, ‘Mr Bacon, by the change of the weather, is assaulted with his familiar infirmity, and his grief is the more, for it hath seized his left elbow and hand, likewise the right thumb, in such sort as he hath not been able to write to your Lordship, and that which is worse, unapt to stir abroad and take his wonted exercises…’
The hogshead of beer had arrived, but with a caution from Lady Bacon. ‘Be not too frank with that papist. Such have seducing spirits to snare the godly.’
Snares and wiles aside, there was small sense in staying at the Inn of Glaucus with the plague increasing daily, people dying in the streets, the epidemic threatening to be as bad as it had been the preceding summer. Far better to take the visitor and the usual retinue of attendants to Twickenham, where half-brother Edward’s house was always vacant for them. Edward Bacon, happily married since 1581, with a growing brood of sons and daughters, had installed himself at Shrubland Hall near Ipswich, and had no further use for the secondary residence that her Majesty had leased him for twenty-one years, until 1595.
Twickenham Park, named also, rather aptly, ‘Ferie Meade’, consisted of some eighty-seven acres of parkland, meadows, orchards, woodlands, all spreading most pleasantly on the Middlesex side of the river Thames. The house itself, said to have been built originally as a hunting-lodge for Edward III, was on rising ground fronting the river. The windows looked across to Richmond Palace on the Surrey bank, a feature that was likely to appeal more to Francis than to Anthony; but the secluded walks about the grounds, and the lake in the midst of them, meant that the elder brother could take ‘his wonted exercises’ without fearing that her Majesty, when at Richmond, might peer down at him from some high turret of her palace on the opposite side of the river.
On the other hand, the Earl of Essex could be ferried across with the greatest of ease, meet Mr Standen, and reassure Francis that he was doing everything possible in his power to move the Queen to receive him back in favour and, what was more, have his name placed high on the list for the vacant place of Attorney-General. The trouble was that Mr Edward Coke, the Solicitor-General, who aspired to the post, already had a high reputation and was greatly favoured by the government. He was forty-two, nine years senior to Francis, and had vast experience in the Law Courts (Francis had very little), his only fault being that in argument he was very apt to lose his temper and become offensive, a defect which could never be attributed to Francis.
On July 18th Anthony wrote to his mother, ‘Our most honourable and kind friend the Earl of Essex was here yesterday three hours, and hath most friendly and freely promised to set up, as they say, his whole rest of favour and credit for my brother’s preferment before Mr Coke’s… His Lordship told me likewise he had already moved the Queen for my brother, and that she took no exceptions to him, but said that she must first dispatch the French and Scotch ambassadors and her business abroad, before she thinks of such home matters.’
Meanwhile, the summer months by the Thames were not passed idly by either brother. The Earl had handed over to Anthony some private correspondence which he had been having with Sir Robert Bowes, the ambassador to Scotland, and Anthony, besides his numerous contacts in Europe, found himself dealing with agents north of the border, chief of whom was a Mr Morrison, to whom he sent £30 by way of encouragement. It seemed that certain Scots noblemen, like their counterparts in Ireland, were in secret treaty with the King of Spain, and there were plans afoot for an army of 30,000 men to land in Scotland, of whom 1,500 would remain there, while the rest of the Spanish army invaded England. Thus King James VI of Scotland had the makings of a full-scale war on his hands, besides a rebellion by some of his own subjects, a situation which was rendered all the more dangerous by the fact that his wife, Queen Anne, was said to have Catholic sympathies.
Then, on July 25th, affairs in Scotland were temporarily forgotten in the news from France. Henri IV had renounced the Protestant faith and had been received into the Catholic church.
Those were some who, like Anthony Bacon, had long expected it and were not surprised; but to many Huguenots, who had so loyally and faithfully served the King through the years of civil war, it seemed like treachery. They could not understand that the change of faith was politic, that the useless slaughter of brother by brother would soon be ended, and before very long the gates of Paris would open and the citizens of the capital welcome their crowned King. ‘Je veux tout pardonner, tout oublier,’ Henri IV was to say, and it was true that he forgave his enemies, and also forgot his friends. Du Plessis wrote in his memoirs: ‘At the end of twenty-five years (and what years!) for the most part I have retired without gain, without a home, without position or privilege, this is my reward for service. Despair to those who serve only men. But I serve God and I shall not lose His reward.’
Young Aubéry du Maurier was more fortunate. By the time he had turned forty he was ambassador to Holland.
The conversion of Henri IV was received in England with mixed feelings. Appreciation that he had taken the only possible step to prevent the complete disintegration of his kingdom was qualified by the feeling that there was surely loss of face and much humiliation in publicly disavowing the cause for which he had fought. Besides, how would he now stand with Spain? If he made peace, then England would find herself alone.
So discussion and argument between the brothers and their guest went on at Twickenham Park, with Standen, ‘that papist’, firmly supporting the King of France, who knew so well what he was about, and Anthony somewhat discomfited, despite his agreement, by a letter from good Théodore Beza, who had just written some sermons on the ascent and descent of the Holy Ghost, and professed himself aghast at what had so suddenly and unexpectedly happened in France.
On July 26th one of the Lord Treasurer’s secretaries, Michael Hicks, arrived at Twickenham Park to inform Mr Standen that her Majesty would be graciously pleased to grant him access to her, and he was commanded to appear at Windsor, where the Court now was, within four days. Once Hicks had taken his leave Standen, at Anthony’s direction, wrote to the Earl of Essex, telling him of the visit and the summons to Court, and saying that he would wait upon the Earl to receive his directions and commands as soon as he arrived at Windsor. By so acting, he would be primed by the Earl of Essex before seeing the Lord Treasurer.
Essex, who was presumably at Barn Elms, his house in Putney, another Walsingham inheritance, sent his reply by return of messenger. ‘It is folly in me to give you any direction. For your good I cannot, for I know your sufficiency, and mine own weakness. For mine, I need not, for I know you are of yourself careful of your friends. Only this caution I will send, that your affection to me breed not too much jealousy in the other parties, or offence against you. I hope this first access will make so good an impression, as they, that shall labour to effect any thing for your good with the Queen afterwards, shall find the mark easy.’
Standen left Twickenham at once in company with Tom Lawson—the pair had become close friends since Lawson had acted as courier between England and Spain—and en route to Windsor Standen dined with contacts at East Molesey, who brought him the latest news from France: that the King had sung his first Mass and had met with the Catholic nobility, and the Paris gates were open. Standen sent word of this back to the brothers at Twickenham, and bade them watch for the effects of this French encounter, combined with the blazing star above their heads; a reference to the great comet that streaked through the sky for five weeks during July and August, something that had all the soothsayers and prophets of doom foretelling woes to come.
Standen arrived at Court on August 1st and made his bow to her Majesty, presented by the Lord Treasurer’s son, Sir Robert Cecil. Francis was also at Windsor, but not in evidence. He kept himself well in the background, seeing all, forgetting nothing.
The audience was brief, and Standen was commanded to write down all he had done abroad since he had quitted England in 1565, after which her Majesty might take thought of him again. And that was that. Shaken but undaunted, Standen returned to Twickenham Park hoping that his friend would help him in the appalling labour awaiting him—twenty-eight years to be condensed into a few pages; but Anthony’s right hand was so crippled with gout that there could be no active assistance: the pens of others, those young men forever hovering within call, must be pressed into service.
The work was accomplished, doubtless relieved by feasting, more beer and pigeons from Gorhambury, and possibly some strumming upon the virginals and lute. The effect upon Standen’s liver was detrimental; he had barely returned to Windsor when he was seized with ague, which, as he wrote to his host Anthony, ‘was thro’ the large diet twice a day at your table’. Anthony himself was in little better shape, nor was his condition improved by a lecture from his mother on August 14th.
‘You must be tender with keeping in your bed so continually,’ she told him. ‘The gout is named pulmonarius morbus because it liketh softness and ease. Good son, call upon God to take patiently his correction, and using ordinary good means have comfort and hope yet of better, and endure it as you may with some travel of body more than heretofore. You eat late and sleep little and very late, both enemies to a sound and short recovery. Make not your body by violent and incessant putting in physics, and by practices unmeet, unable to serve God, your prince and country. Make not night day, and day night, by disorder, discoursing and watching, to greater undoing both mind and body.’
He was also threatened with a visit from her Puritan chaplain, Mr Wyborn, a prospect so alarming that despite the crippled right hand Anthony scribbled a note at once to dissuade the good man from making the journey.
‘I pray you, Mr Wyborn, however moved you may be by kind affection towards me, not to suffer for me in my sickness. God has strengthened me with a continual patience, and I would not exchange bodily health for the inner blessings He has given me. I assure you of my continued friendship…’ etc., etc.
Standen returned and took instantly to his bed, and a few days later Anthony told Francis that, ‘My coachman yesterday arrived almost as sick, though not of an ague, as Mr Standen, and hath complained much all this day, and therefore I have given him respite of rest till tomorrow morning, when, God willing, he shall wait upon you with two horses… God be thanked Mr Standen hath found some little ease since his coming by the help of company and attendance to his liking, and will soon recover from his violent sickness.’
No respite for Anthony, though. He had to translate into French the Earl of Essex’s instructions to the Scottish agent Morrison, then into cipher, all within one hour, only to discover that the Earl had changed his mind, and the work had to be done all over again. The continual patience he had spoken about to chaplain Wyborn was sorely tried, as well as the inner blessing; bodily health was not to be despised. If only he could get to Bath he might find relief from pain. Both his friends and a physician urged it, he told his mother in September, but he had been warned that ‘the way thither is very ill for a coach, and I beseech your Ladyship to spare me if you may your litter. As for horses and guides the Earl of Essex hath promised to furnish me. I have likewise special need for a cook, if your Ladyship could conveniently spare Richard, but if you should in any way be incommoded I will take the other.’ (Peter, the crafty boy?)
