by Karen Brooks
Contrary to popular belief, though Elizabethans were very religious, the schism that erupted during Henry VIII’s reign — when he became head of his own church, the Church of England, and designated the Pope a mere bishop of Rome, so he could divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth’s mother) — took a long time to heal. After all, just because a king (and later, a queen) orders you to change the manner of your faith, the rituals you’ve known your whole life and that have been practised for generations, doesn’t mean you automatically do. There was, naturally, a great deal of confusion, resentment and (oft-times militant) resistance. Henry also ordered the translation of the Bible into English, so ordinary literate folk could read God’s word for themselves. This was an enormous step. When Henry’s son Edward became king, he introduced further reforms and was intolerant of Catholic ways. After his brief reign, Henry’s eldest daughter, Mary Tudor, a devout Catholic, took the throne and earned the sobriquet ‘Bloody Mary’ because she killed many English Protestants who refused to recant their beliefs and return to Catholicism.
When Elizabeth became ruler upon her half-sister Mary’s death in 1558, she promised she wouldn’t ‘make windows into men’s souls’, inferring tolerance towards Catholicism despite her firm Protestant beliefs. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith, introduced in 1563, demonstrated this was tolerance with strict caveats. After Pope Pius declared his Bull against Elizabeth (which, at the opening of the novel has just been reinforced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1580 — again, all facts), priests started to surreptitiously enter England with the intention to undermine Elizabeth, the English faith, her rule and laws and to align people with Rome and Catholic Europe. Schools to train Jesuits, overseen by Dr William Allen, as referred to in the novel, were established in various parts of Europe and young, ardent Catholic men flocked to them. Even knowing it could result in their imprisonment and possibly death if they were caught, the priests (often accompanied by devout lay people) travelled to England and were given refuge by recusant families and individuals. And so this fragile official tolerance was dashed. Between the years 1580 and 1590 especially, laws were tightened. Heavy fines, arrests, jail terms and severe punishment, torture and horrific executions resulted. Suspicion was rife and propaganda flourished. Religious prejudice was profound on both sides. In many ways, parallels between what happened in Elizabeth’s reign can be drawn with the world today where assumptions are made about people on the basis of faith — a person’s religious beliefs have become synonymous with their politics, calling into question an individual’s patriotism and loyalty to their nation and fellow countrymen and women. Just like Elizabethans, we’re being taught to fear an ‘enemy within’.
It fell on Sir Francis Walsingham’s shoulders, as Elizabeth’s spymaster and secretary, to do what he could to keep her and England safe from what was seen as the Catholic scourge. In order to do that, he kept himself informed using an incredible network of informants. Historian Alan Haynes likens his network of agents to a ‘Secret Service’, conjuring images of ‘spooks’. Walsingham’s men did utilise aliases and disguises, infiltrated enemy quarters in England and abroad, spread false information, developed secret codes and deciphered them as well as exposing themselves to great risks and danger. This all occurred under the watchful eyes of Walsingham, who determined not only to bring down Catholics, but one in particular — the ‘viper in England’s bosom’, Mary, Queen of Scots. He achieved this in 1587 when Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle.
Walsingham wasn’t above embellishing evidence or falsifying it to get a result. Edmund Campion’s name was belatedly added to Charles Sledd’s dossier, and while Campion’s fate was likely already sealed, placing his name alongside known traitors and inferring he travelled widely with these folk definitely removed all doubt as to the priest’s purpose in England. Likewise, evidence was falsified or added to further condemn Mary, Queen of Scots, thus attempting to silence any who doubted her guilt.
Yet despite this perception of Catholics as traitors and plotters, even seminary-trained Catholics such as Edmund Campion didn’t see themselves as terrorists or trouble-makers so much as liberating English souls from the shackles of heretical Protestant reform. As Robert Hutchinson says in his book Elizabeth’s Spymaster, ‘Today’s dictum that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” was just as true in the 1580s.’ He argues:
To Walsingham, faced with a succession of plots against his Queen and state, the many English Catholics covertly practising their religion were potential terrorists and assassins.
While some Catholics had benign intentions, others certainly didn’t. The equivalent of terrorist cells existed, and small groups of Catholics plotted assassinations, bold shootings, poisonings, the overthrow of the government (and killing of leading figures within it), bombings (the Gunpowder Plot that occurred during the reign of Elizabeth’s successor, James I and VI, being an extreme example), and general disruption to good governance. There was even what Hutchinson calls the first internment camp in England — Wisbech Castle in Cambridgeshire — where Walsingham sent unyielding Catholics to suffer deprivations in the cold, damp and isolated dungeons of the north.
Walsingham also didn’t hesitate to use whatever means at his disposal to put an end to Catholic treachery and stamp out the faith for good. This included torture, payment for information and the infiltration of embassies and prisons where Catholics languished. His spies and informers were drawn from all walks of life; many were from the lowest echelons of society, others from the higher strata. Some did it for coin, others for adventure and a sense of importance, or because they truly believed in the cause. Haynes describes them as being motivated by ‘belligerent conviction, self-interest, family necessity, vanity, desperation and perhaps a low threshold of boredom’. Some, like Charles Sledd, Thomas Phelippes, Francis Mylles, Robert Beale and even Malyverny Caitlyn, among others, were very good at what they did. Others were clumsy, ill-informed and poor at their tasks. Some became double agents, so there was often doubt cast upon information received, especially from agents overseas. Elizabethan England was quite the police state in many ways, especially during the 1580s, engendering fear even among those who had no cause to be afraid.
In the novel, I allude to the fact that while many of these spies were promised recompense for their work, and would write copious letters demanding it, often they weren’t paid. It’s true that Sir Francis mostly funded the network out of his own pocket and died heavily in debt as a consequence. His pleas to the Queen for funds to support his work (mostly) fell on deaf ears.
Despite the propaganda about Catholics and religion, it was not all black and white. There were debates, confusion and sympathy for Catholics and tolerance for their beliefs among all classes of society. Despite the threat people were told Catholics posed and the constant stream of (mis)information, arrests, tortures and deaths — many of them public, and as gruesome as those described in the book — a blind eye was often turned towards benign recusancy, meaning neighbours’ lack of church attendance wasn’t always reported, information about known recusants wasn’t necessarily passed on to authorities and priests were protected. Many priests, like Edmund Campion, insisted, even until death, that they were not in England to incite treason but to succour the faithful and mend wounded souls.
This was especially true in the early part of the 1580s, when this novel is set. As the decade wore on, and attempts to assassinate Elizabeth increased, understanding and tolerance diminished, and subsequent searches for the traitors in England’s midst became more pressing and fervent.
London was the city where suspicion and fear thrived. Informants found a great deal of work and neighbours could turn on their own for coin, revenge or other base motives. Others believed it was the right thing to do — and feared the consequences if they did not.
One of the cruellest of consequences for breaking laws — especially treason or even suspected treason — was torture, which was endorsed and pract
ised with no small degree of skill and, according to many accounts, sick pleasure during Elizabeth’s reign. Thomas Norton, who earned the sobriquet ‘Rackmaster Norton’ because of his expertise with the rack and his ability to prolong pain while keeping death at bay, was considered an expert in extracting confessions. He did rack Campion — twice. He was also a playwright, as noted in the novel. But he was nothing compared to Richard Topcliffe.
Topcliffe’s name became a byword and people feared him. These days we’d probably call him a sexual sadist, a psychopath at best. He was known to take great pride and joy in his work, inflicting shocking pain upon his victims, deforming them, threatening them and taking pleasure from their pain. Claiming friendship with Queen Elizabeth, he did have associates in high places and was protected — so much so that he was given permission to have his own torture chamber in his house. He also had an assistant and, together, they often sexually abused the women in their ‘care’. The abuses I have him inflicting upon Mallory are tame compared to some of the records of Topcliffe’s activities and his known proclivities. Rape, abuse, destroying bodies and minds were his specialties. It’s no wonder that in later years the mere mention of his name evoked terror.
On a lighter note, the incident at Deptford where the Queen manipulated the French ambassador into knighting Drake is true (it was done so the Spaniards couldn’t take offence that she’d rewarded a man who’d recklessly plundered their ships), as is the breaking of the gangplank, which flung so many of the crowd into the muddy waters.
To the best of my knowledge, all street names and churches existed during the period and are where they should be according to contemporary maps. I also walked the streets that still survive, and stood outside where Sir Francis Walsingham’s house would have been on Seething Lane, crossed the Thames back and forth, and walked to the Royal Exchange, St Paul’s, and where I thought Lord Nathaniel’s town house would be. I also navigated through many tourists and experienced the Tower, which is daunting, incredible and a testimony to the power of fear. However, when I visited the Bloody Tower and the dungeons in the Clink and saw the instruments of torture on display there, I felt quite sickened by our capacity to inflict pain upon one another. The real Topcliffe did give his instruments of torture names as he does in the novel.
Attitudes to homosexuality were mostly extremely intolerant and based on religious beliefs, and sodomy (a term which at that time encompassed a number of things, including what we now call bestiality) was punishable by death. But there were those who, like Mallory and Nathaniel and others in the book, could see beyond entrenched prejudices to the person. It is not a modern inflection to include their forbearance. As Liza Picard notes in Elizabeth’s London, ‘There are indications that it [homosexuality] was tacitly accepted in London. Otherwise, the “male stews” would have been quickly closed down.’ Many known homosexuals of the era were accepted and even lauded for their talents despite their sexuality by friends, family and even the royal court. What they did in private was conveniently overlooked and never publicly discussed.
Contrary to the popular belief that everyone in this period married young, the average age for a first marriage among the general populace was twenty-four for women and twenty-seven for men, so Mallory was considered quite young to be eloping. Her engagement to Isaac would have lasted a few years — at least until he was a qualified lawyer. There were exceptions. Some people did marry very young; a girl could be married and a mother while still in her teens. The nobility and gentry tended to marry younger, but not as young as we sometimes think. Contracts of marriage between royalty could be ratified while the bride and groom were mere children, but that didn’t mean they were wed or the marriage consummated (though some were). A person under twenty-one years of age needed permission to get married.
Women in those days didn’t have much to barter with. Their social currency was dependent on limited means — their father’s wealth and position, and their own virtue. Lose one, and all else lost its appeal. Of course, this could change contingent on the dowry and the prospective husband’s needs — but a child born out of wedlock, and without a father to acknowledge him or her, tarnished the mother and potentially damaged all hope of a future, regardless of how the child was conceived (as in medieval times, if a woman accused a man of rape and subsequently fell pregnant, it was then believed she hadn’t been raped but had consented to the sex and was therefore little more than a whore).
While there were no doubt many happy marriages in Elizabethan times (it was the goal of most women — as Alison Sim states in The Tudor Housewife: ‘A woman was brought up to be a wife, to the extent that this was seen as her calling from God’), the notion that a woman had a subordinate status and was akin to a possession (not unlike a piece of livestock) was enshrined in law and generally accepted in society. As Thomas Becon wrote in The Christian State of Matrimony in 1546, ‘Women and horses must be well governed.’ Women were also understood to be ‘the weaker vessel’, fragile and incapable of inner strength of the mind or outer strength of the body (despite the example to the contrary of the Queen herself). Their primary roles were to keep their husbands sexually satisfied, produce children and keep the household running smoothly. A feme sole (single woman) was regarded with suspicion, often open hostility, and could be exposed to all sorts of gossip, bullying and even charges (such as witchcraft). Married women were subject to their husband’s rule, while widows had the opportunity (albeit sometimes brief) to experience independence.
Men were encouraged to respect their wives, but also to control them. While there were diverse marital relationships and degrees of accord and discord, women were raised from childhood to perceive themselves as inferior and men superior. Women — single or married — could be publicly punished and thus shamed for something as simple as nagging (being a scold), being disobedient or generally subverting their father/brother/husband/master’s power. For wives, this was especially the case. Retha M. Warnicke writes in Wicked Women of Tudor England, ‘Reinforcing each other, the legal systems, medical lore, and religious instruction contributed to this ethos … That wives should be in some sense subject to their husbands’ control.’ It was not forbidden (or uncommon) for men to beat their wives — or their servants or children — and no-one had the right to intervene when such punishment was meted out. Some men, such as Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk, even imprisoned their wives in the home, took away their clothes and jewels and made their lives a misery — fortunately, these men were in the minority. For a man to slap or even beat a woman in public, as Mallory witnesses in the streets of London, was not illegal or even necessarily frowned upon — provided the beating was not unusually severe. There were also women who went beyond being ‘scolds’ and beat their husbands, but just like today, stigma was attached to a man who couldn’t control his wife. Like the women, he bore his marriage stoically, as best he could.
Just as it does now, terrible violence of the kind Raffe metes out to Mallory happened behind closed doors. Shamed, her self-esteem battered as much as her body, when Mallory is accused of infanticide she’s so ready to blame herself for her son’s death that she accepts the responsibility. I never intended to write a story that included domestic abuse, but as I read about the lives of Elizabethan women of all classes, it made its way onto the page. The more I write abut the past, the more I understand that I am, in a sense, also writing about the present. Mallory, like so many other brave and remarkable women past and present, is a survivor who succeeds in spite of what has happened to her.
For those of you who would like to explore the period and learn about the real people who appear in the novel, here are some more books I found particularly helpful and fascinating. I cannot express my admiration and gratitude to their authors strongly enough. I hope that by listing their books here (many more are reviewed on my website), they will know how much their work is appreciated.
A fantastic book that explores not only the ambivalence during this era towards faith a
nd the laws that upheld it but also Catholic sensibilities and the lengths some families — who never posed a threat to the Crown — went to in order to maintain their faith, is Jesse Child’s award-winning God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England. Another terrific book that outlines the work done by Walsingham and his network is Stephen Alford’s The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I. There’s also Sir Francis Walsingham, A Courtier in the Age of Terror by Derek Wilson, and The Queen’s Agent by John Cooper. I have previously mentioned Conyers Read’s three-volume biography, simply entitled Sir Francis Walsingham — detailed, fascinating and insightful. For a quicker, lighter read, try Her Majesty’s Spymaster by Stephen Budiansky. More detailed efforts are God’s Secret Agents by Alice Hodge, The Elizabethan Secret Services by Alan Haynes, and Danger to Elizabeth by Alison Plowden. The Pirate Queen by Susan Ronald was also very useful, while Elizabeth’s London by Liza Picard and The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan London by Ian Mortimer were brilliant, colourful and completely indispensible — as was anything by Peter Ackroyd. Also essential were The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England by Kathy Lynn Emerson, and Daily Life in Elizabethan England by Jeffrey L. Singman, and The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. W. Tillyard — an oldie but a goodie.
There were also many, many other books and articles I accessed about religion (special mention here for Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars), clothing, medicine, food, weather, torture, houses, streets and major incidents, such as the Spanish Armada and the imprisonment and death of Mary, Queen of Scots, even though these events aren’t included in the novel except tangentially. Likewise, the early years of Elizabeth’s reign and her relationship with Robert Dudley are endlessly fascinating, and I highly recommend Chris Skidmore’s Death and the Virgin (which explores the suspicious death of Amy Robsart — Dudley’s first wife), Christopher Hibbert’s Elizabeth I, Sarah Gristwood’s Elizabeth and Leicester, Alison Sim’s The Tudor Housewife, the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare, and Michael Wood’s excellent In Search of Shakespeare.
