Francis Beaumont: Dramatist

Meanwhile, Francis would observe with alarm that his Vaux cousins are from day to day objects of deeper suspicion. On November 13, Lord Vaux's house at Harrowden is searched; his mother gives up all her keys but no papers are found. She and the young lord strongly deny all knowledge of the treason; the house, however, is still guarded. On the eighteenth, Elizabeth, Mrs. Vaux, is examined and says that she does not know "Gerard, the priest"[!]; but among the visitors at her house she mentions Catesby, Digby, and "Greene" [Greenway] and "Darcy" [Garnet], priests. She acknowledges having written to Lady Wenman, the wife of Sir Richard, last Easter, saying that "Tottenham would turn French," but fails to explain her meaning. From other quarters, however, it is learned that she bade that lady "be of good comfort for there should soon be toleration for religion," adding: "Fast and pray that that may come to pass which we purpose, which yf it doe, wee shall see Totnam turned French." And Sir Richard, examined concerning the contents of Mrs. Vaux's letter to his wife, affirms that he "disliked their intercourse, because Mrs. Vaux tried to pervert his wife." On December 4, Catesby's servant, Bates, acknowledges that he revealed the whole Plot to Greenway, the priest, in confession, "who said it was a good cause, bade him be secret, and absolved him." From Henry Huddleston's examination, December 6, it appears that Mrs. Vaux has not been telling the whole truth about Harrowden, for not only were the two other priests most suspected, Garnet and Greenway, there sometimes, but also Gerard, whom Huddleston has met there. On January 19, Bates definitely connects Gerard and Garnet with the proceedings; and all three priests are proclaimed. Gerard cannot be found, but from his own Narrative it appears that he had been hiding at Harrowden before, that now he is concealed in London, and Elizabeth Vaux knows where.35 When she is brought again before the Lords of Council and threatened with death if she tell not where the priest is, we may imagine the interest of the Beaumonts. Francis, though no sympathizer with the Plot, cannot have failed to admire the bearing of Elizabeth during the examination:

"As for my hostess, Mrs. Vaux," writes Father Gerard, "she was brought to London after that long search for me, and strictly examined about me by the Lords of the Council; but she answered to everything so discreetly as to escape all blame. At last they produced a letter of hers to a certain relative, asking for the release of Father Strange and another, of whom I spoke before. This relative of hers was the chief man in the county in which they had been taken, and she thought she could by her intercession with him prevail for their release. But the treacherous man, who had often enough, as far as words went, offered to serve her in any way, proved the truth of our Lord's prophecy, 'A man's enemies shall be those of his own household!' for he immediately sent up her letter to the Council. They showed her, therefore, her own letter, and said to her, 'You see now that you are entirely at the King's mercy for life or death; so if you consent to tell us where Father Gerard is, you shall have your life.'

"'I do not know where he is,' she answered, 'and if I did know, I would not tell you.'

"Then rose one of the lords, who had been a former friend of hers, to accompany her to the door, out of courtesy, and on the way said to her persuasively, 'Have pity on yourself and on your children, and say what is required of you, for otherwise you must certainly die.'

"To which she answered with a loud voice, 'Then, my lord, I will die.'

"This was said when the door had been opened, so that her servants who were waiting for her heard what she said, and all burst into weeping. But the Council only said this to terrify her, for they did not commit her to prison, but sent her to the house of a certain gentleman in the city, and after being held there in custody for a time she was released, but on condition of remaining in London. And one of the principal Lords of the Council acknowledged to a friend that he had nothing against her, except that she was a stout Papist, going ahead of others, and, as it were, a leader in evil."

What follows of Elizabeth's devotion to the cause, would not be likely to filter through; but the Beaumonts may have had their suspicions. According to Father Gerard: —

"Immediately she was released from custody, knowing that I was then in London, quite forgetful of herself, she set about taking care of me, and provided all the furniture and other things necessary for my new house. Moreover, she sent me letters daily, recounting everything that occurred; and when she knew that I wished to cross the sea for a time, she bid me not spare expense, so that I secured a safe passage, for that she would pay everything, though it should cost five thousand florins, and in fact she sent me at once a thousand florins for my journey. I left her in care of Father Percy, who had already as my companion lived a long time at her house. There he still remains, and does much good. I went straight to Rome, and being sent back thence to these parts, was fixed at Louvain."36 So much at present of Elizabeth. We shall hear of her, as did Beaumont, during the succeeding years.

In the tribulations of Anne Vaux, his own first cousin, Francis must have been even more deeply interested. That she was in communication with Fawkes had been discovered, November 5. She was apprehended, committed to the care of Sir John Swynerton, but temporarily discharged. When Fawkes confessed, November 9, that the conspirators had been using a house of Father Garnet's at White Webbs, in Enfield Chace, the house called "Dr. Hewick's" was searched. "No papers nor munition found, but Popish books and relics, – and many trap-doors and secret passages." Garnet had escaped but, on examination of the servants, it developed that under the pseudonym of "Meaze" he had taken the house "for his sister, Mrs. Perkins," – [and who should "Mrs. Perkins" turn out to be but Anne Vaux!] The books and relics are the property of "Mrs. Jennings," – [and who should she be but Anne's sister, Eleanor Brookesby!] "Mrs. Perkins spent a month at White Webbs lately;" and "three gentlemen [Catesby, Winter, and another] came to White Webbs, the day the King left Royston" [October 31]. On November 27, Sir Everard Digby's servant deposes concerning Garnet that "Mrs. Ann Vaux doth usually goe with him whithersoever he goethe." On January 19, as we have seen, warrants are out for the arrest of Garnet. On January 30, he is taken with another Jesuit priest, Father Oldcorne, at Hindlip Hall, in Worcestershire, where for seven days and nights they have been buried in a closet, and nourished by broths conveyed to them by means of a quill which passed "through a little hole in a chimney that backed another chimney into a gentlewoman's chamber." True enough, the deposition, that whithersoever her beloved Father Superior "goethe, Mrs. Ann Vaux doth usually goe"; for she is the gentlewoman of the broths and quill, – she with Mrs. Abington, the sister of Monteagle. Garnet and Oldcorne are taken prisoners to the Tower; and three weeks later Anne is in town again, communicating with Garnet by means of letters, ostensibly brief and patent, but eked out with tidings written in an invisible ink of orange-juice. On March 6, Garnet confesses that Mrs. Anne Vaux, alias Perkins, he, and Brookesby bear the expenses of White Webbs. On March 11, Anne being examined says that she keeps the place at her own expense; that Catesby, Winter, and Tresham have been to her house, but that she knew nothing of the Plot; on the contrary, suspecting some mischief at one time, she had "begged Garnet to prevent it." Examined again on March 24, she says that "Francis Tresham, her cousin, often visited her and Garnet at White Webbs, Erith, Wandsworth, etc., when Garnet would counsel him to be patient and quiet; and that they also visited Tresham at his house in Warwickshire." Garnet's trial took place at Guildhall on March 28, Sir Edward Coke of the Inner Temple acting for the prosecution. Garnet acknowledged that the Plot had been conveyed to him by another priest [Greenway] in confession. He was convicted, however, not for failing to divulge that knowledge, but for failing to dissuade Catesby and the rest, both before and after he had gained knowledge from Greenway. He was executed on May 3. Of Anne's share in all that has preceded, Beaumont would by this date have known. One wonders whether he or his brother, John, ever learned the pathetic details of the final correspondence between Anne and the Father Superior. How, March 21, she wrote to him asking directions for the disposal of herself, and concluding that life without him was "not life but deathe." How, April 2, he replied with advice for her future; and as to Oldcorne and himself, added that the former had "dreamt there were two tabernacles prepared for them." How, the next day, she wrote again asking fuller directions and wishing Father Oldcorne had "dreamt there was a third seat" for her. And how, that same day, with loving thought for all details of her proceedings, and with sorrow for his own weakness under examination, the Father Superior sends his last word to her, – that he will "die not as a victorious martyr, but as a penitent thief," – and bids her farewell.

All this of the Harrowden cousins and their connection with Catholicism and the Gunpowder Plot, I have included not only because it touches nearly upon the family interests and friendships of Beaumont's early years, but also because it throws light upon the circumstances and feelings which prompted the satire of his first play, The Woman-Hater (acted in 1607), where as we shall see he alludes with horror to the Plot itself, but holds up to ridicule the informers who swarmed the streets of London in the years succeeding, and trumped up charges of conspiracy and recusancy against unoffending persons, and so sought to deprive them, if not of life, of property. It is with some hesitancy, since the proof to me is not conclusive, that I suggest that the animus in this play against favourites and intelligencers has perhaps more of a personal flavour than has hitherto been suspected. An entry from the Docquet, calendared with the State Papers, Domestic, of November 14, 1607, may indicate that John Beaumont, the brother of Francis, though a Protestant, had in some way manifested sympathy with his Catholic relatives during the persecutions which followed the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot: – "Gift to Sir Jas. Sempill of the King's two parts of the site of the late dissolved monastery of Grace-Dieu, and other lands in Leicester, in the hands of the Crown by the recusancy of John Beaumont." At first reading the John Beaumont would appear to be Francis' grandfather, the Master of the Rolls. But the Master lost his lands not for recusancy (or refusal on religious grounds to take the Oath of Allegiance, or attend the State Church), but for malfeasance in office, and that in 1552-3, while the Protestant Edward VI was King. He had no lands to lose after Mary mounted the throne, – even if as a Protestant he were recusant under a Catholic Queen. The recusancy seems to be of a date contemporaneous with James's refusal, October 17, 1606, to take fines from recusants, the King, as the State Papers inform us, taking "two-thirds of their goods, lands, etc., instead." The "two-thirds" would appear to be the "two parts" of Grace-Dieu and other lands, specified in the Gift; and that the sufferer was Francis Beaumont's brother is rendered the more likely by the fact that the beneficiary, Sir James Sempill, had been distinguishing himself by hatred of Roman Catholics from November 16, 1605, on; and that on July 31, 1609, he is again receiving grants "out of lands and goods of recusants, to be convicted at his charges."

There is nothing, indeed, in the career of Beaumont's brother, John, as commonly recorded, or in the temper of his poetry to indicate a refusal on his part to disavow the supremacy of Rome in ecclesiastical affairs, or to attend regularly the services of the Protestant Church. His writings speak both loyalty and Protestant Christianity. But it is to be noted that not only many of his kinsmen but his wife, as well, belonged to families affiliated with Roman Catholicism, and that his eulogistic poems addressed to James are all of later years, – after his kinsman, Buckingham, had "drawn him from his silent cell," and "first inclined the anointed head to hear his rural songs, and read his lines"; also that it is only under James's successor that he is honoured by a baronetcy. It is, therefore, not at all impossible that, because of some careless or over-frank utterance of fellow-feeling for his Catholic connections, or of repugnance for the unusually savage measures adopted after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, he may have been accused of recusancy, deprived of part of his estate, and driven into the seclusion which he maintained at Grace-Dieu till 1616 or thereabout.

CHAPTER V

FLETCHER'S FAMILY, AND HIS YOUTH

The friendship between Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher may have commenced at any time after Francis became a member of the Inner Temple, in 1600, – probably not later than 1605, when Beaumont was about twenty-one and Fletcher twenty-six. The latter was the son of "a comely and courtly prelate," Richard, Bishop, successively of Bristol, Worcester, and London. Richard's father, also, had been a clergyman; and Richard, himself, in his earlier years had been pensioner and scholar of Trinity, Cambridge (1563), then Fellow of Bene't College (Corpus Christi), then President of the College. In 1573 he married Elizabeth Holland at Cranbrook in Kent, perhaps of the family of Hugh Holland, descended from the Earls of Kent, who later appears in the circle of Beaumont's acquaintance; became, next, minister of the church of Rye, Sussex, about fifteen miles south of Cranbrook; then, Chaplain to the Queen; then, Dean of Peterborough. While he was officiating at Rye, in December 1579, John the fourth of nine children, was born. This John, the dramatist, is probably the "John Fletcher of London," who was admitted pensioner of Bene't College, Cambridge, in 1591, and, as if destined for holy orders, became two years later a Bible-clerk, reading the lessons in the services of the college chapel. At the time of his entering college, his father had risen to the bishopric of Bristol; and, later in 1591, had been made Lord High Almoner to the Queen; he had a house at Chelsea, and was near the court "where his presence was accustomed much to be." By 1593 the Bishop had been advanced to the diocese of Worcester; and we find him active in the House of Lords with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the proposal of severe measures against the Barrowists and Brownists.37 The next year he was elected Bishop of London, – succeeding John Aylmer, who had been tutor to Lady Jane Grey, – and was confirmed by royal assent in January 1595. From Sir John Harington's unfavourable account38 it would appear that the Bishop owed his rapid promotion to the combination of great mind and small means which made him a fitting tool for "zealous courtiers whose devotion did serve them more to prey on the Church than pray in the Church." But his will, drawn in 1593, shows him mindful of the poor, solicitous concerning the "Chrystian and godlie education" of his children and confident in the principles and promises of the Christian faith, – "this hope hath the God of all comforte laide upp in my breste."

We have no record of John's proceeding to a degree. It is not unlikely that he left Cambridge for the city when his father attained the metropolitan see. From early years the boy had enjoyed every opportunity of observing the ways of monarchs and courtiers, scholars and poets, as well as of princes of the Church. Since 1576, his father had "lived in her highnes," the Queen's, "gratious aspect and favour." Præsul splendidus, says Camden. Eloquent, accomplished, courtly, lavish in hospitality and munificence, no wonder that he counted among his friends, Burghley, the Lord Treasurer, and Burghley's oldest son, Sir Thomas Cecil, Anthony Bacon, the brother of Sir Francis, and that princely second Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, who had married the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, and with whom the lame but clever Anthony Bacon lived. Sir Francis Drake also was one of his friends and gave him a "ringe of golde" which he willed to one of his executors. Another of his "loveinge freindes," and an assistant-executor of his will, was the learned and vigorous Dr. Richard Bancroft, his successor as Bishop of London and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. As for immediate literary connections, suffice it here to say that the Bishop's brother, Dr. Giles Fletcher, was a cultivated diplomat and writer upon government, and that the sons of Dr. Giles were the clerical Spenserians, Phineas, but three years younger than his cousin the dramatist, – whose fisher-play Sicelides was acting at King's College, Cambridge, in the year of John's Chances in London, and whose Brittain's Ida is as light in its youthful eroticism as his Purple Island is ponderous in pedantic allegory, – and Giles, nine years younger than John, who was printing verses before John wrote his earliest play, and whose poem of Christ's Victorie was published, in 1610, a year or so later than John's pastoral of The Faithfull Shepheardesse. Bishop Fletcher could tell his sons stories of royalty, not only in affluence, but in distress; for when John was but eight years old the father as Dean of Peterborough was chaplain to Mary, Queen of Scots, at Fotheringay, adding to her distress "by the zeal with which he urged her to renounce the faith of Rome." It was he who when Mary's head was held up after the execution cried, "So perish all the Queen's enemies!"39 He could, also, tell them much about the great founder of the Dorset family, for at Fotheringay at the same time was Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards first Earl of Dorset, who had come to announce to Mary, Queen of Scots, the sentence of death.

From 1591 on, the Bishop was experiencing the alternate "smiles and frowns of royalty" in London; about the time that John left college more particularly the frowns. For, John's mother having died about the end of 1592, the Bishop had, in 1595, most unwisely married Maria (daughter of John Giffard of Weston-under-Edge in Gloucestershire), the relict of a few months' standing of Sir Richard Baker of Sissinghurst in Kent. The Bishop's acquaintance with this second wife, as well as with the first, probably derived from his father's incumbency as Vicar of the church in Cranbrook, Kent, which began in 1555 and was still existing as late as 1574. The young Richard would often have shuddered as a child before Bloody Baker's Prison with its iron-barred windows glowering from the parish church, for Sir John hated the primitive and pious Anabaptists who had taken up their abode about Cranbrook, and he hunted them down;40 and Richard would, as a lad, have walked the two miles across the clayey fields and through the low-lying woods with his father to the stately manor house, built by old Sir John Baker himself in the time of Edward VI, and have seen that distinguished personage who had been Attorney-General and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Henry VIII, – and who as may be recalled was one of that Council of State, in 1553, which ratified and signed Edward VI's 'devise for the succession' making Lady Jane Grey inheritress of the crown. And when young Richard returned from his presidency of Bene't College, in 1573, to Cranbrook to marry Elizabeth Holland, he would have renewed acquaintance with Sir Richard, who had succeeded the "bloody" Sir John as master of Sissinghurst, sixteen years before. He may for all we know have been present at the entertainment which that same year Sir Richard made for Queen Elizabeth. Maria Giffard was twenty-four years old, then. Whether she was yet Lady Baker we do not know – but it is probable; and we may be sure that on his various visits to Cranbrook, the rising dean and bishop had frequent opportunity to meet her at Sissinghurst before his own wife's death, or the death of Sir Richard in 1594. Since the sister of Sir Richard Baker, Cicely, was already the wife of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, when, in 1586-7, Buckhurst and Richard Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, were thrown together at Fotheringay, it is not unlikely that the closer association between the Fletchers and Lady Buckhurst's sister-in-law of Sissinghurst grew out of this alliance of the Sackvilles with the Bakers.

Lady Baker was in 1595 in conspicuous disfavour with Queen Elizabeth, and with the people too; for, if she was virtuous, as her nephew records,41 "the more happy she in herself, though unhappy that the world did not believe it."42 Certain it is, that in a contemporary satire she is thrice-damned as of the most ancient of disreputable professions, and once dignified as "my Lady Letcher." Though of unsavoury reputation, she was of fine appearance, and socially very well connected. Her brother, Sir George Giffard, was in service at Court under Elizabeth; and in Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, she had a brother-in-law, who was kinsman to the Queen, herself. But not only did the Queen dislike her, she disliked the idea of any of her prelates, especially her comely Bishop of London, marrying a second time, without her express consent. For a year after this second marriage the Bishop was suspended from his office. "Here of the Bishop was sadly sensible," says Fuller, "and seeking to lose his sorrow in a mist of smoak, died of the immoderate taking thereof." Sir John Harington, however, tells us that he regained the royal favour; – "but, certain it is that (the Queen being pacified, and hee in great jollity with his faire Lady and her Carpets and Cushions in his bed-chamber) he died suddenly, taking Tobacco in his chaire, saying to his man that stood by him, whom he loved very well, 'Oh, boy, I die.'"

That was in 1596. The Bishop left little but his library and his debts. The former went to two of his sons, Nathaniel and John. The latter swallowed up his house at Chelsea with his other properties. The Bishop's brother and chief executor of the will, Giles, the diplomat, is soon memorializing the Queen for "some commiseration towards the orphans of the late Bishopp of London." He emphasizes the diminution of the Bishop's worldly estate consequent upon his translation to the costly see of London, his extraordinary charges in the reparation of the four episcopal residences, his lavish expenditure in hospitality, his penitence for "the errour of his late marriage," and concludes: – "He hath left behinde him 8 poore children, whereof divers are very young. His dettes due to the Quenes Majestie and to other creditors are 1400li. or thereaboutes, his whole state is but one house wherein the widow claimeth her thirds, his plate valewed at 400li., his other stuffe at 500li." Anthony Bacon, who sympathized with the purpose of this memorial, enlisted the coöperation of Bishop Fletcher's powerful friend and his own patron, the Earl of Essex, who "likewise represented to the Queen the case of the orphans … in so favourable a light that she was inclin'd to relieve them;" but whether she did so or not, we are unable to discover.43

What John Fletcher, – a lad of seventeen, when, in 1596, he was turned out of Fulham Palace and his father's private house in Chelsea, with its carpets and cushions and the special "stayre and dore made of purpose … in a bay window" for the entrance of Queen Elizabeth when she might deign, or did deign, to visit her unruly prelate, – what the lad of seventeen did for a living before we find him, about 1606 or 1607, in the ranks of the dramatists, we have no means of knowing. Perhaps the remaining years of his boyhood were spent with his uncle, Giles, and his young cousins, the coming poets, or with the aunt whom his father called "sister Pownell." The stepmother of eighteen months' duration is not likely with her luxurious tastes and questionable character to have tarried long in charge of the eight "poore and fatherless children." She had children of her own by her previous marriage, in whom to seek consolation, Grisogone and Cicely Baker, then in their twenties, and devoted to her.44 And with one or both we may surmise that she resumed her life in Kent, or with the heir of sleepy Sissinghurst, making the most of her carpets and cushions and such of her "thirds" as she could recover, until – for she was but forty-seven – she might find more congenial comfort in a third marriage. Her permanent consoler was a certain Sir Stephen Thornhurst of Forde in the Isle of Thanet; and he, thirteen years after the death of her second husband, buried her in state in Canterbury Cathedral, 1609.