by Janet Todd
Given the later closeness of the half-brothers, Thomas Colepeper is likely to have visited Strangford for considerable periods at Penshurst. Possibly he took with him the girl, Aphra, whose mother may have helped fill the gap of his own lost parent. If he did, Aphra would have encountered literature there. The Sidneys were proud of their poetic traditions. The huge asymmetrical feudal square of Penshurst Place, with its chapel, towering hall, galleries and intricate rooms full of portraits, armour and aristocratic bric-à-brac, its jumbled splendour and vast uneven park, had been hymned by the dramatist, Ben Jonson, and the poet, Edmund Waller, as well as by its most famous son, Sir Philip Sidney. He had been the uncle of the present Earl and Colepeper’s mother, the pattern of Protestant chivalry and author of the celebrated romance, Arcadia.
The Sidneys were also famous for literary women. The Sidney Countess of Pembroke had been a powerful patron under Elizabeth I, as well as an accomplished poet. Lady Mary Wroth, Colepeper’s dead aunt, to whom Ben Jonson dedicated The Alchemist, could both inspire and warn an ambitious literary girl, for, notoriously, she had published a book.5 This had been a roman à clef portraying herself and her family, as well as some of James I’s courtiers. The latter were furious: one called Lady Mary an ‘Hermaphrodite in show, in deed a monster’ and ordered her to ‘leave idle books alone’ since ‘wiser and worthyer women have writte none.’6 After much furore, the work was withdrawn. If Mary Wroth’s history was known to Aphra, it would have taught her, if not silence, then the need for circumspection in publishing under one’s own name. Even codes must yield more than one possibility if they were to be used with impunity.7
Closer was Colepeper’s much older cousin, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, Dorothy Sidney, Lady Sunderland. With her young son Robert, later the Earl of Sunderland, she lived at Penshurst until 1650, while her husband fought and died in the Royalist armies; thereafter she visited regularly. Before her marriage, Dorothy had become famous under the sugary name of ‘Sacharissa’ as the muse of her would-be lover, the poet Edmund Waller. He was one of the Cavalier writers Aphra began reading in her teens, valued throughout her life—indeed she called him the nurse of her ‘Infant Muse’, nourishing her with his ‘soft Food of Love’—and elegised after his death. In his passion, Waller made Dorothy Sidney into the shepherdess of the aristocratic Arcadia of Penshurst. It was a vision that much appealed to young Aphra, growing up in what disgruntled Cavaliers deplored as ‘verseless times’.
If Colepeper visited Penshurst, he is unlikely to have stayed there, for the Earl was determined not to take in stray children who could not handsomely pay their way—as Lord Strangford so palpably could.8 In any case he had rather more elevated charges. For a short time there were in his nursery two of Charles I’s children, who had been lodged there by Parliament to be taught with the Sidneys. One of them, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, lived just long enough to see the Restoration of his brother in 1660. Years later, Aphra would refer to this noble youth and his intended fate as a cobbler under the egalitarian protectorate: he was to have been ‘bound Prentice to a Handy-Crafts Trade, but that our Lords could not spare Money to bind him out, and so they sent him to beg beyond the Sea’.9 The good Cavalier, Loveless, roundly declared this ‘Blasphemy against the Royal Youth’.
As half-Sidneys, Thomas Colepeper and his sister were allied to the numerous children of the Earl. They ranged from the eldest grown men and women—Philip, Algernon, and Dorothy—down to the young ones, Isabella and Henry. Despite the fact that Dorothy’s husband died for the Royalist cause, the Sidneys largely accepted the Interregnum governments, though happily for their future none was involved in Charles I’s death.
It is possible that, through Thomas Colepeper, young Aphra came into contact with one or two of these Sidneys. She was a friendly, clever girl with some beauty and much wit, and birth was less important in a pretty young person than in an older homelier one. Like Mary Carleton, she could entertain her betters, write appealing verses—her memoirist claims she composed poetry since ‘the first use almost of reason in discourse’—and she was remembered as having ‘agreeable repartees at hand’, which she played off ‘like winning cards’.10 Perhaps she had use as a neat copyer, perhaps she dramatised short scenes from La Calprenède. In particular, she may have come to the attention of Philip, Lord L’Isle.
L’Isle, the tall, haughty, fair and heavy-featured heir, followed a cautious political path in the Interregnum, never being a ‘fanatic’ and pleading ill health when urged to undertake any dubious act. In this he contrasted with his bold and boisterous brother, the republican theorist, Algernon. In 1656, Philip accused Algernon of staging Julius Caesar (and himself playing Brutus) at Penshurst particularly to affront Cromwell.11 On his side, Algernon described their father as demanding that Philip Lord L’Isle ‘leave the lewd, infamous, and Atheisticall life that he led’. Though this report on a man who stood between him and the family title may be biased, L’Isle was, in the 1670s, a friend of the dissolute Earl of Rochester, so may have had some libertine and free-thinking inclinations.12 A widower in his thirties in the 1650s, L’Isle was an aristocrat by birth, inclination and principle, with a high sense of rank and his own importance. He knew himself to have the right of primogeniture, supported patriarchal power, and, like his republican brother, despised the mob, the anarchic multitude. Perhaps this educated, disgruntled man gave some of his time and principles to his cousin Thomas’s ‘fayre’ foster-sister and let her loose in the great Penshurst library of European and classical languages, history, philosophy and comparative religions. The adult Aphra Behn showed some surprising grasp of these.
In her late story, The Lucky Mistake, there is a character called Vernole, a learned older man from a great and noble house. This nobleman educates the twelve-or thirteen-year-old heroine, Atlante, speaking to her of philosophy and matters of state. Indeed he declares to her surprised father,
I find the Seeds of great and profound Matter in the Soul of this Young Maid, which ought to be nourisht, now while she is Young, and they will grow up to very great Perfection; I find Atlante capable of all the Noble Vertues of the Mind, and am infinitely mistaken in my Observations, and Act of Phisiognomy, if Atlante be not born for greater things than her Fortune does now promise, she will be very Considerable in the World, believe me....13
The result of this praise, rather unusual for a heroine in the sort of romantic tale this purports to be, is that her father begins to value her more than he had. Vernole continues his efforts and
as much of his Learning, as Atlante was capable of attaining to, he made her Mistress of, and that was no small Portion, for all his Discourse was fine and easiely comprehended, his Notions of Philosophy fit for Ladies; and he took greater pains with Atlante, than any Master wold have done with a Scholar; so that it was most certain, he added very great Accomplishments to her Natural Wit, and the more because she took a very great Delight in Philosophy.14
Aphra grew up to take considerable ‘Delight in Philosophy’ and to translate precisely the kind of books that communicated the knowledge of this man to discerning women. In the story, it does not follow from her admiration and gratitude that the heroine wants her teacher for a lover, but she deeply respects his learning and enjoys his influence over her. In the ‘Memoirs’, the young untouched Aphra leaves Kent, having provoked love in many. Could one of those provoked to a little flirtation have been Philip Lord L’Isle?15
Probably as fascinating to the lowly-born girl at this time was Colepeper’s raffish elder brother, Lord Strangford. When Colepeper recorded Aphra’s birth in his ‘Adversaria’, he gave as one of the possible places the small low-lying village of Sturry, just north of Canterbury on the River Stour. Possibly this was because he saw her there often: Sturry House, a grand brick manor, was the seat of his half-brother.
In 1653 Strangford marched out of Penshurst. He took with him his new young wife and cousin, Isabella Sidney. The Earl claimed distaste for the match since he
disapproved cousin marriages, was not impressed with his still underaged nephew, and regarded him as after Isabella’s portion which he resolutely refused to pay. Later Strangford declared that he had been bounced into marriage by the fortune-hunting Sidneys.
The new tie did not bind the families. Lord Strangford had acquired a sense of his own importance through easy money. He had been without parental control and, now married, he felt the smallest restraint a violation. According to the Earl, he had become wild and extravagant, gaining popularity with a set of people who fed on his wealth. On his side, the young man had had enough of his haughty relatives: Penshurst was a great house but not great fun, and he longed for freedom.
At Sturry, so short a distance from her Canterbury home, Aphra could have seen the epitome of the pleasure-loving, aristocratic lifestyle before the Restoration of Charles II. Strangford lived well and enjoyed himself, using his servants to collect money directly from the tenants on his estate. He ran through vast sums in drinking, eating and entertaining; Isabella, described by her family as ‘soe unhappily married’, seems to have enjoyed part of it too. No doubt there was music and all the pleasant graceful appendages of life that money could provide. Aphra would have been entranced by an existence of such intensity and luxury.
Inevitably the young man soon fell out with his new employees and blamed everyone but himself for his chaotic finances. He was in a ‘low condition’, he wailed, cheated and entrapped by the people around him. Soon he was broke and, according to Algernon Sidney, confessed he had long ‘bin perpetually Drunck or out of his wits’. Promises were exacted that he should desist from ‘the foolish courses he had taken, shewe him self kind unto his wife, live civilly, leaving the filthy company with which he conversed’, and of course make peace with the Earl.16
At this point the Strangfords had ‘a minde to goe into france’. So off they went with a retinue of ten servants and baggage on the Yarmouth for Dieppe.17 They settled in a house in St Germain-en-Laye. Soon they were running up Parisian debts and shocking the Sidneys anew by their ‘extravagant ways of liveing’. Algernon agreed, for £250 a year, to administer the Strangford estates and he moved into Sturry.18 The good times at the Manor were definitely over.
Undoubtedly Strangford went to France because the Sidneys wanted to be rid of him, but he also went for political reasons. The Royalists were desperate for safe houses for their agents to stay in, since at public inns they could easily be apprehended by government agents. For a short period Lord Strangford seems to have provided one of these in St Germain. It was made especially secure by the frequent visits of the republican Algernon to discuss money with his feckless cousin.19 Strangford may well have enjoyed acting against the political views of his overbearing relative.
Back in England, the half-brothers, Strangford and Colepeper, became involved with the loose Royalist organisation called the Sealed Knot. This had been formed to coordinate Royalist policy, liaise with the King and try to prevent premature effort. It was inefficient, however, and its control over plotting minimal. It failed to prevent several small useless uprisings which served only to create martyrs.
After years of inertia, the Sealed Knot was activated by the sudden death of Oliver Cromwell and the resulting turmoil as his heirs battled for the succession. A general Royalist uprising was projected—later known as Booth’s rising because Sir George Booth’s northern force was the only one remotely to succeed. Lord Willoughby of Parham, proprietor of the South American territory of Surinam and a distant connection of the Sidneys, was to possess King’s Lynn in Norfolk; the eager brothers, Thomas Colepeper and Lord Strangford, were among those raising cavalry troops in Kent.
Then everything went wrong—as it usually did with events planned by the Sealed Knot. The able John Thurloe had built up a strong intelligence system under Cromwell and it was now run, as it had been before his tenure, by the equally able Thomas Scot. Scot was apprised of the details of the proposed insurrection, including a planning meeting near Gray’s Inn in London, information of which was delivered by an alleged Catholic, Lady Willoughby, possibly a pseudonym or just possibly the wife of the Presbyterian Lord Willoughby himself—these were complicated times and the pair detested each other.20 The London militia was readied and the City secured. The various rebels were then picked up before they could properly assemble—indeed there was so great a storm that a good many were simply lost before they could rendezvous.21 Willoughby was taken and Booth defeated. About fifty Cavaliers were caught at Tonbridge, along with apprentices and local supporters. Lord Strangford was informed on and taken; Colepeper, loose for a little longer, followed him. By 11 August the brothers were together in prison—comfortably so, since Strangford did not stint himself and demanded that his servants attend him there. Soon, with the help of Isabella using her brother Algernon’s name, he was bailed for £5,000. Colepeper put up £3,000. All was, in the words of the newssheet Mercurius Politicus, ‘happily quelled’.22
In all these activities, it is possible that Colepeper’s foster-sister Aphra had a role. She had been mixing with her betters and would have become adept at imitation and dissimulation. Women such as Lady Mary Howard were commonly used as messengers for the Sealed Knot to their colleagues abroad, while others like Lady Newport provided cover addresses for correspondence. Aphra Behn could easily have liaised with Lord Strangford in France, where Colepeper’s journeys would be noted, as well as with other Royalist men. There is, however, no proof, for it is the nature of a secret service to remain secretive.23
If there is no proof, there is none the less a good deal of supporting evidence. In an early play, The Dutch Lover, Aphra Behn referred to a changeover of governors in Flanders in 1659, not a common detail for a provincial girl to give, and she set more than one play on the Continent in the charged time just prior to the Restoration. In the 1660s, she had some involvement with Lord Willoughby who was occasionally in Holland during these months, while later she showed considerable familiarity with the Cavalier Thomas Killigrew, in comfortable Dutch exile in the late 1650s, but still involved in intelligence. Earlier he had been a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the young Duke of Gloucester when he had come to the Continent from Penshurst. Aphra is more likely to have made both acquaintances, with Thomas Killigrew and with Lord Willoughby, in their time of relative obscurity than when Willoughby was a courtier and confirmed owner of a goodly slice of English colonies and when Killigrew ran the King’s theatre company, was Master of the Revels, politician and royal favourite.24
Through Killigrew, Aphra was later employed for a dangerous mission in the Low Countries at the height of war with Holland, which England was by no means winning. In such unfavourable circumstances, an attractive, youngish woman is unlikely to have been dispatched without any counterfeiting past, some proof that she would not spring a treacherous leak under pressure. She could have indicated this only through previous experience.
If she did act as agent and courier, primarily for the Royalists—although she may have picked up commissions where she could—Aphra would have joined a vast army of such people, answering loosely to the King’s chancellor in exile, Edward Hyde. He had almost nothing but promises and honours to give out to his agents, but he was an astute man and the Stuarts always generated loyalty beyond self-interest. The service had to be vast since spies were needed to watch both the enemy and each other—a double agent could do more harm than a regiment of soldiers. So there was a veritable army involved in a potential infinity of spying. The movers of the game were the double and triple agents and the waverers.25 One of these was Colonel Bampfield, who would loom large in Aphra’s later spying life and is an example of the breed.
Bampfield had been a Royalist soldier serving in the early Civil War and intimate of the young James Duke of York, whom he had unwisely helped break his word to his Parliamentarian captors. With the aid of Anne Murry, a spirited young gentlewoman to whom the married Colonel was deceitfully paying court, Bampfield helped James escape in women�
��s clothes from St James’s Palace, Anne Murry providing a petticoat of mohair for the Duke and a ‘Woodstreet cake’ for his journey by barge from London.26 In Holland, the fifteen-year-old James found some of the English fleet rebelling against Parliament. Without leave from his brother but with Bampfield’s connivance, he set himself up as admiral, perhaps even fantasising a higher role. Charles had to intervene. James was removed and Prince Rupert put in his place to try to control the riotous sailors, now making drunken havoc in Rotterdam.
Before and after the incident, Bampfield appears on Scot’s and Thurloe’s payroll, giving information about the Sealed Knot and the Booth uprising and sending information about Lord Strangford at St Germain-en-Laye. He would later appear on the books of the Dutch and of the Royalist English government after the Restoration, when Aphra Behn heard much of him and he of her. What was true of Bampfield could be true of any other agent: he or she was performing a function for whoever would pay.
On the Continent, the safest lodging for a female, primarily Royalist agent or courier was a convent of English nuns, and Aphra may have visited at least one of these. Many had sprung up in Flanders since the enthusiastic Mary Ward started the Institute of Mary in 1609, and they formed refuges for English women in exile, as well as for Catholic girls wanting a religious life or finishing touches to their education. The Benedictines had established themselves in Ghent in 1624 and later in Brussels, near Boulogne, and in Ypres. Many years on, Behn set a short story in a convent in Ypres, The History of the Nun, claiming that it was based on fact.27
